Political Behaviour & Decentralisation
How Conducive ?

By Mukti Rijal

WORKSHOPS, seminars and deliberations are organised often to discuss decentralisation especially with focus on how the process can be furthered. In fact, the input discussions are important and create critical rational data to examine about how measures for taking decentralisation process forward should be crafted and implemented. Political will and commitment are said to be the preconditions for decentralisation in the context like ours where politics and politicians command influences in several spheres of national life.

Autonomy

Bureaucracy is politics guided and lacks functional autonomy. Similarly, economy suffers from interventions-formal or informal- of the politicians and politics in general. Decentralisation is something that hits or affects politicians directly. It takes away power and influences of politicians and bureaucrats. It divests them of the glamour and command they exercise in both formal and functional terms and vests power and authority in local institutions. The process of divestiture will definitely be slow, deliberate and painless. Decentralisation reduces central influences and interferences in local affairs and limits role of the higher apparatus in most essential spheres of governmental functions. Where politicians fail to restrain from local details and tend to exercise their influences on local affairs, how can decentralisation process be allowed to go further as it hurts the ego of the politicians and power brokers. Our parliamentarians seem not sincere and lack in clear perspectives when we talk of decentralisation and local self governance. They speak rhetorics and indulge in tall talks when they are in the opposition but shift their stance as soon as they take the treasury bench.

Moreover, they harbour the fear that the strong and functional local governments will undercut their role and influence. They fight tooth and nail for their place and role in local government institutions be it DDC or municipality. When the local Self Governance Bill was being discussed in the Parliament some two years ago, lawmakers seemed keen to create place for them. Some lawmakers floated proposals to ensure that the new law gave preeminent place for them in local affairs. Even the concept of parliamentary constituency level mechanism for local development under the chairmanship of the lawmaker concerned was mooted. But this proposal did not carry much support even as lawmakers could lend strong credence to it. Parliamentarians are, however, given place at the DDCs as members and their role is envisaged in district plan formulation and selection.

Parliamentarians get one million rupees for the constituency development programme. The amount was increased to one million in the last annual budget from four hundred thousands rupees they received to allocate for the development of their respective constituencies. Though the government has issued guidelines to govern the allocation and use of the fund, lack of monitoring and evaluation has resulted into poor results. The fund has been politicised severely and used at the beck and call of political functionaries.

Lawmakers using their political muscle in overriding the interests and values of decentralisation is a strong example of the centralised tendencies.

Political parties do resist the initiatives to bind them to a body of democratic rules and regulations. Inner party democracy is a nation which is provided in the constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal. However, political parties are not structured to permit for growth of democratic norms and values, nor they seem ready to practice internal democracy in day to day functions.

The statute of Nepali Congress party gives more authority to the party president at the expense of lower rungs while main opposition party CPN (UML) is yet to dismantle fully the concept of democratic centralism (Janwadi Kendriyata).

Moreover, the initiative with regard to enacting law relating to political parties to require that they operate with due observance of transparency and accountability has not been materialised. There may be some difficult issues to thrash out, but political parties should give priority to enacting the law to demonstrate that they are committed to transparency and good governance within the organisa-tion itself.

Decentralisation is one of the important tenets of good governance which should be reflected in behaviours of political parties as they, in fact, are and can be mandated to run governance of the state. If political parties fail the test of decentralised and democratic culture, governance run under their aegis is bound to be centralised and hypocritic.

Influence

At the present context, local leaders say DDC president cannot act independent of party influence and dictat. Their loyalty to party interests, not local development and governance interests, counts much to curry favour of central leadership. They can ensure their nomination in the local election only if they can show that they are loyal to central leadership. At such a paradox, decentralisation process is bound to suffer in the country. We have a local framework for decentralisation which concedes some room for local self governance. But will substantive decentralisation be achieved with the prevailing political behaviour is a difficult question to note.

RANDOM NOTES

By Bijay Aryal

Newspapers, Again

IT is over two weeks since a 12-page Nepali daily, Space-time Dainik, the first newspaper venture of a cable television company of the same name, hit the news-stands. At about the same time, another broadsheet daily, Nepal Samacharpatra, began coming out thicker than before-12 pages instead of 8. The grapevine also said that one business partner or two had been brought in to inject money power into that daily to make it come alive. Some time ago, the Kantipur daily had brought in a new editor, Yuvaraj Ghimire. The publishers had said then that this move was aimed at meeting the challenges of the changed times. The Himalaya Times, yet another broad-sheet, seems to be still running in the same old way, without extra investment to turn it around.

It is heard that the space-time is paying its journalists among the best salaries in the industry. It had no money constraints on quality. It made elaborate preparations. It aims to edge out Kantipur as the largest daily. So it is natural to expect something extra in this newspaper that is missing in its rivals to give it a competitive advantage. But that extra is absent from the Space-time Dainik. It has broken no new ground. It has been just another daily.

In allocating pages, it has mostly followed the Kantipur, only the page titles being designated by synonyms. Here Samacharpatra has arranged the pages differ-ently, showing some imagina-tion.

In Kantipur, the editorial leadership has been changed, but the face of Kantipur has not undergone a remarkable change. But it has been just a couple of months or so since Ghimire took over. But on Shyam K.C., who has nearly spent two terms of his editorial contract as editor of The Kathmandu Post, it can safely be said that he has not improved on his predecessor in a noticeable way. At The Rising Nepal, KC served as chief editor for several years, and he was professionally known as a good news writer and personally as a gentleman among his colleagues.

Another daily, the Samacharpatra, perhaps in anticipation of greater competition, has increased its daily pages. But this writer thinks it was a mistake. While much of space within the 8 pages was filled with junk, it should have invested the money on making every page of the paper scintiliate with quality rather than spreading itself too thin over many pages. That means more junk will be served. Its rivals are no exception. It would have been better to reduce the price, say by one rupee, but sticking to the same 8 pages with better contents, better layout, better pictures, and better everything by bringing in experienced and compe-tent journalists with a drive.

For second position in the market, the Space-time and the Samacharpatra will fight it out. The Space-Time is reported policy of delivering the paper to its cable subscribers at no or nominal cost might do something, but how far this very expensive idea can be carried is an important point. For quite some time, the Kantipur will retain its first position despite its many weaknesses.

Yogesh’s Exit

Yogesh Upadhyay, founder-editor of the Kathmandu Post and Kantipur, has said goodbye to the organisation with whom he had been associated for 9 years. But Upadhyay did so after being shunted, first, out of the Post, then, out of the Kantipur. This writer was Yogesh’s deputy at the Post and left it after nine months there after playing a role in its birth. This scribe had joined the Post after resigning from TRN. He found the atmosphere there at that time unfit for professional journalists to work in. At that time Yogesh, too, was averse to professionalism. He was regarded as a man for all seasons as well as a man with a distinct political view. But so are others at present broadsheet newspapers, perhaps with the exception of Pushkar Lal Shrestha of the Samacharpatra.

Whatever may have happened, when we talk of the growth and development of the Kantipur and the Kathmandu Post, it will be incomplete without Yogesh’s name.

Yogesh has said he wants to spend his post-Kantipur time in journalism by taking on some challenging respon-sibility. Good luck to him.