For Successful Decentralisation
Integrity Building Needed

By Mukti Rijal

THE enactment of the local self-governance act in 1998, took decentralisation process to a stage of development in the country. It recognises to the concept of local self-governance and provides it with legal sanction. It, indeed constitutes a quantum leap forward in the evolution of decentralisation process and envisions a new era of its development.

Decentralisation is both a functional and empowering process. In functional terms, it is a means to establish and institutionalise good governance. It is also a process of empowering people. It creates enough space for participation and influencing decision making process. The Local Self Governance Act aims at enhancing good governance in addition to lending impetus to participatory democratic process at the local level. Capacity is one of the prerequisite to the successful working of the local government institutions. This implies not only the institutional, administrative and financial capacity of the bodies concerned but also the individual specific response of the people’s representatives to the governance milieu at the local level. The governance in the country is neither good nor effective. The central apparatus of the government have been alleged to be irresponsible and ineffective to deliver goods and services to the people. The rationale of Decentralisation lies in the fact that it delivers better services and goods to the people. It is assumed that local institutions become more accountable and people’s representatives tend to be accessible on hand to the people. In case the local government institutions fail to provide relatively effective services to the people and the people’s representatives do not respond and act pursuant to the tenets of good governance, the moral and legal edifice of decentralisation and self-governance collapses. Decentralisation in this context banks on the values and ethos based on integrity and accessibility. Local government institutions without democratic value orientations and the people’s representatives failing the test of integrity provide ammunitions to the adversaries of decentralisation. It is, therefore, necessary that the good governance and self-governance should go together hand in hand. This has been the spirit of the Local Self-Governance Act as several provisions in the law provide that transparency, accountability and predictability are followed by the local bodies and the elected officials always remain upright and uphold the ethos of integrity.

There have been some accusations, of late, leveled against the local bodies and elected officebearers charging that resources are not properly utilised and power is abused. Mass media has cited some instances of resource embezzlement as well. Though the instances are very few, they will destroy the very purpose of decentralisation and self-governance if the alleged tendencies are not controlled and checked in time. District Development Committee is the apex tier of the local government hierarchy and it is at this level that exemplary role in terms of observance of the morality and integrity needs to be established and demonstrated. DDCs have a supervisory and monitoring role and any deviant tendencies at this level will also be attributed to the decadence of the local government institutions. DDC office bearers and members should provide themselves as the role model so that not only personnel but also the officebeares down at the VDC level could draw some inspirations from their examples.

People’s representatives are elected by the people and it is also mooted that their performance or non-performance is evaluated at the time when popular mandate is to be renewed at the time of elections. Though it is logic of democracy, experiences have shown that it does not work perfectly especially in the context of emerging democracies like ours where civic vigilance is poor and weak. Citizen’s charter and code of ethics have become the useful tools to account for the deeds of the representatives of the people.

The code of ethics should be of a declaratory nature and stipulate what the members should do and refrain from doing. The code of ethics should from a kind of resolution and commitment and cover the following aspect as observance of the rule of law, clean electoral and representation practices, accessibility to the electorate, clean personal posturing and uprightness.

Moreover it should also comprise the aspects as accountability and transparency, impartiality and non-interference, commitment to uplift of the women and disadvantaged and so on.

This alone can contribute to foster integrity and integrity building at the local level.

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