Empower Women

IN one voice, top Nepali Congress leaders have pledged to work for the betterment of the Nepalese women. At the historic first general convention of Nepal Women’s Association (NWA), an organisation at the vanguard of women’s movement since decades ago, they said that without improving the women’s lot, development was not possible. Setting the tone at the huge gathering was Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba who said social reforms would remain a far cry unless women participated actively in the country’s social, economic and political activities. Nepali Congress President Girija Prasad Koirala also spoke in the same vein. Following the restoration of democracy in 1990, women activists had great hopes that far-reaching measures would be introduced to enlist women’s participation in decision-making and other levels. But in general the measures have fallen short of the high expectations. True, some measures like reservation for women in election candidacies have enabled them to rise up the political ladder. For instance, thanks to the legal provision, some 36,000 women now occupy positions at the local bodies like Village Development Committees and District Development Committees. And close to two dozen women legislators are now in the two chambers of the parliament. But such new-found positions for women amount to only a little more than token concessions. The fact remains that so few women represent half of the people under the Nepalese sky. Radical measures are sine qua non.

As he has emphasised since he donned the premiership, Mr. Deuba told NWA gathering Wednesday that he was in favour of the passage of the women’s inheritance rights bill, which has had a rather serpentine and sluggish journey to the parliament. The bill has been debated and re-debated many times over across the country over the recent years. Now at the parliamentary table, the bill may be passed during the current session of parliament. As much was indicated by Mr. Deuba who also expressed his determination to form a high-level women’s commission, which was mooted by him as one of the first priorities of his administration. All these measures, will go to empower women in a way that would position them to take more control of their lives, which are so far confined to home and hearth. If women are given power and become more and more an equal and able wheel of the proverbial two wheels of the societal chariot, Nepal could hope to move towards a more egalitarian society. A lot however depends on making gender-sensitivity a cross-cutting consideration in all governance and development issues and programmes.

Fiscal Discipline

FISCAL discipline plays a crucial role for achieving the targeted goal of economic development. This is particularly important in the context of Nepal, one of the world’s least developed countries still lagging behind in its development efforts. Its economy is almost in doldrums and poverty rampant — about 40 per cent of Nepal’s population live below the poverty line with an income of less than one US dollar per day as defined in the international standards. Also, there is still a lot more to be done for infrastructure development, which is key to overall progress. Against such a gloomy background, if the government and public enterprises fail to maintain up-to-date financial records and settle accounts in time, the situation will certainly worsen and all development works will get adversely affected. This will pose as a great hurdle in meeting the government’s highly prioritised goal of poverty alleviation as has been manifested in the Five Year Plans.

In this context, Auditor General Bishnu Bahadur K. C’s statement that most of the government bodies are not serious about the fiscal discipline comes as a disheartening news as these are the very institutions that play crucial roles in making the government programmes successful. Informing the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the House of Representatives on the 38th Annual Report of the Auditor General’s Office (AGO), K. C. said that such financial irregularities pose difficulty in controlling revenue leakage and maintaining transparency. It should be a matter at concern to the government that a large number of government bodies and undertakings have not yet taken any initiatives to have their accounts settled. A whopping number of 3107 such institutions have not been audited so far. Besides the regular financial records, the government itself has not been up-to-date in keeping the records of foreign aid as well, which has created confusion to a great extent. This is indeed a great setback in Nepal’s development efforts. Poorly maintained accounts and unsettled financial irregularities of course pave way for corruption and misappropriation of public funds as well, which as a rule directly affect development programmes meant to achieve common welfare. Therefore, in order to improve the situation, the government needs to divert its attention towards strengthening such bodies like PAC and AGO in regulating the country’s financial system and maintaining fiscal discipline for the good of the nation.