Modes Of Governance
A Theoretical Discourse

By Mukti Rijal

GOVERNANCE has attracted debates and theoretical inquiries these days. It is being established that malgovernance or bad governance is responsible for social and political problems the states are facing these days. Improvement in governance is believed to reform distortions and bring the anomalies to order.

Critical

A theoretician on governance claims that a single penny invested in development can go to improve the living conditions of the people if governance is efficient and effective. The same theoretician argues that governments could never govern if the people in their organisations, their families, their groupings of all kinds- were not self governing. This means that local governance or self governance is very critical to make the governance system effective .

Spinoza, one of the great philosophers of our time writes, " Men should be governed in such a way that they do not regard themselves as being governed, but as following their own bent and their own free choice in their manner of life; in such a way, then that they are restrained only by love of freedom, desire to increase their possessions and the hope of obtaining the offices of state".

Theoreticians and researchers have classified governance in different ways. Some tend to use governance as synonym of state. The hierarchical governance is the first type of category often used by experts and researchers. It is the classical parliamentary model of the European states characterised by the constitutional rules for election, Parliament and government. According to this model of governance, the role of state is to govern society on the basis of political preferences. The elected parliamentarians are viewed as the architects of the society. The role of the citizen is to elect the politicians and between elections to act as subjects.

Public Organizations in this model of governance are organised in such a way that the political control of the administrations' loyalty is made efficient. It believes in neutral bureaucracy but fails to achieve it. As a result, the orientation of Public organisations is towards vertical top-down relations and control is carried out using hierarchy and rules internally as wells as externally.

There exists another model of governance called the autonomous governance. In this type of governance one of the roles of state is safeguarding values. The role of public organisations is not neutral. They are expected to actively guarantee and sustain certain values. Autonomy can be brought about in several ways. Firstly autonomy can be secured through legal rules and secondly autonomy can be secured by subscribing to basic values. Organisations belonging to the autonomous type of governance are not actively left without external control. However, control can be carried out through socialisation and peer group evaluations based on norms and knowledge.

The third type of governance is the negotiating governance that is based on the idea of real politik. The state is not regarded as an autocratic agent that has a free hand to impose all its decisions on citizens. The state is up against many interests. The role of the state is therefore to negotiate between different interests. Apart from the concrete tasks that have to be performed, an important aspect of the negotiating state is that of reproducing and developing patterns of influence which can facilitate political integration and stability.

Another model of governance, according to theoretician, is the responsive state. This model builds on the idea of the single individual's recognised demand for concrete goods and services. Although the public organisation can be structured in many ways. The basic orientation is downwards to the user . And the basis principle is bottom up that is opposite of the hierarchical state.

Responsive

The basic quality of democratic governance is reponsiveness and autonomy. In Nepal we have multiparty democratic system which means that we should strive to create a responsive and responsible state. We are still governed by the hierarchical mode of governance in which citizens are yet to be behaved in a responsible and effective manner. We should attempt to make our governance a fully responsive system.

Growth And Utilisation Of Trained Manpower

By Jai Narayan Jha

MANPOWER is both the end and the means of all round development. It is the means through which most of the social, economic and political problems can be solved. Availability of adequate trained manpower enhances the possibility of progress and prosperity in the country.

Liability

Nepal has ushered in into an era of all round development. It has to do away with social evils, poverty, disease, illiteracy and blind beliefs. Following the restoration of democracy in the country, the liability of the government has increased to tackle the increasing problems. The activities of the government have also increased over the years. However, ever since the first five-years plan was lunched dearth and the proper utilisation of manpower has remained as a major stumbling block. National Planning Commission (NPC) has been experiencing serious shortage of manpower to move the engine of development. The experiences over the years have shown that educated manpower in Arts and Humanities was in abundance but plans and projects failed due to severe shortage of technical, scientific and managerial manpower. In 1964, there was a shortage of 24,101 technical manpower especially in the fields of health, hygiene, agriculture, public works, educational and so on. This comprised 4454 for higher level, 6184 for intermediate level and 11,463 for the lower level of labour force. The country was forced to hire foreign nationals for technical jobs. Similarly, in the Fourth Plan period (1970-75) 15,315 higher, intermediate and lower level technicians were in short supply. For a long time dearth of technicians has been major taboo of planned development. Later this part of the problem was realised by the government and a new Education plan was introduced in the country in 1971 to give a boost to the development process. Ever since the country has been producing manpower in abundance. Jobs have been diversified and enlarged to pave the path for all-round development. But now the situation is that the country has been unable to absorb so many manpower. A number of highly educated and scarce technical manpower have quit the country for better prospects. Hence "brain drain" has been a serious problem. However, due to lack of coherent manpower planning, there is still shortage of a number of trained experts.

A serious problem over the years has been that the utilisation of intellectual resources of the population as a whole is poor. The inability to use the trained manpower effectively might be termed as the lack of absorptive capacity. In such cases the education and trainings are sometimes wasted and the financial investment and the development of human resources is lost.

Poor utilisation of trained manpower is the anti-thesis of good public administration in the modern sense of the term resulting in organisational obstacle and psychological barriers.

In fact, enhancing efficacy, speed of work and morale building within the service can be affected only if the capability of trained manpower is utilised properly. If done so then only the government can cope with the increasing volume of works required to achieve the economic development of the country and meet the challenges in diverse fields. The hard reality today is that at all levels from national government to positions in private organisations their is an astonishing waste of manpower.

Over the years a large number of civil servants were sent abroad for higher education and training. They have indubitably contributed considerably for all-round development of the country. But frankly speaking at present in Nepal the utilisation of such trained manpower is very poor.

A tabulation has pointed out that 2900 Nepalese students studied outside Nepal on scholarship awarded by foreign aid mission between 1951-64, but though the numbers are not known about those who studied abroad in their own resources or those programmes not supported by the government. As of 1964, about seven hundred out of 2900 are known to be employed by the state, but at least 1400, who have returned to Nepal are not in the public services and there is no record either in government or in aid mission office about their present employment.

A similar finding of Linsel had pointed out that in the past 2600 Nepalese have received training abroad under various aid programmes and scholarships. Among these some have been valuable to HMG and are occupying these positions of trust. But it must be admitted that many have not found either in the government service or the public sector appropriate to the specific qualifications and training. As such, Linsel suggested that if the figures showing the employment of returning of overseas students quoted above at all reliable then they show a deplorable wastage of training.

Similarly, Mihaly, a foreign adviser, had lamented that a number of civil servants had already been trained in public administration and government in foreign universities. Of the four Nepalese so far trained in Britain only one was still in government. The utilisation record was the poorest in most cases.

Overseas training of top administration will pay dividends provided the utilisation of manpower is carefully planned.

The investment in training both at home and abroad has contributed considerably. However, the utilisation aspect has been very deplorable. Mihaly had to write that most donors eventually learnt through hard experience that the government lacked both the administrative capacity as well as the political will. Some aid donors had argued that Nepal is now receiving more assistance than the country can use, given the manpower of technically skilled people.

Similarly, a committee set up to assist the utilisation of foreign aid in Nepal has remarked that most aid money went to the pockets of big persons, who invested it in building bunglow in the urban areas and hardly the aid money was utilised in egalitarian way.

In the Nepalese politico administrative culture, foreign training has been valued not for the professional development of the country, but as a reward for a particular service or as a token of esteem or favour.
Hence, despite funding and trained personnel all the development programmes of the government have been awfully hampered by the scarcity of an efficient administrative personnel and by the incompetence of those already in government service.

As such, the Nepalese case suggests that "Economic aid failed to hasten the pace of development as desired by donors."

For such state of affairs Riggs and Lapalombara have aptly observed that technical assistance programmes are given to the developing countries, but no attention is paid to the political capacities of the country."

Crucial

Hence the Nepalese case poses a number of crucial questions. In Nepal the whole sole manpower planning is erroneous, which doesn't take into consideration the number of persons to be educated and trained inside the country and another number that have to be sent abroad for higher studies and training. There is virtually no co-ordination between National Planning Commission and the government agencies in one hand and between the Ministry of Education and the Educational institutes on the other. No serious thought is being given to appoint and utilise trained manpower. The dilemma in Nepal is that owing to lack of employment opportunity a number of trained and capable persons have left the country for better prospects. There is no single institute which can deal with all matter related to manpower. The country cannot abuse the investment on training people whether inside the country or in the foreign universities. Hence the need is to take the matter seriously.