For Privatized Food Security System

HMG's action to close down 41 depots of Nepal Food Corporation (NFC) has brought to fore several concerns. The decision is said to be made in connection with the implementation of Agriculture Perspective Plan (APP), the 20 year blue print designed to lift Nepali agriculture out of the subsistence trap. However, the latest decision to close the food depots in the remotest districts, that are known to be perpetually food-deficit ones, while keeping those in other areas intact, is criticized for its insensitivity to the poor who inhabit the remote areas.

NFC depots run under the principle of supplying food to the poor. However, latest findings have shown that subsidies have helped not the targeted poor, but the relatively better-offs. This was the logic when APP recommended to gradually, but speedily, reduce subsidies. Once the government adopted APP as its main plan document, it is the duty of the bureaucracy to implement it in the earnest, whether the donor insists on it or not.

Government bureaucrats told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the House of Representatives that they made the mistake of closing down the depots in remote areas, as they had to decide in a hurry. Another startling fact that they brought to light was that the decision was taken even without consulting NFC management. An excuse of lack of time for a decision related to a plan that is in implementation for more than three years is quite indigestible. This decision shows in a way why all the plans so far have failed in Nepal to deliver the promised goods. It also shows how autonomous the public enterprises are.

This incidence also led the MPs to criticize Asian Development Bank (ADB) for putting a condition to its aid. ADB’s condition to release a tranche of its aid was the culprit for the hurried decision, according to the bureaucrats. But, this logic again is not digestible, because it was upto the government itself to decide which of the innumerable NFC depots to close down. It can not be imagined that ADB would have named the depots to be closed down. This substantiates that it is the Nepali bureaucracy itself that is to blame, not the donors, for failed development efforts in Nepal.

After the PAC flare up, the government has put forward a lame explanation that alternate plans are being formulated to make these remote areas self–sufficient in food. It is a well-known fact that formulating a plan will take some time – generally several years – and its implementation will take still some more. It was the government itself which made the people of remote areas dependent on subsidized food. The process for undoing the damage is to take time, and until that happens the government must keep on with the previous practice.