COMMENT

Be warned

The annual ritual of the government announcing its policies and programmes was done with last Friday. Addressing a joint sitting of the Parliament, His Majesty the King read out the present government’s programmes for the country for the coming year and the future. Like it has been time and again mentioned by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala right from the time he has become the Chief Executive of the nation, the Royal Address also emphasised on maintaining law and order, providing good governance and controlling corruption among others. Then like always, issues like poverty alleviation, modernisation of courts, encouraging private sector, reforms in the financial sector, development of agriculture, tapping water resources, drinking water, sanitation and human settlement development were also included in the government’s priority list.

Regarding the security concerns of the nation, His Majesty the King said, “The government will guarantee the freedom of life to the Nepalese people and enable them to enjoy the freedom fearlessly so that they can realise the vision of a democratic as well as prosperous Nepal”. This is fine, as freedom and democracy would have no meaning if a person feels insecure. However, security is something, which not only this government, but also many other governments before it, have not been able to give to the people, specially those who live in the Maoist affected areas. Even government officials accept that in several districts in Mid-Western Nepal, the insurgents run the show as far as administering the area is concerned. Sadly, till now, the government has not been able to make any headway either in starting talks with the Maoists, or in controlling them through sheer force. Prime Minister Koirala himself has limited his efforts to tackle this daunting problem in speeches only. Unless some concrete steps are taken to deal with this problem soon, the people will lose faith in this government too.

One other issue hyped to a great extent by Prime Minister Koirala, is his government’s efforts to control corruption. But apart from the ministers performing the routine task of declaring their property, nothing seems to have been done in this direction. In the Royal Address it has been said, “ Measures have already been initiated for the amendment of existing laws, enactment of new laws as well as structural and policy reforms in order to check corruption, graft and revenue leakage”. But such words sound hollow, when one hears the huge amount of property declared by none other than the incumbent ministers themselves. Like mentioned by a vernacular weekly, going by their declared assets, all ministers are millionaires. How could people who have spent most of their lives fighting for democracy, have been able to amass so much wealth? Though, this is a question that should be aimed at not only the present lot of ministers, it should go to all those who enjoyed power, at whatever levels, in the past ten years. Is there the political will in any leader of any party to initiate action against such persons who have earned illegal wealth?

Now to go back to the policies and programmes of the government, it would be best for the nation, if the authorities went ahead and implemented what is said in such addresses and not only bombard the people with big promises. By looking at the state of the nation, which in fact is worsening politically, economically and socially, it does not seem even a little per cent of what has been said has been done. This year, the announcement of the government, even if a routine affair, is important in that, it may be the last time for the Nepali Congress to undo the damage it has done to the country while it has been in power. If the powers that be, do not bridge the gap between what they say and do, then they should be warned that much harder times could befall the nation in the very near future.

Nepal: Focusing on Poverty Reduction through decentralization

A novel feature of Nepal’s anti-poverty efforts —now a central objective of Nepal’s development planning—is the link with an ambitious programme of decentralisation and local empowerment.

Close to half the people in Nepal could be considered income-poor. Official statistics for 1996 estimate that more than 40% of the population is poor, while estimates based on a poverty line of $1 a day per person put the figure at more than 50%. Poverty is greater in rural areas, especially in higher-altitude and less accessible regions and among lower castes and ethnic minorities. Measures of human poverty tend to mirror the more traditional measures of income poverty.

A striking fact: income poverty in Nepal has increased since the late 1970s, mostly in rural areas. So for two decades growth has bypassed the rural poor. Advances in urban areas and their rural periphery have counteracted this trend.

What explains rural poverty? Lack of access to resources. The poor have low-productivity land, partly as a result of lack of credit and modern inputs, in turn a result of lack of credit and modern inputs, in turn a result of inadequate infrastructure and weak institutions. Lacking unsable roads, farmers cannot obtain modern inputs or get their crops to market. Whatever services the government provides appear to be captured by better-off households because the poor are not well organized to defend their interests.

The poverty strategy

Poverty has been an underlying theme of all Nepal’s development plans since the 1950s. the first attempt to formulate a separate plan for poverty was the Programme for the Fulfilment of Basis Needs during the Seventh Plan period, 1985-90, but political upheavals interrupted its implementation. With the restoration of democracy in 1991, poverty again become a major objective of development planning. The Ninth plan, for 1997-2002, singles out poverty as the sole development objective—an unusual arrangement.

The government follows a two-part strategy for poverty reduction. The first fosters broad-based growth to benefit principally the moderately poor, about 60% of all the poor. The second combines targeted programmes with social mobilisation to reach the extremely poor.

The plan recognizes that mere acceleration of economic growth is not enough for effective poverty reduction—and that the composition of growth is important. Tourism and labour-intensive manufacturing are being promoted, but the main force for poverty reduction is faster growth in agricultural small and medium-scale enterprises. The plan is supporting the production of basic food staples in the plains of Terai and promoting livestock and higher-valued commercial crops in the hills and mountains.

Problems of inequality

Greater equality in access to resources would help translate faster agricultural growth into less poverty, but the distribution of land ownership in the country has improved little despite decades of declared intentions. Part of the problem might be the inherently small plots, particularly in the hills and mountains, such that setting ceilings on ownership and redistributing to the land-poor cannot accomplish much.

An important source of new inequalities is the unequal access to education. The government is trying to meet the spending targets of the 20/20 Initiative for basic social services and is raising real social expenditures per person, but overall social spending remains low. More fundamental, the total budget is unusually low, with a revenue-to-GDP ratio of only 11%. Until tax revenue is raised, economic and social policies will complete for scarce government resources.

ONE MAJOR LESSON: THE MORE SUCCESSFUL PROGRAMMES HAVE DEVOTED MUCH ATTENTION, AND OFTEN MUCH TIME, TO INSTITUTION BUILDING.

For anti-poverty activities, the line ministries run sectoral progrmmes, while the Ministry of Local Development runs most targeted programmes. The ministry is also responsible for strengthening local institutional development, such as bolstering the district and village development committees. There is naturally some overlap between the two sets of programmes. In addition, a Social Welfare Council, affiliated with the Ministry of Women and Social Welfare, has been set up to coordinate the activities of civil society organisations.

The diversity of actors demands more attention to coordination and to strong monitoring and evaluation. But monitoring and evaluation units have yet to be set up in most ministries, and the  poverty cell in the National Planning Commission, established to monitor all poverty programmes, lacks the capacity to do so.

Methods of targeting

Nepal has used different methods to target the poor. One is to use an area-based programme to provide infrastructure to the more backward and isolated regions. Another is to target indigenous peoples, the oppressed and downtrodden (dalits), women and children. These programmes typically are small, and the benefits tend to go to the non-poor.

A third method is to use an entry point intervention, providing a service or asset—such as credit, infrastructure or institution building.  Credit-based schemes in Nepal have suffered from mistargeting, declining repayment rates, high service delivery costs and inadequate institutional capacity. They have little sustainable impact on poverty even under the best of arrangements, unless accompanied by greater prosperity in the community.

Little attention has gone to “macro-micro” linkages. There is little recognition of how national policies can affect the implementation of small-scale projects—or of how the lessons from small-scale projects can help craft better national policies. One major   lesson; the more successful programmes have devoted much attention, and often much time, to institution building-to decentralisation of authority, social mobilisation and empowerment.

Programme for decentralisation

Centrally designed, administered and managed programmes, such as the Integrated Rural Development Programmes implemented with the close involvement of beneficiaries—even when they incur more costs for delivery of services—tend to be more successful. Often these programmes rely on strong and effective local government institutions to coordinate multiple interventions.

The government has been decentralising since the early 1980s, but only in the 1990s were these efforts married to building participatory local institutions. The real breakthrough came in the early 1990s with a multiparty system and new goverance laws. Local bodies, with more authority and responsibility, have the power to collect more taxes and strengthen their administrative capacity. And substantial funds were granted to village development committees.

UNDP has supported these initiatives through the Participatory District Development Programme and the Local Governance Programme, simultaneously emphasizing social mobilization and strengthening local government. The test for these programmes lies in sustaining their achievements after the withdrawal of project funds. Will local communities continue to be empowered relative to the government bureaucracy? Will the poor continue to compete with the richer members of the community for the allocation of resources?

(Poverty Report 2000, UNDP)

Learn lesson from Nirmal Lama

The leaders of our country must learn lesson from the death of Nirmal Lama. How he had sacrificed and devoted his whole life for the vested interest of the  country and for the people. He never had a big balance in the foreign banks, neither had he big banglows and Pajeros like the leaders nowadays we can see being enjoyed lavishly from the tax payers’ money.

Our country really needs   honest men like Nirmal Lama. He always has been giving advise to the people. To build our country we must always work hard and fight corruptions. The people of this country must not seat idle and and waste time in unnecessary conversations. If we can fight to stop even 50-60% of the corruptions that the leaders are indulged in, certainly our country will experience a big difference and our country will move ahead for the good future that lies ahead.

And my personal request to our government is please..please we the citizens and the peace lover of this country we do not want hatred and violence and no more blood sheds in the land where Gautam Buddha, the apostle of peace, was born. We all GAESO members and the families share the grief of the  Late Nirmal Lama's families and the people of our country at the moment. r

Yam Bahadur Gurung
General Secretary
GAESO
Via Internet