National 5 (Spotlight Weekly)

Local Empowerment

Actual devolution of power along with capacity-building campaign could provide answer to many of the ills plaguing the country

By SANJAYA DHAKAL

Even as the local bodies in the countries are in a state of limbo at present, experts and officials concur that more, and not less, devolution of power is the need of the hour.

Fourteen years after the restoration of democracy, the country finds itself in a critical condition with insurgency ravaging all sections of society. People are raising demands for socio-economic equity, gender justice, local autonomy and so on.

Amid the cacophony of these demands, experts have said that the country must start recognizing the ground reality and begin to devolve authority to the lowest level.

“Human rights, good governance and decentralization are the three pillars on whose foundation the democracy flourishes. In absence of any one of them, democracy will not be sustainable,” said Dr. Hikmat Bista, chief advisor, DASU/DANIDA. “Decentralizing government from the national level to regions, districts, towns, municipalities, rural areas, settlement and communities enables people to participate more directly in governance processes and can help empower people previously excluded from decision-making.”

Experts everywhere agree that rule from proximity tends to be sustainable. “Decentralization is a tool through which the government can distribute the fruits of development to its people,” said Krishna Man Pradhan, president of the Rural Development Foundation (RDF) – an NGO, which is actively working to promote decentralization in the country.

History Of Decentralization

Although decentralization has been floated as a concept for development since long time back, it was in the year 2020 B.S. (1964 AD) when then government introduced Decentralization Action Plan.

Even during the authoritarian Panchayat regime, elections used to be held at local level to choose representatives of the local bodies. In fact, in the early 1960s, Nepal was the first country in the region to traverse the path of decentralization.

However, the concept of decentralization received a major boost after the restoration of democracy in 1990. The Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal 1990 also promoted this concept. Subsequent governments promised effective decentralization amid growing awareness among the local level leadership.

As a result, a watershed Local Self Governance Act (LSGA) was introduced in 1998 after intense debate and homework.

Prevailing Weaknesses

Unfortunately, even after the introduction of the LSGA, the country could not witness the dramatic change as desired. “The spirit of the LSGA could not be institutionalized because the central government institutions continued to exist in parallel forms in the local level. There are duplications of functions and contradictory laws. As such, the LSGA could not become fully functional,” said Dinesh Thapaliya, an under secretary at the Ministry of Local Development. (MLD).

There are many examples of lack of clarity in division of authority. While the job of the Agriculture Ministry is to frame policies and programs at the central level, the LSGA states that District Development Committee (DDCs) are responsible for framing the same at district level.

“Against the spirit of the LSGA, the government still continues to run district as well as village level agricultural offices. Clearly, there will be duplication in the jobs carried out by these offices and that of the DDCs and VDCs,” said an official.

Likewise, the central government still continues to recruit teachers at rural schools. As a result, the teachers are answerable to the ministry and not to the VDC. Similar is the case in health sector.

“Besides, for every provision in LSGA that aims to empower the local bodies, there are ten provisions in other acts that tend to snatch away their authority,” revealed another official conceding that the government has not been able to abide by the letter and spirit of true decentralization.

Sectoral Devolution Strategy

With the objective of bringing about further devolution in the real sense and to clearly demarcate the jobs and responsibilities of the central and local government, the RDF with the assistance of DASU/DANIDA has prepared a “Sectoral Devolution Strategy.”

At a workshop organized on August 8 to discuss the preliminary draft of the strategy with the responsible government officials, the participants agreed that there is an element of urgency in implementing decentralization.

“It is already too late for us to start devolving authority. I believe that the government should immediately start shedding authority in a time-bound manner. What we can devolve, we should devolve immediately. In areas where we face problems, we can postpone the devolution by certain period,” said Bhoj Raj Ghimire, Secretary at the National Planning Commission (NPC).

The strategy, which has been prepared after seven month long homework by a team of officials and experts, not only aims to bring about devolution but also proposes to make changes in particular laws so that there will no longer be lack of clarity and/or duplication.

“The strategy not only talks about the general things but deals with specific issues faced by the local representatives in their day-to-day work,” said Udaya Nepali Shrestha, vice president of Law Reform Commission and former government secretary. Shrestha is also a member of the team that prepared the strategy.

The strategy clearly defines the relation between the central government and the local bodies and also among the local bodies like DDCs, VDCs and municipalities. It delineates jobs and tasks to be performed by the central and local government. Apart from issues related to policy-making, national security, defense, foreign relations, taxation, monetary policy, central revenue, protection of individual rights, human rights, social security, large-scale disaster management, mega infrastructure projects and monitoring and evaluation; all other functions should be handed over to the local bodies.

The strategy studies thirteen different sectors in which it proposes the clear demarcation of jobs between the center and the government. The study is the first-of-its-kind, which comprehensively deals with the specific functions that need to be devolved to the local level. The thirteen sectors include health and population; education and sports; agriculture, livestock and cooperatives; physical development and water resource; forest, environment and soil conservation; industry, commerce, supplies and mines; local development; information and communication; labor and transport; women, children and social welfare; tourism and culture; land reforms and management; and finance.

Capacity Building

Another major reason for the apparent failure of the LSGA to take off was the lack of resources and capacity on the part of the local bodies.

Experts say that local bodies require functions; finance; functionaries; accountability; and monitoring and evaluation in order to be effective. “In the past, the government always gave authority but did not provide resources and capacity required to carry out those authorities,” said Thapaliya.

In the proposed strategy, experts have said that the government should not wait till the local bodies become capable before devolving the power. “The devolution and capacity-building must go hand in hand. One without the other will be meaningless. Besides, it would be stupid of us to presume that local representatives are incapable and inefficient,” said Reshami Raj Acharya, an official at the MLD.

The team had undertaken an on-the-field study at the local bodies in Dolakha, Tanahun and Saptari district to find out their real needs. It found out that the local bodies need to change their organizational structure; financial management procedure; system and procedures; resource distribution mechanism; and physical condition and environment.

“People who work in local bodies have to be more specialized. Take for instance the jobs that have to be carried out by municipalities like sanitation and solid waste management. They require technical manpower. Unfortunately, the practice here is to depute a bureaucrat to handle the DDC and/or municipality,” said Dr. Gobinda Dhakal, director of the Local Development Training Academy (LDTA). “If the government sends the officers it wants to depute to the local bodies for at least one month of training, a lot could be improved. Without adequate training, we cannot imagine to build the capacity of the local bodies,” he said.

At a time when the country has been running without the elected local bodies for the past two years, the debate on devolution has assumed greater significance. The experiences of the last two years have amply demonstrated that there is no alternative to elected local bodies to carry out the tasks of development and service-delivery. In addition to that, the experiences have also proved beyond a ray of doubt that there is no alternative to providing more authority to the local bodies. If decentralization could be implemented in true sense, the situation of the existing conflict, too, could be eased as many of the demands relate to the centralization of power at Singh Durbar.