National 8 (Spotlight Weekly)

Development and Service Delivery at Local Level within Conflict Situation

Krishna Man Pradhan

Background : The nine-year-long violent insurgency has rocked every sphere of life in Nepal. Around 11,000 people have already lost their lives and properties worth hundreds of millions of rupees have already been destroyed. The situation is turning from bad to worse with every passing year. Amid the protracted conflict, concerns are deepening about how to guarantee the service-delivery and development works at local level. The country simply cannot afford to wait for the day the conflict ends to resume service delivery and development. That attitude would only worsen the situation and further fuel the conflict dragging the country to a vicious cycle of internal war and bloodshed.

The service-delivery and development initiatives, however, will have a direct bearing on the peaceful settlement of the conflict because it will gradually lure the people away from conflict. This will lead to a situation whereupon the rebelling side will gradually begin to lose the root causes based on which they could launch the insurgency. Such a situation will be greatly favorable for peaceful settlement of the conflict. It is already clear that policies and laws framed for normal circumstances cannot adequately address the people’s problem during conflict period. A new sort of policy will, therefore, be needed to address the problems during this interregnum period of conflict as well as post-conflict reconstruction phase.

Broadly there are two perspectives of looking at the present situation in the country. The government and the Maoists hold two diametrically opposite viewpoint regarding the state of the country. To a large extent, its central level offices are, indeed, functioning normally. But its district and local level machineries lie thoroughly disrupted. In reality almost all of the secretaries of VDC have already resigned and even the remaining are working from district headquarters.

Present status

In the initial years, the Maoists were able to finance their operations by looting few banks and imposing levy on teachers and employees. Along with the speed with which its organization expanded, its financial needs, too, have soared as they now needed to sustain their burgeoning size. Naturally, the Maoists were on the look out for lucrative source of income. Consequently, in the last two-three years, the Maoists have begun to extract certain percent from INGOs and NGOs. But this source of income, too, seems to be drying up because the Maoist strategy of disrupting development works have gradually compelled the INGOs and, also to an extent, the NGOs to withdraw their hand.

This new development has ruffled the Maoist feathers, too. And, of late, there is a marked change in their strategy and at many places they have seemingly started allowing development works but under their terms and conditions.

The strategy of smashing the government development network, which they adopted during the initial years of insurgency, appears to have been fine-tuned because of the growing needs for funding to run their organization. This change has opened a window of opportunity for the development workers. If exploited this situation can be used to forward development and service-delivery in villages.

Historic Position:

For centuries, Nepal remained shackled in ethnic hierarchical societal structure with pyramidal chain of control and command.

The Bahun and Chhetri who cornered most of the plum positions of state and society were in no mood to let go off their privileges. Likewise, other communities, too, had their own egos and none were in a mood to compromise with the other.

However, the nine years of violent wave of insurgency has shattered that foundation of hierarchy and each and every ethnic community now wishes for peace. And they appear willing to compromise to achieve the peace. But this situation is still fluid and can quickly harden to earlier rigid and uncompromising position if the current equilibrium is disturbed in any manner. So, if we want to bring forth radical changes in the socio-economic state of the country, this is the most appropriate time. If we sit back with hands folded and wait for the conflict to end, we will lose this precious opportunity to bring about socio-economic transformation. It, therefore, need not be exaggerated how important continuing and even deepening the overall development and service delivery is at this juncture. This development will have to consist of factors like social inclusion, gender equity, regional balance and participatory democracy.

Possibility for the development

Before delving into details of how to ensure uninterrupted service delivery amid conflict situation, it would be relevant to see how the current chain of government command works. At local level, people seek services like recommendations for citizenship, health, education and so on. It has been seen that local people are largely ignorant and even nonchalant about big corruptions that take place at central level or even district level. But when they feel the brunt of corruption at the local level – or when they have to spend money to get their citizenship or passport – they get angry. In the last nine years the Maoists have made every effort to smash this chain of structure. They have also tried to expose the corruption and tried to win sympathy from the people. They have succeeded to hit at the link between the district and the villages to a large extent and have isolated the people.

So, what can be done to ensure service delivery at this juncture. One way is through the holding of mobile camps as is being practiced by the government. But it is largely infrequent and one-time affair that cannot give durable solution during conflict. A tentative solution to this dilemma could be creating a mid-point interface between the government officials and the village people. What we propose is that the development organizations (NGOs/INGOs) interact with the local people and assess their service needs, which will then be communicated to the district level officials of the government.

Subsequently, officials will be made accessible to the local people at suitable mid-point in regular periods. While the local people with the help of development organizations will keep the records and provide other back-up and supplementary services, the government officials will ultimately provide the state services in a planned manner.

Conclusion

Before launching this new policy, there is a need to lobby at central and local level about this issue within the civil society through focus group discussions on effective service delivery mechanism. Based on the findings of the civil society, the government should make temporary policy for service delivery at local level. There is no alternative mechanism for the service delivery through the local government. But for the development work we have many experiences and examples regarding the delivery of development at the local level. At present the development activities are implemented by the local bodies through user group in cooperation with HMG, INGO, NGO and donor under the local self-government Act and rules. Most of the development activities are supply based and only a few are demand or need based. But the Maoists do not seem to be agreeable about the implementation methodology and people involved (in development delivery) and they have disturbed the programs. Therefore, the HMG, donors and civil society have to think and come up with new strategy if they want to work at local level on development issues. The donors either work through the state machinery or directly initiate development projects with community participation by mobilizing NGOs and CBOs. Maoists have shown their intent to disrupt this development linkage as well with the aim to isolate the people. The people, generally, wish for development. As long as development takes place in their villages, they do not mind who is carrying out the projects. Therefore, it is clear that once the development organizations are allowed into the people’s level, carrying out development projects would be smooth. It is quite obvious that the existing machinery has not been able to undertake service-delivery and development activities in a satisfactory manner. Community-based approach could be explored to advance the development amid conflict through target group. They should make development activities themselves and donor and NGOs should support financially and technically on the proposed activities.

(Mr. Pradhan is the President of Rural Development Foundation. For more information contact - kmprdf@mail.com.np)