National 8 (Spotlight Weekly)

'There Should Be a Clear Demarcation Between the Civil Servants and Political Leadership'

Bhoj Raj Ghimire

Bhoj Raj Ghimire, 46, is the member-secretary at the National Planning Commission (NPC). Ghimire had joined the civil service in 2039 B.S in the third class officer level. He has served in different officer-level positions at Forest Ministry, Industry Ministry and Finance Ministry. He has even worked as Consul General in Kolkata. A Masters in Economics as well as Science, he has been working at the NPC in current capacity for the last one and a half years. Ghimire, an energetic and young bureaucrat shared his visions and experiences with the SPOTLIGHT. Excerpts:

As a senior bureaucrat how do you find the Nepalese civil service?

Since I joined the service in 2039 B.S. a lot of reforms have happened in our service. Earlier we had to work under separate set of environment during Panchayat, which was a closed system. With the restoration of democracy, the civil service definitely has changed. All these changes are aimed at making the service-delivery to the people more effective and efficient.

Currently, you are at a decision-making level. What is your vision?

I don’t think a vision of an individual like me would make any sense. Anyway, at present, our bureaucracy has earned a number of adjectives like inefficient, corrupt, ineffective and so on. This has led to low morale among the civil servants. I think that there is an urgent need to raise the morale of the civil servants. This can happen only when the service delivered by civil servants is praised by the people. Along with making the bureaucracy effective, there is also a need to counter the propaganda that is showing the bureaucracy in poor light. Generalizing some cases has also hurt the image of the service. But if we start improving our service-delivery, if we begin to get neutral and if we start working by keeping people’s concern at the center, it will not be too difficult to rebuild the image of the service. The service should be such that people will have no reason for complaint.

What can be done to rebuild the image, then?

Well, we could start by making our service result-oriented. There should be proper system for reward and punishment. The promotions should be merit-based. There is a debate here on seniority vs merit. I believe in giving priority to merit. Currently, we have a lot of problems in the transfer. Most of the political intervention also happens in this transfer issue. I think that we should have a system whereupon a bureaucrat should be pre-informed where he will be transferred, say, six months later. That will give him time to prepare his mind as well as to make arrangements for his families and children. There should be a definite pattern in such transfers.

Bureaucracy is said to be the permanent government. How can it become a better partner of development of the country?

The civil administration or bureaucracy is the agent of development. It is the machinery that delivers the program formed by the government. If the morale of this machinery is not high, no government will be able to implement their programs. I don’t think Nepal’s civil service is inefficient. We have pretty efficient manpower. There are many learned and experienced persons. The thing is that they are not aware how effective they can be. If conducive environment is formed by the political leaders and top-level civil administrators, this problem can be sorted out.

How do you find your current role as the member secretary at the NPC?

The NPC has a very critical role in the development of the country. Since, I have finance background, I am more interested in economic activities, economic policies and private sector development. As a member sectary of the NPC, I give priority to pro-poor programs and projects during the process of project selection and approval.

Do you think there is much political interventions in bureaucracy?

Bureaucracy runs on the basis of Civil Service Act. There should be a clear demarcation between the civil servants and political leadership. It should be clearly spelt out what the role of government minister is and what the role of top administrators is. The tope levels should be more engaged in policy-formations. At present, most of the problem lies in the issue of transfer. On the issue of promotion, Public Service Commission (PSC) is responsible and there is no intervention here. Most of the allegations about the political intervention is on the issue of transfer. Therefore, if we form a clear policy on transfer and give the authority to lower levels – department and section heads – this problem will be solved. For instance, at the NPC, I have already devolved the authority of transfers of officers at the Bureau of Statistics to the department heads.

Since you are also involved with the administrative reforms, what do you say about the recent roadmap for reforms, particularly the proposals for providing reservations?

The problem we are facing today is that of social inclusion. If we look at the civil service today, there is a domination of certain castes like Brahmin and Chhetri. As a result, the bureaucracy could be representative one. Therefore, we had to look into other alternative mechanisms. There were two alternatives before us – affirmative action and reservation. By affirmative we mean providing coaching classes and intensive tuitions to underprivileged sections of society. But we concluded that mere affirmative action would not bring in desired impact in short-term. Therefore, we also chose to go for provide time-bound reservation to women, Dalit and indigenous community. But we will not be compromising on quality and merit. There will be narrow competition for these underprivileged section. And then we have also planned to relax the entry criteria for women in joint-secretary level so that we can have more women in senior level.