Governance implications of the traditional social structure

- Bihari Krishna Shrestha, Freelance Anthropologist, Nepal

In Nepal, the impediments to good governance is built into the structure of the society itself which, as observed above, is based on Hindu orthodoxy leading to a highly skewed distribution of productive resources and other attendant benefits. Most voters in the country are illiterate and poor, which means that the aspiring politicians are successful at the polls mostly when they use cash and material incentives to attract them. Thus, while the overall set-up of the polity is democratic in form, its practice is subject to pervasive undemocratic forces. In most, cases, money and muscle powers are critical for winning elections, thus severely compromising the essence of popular mandate and representation. Most politicians generally resort to corrupt practices for mobilizing resources for themselves and their party. Given this situation, it is increasingly the case that a successful politician in Nepal is, in most cases, a corrupt individual. The bureaucracy itself, which has historically failed to enjoy a favorable reputation, is further forces to function at the beck and call of such political masters. It has become progressively de-professionalism, increasingly non-responsive and pervasively corrupt. The basic conditions of good governance such as transparency of decisions, accountability of public officials, citizen participation in decision making, predictability in the application of law, etc. have continued to be compromised with impunity. While most of the media has been factional motivated, the political leadership has generally become immune to public criticism. Most Nepalese, both educated and uneducated alike, more optimistic about the future. As a result of this, a large section of the people are nostalgic about the Panchayat System under which the King wielded and occasionally demonstrated in practice both the power and responsibi9lity as the source of redress of the last resort when the politicians and bureaucrats were unduly irresponsible.

At the village level, the same rule of the game prevails. Generally, there is the convergence of the social status, economic power and political prowess. It is the socially and economically powerful in the community who emerge at the apex of its political decision-making structure. While there are factions in the villages led by mutually competing local elite, allegiance to such centers of power is an inescapable necessity for the village poor, both as a safeguard against possible predators as well as a source of support in times of need including credits which generally bear high interest rates. Therefore, in the continuing rough and tumble of the village politics, it is mostly the socially high and economically powerful that change hands to preside over the political apparatus in the commentates.

One of the outcomes of such structurally defined domination of the community by a small club of village elite is the paucity of the sense of accountability on the part of the elected officials and the consequent lack of transparency in the management of resources. The village political leadership has, in most case, demonstrated little serious concern regarding the poverty of the vast majority of its votes. But, come next election, they reappear at their doorstep to make more promises all over again.

Most people in the villages are thus caught in an effective and inescapable trap of poverty. The trap is effectively sealed from inside by the traditional societal forces that perpetually subject then to the exploitative designs of their more powerful neighbors. It is also well-sealed from outside by making what little is available in the government’s development allocations, more or less exclusively available to these very elite in the communities. Each adverse turn of events for the poor such as increase in the family size, natural calamity, or such social occasions as marriage, birth, etc. forces them to slide down the economic ladder a little further resulting in a process of what has been called a "progressive disaccumulation of assets" (Kievelitz, 1996) and of the perpetuation of what the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation has referred to as "poverty reproduction" (SAARC Secretariat, 1992).

One significant development of recent years is the functioning of the "All-party Meetings" for prevention and resolution of conflicts as well as for building consensus in the village communities. The forum in which the representatives of all the political parties in the VDC come together as and when needed to resolve the specific issues confronting the community was innovated by the short-lived CPM-UML government in 1994. At that time, it was intended mainly as a mechanism for drawing up development programs free from the otherwise habitual politically-motivated controversies in the communities. While the UML government has long been gone, the innovation remains. The villagers all over the country resort to convening all party meetings when difficult decisions have to be made which would otherwise likely have polarized the various sections of the community to the detriment of its interest.

The raison d’être of the creation and continued tenacity of the All-party Meeting lies in the conflict-prone nature of the village communities in Nepal. The political parties in the villages are normally headed by mutually competing traditional centres of powers based on their higher caste status and economic affluence. With the restoration of the multi-party system in the country, these rivals simply joined opposing parties. The decision to join a certain party was not necessarily a function of the person’s commitment to the ideologies that a party stood for. However, such party membership lent a greater degree of legitimacy to these traditional centers of power and a more-formal structure to the fluidity that otherwise characterized the practice of their factional rivalry in the villages. This enhanced legitimacy and formalized structure, in turn, have become more effective in arriving at community consensus about development projects or for resolving larger community conflicts and problems.

While the All party Meetings are generally crisis management forums, they have nonetheless brought about greater transparency in the management of community affairs in the mean time. While their coverage in the country is unknown, they seem to be more operative in situations where no single political party is predominant. In most villages in the country, the general complaint has been the misuse of resources at the hands of the local bodies. Each year the government gives out large sums of money, in tied and untied such grant in the current year of 1999/2000 amounts to some 2 billion rupees in grant to the VDCs, 650 million to the DDCs and 260 million for the municipalities. But there is very little in terms of useful output from those investments.

Aside from the problems at the national level described above, the problem is as acute, if not more, at the DDC level. The DDC is basically a political body in which generally diverse political parties are represented. Most expenditure is undertaken with the possibility of political capital and personal benefit in mind. Often, there are disagreements between members on the allocation of resources which then stalls even the normal DDC activities. Therefore, whatever may be the rhetoric of the DDC politicians, the basic ground rules are narrowly political and selfish. It is doubtful if any lasting benefit in terms of sustainable development is attainable by dint of the DDC’s effort. Most of the major commitments of the DDC, the allocations of resources of the Development Grant, and the allocation of their own internal resources, all point to one common denominator: the proposed heads of expenditure are highly populists and are mainly intended to generate maximum political leverage for the political parties of the members. As things stand at present, it the DDCs were to go out of existence, no important service in the district would suffer for want of this institution. Thus, largely by default, the DDCs have rendered themselves a superfluous body. They exist more as the legacy of the party-less Panchayat System. In keeping with the tradition of the erstwhile political practice, they aspire for more powers without much accountability to go with them.

At the village level too, the story is more or less the same. Most of their resources come from the annual government grant of half a million rupees each year supplemented by local resources, however meagre in most cases. However, after the provision of overhead expenses, the money is more or less equally divided between the nine wards, although against specific projects ostensibly identified for the purpose. No lasting impact is made in most cases, and they fail to address the overriding problems of poverty in most villages. The rules for spending the money is highly relaxed and expenditure is rarely subject to any serious audit. In sum, the traditional social order that obtains in most villages in the country remains a major deterrent to the goals of modernization implied by the development programs and policies of the state.

Excerpts from the author’s article on " The Sociological Context of (I)NGO Work in Nepal from a book, NGO, Civil Society and Government in Nepal published by Central Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology, T.U in cooperation with the FES: Chief editor.

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