By Surendra R Devkota, Sanjaya Parajuli, and Pramod Aryal

Political space for leadership

Sufficient political space should be provided for people to empower themselves. People should not be treated as “Raiti,” but should be developed as dignified citizen, “Nagarik.” For this they should be allowed to exercise their rights to build-up leadership from within. The local leadership would be identified by the community to provide leadership that focuses and provides direction. Effective leadership, those who can lead in particular or related issues, should be developed so that there would be several effective leaders concerning different matters. Such diverse types of leaders focused in their respective particular issues would be able to deliver effectively and ensure the rights are protected.

Enhancing participatory awareness

Respective local leaderships should work on to make their members aware of the issues, their rights and expected benefits in understanding their rights. There should be participatory approach so that each member’s view is integrated. The discussion should be fostered by respecting and listening to each other without personal attacks, emotionalism, egos, anger, fear, partisan politics, blaming, and defensiveness. This will generate “ownership” of the democratic institution and the local community will protect them. Diverging ideas is the main pillar of effective people empowerment to sustain vibrant democracy.

Participatory institutionalization

The local leadership promoting non-judgmental discussion with “ownership” would lead to participatory institutionalization of rights and responsibilities. This will effectively look for remedies of any prevailing or future shortcomings. Thus, efficient mechanism should be developed for the members to discuss cause, effect, remedy etc. Participatory institutionalization would pave effective way of people empowerment and will make difficult for any dictatorial regime to emerge.

The primary aspiration of people’s empowerment is a complete devolution of socio-political and economic powers to people that will be fortified through the central and local governments.

Central level:

Central level government will be involved in national policy making while the local governments would be involved in planning, execution and monitoring of programs in their region as per the spirit of national policy. Parliament with exclusive rights, responsibility, and accountability will be the ultimate source to govern Nepal and will be accountable to people of Nepal. The executive branch will be involved in national policy making which should be ratified by the parliament .

The parliament will be bicameral: Upper and Lower Houses. The Upper House will have representation from different socio-ethnic groups, minorities, women, and people of different walks of life. Bills concerning language, culture, heritage, education will originate in this parliament and should be passed with majority before it goes to lower house .
The Lower House will have a representation system of directly elected people from respective constituencies, and to be decided by constituent assembly about proportionate representation (Electoral College type). Each member of the parliament is accountable to the people of Nepal and elected members can be recalled by the people of their respective constituencies.
The parliamentary committees will have final authority in tabulation of bills. The committee members have rights to bring any bills to the respective committees.
All the nominations of heads of constitutional bodies, ambassadors, regional directors, head of security apparatus (army, armed police force, intelligence agencies) should be approved first by respective parliamentary parties, and then by the lower house.
The following system will be independent but will be responsible to the people and accountable to parliament :
• National Judiciary system

• Election system,

• National Education and University system,

• National Public service commission,

• Criminal Investigation and Authority Abuse system.

All types of security system will be regulated by the parliament, will be responsible to people and accountable to the parliament .
Local Level:

The existing politico-administrative system exclusively depends on the centralized planning and decision making system. Failure to involve locals with authority in identifying, planning and execution of programs has not yielded satisfactory effects in outcome. For example, despite population stabilization objective of government since 1970s the average population growth rate decreased from 2.3 (1951/52) to 2.27 (2001) only during the past five decades.

Whereas in the areas where local community has been involved in planning and execution of the programs with ownership, it has developed efficiently than any centrally planned project. Local irrigation managed by beneficiary farmers has been found to be better with higher agriculture yield than government implemented and managed systems which received more technical expertise and financial resources. Another example is success of community forestry, which is one of the models of sustainable development.

Despite spending five decades of development planning, at the local level basic socio-economic development structures such as schools, primary health care center, post office, telephone, technical advisers for agriculture, and proper infrastructure facilities are still lacking. This clearly indicates the failure of central planning opted implementation procedure that did not strengthen local institutions but made people ‘passive recipients’. The situation is like juxtaposing two pyramids of flows of problems and resources (box 1).

Box 1

Local authorities will be the leading stakeholders to the devolution of rights, resources, responsibility, and accountability. There should be local governments (Local Authority; LA) with its own bureaucracy, economy, taxation, law enforcement agencies, and judiciary. Hence, they should be empowered for:

Socio-political and economic decision-making authority.
LA should totally own resources and have authority of self determination for their socioeconomic development.
LA should plan and execute development and welfare programs, such as schooling, health care, infrastructure development etc.
To be responsible for enforcement and monitoring of national policies adopted by the Parliament.
The authority of law enforcement (police, and judiciary).
Establishment of local and regional public commission for selection of local and regional government officials.
LA should have its own taxation policy while center should provide bulk grants for implementation of national programs .
Conclusion:

Nepal has remained a sovereign nation throughout its history, but its citizens have never been truly sovereign. Initially they were treated as subjects, which became populace lacking right of self determination. The lack of people empowerment did not only prevent development of functioning democratic institutions, but curtailed civil rights, too. As the people are the first tenet of sustained democracy, Nepalis should be empowered so that they become truly dignified citizens for sustaining democratic values, institution and civil rights. The sovereignty of the country should be vested in people and they should be ultimate decision makers for the fate of their community, locality, region and country. Empowerment with inclusiveness of diverging communities to address their interests, priorities, and specific needs would limit rise of insurgency, or tyranny by properly addressing dissents for preventing political instability. People should be empowered in true sense so that they could decide the fate of different political interests for overcoming present political standoff between diverging groups. This will lead to more harmonious society committed, in tandem, to safe guard their rights of self-determination and democracy.

It is being late to reform the socio-economic development strategy and structure. Decentralization should be carried out by empowered local governments in planning, execution and implementation of programs. To bring substantial changes in making people empowered and constitutional guarantee of such changes, merely cosmetic changes in 1991 constitution would not be enough. In order to develop ownership there should be peoples’ participation from conception to the implementation phase thus election of constituent assembly, writing and promulgation of new progressive constitution through this assembly with clearly stating devolution, will guarantee the changes.

In a competitive political system, people are only sources of the political capital of the parties. Their main mission should be to empower the people. Many countries either advocate or admire for a democratic set up so that people will enjoy their civil liberties and the country prospers. Nepal should learn a wide variety of democracies in order to materialize their zeal for loktantra. In the past we also experienced different models like indirect voting during the Panchayat system, and a direct representative system (liberal democracy) after 1990. The former turned out an oligarchy system while the latter ended as an elitist democracy. Since the socio-political system is a dynamic process, people would like to explore other forms of democracy like participatory or grass roots democracy so that they will find their say in decision-making process – inclusive democracy.

People’s representatives, elected member of the constituent assembly, will define the new boundaries of local and regional government and specific powers of these local entities. The local/regional government should be developed in such a way that it tries to build integrated society of different demography while protecting the rights of minority demography for cohabitation. The development of local / regional government should look into providing greater space to the inherent habitants of that region which share common cultural and linguistic tradition. The inherent groups, nationalities, religious minorities, women, Dalits, and Janjatis would have political space to evolve in a vibrant mainstream community.

To sustain democracy and comprehensive development, Nepal should have an innovative constitution that guarantees rights, resources, and responsibility, accountability at different levels, and empowers people at local level rather than a simple politico-administrative makeover at the central level. A novel constitution is needed to institutionalize democracy at local and regional levels so that resources will be mobilized by the local people with due responsibility and accountability.

(Concluded)

(Dr. Devkota is a Faculty at the World Learning , Vermont , USA and can be reached at [email protected] Sanjaya Parajuli is a Computer engineer while Pramod Aryal is a Scientist.)

Part of this paper is to be presented in the Association of Nepalis in the Americas (ANA) convention July 1-2 2006, New York—Ed.

Empowerment of people and Devolution of power in Nepal-II

(Editor’s Note: Nepalis, wherever they live, as well as friends of Nepal around the globe are requested to contribute their views/opinions/recollections etc. on issues concerning present day Nepal to the Guest Column of Nepalnews. Length of the article should not be more than 1,000 words and may be edited for the purpose of clarity and space. Relevant photos as well as photo of the author may also be sent along with the article. Please send your write-ups to [email protected])