Democracy For Nepal: Open Letter To Surendra Devkota, Shiva Gautam

Monday, February 05, 2007

Open Letter To Surendra Devkota, Shiva Gautam

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Response to your article: Model of federal system

I read this with great interest.
http://www.kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?&nid=80799

I think this has to be step one:
http://demrepubnepal.blogspot.com/2007/02/compromise-add-45-constituencies-to.html

What do you think?

And then we have to move to this: http://projectnd.blogspot.com

Why don't you two write a full critique of my Proposed Constitution? I
think it is a complete document. It can only really be looked at in
its entirety. I'd appreciate that.

And I will ask you a question I also asked Kanak Dixit. How do I get
published in the Bahun media in Kathmandu? Can you two help? Even
people who personally know me b/c I met them in NYC boycott me!

:-)

Parmendra jee

Could you please email to me your contact phone no so I can call and talk to you about a possible interview for the VOA Hindi? . Please send it as soon as possible. Thanks

rashmi shukla

Managing Editor/Hindi Service, VOA in Washington DC

Model of federal system

By Surendra R Devkota and Shiva Gautam

Nepal, since its existence, never had a citizen-centered governance structure. All state machineries during the Rana and earlier regimes were focused on only tax collection from the citizens and power consolidation at the center.
After establishment of the National Planning Commission in 1956, and introduction of the guided democracy by King Mahendra in 1961, the politico-economic forces tried to control all types of resources regardless of high entropy in the system. Such systems are bound to fail as the late Pakistani economist Mahbub-ul-Haq, who was pioneer in developing the UN's Human Development Index (HDI) in the 1970s, maintains that both mixed economy (similar to Panchyat) and the generous assistance of developed countries to upgrade the living standard and growth are inappropriate models of development is still relevant to developing countries.
Even after 1990, decentralization in planning, and socioeconomic decision making never materialized in total, rather country witnessed both intra and inter agency feud over how to control the resources. This did hurt public's aspiration, and created lots of cynicism about the development and politics at different levels
Time has come to correct all the misdeeds of the past by dismantling the old top-down governmental structures and devising a new Nepal with a holistic change. We propose a federal system, a down-top structure that is inclusive from local to national level.
We propose national/central, regional and local governments in our model of federal system. At the local level our model consists of cities, towns and villages only, but not districts which are nonexistent in our model. It is our view that district and regional governments may not be compatible because too many politico-administrative layers could slow down the top down flow of resources. District-based model could be another option and also discussed by one of the authors (see nepalnews.com June 30).
Central level: The parliament will be bicameral: Upper and Lower Houses. The Upper House will have exclusive representation of 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 the majority before it goes to lower house.
The upper house must explicitly be comprised of all ethnic communities and professional bodies so that their concerns will be considered at the top level.
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. Each member of the parliament is accountable to the people. 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 and heads of security apparatus should be approved first by respective parliamentary parties, and then by the lower house.
All types of security system will be regulated by the parliamentary system, and will be responsible to the people and accountable to the parliament.
There will be a few independent federal systems such as National judiciary system, Election system, National university system, National Public Service commission, Environment Conservation, and Criminal Investigation etc. At the central level only the ministries with less than 25 percent of total workforce could stay.
The Role of Prime Minister: The prime minister will be elected by national popular vote. S/he will appoint cabinet members of his choice. The cabinet members must be endorsed from the upper house/lower house. If a member of parliament is appointed a cabinet member s/he should vacate the membership of the parliament.
In the past the prime ministers spent much of their energy in political maneuvering and serving the parliamentarians instead of focusing on national issues and serving the people. A prime minister (or the president) elected directly by the people will be primarily accountable to people rather than to the parliamentarians. This created an overlap between judicial and executive branches of the government.
Regional level: We propose a three regional system based on Koshi, Gandaki, and Karnali river basins. There will be Regional head directly elected by the people, and a council also directly elected by the people in the region.
The number of council members will be determined by the population density in the region; one person may represent about fifty thousand residents. The roles and responsibility of the regional government is not only limited to implement central policies, but also include to devise its own planning and mobilizing all types of resources that means economic development, taxation, education, conservation, social well beings etc. Regional head will have the authority to appoint at least 25 percent of council members based on socio-economically deprived communities.
All central administration like ministries will have department in the regions. Regional administrative head could be from the Auditor General's office whose responsibilities would
be to help mobilize resources effectively.
Local level: Local governments would include Village and City/Town units. We don't propose a district unit, because too many tiers in politico-administrative system would be further problematic. The presence of regional governments should complement to the local government units.
Local governments' geo-physical boundaries must be scientific. One option could be to use the local watershed of rivers and streams with help of both geographer and demographer's expertise. A village unit could be at least 5,000 households.
Villages have been relegated to the bottom in terms of availability of socio-economic development institutions as well as resources where the crux of problems exists. Therefore, each village unit should be assigned as a socio-economic development unit, that means they must be empowered to appoint all types of technical manpower, and could monitor other social system like school, public health, communication etc.
The chief of village unit as well as village council (say, one council for each 250 households) should also be elected by the local people. All of them are accountable to the local people. There should a clear demarcation between village and city or town, and people have the right to choose which system would be preferable to them. All these numbers are to be decided by the constituent assembly.
There are different models of federal system, and the one which we outline may be relevant to Nepal based on past fifty years of geo-political development.
There is no question about it that to sustain socio-economic development, Nepal needs an innovative constitution that guarantees rights, by empowering through a coherent system of accountability, institutional and financial decentralization, ecological, and economical rights along with civil liberties at many levels rather than a simple politico-administrative makeover at the central level. The government, political parties, and the Maoists should not waste their time: sooner the better. People are expecting the election of constituent assembly.
(Dr Devkota is a faculty at the World Learning, Vermont, USA, and Dr Gautam is a faculty at Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA)

5 February