I am not sure how many readers have been following the shenanigans happening at the Kathmandu City Assembly, formally the Kathmandu Metropolitan City Municipal Assembly. Without getting too much into the nitty and gritty of what's going on, there are some disagreements between Mayor Balen Shah and the ward chairs, who are legally members of the legislative body. The mayor wants the ward chairs to set politics aside, meaning to leave their party affiliation outside of the deliberations.

I do get what Shah aims to achieve with his proposition. After all, the word 'politics' itself has now become synonymous for everything except effective policy-making and strict adherence to the rule of law. Unfortunately for Shah, an independent and unaffiliated elected official, his opinion on this matter is just wishful thinking. Legally speaking, there is nothing that can prevent the ward chairs from wearing their parties' hats during the City Assembly.

The mayor can only establish a constructive working relationship with them by finding some shared informal ground rules to prioritise the citizens' interests rather than those of the main political parties. Yet

I do understand the frustrations of Mayor Shah because I have some big concerns on how a metropolis like Kathmandu works.

People do complain a lot about the ineffectiveness of federalism, but the real problem is not to be found in the usual scapegoats: lack of a committed central governments; a political class mostly interested to expanding their personal agenda; endemic corruption and lack of federal legislation that would enable the local units to carry out their work. Undeniably these factors are real and should be taken into consideration in any diagnosis of the malaise around federalism.

Yet there is an underlying problem: the ways federal units are structured and work, starting from local bodies like rural municipalities, municipalities and metro cities, are overly complex and ineffective by default. Let's stay focused, for example, on the Kathmandu City Assembly.

It only meets twice a year, and it is literally a jamboree with over 160 members. I do wonder how decisions can be taken in so few times in a year and how accountability can be exercised if meetings are so rare.

To my understanding, what is shocking is the simple fact that the ward chairs are members of it, together with other ward representatives and a few nominated members. My point is simple: there is no reason for which the ward chairs should be part of it.

These are elected officials, the facto mini mayors in their respective areas, that's all. They have gained legitimate power and are invested by the people to govern locally. Therefore, they are, by design, very political officials in the sense that they pursue their own agenda that, hopefully, is based on implementing their electoral manifestos, rather than pursuit of personal benefits or the ones of their parties.

What I do believe is that the ward chairs should just govern their neighbourhoods and effectively work with their own ward assemblies. That they legally sit in the Kathmandu City Assembly is something odd. I am not saying that we should not have a coordination mechanism between the mayor and them, but the former has a bigger and higher mandate. That's why he is elected by all the citizens within the metropolis.

The current system is bound to engender clashes of competences, egos and different political interests. It should not be this way.

Kathmandu City Assembly and even the Kathmandu Metropolitan Executive could work much more effectively. First, the City Assembly should be constituted by elected citizens exclusively selected for the legislative body rather than being formed by officials that also hold legislative or/and executive powers at the ward level.

A clear demarcation of responsibilities is also warranted, between, on one hand, what a mayor and the executive can do, together with their respective City Assembly and, on the other hand, what the ward chair and local executive and assemblies can do.

Experts should also rethink the way the executives of local levels operate. The Mayor should have the power to nominate the deputy mayor and appoint a small number of trusted persons in the executive, people who could either be elected in the same list of the mayor or even be outsiders.

It's obvious that the mayor and his team in Kathmandu should focus on the big picture, solving the daunting challenges affecting the whole citizenry, undertakings that have a certain level of ambition and have a high degree of complexity. Transportation and pollution, waste management, health, public education and health, public security, for example.

The ward chairs should have their own voice and opinion on such matters, and that's why a loose, non-binding forum could be created between them and the mayor. Yet the ward chairs should be focused on fixing their own areas of competence in their geographical spaces for which they got elected.

Imagine that one day Kathmandu will build a modern subway system. This is a huge project that can be presented by the metropolitan executive, then discussed and voted in the City Assembly. Consultations with the mini governments and mini assemblies, meaning the ward executives and ward assemblies respectively, should certainly be held but then it would be the job of a City Assembly to make the final call.

Mayor Shah was elected to transform the whole metropolis while the ward chairs are doing their job to transform their own respective areas. At the end, the metropolis is one, and it should not be just the sum of a myriad of feuds.

Big steps and small steps are required, huge initiatives and simpler ones must be implemented together, but we need to have clarity on who is doing what. Effective, good governance happens through a magic combination of clear rules and division of responsibilities with also a capacity to reach out and listen to others.