The ways of Nepali governance are strange. We first misgovern for years on, creating an ugly mess, then we request foreigners to clean it up, or we readily agree to foreign offers of aid to do so. Even in the disposal of mountains of garbage we piled up, we sought foreign aid. We recklessly ran the two largest commercial banks for years, virtually bringing them to the precipice of bankruptcy, and then we acquiesced in a World Bank offer of loan, of course, with conditionality. Much the same has happened to the Agricultural Development Bank, now turned into a company, with ‘revamping’ aid from the Asian Development Bank, and so on and so forth. This week a news report appeared that the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, has moved, in response to the request of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, to help restructure the troubled state-owned Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC). IFC is said to be ‘studying’ how it could help. The idea is to bring the national flag carrier under a public-private partnership by seeking a ‘strategic partner’.

Most public corporations are crying out for rescue. Would the government apply for foreign bailout for them too? Besides, generally speaking, the performance of the government’s ministries and departments and branches are doing even worse, what would it do? Any government that tends to send out an SOS to foreigners even to deal with purely domestic problems or problems that it is supposed to deal with on its own — like improving the management or commercial performance of a public corporation— needs to do a lot of introspection whether it is fit to rule. Posterity may inherit the problems created now, as the present generation has inherited the problems created by past rulers. Handing over entire problems to a foreign firm or donor will save the government leaders the mental effort of innovation and the will to do well by themselves. This kind of ‘final solution’ does not call for any special quality.

NAC has been in deep trouble for so long, since even when the present Prime Minister became prime minister for the first time more than fifteen years ago. NAC has been prolific in throwing up financial scandals since the Panchayat days, in the process involving big names such as the royal and Koirala families. Several high-level commissions have been constituted in the past to suggest the best ways of bringing NAC around, but nothing concrete has followed so far by way of action. For a government that hiked the oil prices weeks ago but that has been unable still to ease the supply of petroleum products, it is difficult to find favourable words. But any kind of sale of major stakes in any corporation to any business group in the name of privatisation or restructuring would hardly find favour with the public, either, because of Nepal’s bitter experience with privatisations through sell-off of entire corporations at relatively low prices. The only way to win general support would be privatisation through maximum public participation.