Book: Local Governance in Nepal: Democracy at the Grassroots.

Author: Dr Rabindra Khanal

Pages: 300

Price: Rs 295

Kathmandu:

Dr Rabindra Khanal is back with the anatomy of Nepal’s attempts at decentralisation and empowerment of local bodies in his book Local Governance in Nepal: Democracy at the Grassroots.

Local governance and decentralisation are means of democratisation at the grassroots. Even though Nepal began developing a system of local governments in a modern sense during the Panchayati regime, the central government or the people in the government lacked accountability, sincerity and seriousness towards empowering the local bodies. The author finds that even the post-1990 governments treated local bodies as their development agents rather than independent, autonomous and powerful institutions. And, looking at the realities of the power and capabilities that our local bodies enjoy and exhibit, one can say Dr Khanal is right in his analysis.

The writer analyses the legal provisions on local governance, their merits and demerits as well as the role of the government, political parties, civil society, media, NGOs and other stakeholders at the local level. He begins his study with the approaches of local governance in Nepal with a brief discussion on all the four approaches in practice namely welfare, anti-poverty, efficiency and empowerment approaches as well as the concept of decentralisation and local governance.

While sketching the history of local governance in Nepal, the writer depicts the existence of thums and panchalis, the equivalent of current VDCs, during the Kirant and Lichchavi period. Though they were sort of primitive, the local bodies then were based on the power decentralisation, people’s participation and non-interference by the centre. In post-unification Nepal, these bodies were militarised in a sense with the local administrations run by military governors, Mukhiyas and zamindars until the abolition of Rana regime.

The Panchyati regime began the development of a system of local bodies in a modern sense by dividing the country into three tiers of governance namely villages, districts and zones. Lack of democracy, however, prevented these efforts from strengthening the local bodies. The writer here does not forget to discuss the experiments during the 1950-1960 transitional period and the measures taken for decentralisation of power during the Panchyati regime.

These innovations of po-st-1990 Nepal are the constitutional provisions on local governance and decentralisation, policy framew-ork, Administrative Reform Commission, Local Government Act, high-level Decentralisation Coordination Commission, Local Self Governance Act.

While discussing the role of local governance in democratisation, Dr Khanal lays emphasis on accountability, transparency, participation and wider representation for the smooth and efficient functioning of local governments and rues the weaknesses of system on these aspects. The writer’s conviction is that promoting democracy at the grassroots is mainly the responsibility of political parties. However, lack of political socialisation, the author

argues, is the main reason behind poor local governance in Nepal.

The Local Self Governance Act is the biggest step forward in Nepal’s efforts for decentralisation. He says the Act is ambitious and ambiguous as well, but fails to mention that the conflict is the major factor which has prevented the local bodies from exercising the positive aspects of the Act. As such, Nepal has only the veins of local bodies, but not blood running in them for the last few years.

Dr Khanal concludes with some worthy recommendations, which can be useful in this transitional period to correct the mistakes of the past and promote democratisation at the local level. The local bodies are little or not at all functional at present and we are bracing up for certain big changes in the local governance system in the near future, if not an overhaul.

Overall, the book will be useful to policymakers, researchers, students, political parties and other actors of local government like civil society members and N/CBOs.