The most important thing is to make high-level bureaucrats accountable to the public
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal launched hello sarkar - a public redressal mechanism - at the Prime Minister's Office the other day to receive public complaints round-the-clock and address them as soon as possible by the concerned government agencies. The government has deployed 25 staffers, including three under-secretaries, at the hello sarkar. A rapid response team has also been formed to address the people's grievances from across the country. Chief Secretary Baikuntha Aryal said the public can lodge their complaints through Ncell, Nepal Telecom network, email or other social networking sites such as Facebook, twitter, viber and Whatsapp. The hello sarkar mechanism will inform the public about the redressal of their grievances. While launching the programme, the PM told the employees to take public grievances seriously and try to resolve them immediately.
He also said the Hello Sarkar would gradually recruit university students as interns. This approach would also be expanded to the provincial and local levels, as per the PM. Under-secretary at the Hello Sarkar Raju Khanal said they receive, on average, 100 public complaints daily, mostly about good governance, ranging from poor services at the government offices, citizenship problem and Tribhuvan University not issuing equivalent certificates in time and delay in receiving driving licences to corruption, among others. As per the initial reports, public complaints are also related to provincial and local level governments. When it comes to policy issues, Hello Sarkar sends notes to the concerned public institutions telling them to address them as per the existing laws. Officials at the Hello Sarkar claim that redressal in the federal government was encouraging, but it was not satisfactory at the provincial and local levels. The concerned officials said an orientation programme would be launched at the local level after the Dashain festival about the ways of addressing the public grievances.
The concept of hello sarkar was launched some 12 years ago. But its effectiveness fizzled out after a few weeks as the officials received similar complaints time and again without any redressal. Some of the public complaints were found to be fake while others were simply ignored by the concerned agencies. This is by far nothing new, but old wine in a new bottle.
When KP Oli came to power after the 2017 general election, he had also set up a war-room-style central monitoring office at Singha Durbar to effectively monitor development works carried out by the government.
But it did not work well. Needless to say, there is the National Vigilance Centre (NVC) at the PMO. But its recommendations are hardly followed by government agencies. There is no need to add one redressal mechanism after another if the NVC can be made effective to monitor all the government services from top to bottom. The most important thing in making the government machinery truly effective is to make high-level bureaucrats accountable to the public. In order to make them accountable, the government must introduce the carrot and stick policy without being biased against anyone. The evaluation process of the government employees must be overhauled to make the government services effective.
Indigenous crops
It is a pity that as many 97 varieties of indigenous crops are on the verge of becoming extinct in the rural areas of Myagdi district. They include winter crops, pulses, oil crops, fruits, seeds, sorghum, rice varieties and barley. These indigenous crops are being replaced by high-yielding crops imported from outside. Apart from the poor production, the switch to imported crops is due to declining consumption of crops such as foxtail millet and buckwheat as the staple food. With better road connectivity, it has become easy to import rice and sweet corn, which are now preferred over locally grown crops.
Farmers will naturally grow crops that have commercial value. But if they were taught about the nutritional value of the locally grown indigenous crops, this might encourage them to keep on cultivating them. Millet, for instance, has in recent years been widely promoted for its health benefits, which means there is a good market for it. Indigenous crops like Marsi rice of Jumla and red beans sell very well in Kathmandu due to their taste. The government has the onus to preserve indigenous crops through incentives as they are well adapted to the local climatic conditions.
A version of this article appears in the print on September 05, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
