Despite being one of the countries with the most number of public holidays, the productivity of Nepali workers is among the lowest
FEBRUARY 26
Scenario one: Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) put forward a condition to join Prime Minister (PM) Pushpa Kamal Dahal's government - declaration of Poush 27 as a public holiday to commemorate the birth anniversary of Prithvi Narayan Shah. The straw-legged government had no option but to comply with this demand.
Scenario two: Falgun 1 was declared a public holiday only a day in advance, dubbed as People's War Day, to venerate the decade-long violent Maoist insurgency that was initiated 28 years ago.
These are two recent examples show how the government is making a mockery of good governance and is haphazardly declaring holidays on demand. Holidays are integral components of a welfare nation, and providing holidays to the citizens is a fundamental obligation of a government.
Studies have shown that regularly provided holidays boost up the perseverance of workers thereby increasing national productivity.
National holidays are observed for various reasons, including religious observances, national days, remembrance days or to commemorate other special historical events.
In 2022, Myanmar topped the list of countries with the highest number of public holidays with 32 off days per year, followed by Nepal with 30 public holidays.
However, the recently published calendar by the Nepal government included 37 holidays per year, making Nepal the country with the highest number of public holidays. On the other hand, Switzerland has the least number of public holidays with 7-15 days depending on the region/canton.
Despite being one of the countries with the most number of public holidays, the productivity of Nepali workers is among the lowest. According to a report published by USbased independent organisation Census and Economic Information Centre (CEIC), the productivity of Nepali labourers in 2021 was only 2.38% in contrast to 9.67% productivity of Switzerland.
The reason behind Nepal's holiday mishap is unscientific and non-behavioural allocation of holidays.
As of yet, neither the parliament nor the government has amended a guideline on allocation of public holidays. Governments have been continuously tinkering with annual holidays; sometimes, allotting holidays for certain festivals and national events and sometimes cutting off particular holidays.
In the same manner, experiments have been done with one day or two-day weekend, at least a couple of times. Recently, a holiday was declared to mourn the plane crash in Pokhara. The days of departure and return of president's state visits are also public holidays.
Coming back to scenario one - the stubbornness of the RPP in favour of declaring Poush 27 a public holiday seemed to be a filthy publicity stunt. The contribution of Prithvi Narayan Shah in the unification of Nepal cannot be acknowledged merely by declaring a holiday,rather he should be remembered every day of the year. Prithvi Narayan Shah is not only RPP's liability - every Nepali citizen is indebted to him.
Hence, the real remembrance of Prithvi Narayan Shah is not through a holiday on Poush 27 but with a constructive and patriotic deed on that day from every citizen.
Scenario two - the backhanded decision of the government to declare a public holiday ad hoc on Falgun 1 to commemorate the People's War Day was immoral, unconstitutional and arbitrary. Neither the comprehensive peace accord nor the constitution of Nepal recognise the People's War. The decade-long Maoist agitation has been officially documented as an armed conflict in statutory archive. Hence, declaring a public holiday to commemorate an extra-constitutional event is a severe abuse of authority. Alas, the national political stakeholders, including the Nepali Congress and the CPN- UML, are shamelessly tightlipped in this issue.
A member of the ruling coalition, the RPP, tried to save its face by skipping the cabinet meeting held to declare Falgun 1 as a public holiday. However, the people are not that ignorant as the RPP assumes. Everyone knows that whether a minister participates in a cabinet meeting or not, in a Westminster system like ours, every member of the cabinet - absent or present - is equally accountable to a decision of a cabinet meeting. If the RPP ministers were against the decision of the cabinet, they should have resigned straight away. Hence, this double standard of the RPP is definitely not doing any good to the freshly reformed party.
These examples depict that a guideline on public holidays is immediately needed. As already mentioned, the existing public holidays in Nepal are excessive. Hence, many of the irrelevant holidays should be abolished. The holidays should be announced beforehand, and unless there is an emergency, abrupt holidays without prior information should be strictly proscribed.
The holidays on state-level visits of our president and other foreign heads of state should also be obliterated. We are citizens of a democratic nation and those practices are the mortal remains of the feudal mindset. Apart from that, holidays on the birth and death anniversaries of national figures should also be abolished. Instead of multiple national days (republic day, constitution day and democracy day), only one national day should be celebrated with a public holiday. Rest of the important days should be commemorated not with holidays but with some creative and innovative activities.
The House of Representatives and recently formed public holiday revision committee should have sternly worked on minimising and standardising the public holidays in a logical way.
Contrarily, the government has conspicuously added afore discussed two days in the holiday calendar.
This is definitely the height of anarchy. This kind of random and ad hoc allocation of holidays is definitely not contributing to the prosperity and good governance in Nepal.
A version of this article appears in the print on February 27, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
