Spread the love

By Shanker Man Singh

Bureaucracy in Nepal is appointed and serve the government of Nepal and should rise above party interests. The bureaucracy takes orders from the minister and works within the limits of the constitution.

Civil servants are also administrative experts who remind the minister of the outcome, impact, potential or otherwise of a particular action. Therefore, the top civil servant has two duties towards his minister: he must remind the minister whether a particular course of action is constitutionally permissible and whether a particular course of action is practically possible.

For a minister, the advice of a senior civil servant, secretary or joint secretary on both sides is very valuable. Civil service provides a permanent element in government. Generally, the fortunes of civil servants do not depend on political ups and downs, they can take a dispassionate view of political developments.

Is it the same in Nepal? Not a big one. Ministers should reflect the long-term interests of the nation rather than being colored by immediate political considerations and their long-term view of the national interest.

In Nepal, civil servants enjoy social respect that people in other professions cannot easily attain.    Consequently, in most cases, civil servants should be honest and conscientious.

In a healthy state, the minister and the bureaucracy complement each other – the minister contributes to policy decisions and the bureaucracy implements the decisions. In Nepal, the bureaucracy works with the responsibility of the minister. The minister is responsible to the parliament for every work of the government.

Although bureaucrats implement government policies, they remain anonymous at best. He neither participates in parliamentary debates nor is a member of a political party. The minister should defend the work of civil servants in the House. This system forces the minister to act in a way that the bureaucracy does not embarrass the minister.

However, Nepal’s bureaucracy is not above criticism. First, because bureaucracy has no political responsibility, it is insensitive to the demands of the people. Government is inactive and tied to files.

Second, the dependence of ministers on civil servants develops a kind of “bureaucratic dictatorship”. Third, the bureaucracy creates a very powerful pressure group aimed at protecting the interests of the group. It sometimes works against the national interest.

Fourthly, the creativity of the bureaucracy is sometimes lost as the staff executes the orders of the ministers.

Fifth, employees are often able to resist positive changes in state policies.

Sixth, our staffing structure has often been criticized for excessive adherence to rules and regulations which lead to delays in the decision-making process.

Finally, allegations of maladministration against staff are rife. Yet with all these weaknesses, bureaucracy is an institution without which democratic governments cannot function.

Bureaucracy can be improved but not eliminated. Civil service reform efforts have addressed its roles and functions, its organizational structure and working methods, its human resource systems, and its governance. Despite many efforts, there are many weaknesses in the civil service. Low level of motivation, unnecessary expansion in the number of government agencies and their employees, multiple layers in the decision-making process, and weak mechanisms to hold individual officials accountable are the weaknesses.

The challenge is not being able to adopt new technologies effectively. Lack of accountability to citizens and the lack of decentralization of power required by officials below regional offices also appear to be a problem. Significant structural, managerial and practical challenges remain to be addressed, but some positive lessons have been learned, including that federalism brings people closer and helps deliver and empower people. Strengthening local governance has brought many positive changes. Local recruitment helps to retain employees at the local level and improves the sense of ownership. Many local-level agencies feel more empowered, and restricting the right to transfer has helped protect people from decentralized sites.

As far as the downside is concerned, civil servants prefer to work in convenient locations and centres. It is even more difficult for civil servants to stay at the center and serve at the local level.

In Kathmandu, the main purpose of the job is to get a job, build a house and educate children. There has been some transfer, especially to the districts and provinces, but it has not been as expected.

Since the local level employees are only in the district headquarters, service delivery and other development initiatives of the region have been seriously affected. The pace of federalization is slow, the administrative culture is not performance-oriented, incentives are limited and not fully integrated into performance, and accountability is far from over.

For some time, the people of the winning political party are appointed to the government positions, after the removal of the ruler, the employees also leave and the new system is the spoils system (patronage) system.

It seems that the rulers are trying to adopt the spoils system in different ways. The purpose of the government is to keep employees under contract in the government service to do government work to revive the spoils system.

The revival of the spoil system will lead to the development of the promised administration. This will make the government and political parties more comfortable.

People of all kinds of attitudes join the government machinery for job security and it would not be an exaggeration to say that these employees do not care much for laziness and laziness. Even the hardworking and honest people working in the government seem disillusioned with their work.

In the private sector, there is a desire to become something better with time. There are exceptions in both places, but one can remain stable for 30 years in the government. And many people are still. There is no incentive to move files quickly and make decisions. If you work hard and make quick decisions, something can go wrong. If so, your life is in danger. But if you get bored, and postpone the decision, nothing happens.

How does the idea that “no decision” is a good decision work? This is especially true for senior executives.

How many times has someone insulted you for making a late decision? Check out our records. It takes a few years. And just wait long enough if someone tries to be quick and push things too fast, and the outside authorities will be knocking on your door.

There is no protection against procedural error (actual or perceived) for legitimate mistakes that are not intentional. Officials should be encouraged to exercise caution and make decisions unless they have bad intentions to make bad decisions or ignore the rules. To reduce risk and create diffused collective responsibility, they form committees.

It seems that the government system is built on faith and should not be in suspicion. It is no exaggeration to say that such a system is a natural process that is always slow. We want to set an example.

Employees have great collective power and few governments dare to discipline them. Even when Nepal has been transformed into a federal political system, there seems to be an illusion of adopting an integrated system of bureaucratic organization and accountability.

Contrary to the principle of federalism, the central government recruits civil servants for all levels of government. The central government envisages a strict system of discipline and controls the bureaucracy at all levels.

Although the country ran on a unitary state system by accepting centralized bureaucracy during the period, it is acceptable and practical as the state has embraced federal politics. Both state and local governments should have authority and autonomy, and government employees should be able to work in their areas of responsibility.

Civil servants seem to favor the responsibility of central bodies to maintain their administrative control and protect their interests.

However, maintaining the overall dominance of government employees at the cost of the rights of elected representatives is a violation of the spirit of federalism and the administrative restructuring of the state.

The accountability and responsibility of the bureaucracy will ultimately rest with the central government. The top load structure is maintained without restructuring. While largely a centralized bureaucracy, in fact, Nepal’s bureaucracy still conforms to maximal Weberian norms characterized by a system of legal-rational authority.

A legal-logical rights system includes fundamentals such as defined qualifications, achievements, individual operations, and diversification of public funds from private funds.

On the contrary, there is an urgent need to ensure that the Nepali bureaucracy is at least not based on nepotism and favoritism, official corruption etc. Bureaucracy is seen in party politics and it is divided on a radical basis.

The civil bureaucracy consumes a large share of national revenue. However, it may have been reviewed from time to time that it has not been able to work as expected. It is often seen that employees should not point to partisan politics in violation of neutrality and non-partisan values.

If the bureaucracy is not made result-oriented, the structural and executive systems of the state and local levels will not make any sense to the common people.