Bottom-top devolution policy goes topsy-turvy

Bishnu Prasad Aryal
Lalitpur, April 6

Despite laws made for bottom-up policies and programmes, almost all the procedures in the ministries are forced top-down. The people in the local levels are not involved in formulating policies and plans.

The monitoring reports of the Ministry of Local Development recently assessed in 10 districts show that the plans and policies are directly forced from the ministries and political parties for implementation, which is against the Local Self-Governance Act-2055BS. Along with whole national governaning system, the Act has provisioned to devise plans and programmes originated from local roots.

Dr Dinseh Chandra Devkota, acting Vice-Chairman of the National Planning Commission, said that the devolution could not have been enforced in real sense as the actors of development activities in the districts were less interested and responsible. “The political mechanism in the local bodies should work responsibly above their partisan interests,” he said.

Dr Devkota said that the districts also failed to update them while making periodical plans and programmes. “Neither the centre is interested to devolve power nor the local level is using its rights. The joint efforts from the local level will play a crucial role in materialising the concept,” he said.

Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya, spokesperson for the MoLD and leader of monitoring team at Western Development Region, conceded that law was not enforced as per its spirit. “The reasons behind this drawback is lack of reporting and punishment system in the local bodies owing to the state impunity,” he said.

The MoLD carried out monitoring of 10 districts-Morang, Ilam, Bara, Kaski, Rupandehi, Banke Surkhet, Dadeldhura, Kanchanpur and Rautahat on the performances including development activities and use of allocated funds.

Similarly, the Ministry is monitoring other ten districts on the second phase. Those districts are Saptari, Panchthar, Parsa, Kathmandu, Tanahu, Kapilvastu, Dang, Dailekh, Kailali and Darchula. Monitoring of five more districts will be carried out within the current fiscal year. There are 75 districts, 3,915 village development committees and 58 municipalities across the country.

The senior officials at the MoLD said that concept of bottom-up policy was badly spoiled by the recommendations and order from ministers, political leaders and even parliament members. "Local bodies also don't want to make the centre annoy by suggesting centre and choosing plans and programmes from the local level," said Thapaliya. "Local bodies and political mechanism in the grassroots should be made more responsible towards people rather than ministry and government."

Dhruba Bandhu Aryal, under-secretary at Local Development Section of the NPC, said that the influence from the political parties and government was the major factor in making up-bottom policies. “Though it has been gradually reformed, we are yet to wait for bottom-up plans and policies,” said Aryal, who is also member of the monitoring team assigned for districts.

“We are working homework to make the devolution more effective by empowering local bodies for developing programmes and utilising resources on infrastructure development in the grassroots,” informed Devkota.