Bhattarai was quick to brush aside the charge of giving continuity to the Pajero-culture—the distribution of perk and pork to curry favor from coalition partners—for which Sher Bahadur Deuba gained such notoriety in the late 1990s. It was a ‘coalition compulsion’, we were told. Bhattarai also hastened to add that he was ready for many such ‘minor’ sacrifices in order to achieve the larger goals of peace and constitution.
Now reports are that over 300 senior bureaucrats have been illegally transferred from various ministries. Illegal because the Civil Service Act, 2049 forbids the transfers of high-ranking bureaucrats before they serve two years in one ministry. Also because many of the transfers have been made without the approval of the Ministry of General Administration, which is a must in all inter-ministry transfers.
The secretaries and joint secretaries are the first line of the permanent government, which is supposed to keep the government machinery functioning at all times, even while there might be no government in place. But when the officials are transferred within months of their appointment, in clear contravention of the law, they never get a chance to get the wherewithal of (and gain enough working knowledge of) the ministries. This is important for expect knowledge is crucial for efficient functioning of any bureaucracy.
Some of the transfers border ludicrous. Shital Babu Regmi, an expert on water resources, has been inexplicably transferred from the Water and Energy Commission to the Ministry of Local Development. Similarly, the project director of the Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited has been transferred only six months into his appointment—despite the government’s commitment to the Asian Development Bank not to replace the project director for three years. The underlying motives behind these transfers are not hard to discern.
The ministers want their close cronies working with them, ensuring an easy flow of proceeds from lucrative government contracts. This trend has had a dire effect on vital sectors. The health bureaucracy, for instance, is a shambles: the government does not even know where its health officials are posted.
Like they say, talk is cheap. Successive governments have sold Nepalis sold down the river with their lofty promises of cleaning up the government with one fell swoop. But the hard truth is that the dysfunctional bureaucracies have not only failed to maintain a degree of transparency but, more importantly, fallen far short in their main task of facilitating the lives of the people. The Bhattarai government, we are afraid, hasn’t done much to suggest it’s serious about changing this sorry state of affairs.
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