It is often said that end game on peace and constitution will complete the current turbulent transition in Nepal. In fact, the Sakraman Kaal with regard to federal states will begin when the constitution is promulgated. That must follow a painful process of administrative restructuring to develop the institutional set-up, human resources, enabling legislation, infrastructure and capacity for the soon-to-be-formed provinces.
Federalizing the unitary public administration will be an important opportunity for the implementation of state restructuring and meeting rising expectations on the much-awaited peace dividends. This will also be an opportunity to enhance good governance, ensure rule of law, increase efficiency in public spending and to rid of the ills of excessive accumulation of power, rampant corruption and decay of State institutions. Importantly, federalizing administration will be an opportunity to orient the State towards “principle of subsidiarity”, i.e. delivering services to the people through agencies as close to them as possible.
Three tiers
In its report to the Constituent Assembly, the Committee for Restructuring the State and Distribution of State Powers has conceived of a three-tier administration in the federal set up: with central, provincial and local governments. Accordingly, it will be necessary to create central, provincial and local civil service cadres with some inter-changeability to serve at each level of administration. Though the constitutional committee has conceived provincial level public service commissions, it is not clear how such commissions would function in the states or provinces without creating discrepancy on methods of recruitment and service of public servants in provinces.
In the first place, provisions regarding administrative machinery is yet to be put into place in the yet to be formulated constitution. The functions of each of its three tiers will have to be clearly spelled out to avoid conflict of interest. The relevant constitutional committee has outlined specific functions to be carried out by central, provincial and local administration. But the list of functions recommended by the Natural Resources, Economic Rights and Revenue Sharing Committee is open to debate and the ensuring conflict at different levels, especially on distribution of political and economic power among different tiers of administration.
Apart from central functions such as national security, defense, foreign policy, monetary and fiscal policy, the central government also needs to coordinate and maintain uniformity in the provision of services and application of rule of law in all provinces. No State would want its provinces to start out with their own systems, which could lead to discrepancy, imbalance and multiplicity of systems within one nation-state. Though skeletal in content and administrative power, local government at the district, municipal and village levels have important service-delivery functions. Devolving powers from the center should not lead towards centralization of local government functions at the provincial level.
Besides, there is no consensus yet on how revenues and expenditures will be shared among the central, provincial and local administrations. As recommended by the constitutional committee, the composition and mandate of a National Finance Commission and a National Natural Resource Commission to be established for this purpose will have to be first agreed upon. This also raises the question of how the issues of fiscal discipline, accountability, oversight and integrity will be addressed.
It will be difficult to start building public administration in the new provinces afresh without transferring some of the current personnel to the new provincial administrations.
Currently, some 475,000 personnel, including civil servants, security personnel and teachers depend upon state treasury. It will be difficult to convince the personnel seated in central administration to adjust to the provincial administrative set-up without added incentives, if they are at all accepted by the new provinces which are likely to insist on the right to recruit their own personnel. The recent debacle in transfers within the central administration shows that this process will be far from smooth.
There must be a better understanding of management of transition from unitary to federal administration among the public servants, politicians, different stakeholders and people in general. We have to make certain trade-offs. First, there has to be a balance between continuity and change. We cannot build everything from scratch, nor can we allow the bad practices to continue. In recent times, public confidence in bureaucracy, which is supposed to demonstrate neutrality and professional independence, has eroded due to excessive politicization, widespread corruption and perceived incompetence. Also, the new federal administrative set up will have to work out a delicate balance between inclusion and meritocracy, both being equally important for any good administrative set up. The new set up should reflect the ethnic, regional and gender balance without compromising quality. Besides, popular expectations will have to be managed while educating the public on limits of federalization. After all, federal administration alone cannot solve Nepal’s multi-faceted problems. Doing all this will indeed be a tall task and will call for a well thought-out process and strategies.
Political process
Federalizing public bureaucracy will be a politically contentious and drawn-out process. The current thinking seems to be that an exercise in administrative restructuring can only start after the number and jurisdictions of new provinces are settled in the new constitution. While this is partly true, it should not stop us from preparing for the transformation of the current unitary administrative mechanism into a federal one.
In a recent seminar organized by the Public Administration Association of Nepal (PAAN), it was revealed that the government was preparing a “white paper” containing principles, methods and “prototype” for administrative set-up for would-be provinces. These were among the issues, it was said, being taken up by the Administrative Restructuring Commission set up under the Office of the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers. While this is an appreciable initiative, whether this will be enough to guarantee a working federal public administration is debatable.
Clearly, the jurisdiction and scope of this government commission is not enough to address all the politically-contentious issues related to federalizing the public administration, which requires broad consultations and political trade-offs. Therefore, the debate should be focused on establishing a powerful and constitutionally-enabled Administrative Federalization Commission with wide representation of politicians, bureaucrats, academicians and other stakeholders.
It is equally important that the transition from unitary to federal administrative set-up is phased in through a well thought-out transition strategy, to be complimented by a sound human resource development strategy at the provincial level. All this needs to be done without compromising the fundamental principles of public bureaucracy including neutrality, professionalism, merit, diversity and efficiency in provision of service delivery as close to the people as possible. Additionally, there has to be adequate capacity building in each of these levels. For example, providing enough legal support to provincial legislatures if and when they start functioning would be an important capacity aspect to address. This will require an altogether new exercise.
The task of federalizing the administration will be just as painful and tumultuous as is the management of political transition. There is no international template to federalizing the administration; we must build our own system for federalizing the administration by drawing upon our own and international experiences. Though federalizing the administration is the joint responsibility of public administration and political leadership, there seems to be a premium on political process. The reform of public administration has somehow been put at the bottom of political priorities. This must change if we are to reduce the already-prolonged transition.
The writer is former permanent representative of Nepal to the United Nations
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