MAOIST MEET TO AGAIN SELECTREMAINING MEMBERS OF GOVT. TEAM UNSUCCESSFUL

MAOIST MEET TO CHOOSE REMAING MEMBERS OF GOVT. TEAM INCONCLUSIVE

Kathmandu, 14 April: A Maoist standing committee Thursday evening to select seven more ministers and 11 state ministers in government was again inconclusive.
The committee meets again Friday.
Maoists are demanding the home ministry portfolio as a pre-condition to send remaining members to the government led by Prime Minister Jhalanath Khanal.
Khanal is still hesitant to award the ministry to Maoists.
‘A decision will be taken when needed,” he said Thursday.
Khanal holds the portfolio.
‘The mission of the government is to complete the peace process and draft a constitution and manage internal differences in the party,” the prime minister said in the capital Thursday.
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PEACE RALLY HELD ON NEW YEAR 2068

Kathmandu, 14 April: A peace rally was organized by civil society in the capital and other urban centers Thursday coinciding with New Year 2068.
The rally started from Open Air Theatre, snaked through the city and concluded at Basantapur.
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TWO FRESH VEHICULAR ACCIDENTS

Kathmandu, 14 April: Two persons were killed and six were seriously injure in a bus accident in Banke Thursday.
Two persons died and three were seriously injured when a tractor fell 60 meters down a road in Palpa Thursday.
Three died and 48 were injured in a passenger bus accident the same day in Dandeldhura.
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SMOKING BAN AT PUBLIC PLACES COMES INTO EFFECT

Kathmandu, 14 April: Smoking ban at public places comes into effect Thursday.
Legislature/parliament this week passed a bill banning smoking at such places.
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HAND-WRITTEN NUMBER PLATES BACK ON VEHICLES

Kathmandu, 14 April: Hand-written places on vehicles are back.
Effective Thursday, they replaced digitalized number plates.
Police said they encountered difficulty identifying vehicles with digitalized number plates.
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OPINION

DIPLOMACY AND POLICY OF ESTRANGEMENT

Kathmandu, 14 April: The road to Delhi begins from Lainchour – and Rakesh Sood seems intent on keeping things that way. The soon-to-depart Indian ambassador scuttled a fence-mending meeting between Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Maila Baje writes in Nepali Netbook..
Sharad Yadav of India’s Janata Dal (United) party was said to have arranged such a meeting after much behind-the-scenes jockeying. He and his Maoist-friendly colleagues have long pressed the fact that India cannot afford to snub the leader of the largest party in the legislature, regardless of Dahal’s ideology or idiosyncrasies.
But Sood and an influential section of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) reportedly saw matters differently. They advised New Delhi to first invite Prime Minister Jhal Nath Khanal to sound out the intentions of the new government.
It’s easy to see the shadows of all those black flags running amok in the Indian ambassador’s behavior. Yet Sood & Co. must have bolstered their resistance through their conclusion that the Maoists are, at best, running out of steam.
Earlier this month, Yadav voiced his frustration with Sood by publicly accusing the ambassador of “crossing all limits.” Sood, for his part, is no amnesiac. Yadav has not exactly been credible as a go-between. After all, he had failed to persuade then-Prime Minister Dahal to shelve plans to make Beijing his first foreign port of call. And that, too, after candidly claiming in the full glare of the media that doing so would only antagonize India.
In fairness, Dahal wants to uphold Nepal’s freedom to make the decisions it deems vital to its national interests. That conflicts with New Delhi’s basic psychology. In a recent BBC Nepali Service interview, retired general Ashok K. Mehta seemed to concede Nepal’s aspirations on every specific instance the questioner and his co-panelist, former Nepali ambassador to China, Rajeshwar Acharya, raised. Yet, on a philosophical level, Mehta, in his inimitable Nepali, insisted on India’s paramountcy, citing Nepal’s anatomical import as the head of South Asia.
Dahal, from the outset, probably recognized the difficulty a republican Nepal would face in warding off the dilemma successive monarchs faced vis-à-vis India. He also must have felt he would carry far more credibility in articulating Nepalese concerns as a democratically elected leader.
But Dahal’s obsession has had an echo-chamber effect, muddling the message not only among the intended audience but also among those on whose behalf he is making them. If by orientation and temperament Dahal seems ill suited for diplomacy, those same attributes make him unlikely to stop dragging India into the daily political discourse.
Dahal partisans may jump on RAW’s involvement in the latest ostensible sabotage as part of the effort to project Dr. Baburam Bhattarai as the next leader of the party. The Chinese, too, seem to have become alert to that reality and have therefore begun according greater respect to the vice-chairman.
It is hard to see Dahal making way for Bhattarai. So the Maoist chairman probably has another trick up his sleeve, perhaps even one connected to the latest convention of the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA). At a meeting the Indians believe was held in Nepal, the organization, among other things, resolved, “People all over the world look up to the Maoists in Nepal to break out of conspiracies and advance determinedly towards the completion of new democratic revolution.”
The Dahal plan could go like this. Let the constituent assembly die without its having formed a new constitution. Oppose President Ram Baran Yadav’s inevitable intervention by bringing the capital to a standstill for a few days. Then send out your own men and women on ‘spontaneous’ anti-Maoist demonstrations. Take a deep breath and renew the anti-Indian tirade.
New Delhi must have anticipated as much. The variables beyond are probably what both sides are anxiously weighing.
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HOW BUREAUCRACY CAME TO PRESENT PASS

Kathmandu, 14 April: In 1992, Girija Prasad Koirala, as the prime minister, did a great disservice to the nation and its bureaucracy. In a measure that was inspired by prejudiced political color, civil servants and employees in the corporate sector were slapped with draconian regulations for their retrenchment Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review..

In the name of "streamlining" the administration, three exit points were enlisted for discharging officials from their service prematurely. After decades of having 60 years as the retirement age for employees in general -- except in the academic and judicial sectors -- the age bar for retirement was reduced to 58 or 30 years of service or 20 years of service.

Over the years, the longevity of an average Nepali had increased, significantly more than what it was when the Nepali Congress government was in power in 1960-61. After over three full decades, civil servants and their counterparts in public corporations came in for a shock during the Koirala rule. A few secured an immediate benefit, only to regret it not long after.

Many employees moved the court and, after a year or two, were provided with justice. Most of them were reinstalled. The court ruled that multiple exits could not be acceptable, as it would lead to authoritarian and discriminatory practices by those in the authority. The verdict offered relief and justice to those adversely affected and pleaded for uniformity in regulation.

The move was a cowardly tool aimed at installing Nepali Congress henchmen at top posts and promoting their favored ones to various echelons of the bureaucracy. Except the NC camp, all others condemned it without any reservations. Although NC intellectuals, NC civil society leaders, NC human rights groups, NC journalists and NC academics did not protest, the rest of Nepal and Nepalis heavily criticized it. Even Koirala later realized the mistake. But the damage had been done and the politicization of the bureaucracy and employees' unions heightened over the years.

Today, Nepal's bureaucracy is the most politicized in the while of South Asia. Civil servants are openly members of unions that have direct political linkages with political parties. The public corporations are also affected in a similar manner. Schoolteachers and university students and teachers are also affected.

Whenever there is change in government, postings and promotions are made in accordance with political lines. The last five years have been even worse, with coalition partners in the government setting quotas for each of the constituent group nominees for appointments and assignments to "lucrative" posts.

During the 104-year Rana absolutism, "chakari" was a socially accepted culture whereby people went to pay their respects to powerful Ranas at their residences or they lined the route that a particular Rana took on his way to office or back home. Some people made the rounds twice a day to let the Rana know how loyal the one paying obeisance was.

After the 1951 democratic change, the "chakari" system was officially discontinued but many people continued in a somewhat less obvious manner. The new leaders did not discourage it as it gave the latter a sense of importance and power. Now, in 2011, senior officials from various sectors troop to the residences of political leaders with applications and supplications of the most humiliating kind.

These very officials, however, get tough and even rough with the general people but, when it comes to their personal interests, they betray how spineless they are. They issue sermons to individuals, who do not have any political contacts or connections, on regulations and justice but they themselves bend the rules when they get commands from the power bosses. Some of these bureaucrats and security officials complain about "pressure" from the higher-ups to bend the rules.

It is like Transparency International people complaining of corruption when its members are reported to have been party to giving bribes to get their work done speedily. At least the institution is expected not to deny this fact and maintain a minimum level of decency.

Bureaucrats who had welcomed the Koirala cabinet's infamous move to evict civil servants considered not to be in their particular favor later regretted when they had to retire earlier than the provision the previous regulations had. In many cases, civil servants who were illegally retired were reinstalled and their rivals among pro-NC bureaucrats had to work under them. Some of the reinstalled ones went on to become secretaries at various ministries.

Bureaucrats in Nepal every now and then complain of political pressure but these are also some of those who cry "foul" only after they fail to secure political patronage. Quite a few senior bureaucrats, on account of the new regulations, got quick promotions but had to retire in their early 50s. They made a pathetic sight in their early retirement. Today they are the ones who talk of politicization as if it is a secret that they greased their palms for career boost.

If a government were to list indicators for an ideal bureaucracy, Max Weber's prescription might be appropriate:

a. Bureaucracy is a continuous organization governed by a system of rules.
b. Conduct is governed by detached, impersonal rules.
c. There is division of labor, in which different offices are assigned different spheres of competence.
d. Hierarchical authority relations prevail; that is, lower offices are under control of higher ones.
e. Administration, actions, rules and so on are in writing and maintained in files.
f. Officials receive salaries rather than receiving direct payment from clients in order top ensure loyalty to the organization.
g. Property of the organization of separate from personal property of office holders.

If Nepalis tallied the above-mentioned criteria, they can assess how civil servants and employees in public corporations are operating, how they are posted and how they function.

In neighboring India, a series of corruption cases came to light in quick succession in the past one year. It is no secret that corruption is to be found in most places in that emerging economic powerhouse. But India has a systematic, better-structured and more efficient bureaucracy. Nepali leaders who keep themselves busy most of the time singing praises of the southern neighbor would do well to learn to learn some lessons in this aspect of running as bureaucracy.

As for the Nepali bureaucrats, one would like to advise them it show more spines in following regulations rather than buckling under political pressure to bend rules. Have a self-pride of not going by the rulebooks only with an average Nepali but also the bigwigs to serve your salary and salt right.
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