Making Bureaucracy Functional

At an interaction held with the officials of the vital and key agencies operating under the purview of the office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers (OPMCM), Prime minister K.P. Sharma Oli expressed his dissatisfaction the other day over their performance and advised them to define clear cut milestones to ensure that they are fulfilled within fixed time period. Not only the incumbent Prime Minister Oli, his predecessors including Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda had vented ire over poor public services delivery time and again directly attributed to the dismal record of the upper echelon civil bureaucracy. 

Confusions indeed broadly persist on the factors responsible for poor report card of the civil bureaucracy. Political leaders and policy stakeholders fail to see the underlying institutional and structural causes that render civil bureaucracy to be ineffective as they see that individual personnel are alone responsible to deliver regardless of existing institutional contexts and constraints. One of the key institutional instruments to govern the civil bureaucracy and define their terms and conditions is Federal Civil Service Bill, which is lying pending in the parliament since several years now. 

Discord 

Some issues in the Bill have become controversial and thorny which have made it difficult to thrash out and arrive at agreed decision. The civil service Act should have been enacted immediately after the election held in 2074 B.S. in accordance with the federal constitution of Nepal. But this aspect had not received enough attention by the succeeding governments, as a result of which the implementation of administrative federalism has not gathered speed in the country. The problematic issue that has remained very much undefined is what is generally known as increased blurring of demarcation of authority between politics and administration.

Often times, bureaucrats poach into the territory of policy making which is the exclusive reserve of politicians whereas ministers and policy makers are also tempted to exercise undue influence on the jurisdiction of administrative authority.  The relationship between politics and administration has been indeed a tricky one not only in Nepal but also in several democratic countries. The civil service bill is also said to be flawed on several counts. As reported, it has not clearly spelt out the role of civil servants' unions and association. 

There are worries that bureaucracy has been politicised due to their trade union type associations affiliated to different political parties which has reinforced their partisan orientation. Another major issue that has become a bone of contention is accountability relationship of the civil servants to three tier governments –federal, state (pradesh) and local.  Nepal has indeed continued with the unified system of bureaucratic organisation with the central government keeping the hold and authority in recruiting, deploying, rewarding and punishing civil servants across the three tiers of the government. State and local level key bureaucrats are recruited and administered from the centre without any consultation with and concurrence of subnational governments.  

In fact, both state and local government should be practically enabled to exercise authority and autonomous space to set terms to hire and retrench the civil servants to work under their respective purview. Civil servants are seemingly in favour of continuing their administrative loyalty and answerability to the central agencies which they perceive will safeguard their interests. Nepal's federalisation process has hit snags especially due to the issues related with the lack of proper administrative devolution and efficient personnel management. This has strained relations between state and federal government as well. 

As the several functions that used to be planned and implemented at the central level have been constitutionally assigned to the provinces and local governments, sub national capacity to implement newly devolved functions needs to be enhanced. This capacity can be bolstered only if the adequacy of trained and competent personnel, among others, are provided under the purview of the sub national government. The top heavy bureaucratic structures has been kept at the federal level without being recast and restructured assessing and examining their functional needs and obligations.  

The elite personnel embedded at the central bureaucracy tend to resist in integrating and work under the purview and complete answerability to sub-national government. Due to this reason, contrary to the spirit of the federalism, the bloated volume of the civil bureaucracy to the tune of forty five thousand is being retained with the federal government at the centre. Since the   constitution limits the number of ministries and departments at the federal level, the size of bureaucracy will have to be thoroughly downsized through the fresh organisation and management survey according to the principles of subsidiarity.     

Max Weberian values

Furthermore, Nepal’s bureaucracy has not been fully oriented to the well-known Max Weberian values characterised by legal-rational authority system that encompasses the fundamentals such as neutrality, state system loyalty, merit and competence, separation of public funds from private use and so on.  Moreover, civil bureaucracy is swallowing a bigger chunk of the national revenue indicated by ever growing size of the recurring expenditure. Unless bureaucratic set-up is reorganised, result-oriented and citizen-centric as per the spirit of federalism, the devolved political structural and functional arrangements at province and local level will make no sense for the ordinary populace. 

The Nepali Congress-UML combined coalition government should focus on making institutional and structural changes in the existing bureaucratic set up to ensure that it reflects the spirit of federal polity and delivers as expected by the Prime Minister and policy stakeholders. The government should exercise its mandate to carry out radical restructuring of the bureaucracy to warrant that it is lean and efficient to fulfil the aspirations of the people. 

(The author is presently associated with Policy Research Institute (PRI) as a senior research fellow.  rijalmukti@gmail.com)