Bigyan Prasai,
Chartered Certified Accountant, London
Member of Central Department, NJSS , Nepali Congress
The end of Monarchy and the entrance of Maoist in the main stream political arena resulted from the 12 Point Agreement between the alliance of 7 Parliamentary Parties and the Moist on 22 November 2005 , ponder the new era of Politics in Nepal. In this short essay I would like to conceptually analyse the situation of Nepal as it stands today with the reasoning behind it. There are two main critical factors that have led the country in such a political , social and economical muddle . The first factor being the wave of globalisation , globalisation in terms of neo liberalism globalisation. The other factors is the internal factors , which I term as the national factor.
Intersection of Internal and external factor
During 1980s the US Government and the World Bank and IMF declared a concept of opening up market in the globe to exploit the international market to gain competitive advantage called Washington Consensus Declaration. The concept of this was based on neo liberal economy and believed to the first stage policy reform in the developing countries. The neo liberalism concept was to reduce the role of the state and increase the role of private sector which will led to more efficient economy of the counties and lead to economic growth. In the surface it looked like the US, World Bank and IMF was concerned with the poverty and the mess of the developing countries. It was thought and made it believe that the prescription of Neo Liberalism would solve the problem of the developing countries especially as seem in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia. But it was unpractical to fit their concept in the countries where the political ideology was more authoritarian than democrat. So in order fit the policy it was prerequisite that the country had to adopt the democratic set up. So from mid 1985 and beginning of 1990s developing countries were swept with the wave of democracy and Nepal is no exception to it.
During mid 1980s, US, World Bank and IMF had proposed market oriented economy to privatise the economy in Panchayat regime but because of various reasons, the government did not come up with concrete and specific plan, it did reflect the determination in practice to move towards economic liberalism. This concluded the Donor agency that without adopting a political liberalisation the application of the concept of economic liberation was not possible. The change of regime form Authoritarian Panchayat to Multi-Party democracy was one of these factors that have played an important role. The external inducement of US, World Bank and IMF was a subtle in the surface but was in fact the most influential factor to the change of the regime.
The Washington consensus based on Neo liberal policy was in fact not pronounced to serve the need of the poor and developing countries but in fact was adapted because of economic crises originated from multiple facts. One being the oil crises following the emergence of OPEC which mounted high level of external debt and thus rise in US and international interest rate and loss of access to foreign credit. The developing countries were not capable of paying the interest and paying back international loan. So in order to make the developing countries capable to service the international debt and to increase the economies of the industrial by increasing the global territory, the Washington Consensus came up with the policy of structural adjustment inducing many developing including Nepal to Multi Party System.
On the other side Nepal was falling far behind the world developing countries especially with the neighbouring countries like India and China in terms of economic growth and prosperity, the corruption, inefficiency to public service delivery, lack of expression of freedom and many factors were cumulating the dissatisfaction of the people which led to people up rise to Multi- Party Democracy. The intersection of this both national and international position resulted in the restoration of Multi party democracy in Nepal in 1990.
From here after the logic of restoration of democracy, I would like to move on what went wrong on the Multi-Party Democratic system in Nepal. The system itself inherits the best practices of the Government through the Globe. But what we fail to understand is that Democracy is not a precondition to Development but Development is a precondition to Democracy. In order to align with this notion the missing part of sustained development failed to work properly in the practice of democracy set up. The point here to ponder is why we failed to development and what are its implication to the nation. Aftermath of 1990 , Nepali Congress election victory of 1991 obtaining the simple majority made a paradigm shift in its economic policy towards the externally induced Neo Liberal economic policy. This was contrast to the policy adopted by Nepali Congress since its inception and that was enshrined in the manifesto of the party. Nepali Congress party historically had Leftist ( Centre left ) participatory -populist ideology. The social democrat was its core principle in terms of political and economical ideology but contrast to this it adopted a different governance approach incorporation neo liberal market oriental principle . The foundation of the social democratic principle was of creating a participatory developmental state. The ideology behind this was so much contexture to the Nation state. The ideology was to marry between the capitalisms ( total liberal economy ) and the Socialist ideology and thus to move towards a welfare state. But in contrast to this we adopted – Washington Consensus (Neo Liberal Market oriented) married to Democratic Centralism. I would like emphasise that this was the first mistake we made towards our development goals. Throughout the history of Nepali Congress the party advocated the ideology of Social democracy and the entire schooling among the cadres and supporters were influenced by this very enshrine doctrine of socialism. The paradigm shift of this very fundamental ideology was not even discussed or debated within and between the internal party decision making platforms. So thus this deviation form it’s internally nurtured, inherent historically policy to external inducted neo liberalism market was the basic wrong in the policy adaptation.
The country started with a wrong economic philosophy since 1990 ending up to more inequality both in terms of economic and social indicators. The words like Accountability, transparency, market economy, better governance, trade liberalism looks good in paper but the translation into practice is the important factor that needs to account with. The Nepal does not lack development policies. If you look in to National Planning library we can see bundles of developments policies piled up from intellectual policy makers and from the advice and suggestions from international experts , from donor agencies world bank, IMF etc. What the country lack is the implementation policy rather than development policy. The failure of implementation of the policies has led the country mingle with failing state. The emergence of Maoist and the social unrest since 1996 to date has been the product of implementation failure of the neo liberal economic policies. The implementation of the policy failed to fit the policies contextually without proper analysing the preconditions attached to its implementation. There are also many other political factors obstructing procedures but my article restricts to the basics only and the residue to follow on next article. The effect of structural adjustment of Washington consensus with the one size fits all policy was one of the fatal situations of the developing countries after 1990s. The comparative analysis also is made with various developing countries in Africa. The situation of Nepal can be compared with the study of South Africa after the adaptation Multy party democracy 1990s with the rise of ANC (African National Congress) in power and can be referred to post Apartheid reform in this country
Conclusion
The essay here not wants to blame the Nepali Congress for the wrongs. The policy sold by international donor agency lured the internal actors in Nepal that the adaptation of that policy would make Nepal prosperous nation breaking the vicious circle of poverty. NC though adopted with a good intention but end of leading to wrong out comes. I am against the neo economic liberation in totality but agree that adaptation has to be in sequence with the internal capacity building to the state. The adopting of open economy pairing with domestic capacity building would smooth the process of liberalisation leading successful outcomes. So what I would like to conclude here is that the implementation of the policy can only be possible if we develop the state capacity and investing in infrastructure and the most important being on the human resource capital infrastructure. Without having a skilled and healthy workforce the development is not possible no matter how the policy is. So the focus of the planning on the development of the nation should be to produce healthy and educated population. The now the planning commission should focus their planning strategy to practical and quality education with improvement in public sector education and secondly to focus on the implementation policy on public health. With out healthy and wise citizen the country cannot adopt to any developmental policies. So let’s start to make the basics right improving the education and health sector.
