Importance and Challenges of Federalism in Nepalese Prospective

Importance and Challenges of Federalism in Nepalese Prospective

 

Reported by: Sudershan Basnet

 

 

Federalism is a system of government in which a written constitution divides power between a central government and regional or sub-divisional governments. Both types of government act directly upon the people through their officials and laws. For the general understanding Federalism is a system of government in which entities such as states or provinces share power with a national government. 

Federalism in Nepal is a new governing system which is going to be implemented. Especially Nepalese Constitution 2073 clearly stated that Nepal will be the federal country and where central government will be divided into three levels that are Federal Government, Provincial government and Local Government. Nepal is a multi lingual, multi language, multi ethnic nation so due to these vary it has many challenges has going to be appeared and it has many importance too. Both importance and challenges has been highlighted below.

 

Importance of Nepalese Federalism:

• Against Centric Ruling System – One of the most important points of federalism in dividing the power between the national government and state governments, and spreading the national government’s power among two branches that are Local government and Province Government.
• Expands Opportunities – Federal system expands the opportunities for citizens to participate in the various levels of government. It creates an opportunities to political, administrative and as a whole to the local governmental bodies. 
• Conflict Management – By allowing different communities and state to create their own policies, they allow for people with irreconcilable differences, or very strong disagreements, to live in separate areas and create their own solutions, or policies, that would be totally disagreeable to the other people in other states or regions of the country.
• More Responsiveness towards Citizen – The local and province government can be more responsive to the citizen needs. A government entity is to its citizens; the more likely it is the respond to the needs of citizens. States are more likely to listen to citizen needs, and respond to them, than the national government would be.
• Equal Development – One of the main adjectives of the federal system is to develop equally and as per equitable manner to the grassroots level. Nepalese constitution has been assumed that all the sector would be developed by participating of local people at all the development phases.
• Protection of Diversity – Constitution of the year 2047 B.C. stated Nepal as multi lingual and multi caste based country but it didn’t protect the rights of all people such as various ethnic group, indigenous people, women, madeshi, dalit etc.  But the new Nepalese constitution believes that federal system will protect all the right of them and will respect their cultural aspect by formulating favorable laws and policy in the local level.
• More Democratic Practices: Power decentralization is one of the major activities of democracy. Nepalese constitution is going to provide all the major central governing task to the local level through federal system they are; executive power, judiciary power and parliamentary power. Thus, this is a best democratic practice in the world. This type of power distribution process will help people to be more responsible and more ‘we’ feelings to the national development process.

 

And we are presented here some Challenges of Federal System in Nepal that are given below.

 

 

Administrative Challenges

·      *   Debate in Restructuring: One of the major tasks has been still remaining to give a final number of provincial state and draw the lines between constituent units on the basis of ethnicity, language or geographical features or resource distribution. And there is also conflict about the naming process. Madeshi parties are demanding one Madesh and one Pradesh which is really impracticable. Likewise other national parties also lobbying for the province associate with ethnicity and caste based system which will be the more complicated to address their voice who are not covering their right equally.

·         * Inequalities between different states: It allows for inequalities between different state or province. For example, instead of education funding throughout the country being the same, since it is a state issue, some states will spend more, per capita, on education than other states, causing what could be considered a disparity. The same goes for other things, as well, such as taxed, health care programs, and welfare programs.

·        *  Against the National policies: the states can fight against the existence of certain national laws by challenging them in court, or going out of their way to not enforce those national laws, or even deliberately obstructing enforcement of national law.

·     * Difficulties for the Human Resource Management: Of course after implementing the federal system there will be huge requirements to the all bureaucratic and non bureaucratic sectors. Thus, during the settlement of human resource, current bureaucrats can avoid the central decision and central government cannot hire capable person in a single time.

 

Economic Challenges

·       *  Financial Burden: Other major bad aspect of the federal system is financial burden. Huge amount will be expenses for the infrastructure development and for all the elected members in three levels i.e. Central level, province level and local level. According to current political discussion; Estimated 1200 assembly member are expected if that discussion has been finalized, amount of the governmental expenditure will be higher.

·       

8      *  Conflict regarding revenue system: The economic related policy can be disputable when revenue, tax and other charge are going to collect and share with central government. Due to lack of proper policy related to tax and revenue, local or central government will be confused where tax and revenue will be collected? And by whom?

·   * Difficulties for resource mobilization: It’s been a debating issue about the proper resource distribution and utilization of natural and available resources. One state cannot share their income or benefit which is collected from their internal resources that can be natural and industry. Generally in the prospective of Nepal, we can analyze that Biratnagar and Birganj are main industrial area of Nepal but their provincial government cannot share her benefits to other states that can be conflicting issue future. And another aspect regarding the resource utilization, if other state can wants to use resources from another state, the owner state can take high interest.

 

Political Challenges

·    *  Unqualified elected member: It’s a major challenges of federalism practice in Nepal because majority of the elected member are not so qualified in legal aspect and about planning, implementation process. We cannot imagine that federal system will be implemented within  a short period from an uneducated and unqualified personnel. They need to study and need consultation from the expert which may take long time.

·    *  Use as playground: Nepal is like a baby child about the federal governing system. All the politicians are new players regarding federalism so in the mean time international affairs can use our state against the central laws and policy. Like India can play role in Madesh reason to make favorable environment and China can create the same situation in Northern part as well.

·      *  Alliance for federalism: Anti federalism party still existing in our country like Rastirya Janamorcha Party is always bargaining to make an unitary governing system but majority of the party are supporting federal system so that it has bit challenges about it as well.