Once again, local bodies in Nepal have started participatory planning. The planning process consists of a series of interconnected steps that local bureaucrats organize, and in some others, facilitate. One feature of the process is that people from divergent socio-economic backgrounds deliberate on annual budget and policy issues for the new fiscal year. It is increasingly an administrative process at local level, and the political nature of participatory planning is slowly being forgotten.The genesis of participatory planning lies in our constitutional objectives. The Constitution of Nepal, 1990, which aimed at increasing and enhancing democratic citizen participation in governance, is the fundamental political base of modern-day participatory planning. Constitutional reforms thereafter have ensured citizen participation in governance as a priority. Local bodies, for their part, are following the Local Self Governance Act, 1999 and its supplementary regulations.
Before discussing how the process has been transformed from a purely political to administrative process, let me explain participatory planning. It connects central government with local government, particularly in management of development projects. Local bodies start the process every November when they get policy guidelines and budgetary ceilings from the center. The prevailing legislative provisions give some autonomy to local bodies to customize policy guidelines as per local needs. Then the policy agendas, development plans and budgetary issues are widely discussed at lower echelons of local bodies, mostly in community-based organizations.
The Integrated Planning Formulation Committee (IPFC) has been established at the local level to bridge the gap between communities and local authorities. As there have been no local elections for over a decade, a bureaucrat appointed by the center has been given the right to approve such plans. Hence IPFC recommendations are approved by a bureaucrat who is only an administrative chief of the concerned local body.
As a political process, participatory planning is supposed to be governed by elected authorities at local level. Elected politicians are expected to broaden discussions to include people marginalized for various reasons. The deliberative forums at and beneath ward level are also designed to be steered by politicians who not only have to answer questions raised at lower levels but also defend the rights of ordinary citizens. So, legally, local institutions should be governed by elected representatives.
There are three important dimensions to political participatory planning. First, the politicians are accountable to their constituencies. Any ordinary person can have access to his representative and has the right-to-ask. Second, due to competitive nature of representative democracy at local level, resource allocation and policy deliberation are transparent. Irrespective of which party is in power, there are mechanisms for the opposition to take up resource-related issues with those in power. Finally, participatory planning is fully democratic in the sense that local people are invited to join and influence decision making. Ordinary citizens become key actors of the planning process.
In absence of elected representatives, the political participatory planning is slowly being replaced by a purely administrative apparatus. The administrators are now designers of plans, and they set goals and budgetary ceilings (out of allocated budget), policy guidelines and so on. In many local bodies, involvement of local people has been reduced to a purely administrative process in the sense that they are assembled only for the heck of it and not with an intention to involve them in the process. Local bureaucrats prepare documents, rather than organize participative forums and make people participate.
In many local bodies, particularly in villages, local administrators work as superheros and act as if they are real experts. Community based organizations, in some cases, support them because they wish to be favored by these local bureaucrats. Local political parties remain mute, mainly because they are powerless. Advocates and campaigners remain uninformed of the process as many of it takes place underground. At some locales, media is easily purchased by local bureaucrats.
Nevertheless, it cannot be said that transformation of participatory planning from political to administrative process is all bad. In some local bodies, particularly in municipalities, the role of local administrators has remained purely facilitative. Local non-governmental organizations and community based organizations work with local authorities to broaden and deepen the process. Latest local government institutions such as the Ward Citizen Forums and Civic Awareness Centers have harmonious relationship with classical community forums such as the Tole Lane Organizations.
Local authorities have been investing in these organizations to make them capable of carrying out initial participatory planning. Community members have sharpened their capability to assess the concerns raised at community level and recommend technical ideas to local authorities. Municipalities in particular are well organized, systematic and adopt democratic procedures of participatory planning.
The 'bureaucratization' of the planning process has some other things going for it. The process has been relatively disciplined. Local staffs, centrally appointed chiefs of local bodies and local representatives of political parties—all work together in a disciplined manner. They complement each other despite their individual backgrounds of power, authority and legitimacy. The community based organizations obey administrative procedures more than they obey political representatives. This is with the belief that bureaucrats have no ulterior motives.
There is a legal process of follow-up to assess whether the bureaucrats are obeying the laws. This makes ordinary citizens feel that bureaucrats are working based on certain norms and standards. Evaluative techniques such as performance measurement are in place to assess participatory planning as part of local governance.
While administrative procedures cannot be democratic given their hierarchical and procedural limitations, the overall local governance process in Nepal has been bureaucratized for over a decade. The notion of participation of ordinary people in planning, hence, has also been bureaucratized. People are participating in the process but to what extent their participation influences local policy making is a question that is yet to be answered.
The author is pursuing PhD on Public Sector Reforms at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra, Australia
thaneshwar.bhusal@canberra.edu.au
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