TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT & PM
PM Bhattarai´s directives give a sense of how he views the executive role as the head of the government. Even if we assume for a moment that the opening of a stretch of road deserves the attention of the PM, the question is: What are the strategic issues related to traffic management in the capital? Can it be solved through one time potshot decisions by the head of the government or does it require setting certain boundary conditions that recognize the multi-dimensional nature of the problem?
Alternatively, is the Bhadrakali road something other than just a symptom of a deeper underlying problem of the urban management problems that have remained ignored by all the governments including the present? If we agree that it represents a generic problem related with urban management of the capital, does it make any sense for the chief executive of the country to focus on a small part while ignoring the whole? Does this not indicate a penchant for temporary cheap popularity instead of a serious attempt to solve the problem especially when the PM apart from being a politician and a Marxist ideologue also happens to be an architect and an urban planner by academic training?
The Bhadrakali road episode highlights the fact that a leader as an executive in the government needs more than an eagerness to issue directives with the press in attendance. The important point is to be able to conceptualize the generic nature of the problem and to outline policies and rules that help solve it and in our case the traffic congestion problem not just in Maitighar but in other parts of the city as well.
If the Maitighar traffic problem deserves prime ministerial attention, what about the problem in Chabahil or Maharajgung where the situation is becoming almost unmanageable? Will the PM now start issuing directives for all these intersections? The question is almost a joke except for the fact that it concerns the head of the government.
POLITICAL ILLUSION
One of the illusions that politicians who are in the government have is to think that once a decision is made, it will be implemented. The trappings and prestige of the office inflate the ego and it is easy to believe that all that is needed are attention catching directives to solve the problem. This illusion is quickly shattered when the directives loose all their thrust and momentum by the time they reach the execution level as we are observing in the case of the Maitighar episode.
The Bhadrakali road episode highlights the fact that a leader as an executive in the government needs more than an eagerness to issue directives with the press in attendance. The important point is to be able to conceptualize the generic nature of the problem and to outline policies and rules that help solve it.
Once this happens, the normal tendency is to accuse the bureaucracy and even complain that it is not cooperating with the political leadership. I have personally heard this kind of dialogue very often. The general complaint, expressed with a kind of anguish and a deep sigh, is that the country could really be transformed if only the bureaucracy would cooperate. This naturally absolves the political leadership of their own incompetence in decision making.
I have myself gone through this process and hopefully learnt a few lessons. In 1984, when I became the finance minister, I was convinced that the only way to boost the growth rate of the country along with a gradual shift in the power balance in the political structure was to help create conditions that would encourage the emergence of a new bourgeois or an entrepreneurial class. One part of this program was to privatize 12 government corporations in one year, one every month. It was a decision that was to my surprise easily approved by the cabinet and I was proud of the fact that I was able to incorporate it in the annual budget.
However, by the end of the year, to my own dismay, the finance ministry that had taken the leadership in this project had been able to involve the private sector only in one government-owned enterprise. Similarly, government ministers who had to take the initiative on privatization remained completely indifferent to the proposals that they themselves had fully supported in the budget.
In spite of the grand scheme of the budget, all that was achieved was to sell 15 percent of the government-owned insurance corporation under the finance ministry. As for the remaining 11 corporations, the achievement was close to nil. The striking thing is that even after 25 years since then, we have not made any substantial progress in the management of government-owned corporations. What happened? Why were the decisions approved by the cabinet not implemented?
We failed in the past to implement many innovative ideas because the whole question of specifying the boundary conditions in a decision representing the aggregation of the interests of different groups and stakeholders into policies that forward public interest were not seriously considered. Similarly, major decisions were not conceptualized in the context of their links with new values and structures that would be necessary for successful implementation. So, new ideas quickly degenerated into potshot populist measures that ultimately had the effect of creating disillusionment among the people.
NO CONSULTATION WITH ARMY
The prime ministerial decision to open the Maitighar road in all probability will join the long list of adhoc decisions that will soon be forgotten. The PM has even ignored to hear the army. He seems to have neglected to find out if the army can indeed carry out the decision given the institutional considerations of security of its assets and infrastructure. A decision style of this nature shows both inability to consider the problem from a broader perspective of urban management as well as a reluctance to take into confidence the agency responsible for implementation. The same can also be said about his other directive to remove billboards from the main thoroughfares of the capital.
Our PM, if his recent love for foreign direct investments is to be taken seriously, seems to be a new convert to globalized capitalism, a departure from his ideological conviction that formed the basis of violent politics in the past. It can of course be argued that capitalism in a period of economic transition, especially when the Maoist party is leading the government, is really a progressive "mode of production" and thus a way toward a communist state. After all, didn´t Lenin, the high priest of Marxism, advocate his "new economic policy,” a variant of capitalism, soon after he captured power?
The beauty of Marxism is that as a philosophical method of analyzing history, it is highly rational, claims to unravel the essence of a historical relationship and boldly declares the doctrine as a guide to history. And, yet, its philosophical methods have been used by the high priests of Marxism to justify the most inhuman acts in history.
The 20th century is littered with the wreck and ruins of Marxism ranging all the way from one-party totalitarian dictatorship that treated human beings as nothing more than body machines to inhuman gulag (labor camps) where thousands perished in the name of a mystic new world, a new model of political and economic nirvana and the dream of a new city shining on top of the hill. It is this holier-than-thou attitude – an intensely authoritarian style that reflects in many ways the values characteristic of a feudal regime – that ultimately destroys the system.
On the other hand, as a system of economic management, modern capitalism does need properly defined boundary conditions that allows aggregation of the interest of the stakeholders at the ground level for effective execution of central directives. It is time that the PM remained aware of this imperative.
The writer is the Co-Chairman of the Rastriya Janasakti Party and a Member of the Constituent Assembly
prakash_dr@hotmail.com
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