building their private infrastructure just to get on with daily life. Many of the Kathmandu valley’s new wells come from communities boring for much needed water and a number of villages have learned if they want a road, they must build it.
Not all people have the resources to build their own infrastructure and pay for basic necessities that in much of the world are free. It is the poor and those living in rural areas who will suffer the most from the earthquake. The Nepalese will unite to help one another as much as they can. They have done so from around the world since the tremors began. Nepali citizens have proven their unity and commitment to each other over and over again when they are pushed to the limits. Now it is time for the government to do so, too. The largest oversight in the government’s disaster preparedness is the lack of robust, empowered local governance.
What lessons should be taken away from this expected but nonetheless heartbreaking tragedy? Nepal’s constituent assembly government needs to stand true to the promises of the 2006 People’s Movement. The underpinning logic for federalism was to devolve power from the center, Kathmandu, and relegate it to the provinces in order to create more regional autonomy.
The ongoing debates over the federal state structure and nomenclature have focused on ethnicity and identity-based rights. These issues are central to addressing the many histories of marginalization and healing the wounds of a decade of civil war. However, these disputes obscure the fact that there is little political will among Nepal’s politicians to decentralize power.
All of the parties are stuck in the centralised, top-down mode of governing. But this model is faulty because of its cascading effects. With the top level at an impasse, the middle and local levels are languishing. Imagine if robust local and regional governance had existed when this earthquake hit? Then the relief efforts would not be mimicking the ad hoc approach the central government has taken to governing and state restructuring over the last seven years.
Excerpted from: ‘Nepal’s Earthquake Politics’.
Courtesy: Counterpunch.org