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 Nepal has an image prob­lem when it comes to assuring investors. Years of conflict, instability, and a rent-seeking mentality in gener­al are an open secret that both domestic and foreign investors know all too well about. Just announcing Nepal is open for business isn’t enough; it needs to be demonstrated through action that Nepal actually has a busi­ness-friendly government and environment.

To be clear, foreign investors aren’t looking for a cakewalk; what they expect is a degree of certainty that even in the worst-case scenario, they won’t entirely lose their investments.

On the one hand, the govern­ment wants foreign investors to come here in droves, yet it appears reluctant to allow them to make profits and repatriate them back to their home coun­tries. Historically, such reluc­tance stems from our society’s deeply ingrained mistrust of the private sector, which in turn per­haps has its roots in the Marx­ist and socialist orientation of all major political parties. That mistrust remains pervasive both in government and civil society circles.

Strangely enough, we also toler­ate and perpetuate the monopoly of a few private entities and seek to shield them from competition, as reflected partly in the negative list of the Foreign Investment and Transfer of Technology Act 2019. Ideally, the negative list should be used to protect an industry unique to the country or critical to national security, identity or culture; this doesn’t mean a sec­tor should be deprived of foreign expertise or finance.

Public works

On financing public infrastruc­ture, our official obsession with grants and free money is the biggest impediment to crowding in of development finance. We should seek grants where they are available and advantageous, yet we need to be mindful of the strings they come attached with. For instance, any bilateral grant to, say, upgrade an airport infrastructure comes with con­ditions to use equipment man­ufactured by the companies of that donor country. While for the short-term, the upgrade may come free, in the long run, the cost of parts replacement ends up being very expensive for the receiving country.

The government has identified different modes of financing pub­lic infrastructure, including gov­ernment-to-government (G2G) agreements and public private partnerships (PPP), yet the civil service remains inherently skep­tical of the private sector. Per­haps the failure of the private sector to pull off the Kathman­du-Hetauda Tunnel expressway and Kathmandu-Tarai Fast Track may have reinforced the govern­ment’s mistrust. But at the same time, the government has done very little to examine its own role in ensuring that the project did not take off.

Foreign sponsors and lenders look for sovereign guarantee, particularly in funding infra­structure projects. After all, the private sector is here to make profits. But often the implied assumption in both our official approach and media narratives fed by officials is that it should be done as a service. The lan­guage used by officials unwitting­ly sends the message that Nepal is doing investors a favor by allow­ing them to invest here in the first place.

Despite two investment sum­mits and ongoing regulatory reforms, Nepal’s image is not going to change overnight. But it will help if government lead­ers work as champions of key projects where they demon­strate change in the way of doing business.

Success stories

A successful demonstration project in public infrastructure under different financing modal­ities will go a long way in proving to investors that Nepal means business—and thereby helping to generate funding for the coun­try’s huge infrastructure needs over time. For instance, rath­er than listing 20 projects, the government should identify one infrastructure project each to be built under the PPP and G2G models and see through its imple­mentation within a specific time frame. This can be an airport, an expressway, a sewage treatment plant, or a metro rail. It can also be something small, a hospital or street lighting.

Words of failure may spread faster than those of success. But success stories do travel and reach investors far and wide. Therefore demonstrating both intent and success is important—and this can only be done by walking the talk.

After the Narendra Modi gov­ernment in India dramati­cally changed the status of Jammu and Kashmir in the first week of August, it expected a show of support from neighbor­ing and friendly countries. Clear­ly Kathmandu was caught in a diplomatic dilemma as the issue involved three countries with which Nepal has friendly ties. It also complicated the issue further as Nepal is the current chair of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). As such, Pakistan expected a ges­ture of solidarity from Nepal—or at least a statement that showed concern.While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) rightly kept a stud­ied silence over the issue to avoid offending either of the two par­ties involved, the fear was that the party apparatus, particularly of the ruling CPN, would issue a statement that could create anoth­er difficult diplomatic incident for the country. Such a fear was not irrational, given how insen­sitive the CPN’s sister wings have been to the country’s interest over Venezuela.

There has been some brain­storming over Nepal’s foreign pol­icy and protocols in the past—par­ticularly to bring party apparatus on the same page, but it seems to have done very little in streamlin­ing the process or ensuring com­pliance with the protocols.

More heat than light

In 2014, the Institute of Foreign Affairs conducted a seminar for the representatives of political parties to orient them on ‘Prin­ciples and Strategies of Nepal’s Foreign Policy and Protocol’, yet the discussion produced more heat than light. Participants com­plained that the seminar lacked focus, and the event quickly descended into a competition of sorts over who knows more than whom. Unfortunately, that is the usual sight in most conferences and seminars held in Kathmandu on Nepal’s foreign policy.

The constitution reiterates Nepal’s faith in the UN Charter, Panchasheel and non-aligned principles, and eschews refer­ence to special relations, yet these are abstract ideas that cannot be easily translated into action­able strategies, particularly in the context of a renewed cold war that involves our neighbor to the north. While Panchasheel does offer some room to anchor to our foreign policy posture in most cases, it is not always easy to operationalize our neutrality when an incident involves two neighboring countries with dia­metrically opposite views. The MOFA’s own guiding principle does not go very far from the constitutional directive: Nepal shall pursue its relations with neighbours based on sovereign equality and reciprocity, but the country shall not align one neigh­bor against another.

Internal issue

On the Kashmir issue, it would be problematic to even say that Nepal does not comment on the internal affairs of another coun­try. What India considers internal is an issue Pakistan has sought to internationalize for seven decades.

Besides the competence of dip­lomatic personnel, Nepal clearly has two challenges to address: to operationalize broad foreign pol­icy principles into clear action­able strategies; and to bring party officials on the same page. This can only be done by creating a robust research and debate cul­ture in the country. Given how rapidly the geopolitical landscape evolves in this day and age, a static approach cannot address the challenges inherent to being a small power in a vibrant and complex neighborhood

There is a huge disconnect between the words and deeds of Nepal’s foreign pol­icy establishment. This establish­ment is comprised of civil ser­vants, party officials and security apparatus, each of which has its own institutional interests that often don’t add up to a broader national interest. Their divergent interests are in turn giving trac­tion to confusing signals to both the United States and China that are now locked in a new Cold War. As tensions grow, a flip-flop can easily put Nepal on the receiving end of harsh punitive actions—like the recent blockade.As inhuman and unjust as the Indian blockade was, there should also be a clear reckoning of the role of the national leaders in triggering it. It has now been established that our top leaders offered categorical assurance of retaining a Hindu state in the con­stitution when they were sum­moned to Delhi, a promise on which they reneged. A similar punitive action from Beijing and Washington cannot be ruled out if we continue to ignore their sen­sitivities. Being a small state, we do not have the luxury of big pow­ers and cannot be assured of a second chance.

Both the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Indo Pacific Strategy (IPS) are a reality and the best way to navigate the inherent risks is by transparently engaging with both sides. Nepal’s current approach appears to be one that favors the BRI and distances itself from the IPS. Yet upon closer inspection, even on the BRI, Nepali state remains deeply non-committal—as evidenced by the scaling down of the list of BRI projects from 36 to nine. This approach is unhelp­ful and dangerous as it creates a false impression globally of Kath­mandu leaning toward Beijing—without delivering the benefits of an unequivocal public alignment with the China-led strategy.

Nepal does not need to buy into the exclusionary narrative of this or that strategy. It is nat­ural for Washington or Beijing to want allies to be completely loyal to them, but we do not have to be—so long as we make our principles clear. In fact, during the previous Cold War, Nepal suc­cessfully received development assistance from both blocs. Even today, sections of the East West Highway have both Soviet and American engineering stamps. That speaks volume about how our then non-alignment strategy provided a safe approach to deal­ing with big power rivalry.

That old template may not be completely relevant today, yet it could provide valuable lessons for our renewed diplomatic posture in an evolving global and regional geopolitical context. This new Cold War is both ideological and civilizational—hence the stakes are that much higher. Rather than getting caught up in and defined by events and diplomatic acci­dents, Nepal needs a proactive approach in defining the limits of its engagement within both the BRI and the IPS. This means articulating a clear principle that would define our renewed foreign policy posture. This also means clearly communicating our com­fort levels and our desired depths of engagement with both Beijing and Washington.

Our current response to the BRI and the IPS seems to be a curious case of politicians saying one thing and civil servants doing a completely different thing. By being gung-ho about the BRI early in the post-blockade context, our politicians had raised Beijing’s expectation, which is now being met with frustration over the slow pace of delivery.

On the IPS, Washington is flabbergasted by how our for­eign ministry officials treat this strategy as radioactive (the MCC predates the IPS, and even Amer­icans are giving mixed signals about whether the MCC is a part of the IPS). Yet our military and armed police continue to benefit from elements of the IPS. At the same time, youth wings of the rul­ing party are hosting top leaders of the Venezuelan regime.

Not just Washington, even Bei­jing is wary of the shenanigans of our top political leaders, a wari­ness that is compounded by the civil administration’s lukewarm response. This may personally be a risk-free approach for top bureaucrats and politicians, but it is building up an unacceptable level of risk for the country.

Foreign ministry officials need to articulate a clear roadmap that other actors can adopt and adapt. As tensions escalate, Nepal urgently needs coherence and clarity in dealing with the rival frameworks being promoted by Beijing and Washington O

When the issue of government flip-flop on testing pesticides level on imported Indian vegetables flared up earlier this month, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli apologized for misleading the public about an Indian Embassy letter, and for implying that the government acted on its own when it reversed its earlier stance on the matter. He blamed civil servants and his ministers for keeping him in the dark about the Indian letter. This is not the first instance an elected prime minister of this country has rued about being misinformed, and his inability to get things done and govern, and this certainly will not be the last time.

All governments since 1990 have ignored the fundamental problem of governance in Nepal: the failure to accumulate power in state organs and in subsequent institution building for the use of this power. Instead, they all focused on leveraging the power they individually had to reward supporters—in the process weakening even the few institutions that had been built by past authoritarian regimes.
The legitimate coercive power of the Nepali state has hence been limited even in the best of times. Government authority simply does not emanate from a piece of paper. It is instead earned and accumulated through its use over time through instruments of trust, fear, or both.

While most states excel in one or the other, or both, the Nepali state has never been particularly good at either. There is little trust in state institutions or leaders who preside over them. Hence the continuous opposition to government efforts to exercise its prerogatives—from the Guthi Bill to the decision to host the IIFA awards.

As government leaders wonder why they can’t even move a needle with their two-thirds mandate, perhaps reading Samuel P. Huntington’s seminal book, ‘Political Order in Changing Societies,’ written nearly six decades ago, could be instructive.
To govern and govern well, a society needs strong political institutions to define and realize public interests. But political institutions have “moral as well as structural dimensions… morality requires trust; trust involves predictability; and predictability requires regularized and institutionalized patterns of behavior,” writes Huntington.

The behaviors of our institutions are predictable in a sense that they can be trusted to make decisions or appointments that serve private interest of the leaders—which are clearly amoral and offer no public good. Hence there is opposition even to decisions made with the best of intent. The past is seen as an indicator of the future.

That is largely true. Successive prime ministers and ministers compete to outdo his/her predecessors and the resultant vicious cycle delivers repeated blows to our institutions as new sets of leaders, or rather recycled ones, come in rather frequently—leaving the institutions in tatters. This is evident in ambassadorial appointments to the behavior of leaders in the country’s oldest university. Who appoints them and how? What is their goal once they occupy these high offices?
The biggest challenge for us as a society is to persuade government leaders, civil servants, and politicians to distinguish their individual interest from institutional interest. While to suggest that leaders not pursue private interest at all would be utopian, they should do so without compromising larger institutional interests they preside over. Leave the office you occupy better than what you came into. In other words, educating leaders about individual legacy—not inheritance for the family—can be a good starting point.

Given how appointments are made, or to put it more bluntly, paid for, and inherent unpredictability of the tenure or term of appointment, the overwhelming drive among public officials is to recuperate the investment and leverage the position for personal gain before their time is up. With collection of such individuals in the key governing structures, one wonders how anything that promotes public good gets done in this country.

It will be an uphill battle to change the structure and culture even if we are lucky enough to have an enlightened leadership committed to a complete overhaul. This can start through a discourse around how to fix things, and by intellectuals affiliated to political parties speaking truth to power. Unfortunately, that is becoming a very high bar in even matured democracies—as social media form echo chambers that reinforce your worldviews rather than create informed public spheres

 Even as annual tourist arrival numbers remain upbeat—crossing the magical million-mark last year—data on the average daily spending by tourists paint a dismal picture. The latest figures compiled by the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) show an 11 percent decline in daily spending to $47—from $53 in 2017.

The government wants to double last year’s numbers to two million by 2020, while increasing the average daily tourist spending (to $62) as well as the average length of stay. Although these three goals are not necessarily contradictory, Nepal has seen a pattern where an increase in tourist numbers and the average length of stay tends to bring down the average daily spending.

For instance, in 2015, immediately after the deadly earthquake, while tourist arrival numbers plummeted over safety concerns, the average daily tourist spending was a high of $68.5. The primary reason behind the high spending was that tourists who came that year mostly stayed in Kathmandu and Pokhara and in hotels with infrastructure deemed safe—where prices are higher than in other establishments. Of course, the figures were partly skewed by the high prices in the aftermath of the blockade and humanitarian and aid officials travelling to Nepal in high numbers.

Is average daily tourist spending a fair indicator of tourism’s increasing contribution to the economy? Is the government’s goal of increasing daily tourist spending to $62 even realistic given the complexities involving international payment gateways?

The math

Average daily spending figures are derived from gross reported tourism earnings divided by the number of tourists—factoring in the average length of stay. In simple terms, the greater the tourist numbers and the average length of their stay, the higher the likelihood of daily spending figures getting depressed. Overall, in Nepal’s case, an increase in numbers usually means an influx of backpackers who travel on budget—given the state of infrastructures and connectivity issues. An increase in the length of stay also means tourists going on longer treks—which also lowers cost if you are travelling in groups or without a guide.

A backpacker can survive on an average of $30 a day. If you are part of a large group and staying for any length of time, tour operators drive down the margins further.

The average spending could go up significantly if the revenues generated by international airlines were in fact remitted to Nepal. Currently, tourism revenues from only Nepali airlines are considered, whereas nearly two-thirds of the tourists coming to Nepal are serviced by international airlines. A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that would make a difference of at least $20 on daily spending.

Another issue is complexities involving remitting the earnings through international payment gateways. It is not clear how much of the payment made through international booking sites is accounted for in these calculations.

Additional factors

But experts include another contributing factor for driving down spending figures this year: payments made either in China or through payment systems such as WeChat and Alipay—where the money never enters the country. As the number of Chinese tourists soars, along with Chinese-run tourism businesses in Nepal, transactions often take place through China-based payment systems that have no linkages to local banking networks. (On May 21, The Himalayan Times reported about how Nepal Rastra Bank had banned the use of these Chinese digital wallets in Nepal, yet the same story acknowledges how difficult it will be to enforce the ban.)

Some even point to a Hundi connection to travel related transactions from countries such as South Korea and Japan. According to this theory, as the government tightens the noose on Hundi, Nepali entrepreneurs are increasingly parking in Japan and South Korea a significant portion of the payments made by Nepal-bound tourists. While some of these may be taking place to bypass the stringent foreign exchange regime to make genuine business-related payments, that does not entirely explain the significant dip in the average spending.

Some officials also think that the significant increase in the number of Sri Lankan and Thai visitors to Lumbini—who arrive for a day trip and tend to spend very little, except for visa fees—skew the data.

These anomalies in spending are not a fair indicator of tourism’s contribution to Nepal’s economy; travel-related jobs continue to soar, with an average of one job created by every two tourists. But there is clearly more to these variances between tourist numbers and money, which needs to be investigated and addressed to maximize the benefits of a booming tourism sector.

 President Bidhya Devi Bhandari’s address to the joint session of the parliament has been criticized and even mocked. In particular, her use of the phrase ‘my government’ has come under scrutiny. By that logic, last Friday, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli went to the parliament as a citizen and came out as a subject, someone tweeted—clearly a reference to the royal era. Jest and hair-splitting over constitutional niceties aside, the content of the speech calls for careful examination.

Policy and programs are a vision document for the entire year or even for multiple years. It not only outlines ambitions but also provides a clear basis for achieving them. The half-heartedness in preparing this document is visible from the get-go. One would assume that a serious government document would make efforts to avoid tenuous claims: ‘transitions of all kinds have ended,’ (point number 4) or ‘mobilization of human resources [to implement the federal set-up] has been completed’ (point number 7).

For all intents and purposes, the federal transition has just begun. Equally misleading is the claim about completing the mobilization of human resources for the federal set-up. Many provinces are still reporting up to 70 percent unfilled vacancies. There also are inherent contradictions in many parts. The document argues that there has been a 27 percent increase in capital formation in the country and subsequently highlights the government’s austerity measures and savings—which it intends to mobilize for building infrastructure. Yet it also commits to increasing social security allowances and pay and perks for civil servants. The benefits given to civil servants should be increased, no doubt—but it should be accompanied by a downsizing of the bureaucracy and the outsourcing of several services to the private sector—which will help balance the book while paying competitive salaries to the public sector workforce.

Transformative changes

The address by the President highlighted several projects as if they were symbols of substantive changes—such as the steamers operating in Nepali rivers, the airlifting of a pregnant woman from Mugu, the response to the tornado in Bara-Parsa, and the completion rates of several airports and national pride projects. But in the same speech, Bhandari also admitted that the goals of ‘bringing transformative changes to the public service and increasing capital expenditure’ were not achieved due to ‘a traditional work culture, legal complications and weak mechanisms of accountability’.

Yet the address failed to offer examples of how the government was addressing these issues. While the President’s speech did touch on the problems—the issues around structure and the culture of civil service and the associated mechanisms of good governance—it only made passing references to addressing it in Year Two of the government. She repeated a cliché by way of a solution: performance-based contracts (PbC). Administrative reform is much wider and more complex. But let’s say for argument’s sake that PbC was a panacea. Who would spearhead its implementation? And will political appointees come under its purview? Even if someone in the PMO completely understood the concept of PbC in its entirety as well as the procedures for operationalizing it (which I doubt), they don’t have the will to carry it out.

Bizarre plans

Two bizarre plans stood out: eradicating the ‘psyche of poverty’ and converting suitable sections of national highways into emergency runways. (Even aviation officials are baffled by this one or how it made it into this serious document; perhaps this is what qualifies as thinking outside the box these days.)

The US Federal Aviation Authority database suggests that on average a dozen small single-engine planes land on highways every year, but for bigger passenger planes the instances are fewer—with disastrous consequences even for developed countries with flat terrains and roads worthy of being called a highway. In 1971, a Pan International Airline flight’s (BAC-111) emergency landing in German Autobahn killed 22 passengers; and in 1977, a DC-9-31’s forced landing in the highways of southern Georgia in the US killed 72 people, including nine on the ground.

Quirks aside, Nepal’s ambitions for a double-digit growth, middle-income status and prosperity are within reach—provided that our officials spend a little more time overhauling the delivery and deliberation mechanism and the work culture in line with the federal principle.

 When the earthquake struck in April 2015, many of us knew that a major one was due. There were projections of 40,000 deaths, 95,000 injuries and over half a million homeless­ness in the Kathmandu Valley alone—with roads and bridges collapsing—making it difficult for international rescue and relief to reach the survivors on time. The US military estimated in 2011 that “4,000 metric tons (MT) of food and water, or 1,000 MT of just food,” would be required per day to feed the survivors. This would require support of over 257 C-130 Hercules military trans­port aircraft missions per day to sustain the level of humanitarian operation.

As early as April 2011, the US Embassy in Kathmandu and the then US Pacific Command (now the Indo-Pacific Command) had tasked the US Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) Civil-Mil­itary Emergency Preparedness (CMEP) program with seismic assessments of critical infrastruc­ture at the TIA and development of an emergency response plan for the airfield.

As I reported in The Kathman­du Post in Sept 2011, US military concluded that the TIA’s capacity at the time could only support 40 landings and take-offs of C-130 and CH-47 Chinook transport heli­copters per hour.

While most of these warnings about the worst-case scenario were out in the public, it did not necessarily trickle down to the level of public discourse until the events of 2015. (There was a brief momentum in Sept 2011 follow­ing the Sikkim earthquake, but it quickly fizzled out.)

The fateful day

When the shaking began on that fateful afternoon of 25 April 2015, I was driving to a col­league’s house for lunch. As our car shook violently just minutes away from her apartment locat­ed in a high-rise in Lalitpur, my first instinct was to blame the mechanic—who had serviced my vehicle the previous week—for poor workmanship. If we had arrived a few minutes earlier, we would most likely have been trapped in an elevator. It took me a few more seconds to be aware of what was happening. After that the cries of animals and birds served as an earthquake alarm for the repeated aftershocks. I don’t know if we were halluci­nating, but there was a strange hissing sound that accompanied the aftershocks.

As dozens of us spontaneous­ly huddled together in an open space for safety in the immediate aftermath, there was pervasive fear about our own safety and that of our loved ones. There was also a sense of connection with the strangers. For several weeks afterward, all the tenants in our apartment building cooked and ate together. Prior to the quake, our interactions barely went beyond pleasantries when we passed each other. We even slept in our neighbors’ living room on the ground floor—with doors open in case we needed to flee at a moment’s notice.

The death toll and injuries from the earthquake could have been much worse had the earthquake not struck during day time—and on a Saturday when schools were closed. Many of us who came through the quake felt extreme­ly lucky and for months carried what psychologist call survivor’s guilt. A lot of the spontaneous public mobilization for rescue and relief perhaps stemmed from that guilt.

Sense of preparedness

Beside the tragedy, several sto­ries about how the earthquake offered lessons in humility were reported in the media. My favor­ite: a story involving another Lal­itpur high-rise and the adjacent slum. According to the story, some folks living in the high-rise looked down on the people living in the slum area and often argued with them. But after the quake, they pleaded to stay with the folks in the slum.

We all vowed to change our ways and prioritize safety, yet anecdotal evidence suggests that the level of building code com­pliance has probably gone down. For the first six months, many of us took measures to secure our cupboards and flowerpots and kept a go-bag ready. But four years later, that sense of readiness has evaporated.

But the biggest amnesia can be seen among our officials responsi­ble for disaster risk reduction and preparedness. As I argued in this space two weeks ago, the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act 2017—which was passed nearly a decade after it was first floated and two and half years after the earthquake—continues to treat risk reduction and response as a seasonal occupation. The Act puts no emphasis on specialized staff and rapid decision-making—which as a matter of common sense should be the hallmarks of a rapid response agency.

In the aftermath of the rare tornado that hit Bara and Parsa on March 31, killing 29 people, injuring over 400, and rendering over 1,000 homeless, the discus­sion over the extreme weather event has ranged from serious to trivial. The tragedy has led many to ask pointed questions about our preparedness to deal with disasters and the overall govern­ment mindset. The savagery of the winds was so unprecedented that some are struggling to find an appropriate name for the disas­ter in Nepali. With or without a name, it would be a mistake to treat this as a one-off extreme weather event.

In the past five years, Nepal has been hit by many major disas­ters: the Jure landslide (2014), the Gorkha earthquake (2015), the Bhotekoshi floods (2016), nation­wide floods (2017), the Bhaktapur floods (2018), to name a few, and every new disaster shows more cracks in our system.

Disaster mainstreaming has been a major development agen­da for at least a decade now. Both our development partners and the government have spent bil­lions of rupees on training, equip­ment and policy alignment to better prepare for disasters. Given Nepal’s poor ranking on several vulnerability indices, these invest­ments are needed. On a global scale, Nepal ranks fourth, 11th and 13th in terms of vulnerability to climate change, earthquake and flood risks respectively. On an average more than two deaths a day are attributed to disasters, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA). But after every disaster most of us are left scratching our heads as to why those investments have not trans­lated into effective early warning, rescue and relief, and post-disas­ter recovery and reconstruction.

Fiefdoms

Rescue and relief are closely guarded fiefdoms of the home ministry. Our system is designed to do some rescue and a lot of relief post-disaster. (Whom the relief actually goes to is a different story—and hence the fight for the turf.) Despite the rhetoric and sleek tweets, the MoHA’s system is not designed for early warning or mitigation. It performs through an antiquated system of an ad-hoc committee of whoever is available in the district. In other words, there is no emphasis on special­ized training and personnel and continuity of services.

Given the high turnover of gov­ernment staff, there is lack of cohesion and internalization of standard operating procedures at the district and local level from one year to the next. Disaster risk reduction and preparedness is a highly specialized field. Yet how many of the people put in charge of such critical operations have specialized skills within our gov­ernment system?

This is not to say that there is no capacity in the country. Our military and paramilitary organi­zations have shown remarkable progress in their disaster response capacity. The Armed Police Force (APF) effectively responded to the 2018 Bhaktapur floods as they could deploy ample training and stock rescue gears, including rub­ber inflatable flotillas—in collabo­ration with the UNDP and other development partners.

In comparison, the civilian side of the administration remains woefully unprepared and unin­terested. Perhaps that is why the government handed over the task of building shelters for the survi­vors of the Bara-Parsa tornado to the national army. Given the fast approaching monsoon, the gov­ernment had little choice.

Specialization

But the general lack of interest in building the capacity and the specialization of the civilian side of the administration on disaster preparedness and response is baffling. Take for instance the Disaster Risk Management Act 2017, which was passed nearly a decade after it was first floated (delayed and diluted primarily due to entrenched interests within the home ministry). It has made every attempt to keep the disaster risk reduction and management responsibility within the MoHA structures. As a result, instead of creating an agile agency with spe­cialized staff, there is now anoth­er bureaucratic web weighed down by two additional layers of bureaucracy.

The original idea was to cre­ate a nimble National Disaster Management Agency led by a high-powered individual—prefer­ably a cabinet minister. Instead, the Act creates a National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority within the MoHA that reports to an Executive Commit­tee led by the minister, which in turn reports to a council chaired by the prime minister. So, in a nutshell, the Authority is nothing but a secretariat, which in turn presides over another ad-hoc sec­retariat-like structure in the form of district committees. Disaster management is more than just rescue and relief—and clearly it is not a seasonal occupation. While the army and the armed police are there as a last resort, the civilian side needs to get its act together on mitigation and response before another bigger disaster-induced tragedy strikes.