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And poor old Ram Baran Yadav was being pilloried for acting hoity-toity on the job! But compared to the excesses of his suc­cessor as the country’s president, Bidya Devi Bhandari, the medical doctor is turning out to be rather saintly. It would be stretching it to say that Yadav was attuned to public sentiment. If so, Bhandari is tone-deaf.

From getting sitting Supreme Court judges to kneel down to receive Dashain tika from her blessed hands, to making motorists wait for hours as the police clear the way for her illustrious motorcade, to lavishly spending people’s hard-earned money on luxury cars, the communist president is perhaps the epitome of the kind of crony capitalism that her mother party likes to rail against.

Arguing that the aging fleet of cars belong­ing to the previous president is unreliable, Shital Niwas now wants to replace the whole fleet, a noble task for which the government has just approved Rs 140 million, on top of the Rs 40 million that had already been disbursed for the same pur­pose. It is unclear why a ceremonial president needs cars with top security features. Or why she needs dif­ferent vehicles for ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ use. But the new queen of republican Nepal has asked for it. And my word, she shall have it.

So what if people rain all kinds of curses on her for delaying their travel home, as the roads her maj­esty will travel on are cleared of all vehicles, nay, even pedestrians, an hour in advance? So what if the only well-oiled academy of national police has to be dismantled to expand her bungalow? So what if she is being heavily criticized even within her own par­ty for supposedly besmirching the name of her hus­band, Madan Bhandari, the preeminent Nepali com­munist hero? Her highness does not care. She does not have to care.

The request for new cars has been routed through the Nepal Army, supposedly as the president is their ceremonial head. By doing so she perhaps hopes most of the blame will be deflected off the glistening pillars of the ‘Cool Residence’. And it just might, you know. She will not be the first head of state in Nepal who thinks the country is hers for the taking. On current evidence, she will not be the last.

 Who wouldn’t love to see the country’s flag carrier fly to every conceivable destination in the world, proudly bearing the national standard? There was thus a lot of excitement when, in 2017, Nepal Air­lines bought two Airbus A330-200s. The addition of the ultra-modern 247-seater, long-range aircraft, the NA management promised, would herald a new era in Nepali aviation. But there was just a wee problem. Till date, in the absence of proper paperwork, it is not even clear that the NA actually bought the two aircraft.

It has been a murky affair all along. First, instead of buying the aircraft directly from Airbus, the NA manage­ment decided to purchase them through the US-based AAR Corporation, at $209.6 million apiece. Interest­ingly, the AAR didn’t have the aircraft. The NA then decided to get the two planes from the Portugal-based ‘Hi-Fly Airlines’. In another bizarre twist, when the NA got the delivery, it was from the Ireland-based ‘Hi-Fly X’ (no relation to the Portugal-based company). Again, if the NA management had nothing to hide, why didn’t it get the planes directly from Airbus? And where are the papers that prove the NA’s ownership?

Unable to come clean on the series of exposés that our sister publication Annapurna Post has been run­ning on the issue, Nepal Airlines CEO Sugat Ratna Kansakar has taken to Twitter to accuse “a prominent media” of “unnecessarily…dragging into controversy a third party, an esteemed internationally reputed com­pany Airbus”. He also suggested that the Nepali media act with “a sense of responsibility” and not destroy the country’s fledgling aviation sector.

He seems to have gotten it backward. The reason this media organization has been running this series on the NA is that it wants, first and foremost, a robust aviation sector, which is vital if Nepal is to realize its tourism potential. For this it is important that our national flag carrier be in rude health, and able to compete against the best in business, at least in South Asia.

The prime minister is reportedly keen on getting to the bottom of the issue but other cabinet ministers and top bureaucracy are apparently unwilling, perhaps because some of them personally profited from the gargantuan deal. This is not inconceivable. In the past, no less than a sitting prime minister has been charged with profiting from NA’s aircraft lease. The current gov­ernment’s goal of bringing two million tourists by 2020 is laudable. But that will be a tall order if has to rely on a corruption-ridden and ailing national flag carrier.

Any way you look at it, the recent labor agree­ment between Nepal and Malaysia is a land­mark deal. Nepali laborers will henceforth not have to pay a single rupee to go and work in what is Nepal’s number one labor importing country (besides India), with a floating population of around Nepali 400,000 workers. The recruitment service charges, two-way air fares, visa fees, medical check-up cost—all will now be borne by the employers in Malaysia. Nepal government had stopped sending workers to Malaysia five months ago, in protest against the hefty fees being imposed on its poor workers: on average, a worker had to fork out at least Rs 80,000 to cover all costs.

Minister for Labor Gokarna Bista had gotten a lot of flak for it. The south-east Asian country could never be forced to accept Nepali workers, the critics said, when it could easily import cheaper labor from Ban­gladesh and Pakistan. But Bista held his ground, firm in his belief that the quality of Nepali workers was superior—in that they are considered more adept and reliable—than those from other competing labor-ex­porting countries. His faith has been vindicated. This is another feather in the cap of Bista, who in his earlier avatar as the Minister of Energy had also done a com­mendable job.

Manpower agencies in Nepal are now cribbing and complaining. According to the new agreement, they will from now on be paid directly by the companies hiring Nepali manpower. Their cut will amount to half a month’s salary of the recruited worker. They say it is nearly not enough to cover their costs and have threat­ed to stop recruiting people to go to Malaysia if they cannot get at least a month’s salary of the recruited workers. The way we see it, with Nepal exporting an average of around 600,000 workers a year, the man­power agencies can still earn enough. If they want still more, they are in the wrong business.

No business should be allowed to thrive on exploita­tion of some of the poorest people in the society. Hav­ing inked the deal with Malaysia, the government must now not give in to the manpower agencies’ pressure tactics. It is unlikely to, in any case. Rumors are that the government is preparing similar agreements with oth­er big importers of Nepali labor in the Gulf. Perhaps the days of the unscrupulous manpower agencies are truly numbered.

The Asian Development Bank’s latest Nepal Macroeconomic Update is reflective of the fears surrounding the implementation of fed­eralism and operationalization of the three tiers of government. It projects the national economy to grow by 5.5 percent in 2018/19, well below the gov­ernment target of 8 percent, but still respectable con­sidering an average of 4.3 percent growth over the past one decade.

Boosting growth this year will be expectation of political stability, as well as normal monsoon and implementation of mega-infrastructure projects, says the report. But it then points out limited capacity of sub-national government units and complications in implementation of federalism as the biggest obstacles to growth. “Slow progress in requisite legislation and deployment of staff, the need for further clarification of mandates and responsibilities of the three tiers of government, and inconsistencies in revenue mobiliza­tion regarding fees and taxes at local levels” could all hinder smooth operationalization of fiscal federalism.

Clearly, for Nepal to prosper there should be a high level of coordination between the three tiers of gov­ernment, and a level of agreement on resource mobi­lization and spending. Yet what we see is the opposite. Local units complain that even though they have been saddled with many responsibilities, the center has been miserly about giving them the needed money and manpower. Likewise, the seven provincial gov­ernments are unhappy that between them ‘the center and the local units have appropriated all vital powers’ and the province-level governments as such have been made redundant. The federal government for its part says these are birth pangs of federalism and things will be sorted out in due course.

In other words, there is currently little trust between the different tiers, which in turn is crimping their growth prospects. If the ruling coalition under Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli is serious about honoring its promise of all-round prosperity, it will have to start trusting the lower tiers more, and not hesitate to del­egate vital powers and resources. In a federal system, the center acts not so much as guardians of lower tiers but more as facilitators of their aspirations for devel­opment. Yes, there is room for abuse of such delegat­ed powers. But then the old unitary dispensation was hardly a model of economic rectitude. The onus is on the all-powerful federal government to honor the let­ter and spirit of federalism.