Seminar report on

Delivery of Goods and Services to the Needy in a Conflict Situation in Nepal

Organised by Nepal Foundation for Advanced Studies (NEFAS)

10-11 March 2006, Lalitpur

Academicians and policymakers gathered for the purpose centered chiefly around the different paradigms and ideologies that guide a public distribution system. Equally clear were voices unearthing the hard reality on the ground and the difficulties facing today's arrangements for supplying basic needs to the people.

The papers presented offered discussants with the fuel to share their experiences and opinions on the different aspects of the supply system in the country and how to deal with it in the present context. Since the outcome of the seminar is to be published in book form, the output of the seminar will find a place so that policymakers and all those concerned can benefit from it.

The seminar kicked off with NEFAS Executive Director Ananda Srestha introducing the theme of the seminar and calling on the participants to provide some useful academic input for policymakers to work in conflict areas. Dev Raj Dahal, head of FES in Nepal, followed saying that it was the inability of the policymaker to deal with policy challenges arising from the need to manage the varied interests of the state, market and civil society that produced the conflict in the first place.

The first session, chaired by Mohan Man Sainju, saw two papers being discussed. They were authored by Prof. Guna Nidhi Sharma and Vidya Nath Nepal. Prof. Guna Nidhi Sharma tried to wean the discussions away from the ideological left-right divide and put it squarely on the pragmatic problem of how to reach the needy. Participants did agree that the need to reach every nook and corner was the most basic question rather than allegiance to the kind of ideological vehicle to do so. If the market is better at it, let it carry out the job, and if it does not want to do so, let the state or the civil society take care of it-was the consensus that came out of the brainstorming.

Veteran retired civil servant Vidya Nath Nepal described the existing state of the supply lines in the public distribution system. He had a hard time fielding off queries as participants dealt with him as if he was there to defend the government's supply system. Participants would not let go of the fact that corruption and cartelling went on in the subsidy regime. The passion subsided a bit when the presenter said that the subsidy in foodstuff was too small to warrant much discussion and that too applied only for the transportation of the 50,000 odd quintals of rice by the Nepal Food Corporation.

Perhaps the most animated of all discussion took place during Vidya Bir Kansakar's presentation as he had provided the geo-political angle to the way the supply system in the country was being carried out saying that the remote areas portrayed as the most resource starved are in fact loaded with riches waiting to be exploited. He also proposed that the new supply routes in the remote mountainous areas be charted through Tibet of China rather than using the costly air-lifts being used today. Discussants dwelt on past involvement of external powers in shaping the development paradigms in the country.

The second day's discussion began with Jagannath Ojha's portrayal of the existing institutional and systemic arrangements responsible for governance and the weaknesses hampering public service delivery. His warning was that since the government's delivery system was being challenged by the Maoists as their sphere of governance, in some parts of the country, the government had a much more important task ahead than just supplying the necessity- that of proving its legitimacy where it was being eroded by the insurgents.

His suggestion that civil society be used as a vehicle particularly drew flak from some of the commentators who saw much of donor activity in Nepal fuelling the conflict rather than acting to calm it.

Prof. Ram Kumar Dahal talked about the linkage between development work and the supply of basic needs in the form of wage goods to the people of the remote mountainous districts.