Better Service To People

Minister for General Administration Madhav Prasad Poudel has urged civil servants to improve their service and make bureaucracy more efficient and people oriented so that state services are delivered to the people in a more efficient way. Speaking at the 31st anniversary function of Nepal Administrative Staff College in Lalitpur the other day, Minister Poudel said that the government was effortful in enhancing skill of civil servants through imparting necessary training to enable them deliver better and more efficient services to the people. Bureaucracy is the institution to provide services to the people on behalf of the government in easy, effective and efficient ways and civil servants are its key players. The government formulates policies and programmes on different issues and aspects at the interest of the nation and the people. It is the responsibility of the bureaucracy to implement these decisions and programmes of the government. The effectiveness of the government, thus, depends upon the efficiency of the bureaucracy. In fact, bureaucracy is the permanent institution that acts as a bridge between the people and the government. In other words, bureaucracy is often called the permanent government. The strong and efficient bureaucracy is, therefore, needed not only to provide services to the people but also to implement development activities effectively.

Considering, perhaps, this necessity, the government, on various occasions, has made some efforts to make Nepali bureaucracy stronger and more effective. The remarks of Minister Poudel to enhance the quality of bureaucracy and civil servants seem to have been guided by the objective of the government to ensure good governance and make bureaucracy more accountable to the people. Despite the efforts made by the government to develop bureaucracy as an efficient institution to achieve the goal of creating good governance, there are complaints on the performance and efficiency of Nepal's bureaucracy. The red tape in bureaucracy and other forms of anomalies in the administrative mechanism are pervasive which are against the principles of good governance. At the same time, bureaucracy has also become a victim of heavy politicization. This is the legacy that the country has inherited from the old feudal monarchical system. In the present republican democracy, the old concept of political patronization in bureaucracy must be done away with, for which the government seems to be effortful. Bureaucracy must be allowed to work independently and professionally making it more transparent and accountable to the people. This can be done only when politicization and political interference were completely discouraged. Now this awareness is slowly coming up in the Nepali society.

There should be no shade of doubt that interference in the civil service is harmful to the nation, democracy and the people, which all including politicians and political parties must understand at this time. Bureaucracy, thus, must be free from politics and political interference for which civil servants themselves need to maintain neutrality, demonstrate professionalism and remain committed to their duty instead of running after power and working for partisan interest.