Local Governance in Absence of Elected Councillors: Case of Village Development Committees (VDCs) of Nepal

Nepal has been adopting the decentralization principle as a national policy reform es-pecially after re-establishment of democracy in 1990s. The main aim of decentraliza-tion is to distribute the benefits of development equally to all the citizens in the coun-try who are marginalized, excluded and deprived of their social, political and economic rights. Towards this end, the local bodies- District Development Committees, Mu-nicipalities and Village Development Committees- were reformed and empowered with social, administrative and financial authorities so that they can generate the reve-nues and utilize in their development cause to the extent possible on participatory ba-sis. The Local Self Governance Act, 1999 and Local Self Governance Regulations along with the guidelines have delegated the authorities and responsibilities to these local bodies. As Village Development Committees are the immediate government to the local people, it has vital role in promoting participatory governance and commu-nity development as well as bridging the local people to the central. Recognizing the vital role of the Village Development Committees in the delivery of goods and ser-vices, government has been providing grants from mid 1990s to them and the amount of grant has been increased up to 3 million now from 0.3 million in the beginning. Currently, the local bodies are headed by the government employees such as Local Development Officer as District Development Committee head, Executive Officer as Municipality head and Secretary (grassroot level officer in bureaucracy) as Village De-velopment Committee head in absence of elected councillors for over a decade. Fre-quent transfers of the Village Development Committee Secretaries and political vac-uum in the Local Bodies have led to higher levels of dominance of disorganized local politics in the utilization of funds. As a result, the central grant is not being utilized efficiently and effectively. Moreover, the institutional units as provisioned in the Local Self Governance Act, 1999 and Local Self Governance Regulations, 2000 are arranged differently at different locations and most of them are functioning far below the ex-pectations of Local Self Governance Act. Community participation, transparency and accountability as well as the outputs of the development projects are largely not ap-propriately tuned to the policy framework. The analysis of the current capacity (Hu-man, Organizational, and Institutional) of local bodies points to an urgent need for change in the functioning of local bodies in order to meet the spirit of the Local Self Governance Act.