Nepal, like many other countries in the developing world, is heavily reliant on foreign aid for its development as well as for other social, economic and political initiatives. A particular sphere that is intrinsically related with and influenced by the aid regime is the country’s policy process. Aid agencies and their functionaries have been pervasive in Nepal’s policy making, legislative reforms and program design and implementation for over six decades, and we have little appreciation in regard to how foreign aid influences national policies, laws and programs. This discussion paper, which was developed out of SIAS-ASD collaborative fellowship program, intends to fill this gap. To do this, we address two broad questions here: i) how or to what extent foreign aid regime mediates policy process in Nepal? And ii) what changes are induced by aidsupported programs in Nepal’s policies, legislation and programs? We examine Nepal’s two policy sectors—forestry and local governance—as they comprise two important sectors where foreign aid regime in Nepal has been pervasive. We derive our general observations based on these two case studies.

We suggest that while foreign aid has been instrumental in generating policy, legislative as well as programmatic change in Nepal, the overall outcome is that the changes are more aligned with the priorities of donors and their functionaries. Despite renewed commitments through Rome (2003) and Paris (2005) declaration for aid effectiveness and harmonization, aid administration in Nepal entails co-opted national ownership and fails to accommodate to changing needs of the people. More effort is therefore required to ascertain that the government of Nepal duly represents people’s needs in relation to the mobilization of resources and effectively negotiates with development partners to be able to effectively administer and utilize foreign aid.

In 1990 Nepal underwent a political change that marked the beginning of the state’s transition from an autocratic Panchayat system to a multi-party democracy. The period since has seen major changes in the media sector mainly due to an adherence to freedom of press, one of the underpinning principles of a democracy. The Nepali government as introduced several policies related to the burgeoning media sector as an indication of the changing dynamics of the sector and its role in an emerging democracy.

This paper examines three specific media policies introduced in Nepal since 1990. The nature of the policy outputs and the entailing agendas has been indicative of the expansion of the media policymaking domain. The agendas set out to address various factors such as the privatisation of media, the degree and level of participation of stakeholders in the policy process, the relationship between the media and the state and the nature of regulation suitable for a sector as dynamic as media.

The purpose of this study is to assess how media policies were formulated and implemented in Nepal during its transition to a democracy. The paper specifically analyses the media policies of 1992, 2002 and the media policy of 2013 which is still in its draft stage. These policies try to address the media sector and its diversity in regards to type, reach and diversity. However, the paper suggests that despite the positive policy outputs, the entire policy making process, including improved stakeholder participation and completion of the policy cycle is yet to be fully realized. By critically assessing Nepal’s media policy processes this paper puts forth the problems and challenges that exist in the policymaking domain. The issues noted and discussed affect the entire policy cycle and the paper highlights them by relying on invaluable information collected from some of the key stakeholders involved in the media sector and in the policymaking mechanism in Nepal. The paper offers suggestions to improve the formulation, design and implementation of media policies by highlighting the disconnect that exists between the various stakeholders and the involved agencies. It goes on to make recommendations that should be considered if the policymaking domain in the media sector is to undergo a complete structural and procedural change as suggested in the paper.

Nepal’s ‘political transition’ that ensued from the entry of the Maoists into mainstream politics in 2006 has been marked by a glaring continuity to the vacuum of political representation at subnational polity. This vacuum is nurtured and sustained by the modus operandi of decisionmaking in Kathmandu that is characterized by a tacit politics of convenience amongst of the political party establishments but which is legitimated under the rubric of national consensus. The absence of election in local government bodies—district development committees (DDCs), municipalities, and village development committees (VDCs)—has left them without a platform for democratic representation in regard to the prioritization and mobilization of huge public resources and the discharge of developmental, administrative and para-juridical functions that underpin the country’s local governance legislation. The ad-hoc structures that are set in place as proxy to elected representatives have fared badly in the local bodies. The new arrangement, called ‘all party mechanism’ (APM), is premised on the consensus politics, lacks popularly mandated development agenda, and avoids and silences opposition and dissent. It is unclear who will be held accountable for misappropriation of resources and power. The mechanism lacks the
political zeal and electoral imperative to innovate new programs and properly mobilize the funds, and even fails to spend the earmarked budget. Accordingly, Nepal’s local bodies are plagued by the lack of deliberation over people’s felt needs, ineffective development planning, undermobilization of budget, failure of service delivery, and fraudulent use and misappropriation of funds. We suggest that the past five years mark a lost post-conflict opportunity in Nepal in deepening democracy to sub-national spaces.
In this Discussion Paper, we try to establish why vibrant local governance is important in terms of advancing democracy and, more importantly, examine why the Kathmandu establishment continues with its indifference to democratic governance in sub-national levels. We suggest that there are perverse incentives on the part of political leadership for resisting local election—the status quo allows them maintain clientelism and allegiance of local cadre base, rather than facing the uncertain outcomes of the election. We situate these observations historically in terms of Nepal’s democratic transition and more contemporary behavior of political actors. We see the need of building up pressure on the political elite to initiate at least an interim local election in order to allow people govern themselves and to reduce the misuse of resources.