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How to make Nepal another Singapore? - Part - I
Let us hope that most of us voted for change, not for continuing the same system of loot where political parties agree to gorge on our state funds, extort from business people and the bureaucracy, and force millions of us, ordinary citizens, to seek better economic opportunities abroad.
Sher Bahadur Deuba is missing from the country this time. His astrologer finally got it wrong, maybe because his chances of becoming the PM for the millionth time have come to an end. The old man is in Singapore for so-called medical treatment. Don't be surprised if he has parked his illegal wealth there.
In the 1990s, our politicians promised us that we would be like Singapore. Well, 35 years gone by, and we are the poorest country in the region and one of the poorest countries in the world, along with a dozen of mostly African countries.
If we were to one day become like Singapore, then we must start from tomorrow. A military man in the US once told college graduates that you must first make your bed every day if you want to make any impact in the world. It is small incremental improvements that will help you to be the person you want to be.
And in our case, we first need to ban 'spitting' as they did in Singapore in the 60s. Don't expect us to be like Singapore in 5 years. It will take us maybe 50, but we must start with small changes. Spitting should be banned and fined Rs 100,000 or 100 days of community service in your locality. I know most of us will not be able to afford the fine and 100 days of cleaning the highways or your local high school or even sweeping the streets every morning for an hour would do.
Singaporean leaders have time and again emphasized honesty, integrity, pragmatism, and meritocracy to make the country a developed and one of the least corrupt in the world. If we look at our bureaucracy and the judiciary and the legislative and the executive branch then we find that we miss all of the ingredients mentioned by the Singaporeans.
Our new government has a difficult task in hand. How to make our lazy, corrupt and bloated bureaucracy work with integrity? Most of our government employees are affiliated with major political parties, especially the old ones. And they serve their political masters for lucrative postings, promotions, and work for their personal gain instead of providing better services to the public.
I think the new government must make 'meritocracy' the only criterion for promotions and not focus on getting rid of competent civil servants just because they had earlier aligned with another political party. It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white as long as it can do the job. Leave politics aside. If we can assure the bureaucracy that merit will be the only criterion for career growth, then sooner or later, they will not cling to political push up to go up the ladder.
Our politicians have been talking about transparency, accountability and good governance for decades and those who have governed us have lacked all of it because if they were to be transparent with the funds then there will be another uprising. If they became accountable to the people then they cannot share the loot with their cadres and cousins and contractors. If they focus on good governance then they will have to stop extorting the civil servants for lucrative postings and promotions and the business people for donations.
What happens when a section officer has to pay a bribe of Rs 10 lakhs for a lucrative posting instead of being sent to a remote location? What happens when a business person is forced to donate to political parties? Well, then we have government employees seeking bribes from service seekers to make up for their investment in landing at the 'cash cow' government office. We then see business people evading taxes, fiddling with VAT and even bribing tax officials or being extorted by tax officials themselves.
Politicians spend Karods to win elections. Most of them will have to recoup their investment. Yes, politics is a business for most of those who stand up for elections. Civil servants bribe politicians for promotions and postings. They have to recover their investment. Business folks pay bribes to government employees and they recover their investment by under-invoicing at the customs, selling adulterated and expired products and evading taxes.
The first step to becoming Singapore is to ban spitting. The next step is to make everything transparent. We all need to know who got the government contracts for how much and how long did it take to complete the job? If our government employees are seeking Rs 2,000 bribe for the basai-sarai thing or to renew your NGO then they must be held accountable. We must ensure that from tomorrow onwards, our public servants will serve the public and not the other way round.
