Most local governments pour their funds on road, depriving education, health and other social development of precious resources.

Rudra Pangeni : Center for Investigative Journalism- Nepal

People of Rautahat lag behind their peers in Humla district, which is yet to be linked with the national road network, in several human development indicators. Humla in the remote hills fares better in terms of literacy rate, average years of schooling and per capita income compared to a better linked Rautahat in the southern plains.

But local level governments in Rautahat have allocated more funds to road while the focus should have been on other sectors that need improvement to catch up with other regions. Katahariya Municipality has set aside over Rs 90 million (more than 45 percent), out of the total Rs 200 million of capital spending, for road and similar infrastructure. This overconcentration on roads has undermined other priorities of education, health and broader social development.

Talking over telephone, Mayor at the municipality Siyaram Kushbaha said, “More budget has been allotted to roads as demanded by the local people.” Kushbaha blamed a resource crunch for inadequate funds for other sectors like education and health. “However, priorities are attached to procuring equipment and medicines for health institutions and mid-day meal for schoolchildren, among others,” he added.

Ishwarpur Municipality in Sarlahi district, which also lags behind in HDI indicators, has a similar story. More than a half of the Rs 260 million in development budget has been earmarked for road works such as blacktopping and building local bridges and culverts while health and education sectors share Rs 49.5 million, or 20 percent, between them.
Manoj Devkota, the mayor, defended the share of budget saying that it was important to ease mobility and to maintain roads damaged by floods in August last year.

Chief Executive Officer Hom Bahadur Thapa argued that arranging for resources necessary for meeting the basic infrastructure requirement to qualify as a municipality was their priority. The local unit was declared a municipality in 2016 even as it lacked minimum facilities.
Population, roads, electricity and water supply, a hospital of minimum 25 beds and an internal income of Rs 10 million in Mountain districts and Rs 30 million elsewhere are some of the criteria prescribed in the Local Government Operation Act 2017 for a political unit to become a municipality.

But the criteria lack social indicators–average years of children’s schooling, literacy rate, employment generation and economic activities, among others. This probably is another reason why elected local representatives pour money on roads.

The road receives most priority in the local federal units of the districts in the upper regions too. All wards of Amargadhi Municipality, the headquarters of Dadheldhura district in the west, have already been liked by roads, some of them merely earthen tracks, but road has not ceased to be a priority there. The municipality has marked Rs 60 million for roads, out of the total Rs 160 million estimated for development works overall in the fiscal year 2017/18.

Talking over telephone, Mayor Bipin Ojha said the road budget is for graveling and blacktopping: they have no plan for opening new tracks since all the wards have already been connected with roads. The municipality has given Rs 10 million for agriculture and health each, while the livestock budget is Rs 1.5 million, he added. “We don’t have enough budget for educational programs, apart from salary for school teachers,” said Ojha. The mean schooling year in the district is 3.34 while adult literacy is 57 percent. Segregated data for municipalities are unavailable.

Commenting on the emphasis on roads, expert on fiscal federalism Khimalal Devkota said this was due to misconception that progress means roads. “This flawed notion undermines other important activities and programs that can lead to all-round development,” said Devkota. “Reducing illiteracy, lowering maternal mortality rates, and improving average years of schooling and per capita income in Rautahat and Sarlahi are far more urgent than road,” he explained.

From grassroots to center, everyone loves road

At the heart of the problem is everyone’s–from local level leaders to political bigwigs at the center–love for road. The central government has a long history of allocating huge amounts of money for thousands of small road projects, mainly guided by influential politicians’ choice rather than proper need analysis.

Tirtha Dhakal, joint-secretary at the National Planning Commission, has never found MPs, leaders and bureaucrats coming up with demands other than roads for their constituencies, during his 10-year service at the apex policy making body. “Equally important programs for agriculture, employment generation, literacy and other social programs seemingly carry no value in development!”

After the first ever local level elections were held last year, the federal government disbursed two types of grants to the grassroots. But the local governments used most of the grants on roads without care for their development needs.
To make matters worse, local units have diverted funds meant for agriculture, livestock and women’s empowerment to road, according to NPC officials. The federal government has disbursed Rs 5.12 billion for small and medium scale programs of agriculture at the local level but only Rs 2.66 billion, or 52 percent, will be spent on target, according to the Department of Agriculture (DoA). “The budget for agriculture is being spent on other sectors while agricultural services have been affected in the lack funds,” DoA Deputy Director Bishnu Prasad Paudel told.

Overspending on roads, leaving other sectors cash-strapped, was a topic of discussion at the January 5 meeting of National Development Action Committee at the National Planning Commission. The meeting chaired by erstwhile prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba concluded that this was sure to hit sectors of agriculture, livestock, and women empowerment.

A panel led by then-NPC member Sunil Babu Shrestha was instituted to study and end the anomaly at the local level, with an aim to stop the practice in the new budget due to be announced on Tuesday. However, There was a change of guard at Singhadurbar soon after and the NPC leadership changed too.

There is contention whether the federal government can dictate the local level on budget design but the Centre is preparing to attach some conditions to the funds for local level and provinces, according to officials informed on the matter.

Roads lead to corruption

A recent report of the Office of the Auditor General revealed that the government spent Rs 32 billion on roads at the fiscal-end last year during the rainy season, a time inappropriate for road works, while the NPC and the government approved non-budgeted road projects worth Rs 123 billion. Infrastructure Expert Surya Raj Acharya said the only motive behind haphazard spending of taxpayers’ money on roads was to steal from the state coffers.

Former NPC member Shrestha echoed Acharya. “Past experiences show that budget is divided amongst decision-makers since roads are the easiest way to pocket money given a lack no monitoring,” said Shrestha. Roads are mostly built in the rainy season, making it almost impossible to measure the quality when showers damage structures, said Dhakal.

Political leaders say they cannot change their priority for roads unless there is a change in the development notion. Speaking on the value of education in March, Nepali Congress leader Gagan Thapa said, “People [voters] only demand development, which is visible immediately. People in my constituency won’t listen to me if I promise to improve public schools,” said Thapa.