Federalism: a failure structure?

 Federalism: a failure structure?

It is unfortunate to see the federal, provincial and local level governments are being widely criticized for failing to provide essential and basic services to the people. This reflects how the federal structure is failing to effectively working either during the natural or man-made disasters. This shows either the federal government is denying devolving power to the provincial and local governments or these local governments are incapable of carrying out their responsibilities. It does show that if the political and administrative structures of these local level governments are not properly empowered and strengthened with appropriate resources, the nation and people seem to be hitting hard with many problems in the coming days.

 Let us take examples of many historical, government infrastructures and residential buildings destroyed by killer earthquake in 2015 are yet to be fully restructured and erected albeit the concerned organizations continue to claim to be almost completed with some exceptions. The main reasons behind these delays in construction were entirely due to lack of coordination of job responsibilities among the federal, provincial and local governments.  Most of the schools in the earth-quake effected rural areas are still running their classes either in the open grounds or in the partially damaged buildings.   

Now, the people are panicking with the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic that is rapidly increasing and taking human lives by days. This is because the government has not done anything in the past one year to federalise the government's COVID-19 response “What is wrong with Nepal govt's COVID response” (THT, 26 April, Page 1). Some of the constitutional lawyers opine that the government had to invoke Disaster Risk Management Act-2017 instead of invoking Infectious Disease Act which defines pandemic as a non-natural disaster. The federal government and the COVID-19 Crisis Management Centre had and has done and provided nothing to the provincial and local governments to deal with the pandemic rather than simply issuing directives to them.