Is federalism really capable of bringing a paradigm shift in water resource management of Kathmandu Valley?
“The crisis is prevalent in the entire Kathmandu Valley, but it is the northeastern side that is bearing the brunt the most.” The researcher explains that the migration pattern of Kathmandu Valley is largely horizontal: human settlements are moving from the centre to the outskirts.
“But, the pattern of water flow is quite opposite; it flows from north to south,” he describes, “Hence, horizontal urbanisation results in increased water scarcity.” “Though it is not immediately possible to take a large number of people out of Kathmandu, our hope is that people will stop migrating to Kathmandu before the crisis turns deeper, due to the new federal structure,” Adhikari says, “We cannot decipher what happens after that if our hope fails.” ‘But not a magic wand’ Experts, however, are uncertain about the impact of federal setup on water resource management of the valley, given the poor and unscientific distribution of natural resources.
Doing so in other places will also take an equal amount of time.” Therefore, Paudel suspects the validity of the hypothesis that the introduction of federalism can immediately change the migration pattern and encourage people to live in cities other than Kathmandu.
“Federalism is the decentralisation of governing system,” he defines, “With the decentralisation of government, everything else is decentralised.” Erroneous execution But, Nepal’s problem, according to Sharma, is the ill implementation of the ideal system.
“In such systems, other systems are decentralised, but not the governing system.
“My wish was that all seven provincial capitals would be established outside already developed cities.
If we had done that, we could have planned the cities in a completely new way,” he laments the lost possibility, “It could have brought a big shift in the entire demographic pattern and infrastructure development works in the country.” Sharma says the foundation of bad practice lies in the constitution.
“The constitution has restricted the rights of provincial and local governments.
Hoping against hope Though frustrated with the current working style of provincial and federal political leadership and bureaucrats, Sharma says the correction is still possible if the stakeholders realise intrinsic values of federalism.