Editorial
Parched for ideas
The government must stop distributing tranches of hollow promises as relief to the victims of natural disasters.
A cabinet meeting last week declared Madhesh Province a disaster crisis zone, citing an acute shortage in water supply caused by prolonged droughts. All eight districts in the province are facing a severe water shortage, which has affected the daily life of the people there. The provincial government has tried to assuage the effects of the drought by dispatching a horde of firetrucks and water supply trucks to ensure access to drinking water; the demand for water for other purposes remains unaddressed. Agriculture has been identified as the hardest hit sector, with the annual rice transplantation stalled for weeks in the absence of proper irrigation. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli embarked on an inspection tour of the province on Friday and expressed dismay over the sight of barren plots of land, which would otherwise be filled with paddy. Madhesh province, the grain basket of Nepal, occupies 26 percent of the total paddy fields across the country, contributing around 37 percent to the annual national paddy consumption of 4 million tons. The province saw a 10.70 percent rise in its paddy production year-to-year, with the highest productivity of 3.96 tonnes per hectare. This year, however, a decrease in production is more likely, unless the government formulates and implements timely solutions for the crisis.
When a crisis emerges, governments, both federal and provincial, make high-sounding promises before attacking problems with solutions that will rarely bear fruit. In this case, the promises dispatched from Baluwatar included the installation of 500 deep borings in the province, as a part of Prime Minister Oli’s broader promise of short- and long-term projects to address the crisis. Unsurprisingly, the prime minister did not announce a timeline for the installation of the deep boring pumps. Thus the decision (or the declaration) to install the boring mechanism seems to be more of a publicity stunt rather than a well-reasoned scientific solution to the looming problem. During Prime Minister Oli’s inspection of the province on Friday, the province’s Chief Minister Satish Kumar Singh said that even the boring machines already installed in the province had dried up. Perhaps if Oli had taken heed of CM Singh’s word, he would not have announced to install more such machines.
The government must stop striving for praise by distributing tranches of hollow promises as relief to the victims of natural disasters. The formulation and implementation of plans and projects to address the problem of acute water shortage in Madhesh must take place in the presence of experts. Only then can rash plans like the one to install new boring machines be avoided. A government’s commitment to tackling a problem is highlighted by meticulous planning and adherence to timelines. When such adequately planned actions are announced, the announcement in itself can strengthen the government’s resolve to take timely action, thereby raising hope. On the other hand, in the absence of proper planning, public government announcements become hollow promises. The prime minister’s announcement of new boring machines also points to another worrisome reality: lack of coordination between different tiers of government. This is exactly how not to work during a crisis.