Showing posts with label transparency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label transparency. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 05, 2015

संविधान मस्यौदा मा छुटेको एउटा महत्त्वपूर्ण कुरा: राजनीतिक पार्टी बारे

संविधान मस्यौदा मा नहुनुपर्ने कुरा धेरै छन। पार्टी मेनिफेस्टो मा हुनुपर्ने कुरा हरु छन। पार्टी ले सत्ता मा पुगेर पनि गर्न नसकेका काम हरु लाई मस्यौदा मा ठुँसियेको दर्दनाक स्थिति छ। पालै पिलो काँग्रेस, एमाले, माओवादी सत्ता मा पुगेका छन। जनता लाई आवास, रोजगार दिनु थियो भने त्यति बेला दिनु थियो। आफुले गर्न नसक्ने अनि संविधान मा लेखि दिए पछि कसले आएर गर्दिने? बरु गर्न सक्ने हरु आए भने तिनको हात खुट्टा बांधिदिने किसिमको लेखाइ छ मस्यौदा मा।

तर एउटा हुनै पर्ने कुरा छ जुन संविधान मा छैन। त्यो हो राजनीतिक पार्टी सम्बन्धी। देशको विकास मा नंबर एक तगारो हो देशका राजनीतिक पार्टी हरुको ढुलमुल अवस्था।

  • राजनीतिक पार्टी हरुको आय व्यय पुर्ण पारदर्शी राख्नु पर्ने ऑनलाइन 
  • चुनाव मा वोट पाएको समानुपातिक पार्टी हरुले सरकार बाट पैसा पाउने, त्यस बाहेक अरु कतै बाट पैसा लिन नपाउने 
  • पार्टी हरु को आतंरिक संरचना मा पनि ४९% आरक्षण को व्यवस्था 
  • पार्टी को कुनै पनि पद को कमसेकम ४ वर्ष मा एक पटक निर्वाचन हुनुपर्ने 
  • मनोनित पद १/३ भन्दा बढ़ी हुन नपाउने 

संविधान मस्यौदा मा छुटेको एउटा महत्त्वपूर्ण कुरा: राजनीतिक पार्टी बारे। यति गर्दिए कति आनन्द हुन्थ्यो? होइन भने राजनीतिक पार्टी हरुको व्यवहार नवराजा हरुको जस्तो छ। अब हामी संविधान माथि भन्ने छ। चार जनाले हस्ताक्षर गरेर ६०१ लाई निस्तेज पार्न सकिन्छ भन्ने सोंच।


Monday, May 18, 2015

Minendra Rijal's Joke

"There cannot be any institution more transparent of more accountable than the government, because any penny that we spend would be under the scrutiny of the parliament, would be under the scrutiny of constitutional organs and many other parliamentary committees, individuals, journalists,” said Information Minister Dr Minendra Rijal.
These were the same people who called Nepal's 1991 constitution "the most democratic in the world."

100% Online Transparency


Nepal is currently ranked 126th out of 174 countries by Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Many Nepalese also view the country’s political parties and legislature as hotbeds of cronyism and nepotism. It’s much the same with public appointments

Sunday, May 17, 2015

What Could Transparency Look Like

Transparency is first and foremost about fundraising. Global media might have an attention span of a few weeks, if that. TV coverage, the most effective in getting people to donate, has a smaller attention span than print media. But reconstruction work can last months, years. Fundraising will have to be ongoing and global. That is where social media comes to the rescue. If there is 100% online transparency, you are essentially creating photos, videos, texts and graphics that can be easily shared over social media.

Transparency is not top down. Everyone involved is hoping the Nepal Government will play a large, central role. But no one, not even the Nepal Government can hope to play a one door role where, if you want to help, you necessarily have to go through the Nepal Government. That one door idea is essentially a bottleneck and gridlock idea. That is the exact opposite of what needs to happen.

100% online transparency applies to every stage of relief, reconstruction, resurgence, from deliberation to delivery. Every impacted village should have solar powered phones. Information flow is key. Work getting done on the ground is what will raise money.

And, no, the democratic process does not stop. Criticisms will not and should not stop. If anything, they should go on hyper drive. 100% online transparency means any interested person anywhere in the world can play watchdog roles. That heightened interest is what will make fundraising possible.

The ultimate test is when you manage to create bonds between individual donors globally to individual families receiving help.


Thursday, May 07, 2015

हेटी ले सिकाउने: घुस खाने कि तलब खाने?



Hello, Jajarkot! No worries. I’ve sent doctors and drugs. They’ll arrive in a couple of years!

How not to rebuild Nepal
Last Saturday, I watched with the rest of the world as images emerged in the wake of Nepal’s violent earthquake: the dusty faces of survivors, bloodied bodies, the ruined historic buildings. It reminded me of the devastation I witnessed after the earthquake in my homeland, Haiti, five years ago — and it made me worry about what will come next in Nepal.......... I hope that they will be able to avoid the grave mistakes made by Haitians and by the well-intentioned donors who came to our aid. ..... here were two disasters in Haiti: the earthquake, and then the humanitarian crisis that followed. More than $10 billion in foreign aid still hasn’t enabled our country to recover from this disaster. ...... Most aid projects in Haiti promised “community participation,” yet most failed to truly include local people. What happened with housing provides a clear example. Many aid groups insisted on moving earthquake survivors who were living under tarps into “transitional shelters.” They ignored the objections of Haitians, who feared the flimsy plywood structures — prone to leaks and collapse — would become their permanent homes. Aid groups spent more than $500 million on these transitional shelters,” but have built less than 9,000 new long-term houses. Tragically, yesterday’s “temporary” shelters have become today’s permanent slums. ........ Many aid groups sent well-meaning but barely trained volunteers and deployed foreign doctors and nurses to areas where skilled Haitian professionals were readily available. Of every dollar given to the earthquake response in Haiti, less than a penny went to Haitian organizations........ If these funds had supported local people and organizations, the money would have gone much further. ........ Most aid after the earthquake focused on the short term, often ignoring long-term needs, especially infrastructure needed to prevent humanitarian crises in the future. My country is still struggling to contain the largest modern outbreak of cholera in history. The disease is thought to have been introduced by United Nations peacekeeping forces after the 2010 earthquake, but the crisis does not end there. This epidemic has continued largely because relief funds have unfortunately not been used to help Haiti build sufficient sewage systems. ............ Though coordinating aid seems like the most obvious thing to do, it didn’t happen in Haiti. Many aid groups clamored to support high-profile projects, which resulted in wasteful redundancies in some areas while allowing people in less well-known places to languish. Lack of accountability about foreign aid was the rule, with donors and Haitians receiving little news about how this aid was being spent.
हेटी २०१० बाट नेपाल ले सिक्नुपर्ने छ। सब भन्दा गड़बड़ गर्ने धनी देश हरु नै देखिए त्यहाँ। मेरो विचारमा समस्याको समाधान 100% Online Transparency नै हो। समस्याको समाधान बामे ले भने जस्तो सबै पैसा प्रधान मंत्री राहत कोष मा राख्ने भन्ने होइन। त्यसो गर्दा के हुन्छ नेपालको बच्चा बच्चा लाई थाहा छ। सबको मालुम है।



Media lessons for Nepal from Haiti: Don’t let outsiders seize control of the narrative
Expressions like ‘fragile state’ and ‘among the poorest nations’ were used by foreign powers to take control of the disaster response in Haiti in 2010. Nepal shouldn’t allow the same mistake. ...... each disaster has its own context, its survivors and citizens as first responders their own cultural understandings and priorities. Local people need to be in charge of the response. ..... At 4.53 pm on January 12, 2010, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude struck outside Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. The damage was unimaginable: an estimated 230,000 people died and equal numbers were injured. Over half the housing in the capital was seriously damaged; 105,000 houses were completely destroyed and 188,383 houses badly damaged, requiring repair. An estimated 1.5 million people lost their homes and stayed in makeshift Internally Displaced Persons camps. Though some of these numbers were subsequently contested, the Haiti earthquake became a transnational event because of foreign media coverage. For weeks it dominated the airwaves and cyberspace. ...... In the first week, private US citizens contributed $275 million, mostly to large NGOs like the Red Cross. ..... Sixty per cent of American households and over 80% of African-American families donated to the Haiti quake response, despite feeling the pinch from the global financial crisis. Worldwide, individuals donated $3.02 billion. ........ In the US, media stories abounded of first-time mission trips, almost invariably to celebrate the hometown heroes. Many of these narratives extolled Haitian people’s spirituality and resilience, at times to justify less aid. The returning heroes, now newly-minted experts, spoke about the virtues of Christianity, of capitalist development, public health and hygiene, and limited representative democracy – all markers of assumed cultural and racial superiority. The collective residues of these stories justified, and naturalised, foreign control of the country. ........ The New York Times columnist David Brooks, for instance, argued that Haitian culture was resistant to progress. ..... After the earthquake, the familiar language of Haiti being a “fragile” or “failed” state, which is among “the poorest in the hemisphere”, served to justify the need for foreign intervention as well as a convenient explanation for the limited progress of this intervention. ....... By focusing on “deficient” local cultural practices, social systems and institutions, the foreign media diverted attention from how foreign policies had played a role in amplifying the quake’s destructiveness. In processes similar to Mumbai, the population of Port-au-Prince had quadrupled after the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and United States Agency for International Development began promoting neoliberal economic policies there. Coupled with the erosion of state capacity, neoliberalism contributed to Haiti’s “vulnerability” to the disaster. ..... Haiti-as-a-failed-state is within the frame, while foreign imposed neoliberalism is outside. Similarly, heroic acts of foreigners are highlighted, whereas Haitian people are outside the frame, dehumanised and infantilised. ....... First, the discourse of a “weak state” served to justify foreign control of the process and near-total exclusion of Haitian people from it. Second, this exclusion, having roots in framing Haitian people out of the story and tropes of dehumanisation, led to practices and relationships wherein

aid recipients felt treated like animals

. Third, the disaster response was greatly influenced by the “photo op”, prioritising high-visibility and high-cost “solutions” at the expense of those more sustainable. Finally, a “blame game” led to increasingly severe responses, including increasingly violent forced evictions.