Building the Social Welfare State: Democratic Path to Civic Renewal in Nepal

Building the Social Welfare State: Democratic Path to Civic Renewal in Nepal

Dev Raj Dahal, Kathmandu, Nepal

Introduction:

The sudden collapse of bureaucratic form of communism in the later part of eighties and the rise of grim contradictions in the laissez faire capitalism in 2008 had stoked heated debates over the redefinition of the role of state, re-regulation of market, environment protection and distributional issues for improving the quality of life of citizens. Integrated well into the hierarchical international system.

Nepali state has incorporated many new policy measures to avert their negative effects on its political economy.

As a system of legitimate rule, a well-functioning constitutional state artfully combines well-defined territorial space, people, government and sovereignty and resolves the Hobbesian problem of state of nature.

It acts as an umpire among diverse social classes. It also sets up separation, checks, balances and devolution of power in proportion to the specialized functions of institutions to create regulatory order and prevent the abuse of power within its domain.

“The constitution embodies the continuing sovereign will of the people and thus makes self-rule a practical reality” (Bond, 2000:8).

Popular sovereignty embedded in Nepal’s Interim Constitution 2007 presumes that people cannot alienate, divide and reduce their sovereign will.

It is indivisible, for it reflects the unity of general will of all Nepali citizens aiming to reduce disorder which is inimical to their freedom.

Political power is a public trust based on public opinion.

Elected representatives have only delegated powers.

They have to renew their legitimacy periodically through fair elections as democratic power springs from the bottom up.

Nepal’s successive governments since 1991, however, used neoliberal ideology to delink the public economy and civil society from the state’s constitution, abandoned the role of national parliament as arbiter of public policy and weakened the power of Nepali peasants and workers by cutting subsidy to them.

It marked the decline of Nepali state’s autonomy from the dominant interest groups of society, control over population and policy sovereignty.

The political ungovernability of various regimes tolerated the incubation of the rise of myriad of sectional interest groups that sought illegitimate opportunity from the government, the social movements of citizens for the realization of their unrealized rights, resources and identities, militant political parties which radicalized the society and non-state armed actors vying for local control arousing the fear of new elites that they would lose power and popular support if they do not show a maturity to compromise with powerful forces—legitimate or illegitimate.

It also hit the writ of its nascent democracy, its relationship with the nation’s diverse social classes and an ability to serve tangible common good to citizens.

The neoliberal policy of social, economic and political deregulation and denationalization sought to fend off the regulative capacity of Nepali state to maintain order and discipline producing many sings of dysfunctions at the top.

In clear policy terms, it was a deviation from the historically defined “golden mean” between the welfare politics and the capacity of Nepali state to produce and distribute public goods.

“Deregulation as a principle contradicts the purpose of any state” (HP, 2007:17), a purpose based on the achievement of Weberian legitimate monopoly on power, taxation, loyalty of citizens and international recognition.

The current return of distributive justice as a part of state-building is Nepal’s old theme, a theme that supports the satisfaction of minimum basic needs through the distribution of resources across various identities, generates political will to resolve political conflicts and creates an open-access order for social cooperation.

“Redistribution is a central and foreseeable architectural feature of democratic politics” (Williamson, 2000: 111). Policy experts and social scientists of Nepal continue to advise the governments to reflect on human condition, acquire social learning and beef up poverty-fighting resources to muster the capacity of citizens for self-governance.

Local knowledge is essential to formulate context-sensitive planning from the bottom up and preserve the cultural and moral norms and historical tradition of the duty to family, community, the state and universal norms.

The welfare state espoused by Nepal’s Interim Constitution 2007 promises the right to work for its citizens and entitlement to full citizenship. Welfare provides a social wage –job and health insurance, training opportunity, vacation facility, retirement and disability benefits, etc which are essential to guarantee the livelihood of all including housewives and dependents.

A spirit of enterprise and the art of peaceful coexistence can reduce extremist violence in society.

For the creation of social welfare state there are a few vital conditions:

First, the positive democratic view is that social welfare state gives equal treatment to civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights to citizens, supports their civic engagement in community and increases their life-choices to lead a life of dignity.

Second, the state presupposes a system of legitimate rules whereby mutual expectations are established between peoples of diverse social distinctions.

Accordingly, laws based on social contract foster a common identity of both leaders and citizens.

Third, the provision of rules sets up a system of rights—liberty rights, claim rights, power rights and immunity rights” (Hamlin and Pettit, 1991:2) which are the means for social emancipation.

These legal rights, rooted into popular sovereignty, are inserted into positive laws of the nation and made them applicable irrespective of the structure of economy.

Legal positivism that draws its authority from the constitution and enacted and enforced by those in power becomes less meaningful if it lacks democratic values and inter-generational concerns, becomes susceptible to power politics and fails to maintain judicial integrity.

As laws and rules are connected to a system of rights Nepal needs to maintain a balance between individual, group-based and human rights.

Fourth, constitutional and human rights are followed by corresponding duties of all – the state, polity, government, political parties, civil society and ordinary citizens including corporate elites who have a natural propensity to shift the rewards of rising productivity from employees to the owners of capital (Esdall, 2013:2).

Nepal’s corporate elites always think in terms of profits, not in terms of charity or rights.

As a post-conflict state, there is a need to pursue reconciliation and respect to opposition so as to democratize and civilianize the dissent.

And finally, social welfare state rests on the role of a visible government, not only invisible hand of market forces, to reshape and indigenize public policies and laws aiming to rectify market failures or distortions and set limit on the coercive contents of the state.

Four structural features are characteristics of democratic regimes: “stateness, rule of law, political competition and accountability of rulers” (Offe, 2011: 447).

Nepal, however, appears weak in the state capacity for virtuous governance and effectiveness for performance legitimacy.

Absence of many of these indicators indicates a problematic condition for democracy, development and peace entailing measures to cope with the inadequate democracies in the internal life of political parties.

Nepali state is also weak to stand above dominant interest of society, maintain relative autonomy and uphold its institutional closure: democracy tied to national self-determination, citizenship tied to nationality, universal conscription tied to citizenship and immigration control for giving welfare benefits to the citizens (Wimmer, 2002:9) to strongly embed in the general societal interests.

To separate Nepalese citizens from outsiders and protect national identity, Harka Gurung, offers three immediate tasks: improvement in security system to defend the border and people, revision of unequal treaties and promotion of national unification (2001:14) by promoting the power of public opinion over the special interests and the transformation of preexisting social, economic and political structures so that citizens become active participants.

The main questions pertaining to Nepal’s welfare state are:

Can the Nepali state caught in economic and political syndicate of mainstream parties and populist trap of disloyal opposition settle the nation’s myriad of post-conflict issues and create the legitimacy of public order?

Is it possible to make the poor and dispossessed stakeholder of the state with the ability to exercise citizenship and human rights and contribute to building constitutional welfare state?

How can the state and social classes maintain social solidarity between the informal and formal sectors and reorient new actors such as NGOs, civil society, cooperatives, consumer groups, local bodies and identity-based various groupings to peacebuilding?

How can trade unions and Employers’ Council transcend their class interest to work together for the common interests of all Nepali citizens for sustainable development?

Are cultural industries adequately supportive of a robust statehood or spurring multivoices communicative and linguistic context for centrifugal tendencies?

This article focuses on: the role of the state and market forces, social welfare state, social market economy, social security system, green growth, good governance, upliftment of the marginalized and a robust local self-governance.

Politics and Market:

Nepali state is ancient and indigenous creation emerged out of the necessity of diverse Nepali people to defend, secure, survive and exercise freedom.

Understanding its historical heritage of tolerance and learning from local experience is essential to know the sources of state-society coherence.

Since the country’s unification in 1768 until 1990 Nepali state as a guardian of citizens played roles in various spheres of governance without weakening the capacity of society for communication through Nepali language serving as a bridge across various groups of people.

The state also fostered discipline, social cooperation and articulation of Nepalization fostering centripetal forces. Dibya Upadesh underlines the comprehensive policies for statecraft whose strategic points are still relevant now to maintain the nation’s pluralistic universe.

The advent of Rana oligarchy in 1865 and its introduction of Muluki Ain (National Civil Code) served as law until the success of the struggle of the constitutional tradition of politics in the 1950s which overthrew a century old Rana oligarchy and introduced democracy.

The Ranas, though blurred the boundaries between the public and the private sphere, were also reformers who abolished sati pratha (widow burning upon husband’s death), slavery, restored far-western into Nepal’s territory, demarcated national borders and held a strong sense of national sovereignty.

The successive regimes based on election, cooption and coercion were hamstrung by permanent crisis of political and constitutional instability created by a tension between customary and civic powers.

Yet, the concern for independent statehood remained very strong among the elites—both government and opposition.

After the winds of democratic change in 1990 the Nepali state ceded its power of policy and decision-making to the private sector, civil society and international community as a consequence of its increasing dependence on international system.

The government’s response to the demand of economic experts and the political classes for free market, however, collided with the constitutional spirit of social justice, democracy’s egalitarian spirit and the state’s imperative of stability and social peace exposing the citizens back to the pre-historical era of the state of nature.

The market-dominant governments had upset overall balance of power in society and intensified radical politics, anomic tendency for a long time and negation of opposition and minorities which exacted later super-structural change and geopolitical rivalries for clients in media, politics, business and cultural transformation.

The Interim Constitution 2007 states that Nepali state’s fundamental economic objective is to “transform national economy into an independent, self-reliant and progressive one through equitable distribution of economic gains based on social justice and elimination of economic inequalities.”

It promises to set up an “independent development of public, cooperative and private sectors and their contribution to national development.” In contrast to these promises, Nepali elites opted for a political and economic syndicate and, like medieval feudal Europe, extracted economic surplus, sought to exclude the poorer sections of society from the state goods and undermined the autonomy and integrity of constitutional bodies.

Welfare state seeks the establishment of “good society through the combination of progressive taxation and a poverty eliminating mechanism such as guaranteed minimum income for all” (Weeks, 2011:1).

In such a scheme, old political and economic power of capital is reasonably civilized.

Market-driven globalization, operated on ethically-neutral forces of supply and demand, has however undermined the convergence of the state, economy and citizenship within the national system and embittered social competition and conflicts.

It has also eroded Nepalese society’s rich social capital necessary for internal cohesion of society and external adaptation of the nation as political leaders deliberately decoupled democracy from the state and citizenship from nationality through their continuous clientalization.

The stateness of Nepal suffers from the high-density of parochial interest groups interested to confiscate the assets of both the state and citizens and dissolve the rule of law into fractious politics marked by protracted political transition.

As a result, Nepal does not have a robust national center now capable of mobilizing centripetal forces for nation-building and steer and coordinate governance functions towards national vision.

The author

Juergen Habermas underlines three effects of globalization on welfare state’s sovereignty which are equally relevant for Nepal: the loss of “state’s capacity for control; growing deficits in the legitimation in the decision-making process; and increasing inability to perform the kinds of steering and organizational functions which enhance legitimacy” (2006:77).

Widened socio-economic inequality of resources has affected the quality of democracy rooted into the affirmation of national identity of Nepali citizens.

Cut-throat competitions in the world of individualization, informalization of jobs and massive migration of blue-collar workers abroad have scuttled the prospect for stable economic future.

Though remittance is widely distributed in the society, class, gender, social and geographic inequalities continue to polarize the income gap generating vicious cycle of social and political grievances.

Creation of institutional structures and rules necessary to promote social justice can alone ensure basic human needs, remove underlying causes of conflict, foster social peace, freedom and stability and address the new epidemics of social cost (Roberts, 2013:1).

It obviated social justice as it is based on equal dignity of every citizen.

In this context, accountability of power to society, a highly democratized ownership of poor in the means of production and the transparent use of resources can enable the national leadership to establish normative order of good governance.

In the absence of “social control over investment, the globalization of production challenges the sovereignty of the nation-state” (Bowls and Gintis, 1987: xiii).

# Republished in the larger interest of the readers both within and without. Upadhyaya.
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