Rebuilding trust
Geert Bouckaert has identified at least three clusters of trust: society’s trust in public sector; the public sector’s trust in society; and trust within the public sector. Recent discourse over the channelization of PMDRF suggests ‘distrust’ in all of these domains. Firstly, Nepali society—both domestic and diaspora—has increasingly expressed dissatisfaction over PMDRF because it regards the public sector as corrupt and inefficient. As an alternative, a lot of illegal routes have been utilized to provide relief funds.
Secondly, public sector itself does not fully trust many societal initiatives. From this perspective, government authorities believe that private and non-governmental initiatives always try to avoid or refuse ‘regulation’. An example of this kind of trust deficit is the government’s recent decision to use the banking system to apply additional controls over donated funds.
Thirdly, there has been a growing distrust in the public sector because of its own mechanisms and processes. Public authorities including senior civil servants constantly act against national rules and regulations. (Recently, a government Joint Secretary expressed mistrust of the governance system.) Coordination problems among governmental organizations in the aftermath of the earthquake, particularly between Nepal Army and Ministry of Home Affairs, have bred more distrust. Our heavy process orientation and Weberian bureaucracy are other examples of how public sector is itself fostering mistrust of governance.
However, some attempts have been made of late to increase trust in governance over the last few weeks. For example, Swarnim Wagle, a member of National Planning Commission, released a note on what is and is not PMDRF, so as to enhance public trust on utilization of earthquake funds; Rabindra Mishra, a journalist and nongovernmental activist, asserts that his charity organization, Help Nepal Network, will cover administrative costs in handling of earthquake relief by itself; another potent article by Amit Dhakal on setopati.com highlighted how belief in governance can foster patriotism; Sukhdev Shah, writing in Republica, also tried to explain ways to increase trust in governance.
Moreover, the chaos of earthquake has been seen as an opportunity to build our nation from ground up, by the likes of Baburam Bhattarai, a former premier. But first we need to reform our liberal policies by adding additional and tight regulatory provisions, to better regulate both the public and private sectors. The role of government has certainly increased in terms of providing services, but it also needs to expand its regulatory reach. A comprehensive public sector reform, therefore, is the need of the hour.
In the age of network, partnership and collaboration, the government actors should be fully aware of the potential of private sector and not-for-profit sector. Unless all of these sectors work together for a single objective, the cloud of mistrust will only grow darker. The PMDRF is again a case in point. But even the darkest cloud, they say, has a silver lining. That will be the case if the prevailing trust deficit can be used to bring about sweeping reforms in governance.