Challenging time ahead!

As Nepal enters festival season and general election campaigning-period, three service sectors – public service delivery, market stability and essential development works – demand special attention and priority. None of those three could be ignored. Nor could they be postponed for future focus. The Teej, women’s festival, Dashain and Tihar are celebrated every year in Nepal and people should feel assured about availability of goods and services on those occasions. The market manipulators should not be allowed to disturb the market stability by raising price or creating artificial shortage or selling substandard goods and services to the people. The government administration at all three levels should take special care in this regard. The election campaigning for parliamentary and provincial assembly polls should also be allowed to take place freely and fairly and with no sense of fear. People should be allowed to participate in campaigning and they should be able to understand better about the competing political parties and leaders at both parliamentary and provincial assembly levels. The election campaigning period is a time when people get an opportunity to explore the strength and weakness of competing candidates. The free flow of information in the process plays a very important role in educating people and ultimately enabling them to make their best choice during the voting time. Some development works for municipalities and areas are a must; they should be undertaken with high urgency and none should disturb them. The government and local administration should see that such works are never disturbed under any excuse. These development works are instrumental in rendering other public service delivery smoothly. Any disruption in this regard could generate an adverse chain reaction to other service deliveries. The government and local administration have to undertake the responsibility with a very high sense of duty towards the society and the people. There should be no excuses of any kind in this regard. Past history shows that local administration has not been able to control the manipulators of market; they are actually waiting for a chance to exploit the situation for their own benefit and at the vulnerability of people. Inflation has already punished people a lot. It has made the fixed income group people highly vulnerable. If market manipulators are allowed to exploit them further as they go on celebrating the festivals in their best time honoured traditions it will be great injustice to them. Prime Minister Deuba should take special care in this regard and allowing those three sectors flow smoothly in these challenging times.