The Fourth South Asian Conference on Public Policy and Governance successfully concluded at Nepal Administrative Staff College (NASC) on July 8, 2022. The central theme of the conference was “Deepening Democracy: Reflecting on the Foundation Years of Federalism in Nepal”.
Five papers were presented in the conference on the sub-themes: politics of federalism; administrative and fiscal aspects of federalism; intergovernmental relationships; policy, planning and delivery; and the sub-national governments. In the first day of the conference, Prof. Krishna Khanal presented paper on "Federal Politics: Expectations and Achievements" and Dr. Rajan Khanal presented paper on "Financial Federalism: Practice, Challenges and Opportunities". In the second day of the conference, Dr. Bimala Rai Paudyal, Mr. Pratap Kumar Pathak and Mr. Krishna Prasad Sapkota presented their respective papers: "Nepal’s Journey towards Federalism: Dynamics of intergovernmental relations", "Policy, Planning and Delivery in Federal Units", and "Basis of federal structure: State and local government".
Senior Director of Studies Mr. Ananda Raj Dhakal presented the synopsis of the two days' conference, where he highlighted that the conference was able to draw up three common consensus understandings, videlicet: we need a change in actors' mindset—political as well as bureaucratic—towards federalism; there is no option to federalism, so we should work on to further improve it; and there are a lot of space for improvement to successfully implement federalism in Nepal.
Executive Director Dr. Rajan Khanal put his concluding remarks by highlighting the need and urgency to have a discourse to reflect on the foundation years of federalism. Dr. Khanal remarked that this conference provided a forum to discuss and share practices as well as experiences of public policy, development activities and governance in federal Nepal and draw a common understanding for deepening the democracy and discuss about the problems faced and the way to resolve it. He thanked the paper presenters, chairs, distinguished guests, dignitaries, faculties and participants for making this two days' conference a grand success.