3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

“Expanding Public Choices and Market Opportunities”

4-5 July 2019 Table of Contents

Conference Background and Rationale 1 Conference Theme 1 Conference Schedule 6 Abstracts 10 Presenters’ Profile 41 Speakers’ Profile 49 Conference Management Committees 60 Organizing Institutions 61 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

CONFERENCE BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE Over the last couple of decades, South Asia has economically growing with the growth topping 6.9 percent in 2018 and set to accelerate to 7.1 percent next year and firming up its position as the fastest growing region in the world. However, the region is facing several developmental challenges including vulnerabilities stemming from climate change and environmental degradation, governance challenges and increasing inequalities within and among the countries that poses serious threats to the sustainable development in the region. Citizens in South Asia are now seeking the opportunities of wellbeing that can be achieved by expanding opportunities for inclusive growth. The second series of conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia drew attentions of scholars and wider policy stakeholders on ‘Justice and Prosperity’ in the region. It further highlighted the issues of ‘expanding opportunities’ as a strategy to achieve larger goal of ‘justice and prosperity’. Hence, this conference has been organized as the third in the series on the theme of “Expanding Public Choices and Market Opportunities”.

AIM This conference aims to bring together scholars, policy actors and political leaders of South Asia into a collective platform and deliberate and share experiences on public policy and governance in the region. This will further provide an opportunity for mutual sharing and learning from each other.

OBJECTIVES q Provide forum to discuss and share practices as well as experiences of public policy and governance, q Support to promote culture of evidence-based public policy making and identify issues and opportunities in public policy process in the region. q Strengthen the synergy and networking of institutions working in public policy and governance. CONFERENCE THEME EXPANDING PUBLIC CHOICES AND MARKET OPPORTUNITIES South Asia is characterized by mixed governance practice— liberal and social democracies to limited democracies and also absolute monarchial rules. However, as the result of increasing education, access to and interaction with global markets through liberal economic policies and practices, network with global societies, people in this region have opted for more democratic practice and opportunities. At the same time, the region is striving to acknowledge more democratic values, hence public democratic spaces have come up as the necessary boulevards for expanding public choices. With introduction and enriched practice of democracies, people have been empowered as citizens with sovereignty vested constitutionally on themselves from mere subjects in the other rules. The sovereignty in practice is taken as political-economic value. Exercise of such constitutional authority and power as citizenry value by people opens

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up political and economic opportunities. Political decision making and policy management through periodically elected political representatives is the political dimension in practice of sovereignty by people while freedom of choice in employment, entrepreneurial scope and management of private assets have been the economic scope of sovereignty in practice by people. Similarly, countries in South Asia have acknowledged decentralization on various forms, and tried to strengthen public access to governance and economic opportunities. India and Nepal have constitutionally acknowledged local governments as the closest to the people through which state authorities are exercised, opening a number of opportunities- civic, social and economic ones. Bangladesh is sincerely decentralizing its governance and delivering services through local one-stop service complexes. Sri Lanka has been duly practicing devolved governance since 1980 for enhanced access of local people mainly in agriculture and other livelihood practices in addition to political representation. Other countries also acknowledge to some form of decentralization that aims in enhances access to socio-politico-economic opportunities. This theme is aimed to have papers which raise discourse on public governance at large as well as specific perspectives and dialogues on subnational governance, growth that is inclusive and sustainable (ref. sustainable development goals-SDGs), and investment environment.

SUB THEMES A. Public Sector Governance During the recent two decades, south Asian countries have been gone through an unprecedented transition in governance mechanism by adopting a new market-friendly approach to public sector management. Along with this change, these countries have continued to undertake varieties of development-related initiatives such as long-term development plans, poverty reduction programs, rural development strategies, and inclusive development approaches. Certain institutions including national planning agencies, public service commissions, local government authorities, and series of other public institutions were established to implement those initiatives. However, several of these initiatives and institutions are facing challenges due to political, economic, social and environmental reasons. Similarly, public sector, in the recent times, is redefined and working collaboratively with market mechanism, has been the major vehicle to drive development and growth in the South Asian region. With growth of market facilitated by liberal economic policies in the region, it has demonstrated considerable capacity of serving in the public affairs. Governments in the region acknowledge the market as one of the inescapable stakeholders of serving the public and be an integral partner of governance. It is so duly acknowledged due to its capacity of managing and mobilizing resources, bring in and adopt innovation in management and leadership and harness value for money. For South Asian countries, these have become the common scopes and paramount competencies that public sector should develop capacity, so the results shall be better attainment of the public commitments through public service delivery. As the region itself is a dynamic environment, skilled and experienced public sector managers are the need of the hour, the general public want the quality of service delivered by

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the public service to improve, therefore, it is imperative to develop on required competencies encompassing skills, knowledge and attitude of the public sector. India and Sri Lanka have formally defined the competencies and have adopted capacity building initiatives based on the competency frameworks while Nepal has recently defined the competency areas and proposed the competency framework for capacity development of the civil service. Although the other South Asian countries are silent on such framework with defined competency areas, they have adopted needful strategies for building the capacity of the public sector. Hence, this theme brings the experience of public sectors institution development that depict resulting management practices in South Asia and provides opportunity for countries to learn from each other. Similarly, bringing in the learnings and experiences of countries across the region on their initiatives on reforming the public sector and capacity building will bean advantage of the conclave. B. Subnational Governance Most of the countries of South Asia have practices of decentralized governance in some forms. There could be difference in forms and scope of sub - national government or the multi-level governments but basic principles of management could be the same. Nepal, for example, is the youngest country to adopt federalism with an aim to devolve power to the sub-national governments for strengthening democratic governance whereas India is practicing federalism for the last 6 decades. Bangladesh, on the other hand, is practicing decentralization to empower sub-national units. As federal countries, Pakistan, India and Nepal have multi-level governments while the others have decentralized units to undertake governance functions closest to the people. Though its own unique kind of multi - level governance the countries in the region have adopted, all of these have unequivocally underlined the importance of devolution of opportunities along with the devolution of power at all the levels of government. The arrangement existing in any form, are designated as the sub-national governments which in common work for the goal of coordinated and pro-people governance. The inherent philosophy, therefore, of the subnational governance is to bring citizen close to the government by expanding opportunities for improved service delivery. However, it is evident, in the region that the capacity to effectively deliver the governance function by these sub-national governments is limited and the capacity of these governments is always on question. With this critical state, it is imperative to look into the capacity building of sub-national governments. Hence, the conference takes this thematic scope to bring in the initiatives taken by different countries, experiences—both what worked well and what not, best practices and some way forward and opinion proposed, into discourse in the dialogue sessions, paper presentation and even in the key note address. It is aimed at providing an opportunity to the delegates to engage in dialogue and share their research insights and experiences from the practice of dealing with different forms of sub - national governance practice in South Asia. C. Creating Investment Environment South Asian region remains one of the most promising investment prospects for the world. There has been a phenomenal growth in the output, trade and employment which highlights the importance of investing in this region. It is at its historic moment of transforming the economic conditions in the global economy. Consequently, it could help in addressing the challenges of

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poverty, peace and environmental degradation that confronts the world. If present trends of GDP are to be analyzed, then China will be the largest economy in the world followed by USA and India respectively. Under these kinds of development going around, if South Asian countries develop an integrated economy, then perhaps South Asia could become the second largest economy in the world after China. Also, if analyzed from the geographical proximity, South Asian region have the obvious potentiality of being an economic powerhouse. Since the growing importance of trade in services in most of the South Asian countries, the salient question that arises is regarding the growth of investing opportunities and its contribution to the development of the economy. Analyzing the competitiveness and openness primarily helps to understand the potentialities and complementarities among the South Asian countries. Furthermore, along with technological advancements, provision of services occurs at lower costs, which opens up the possibility of specialization in different sectors. Next, economic liberalization could integrate markets, which in turn leads to a restructuring of production. This change or transition of production structure is true for industrial products but there is a need to look at the same in the context of services; especially in the context of South Asia’s business and to create opportunities. D. Inclusive Growth Growth has always been an all accepted political and social development issue in the countries of south Asia. In the meantime, acknowledging the socio-economic needs of people with varying socio-economic bases is one of the major challenges, and, if-well-taken an opportunity impactful results. Governance paradigm and policy practice have acknowledged many other stakeholders in addition to conventional actors, with an aim to create an enabling environment for harnessing all opportunities of economic development and growth. Long term perspective plans to periodic development plans have been adopted and country wise poverty reduction strategy papers introduced with an aim to foster inclusive growth in the economies. Having this context, this theme aims to bring in papers from government agencies, academia and practitioners to share among the conference attendees for initiating discourses by providing them an opportunity for assessment on historicity of inclusive growth and share newer perspectives for common benefit of South Asian people. E. Sustainable Development Goals Despite having a rich resource base, South Asian Region accounts for 36% of the world's poor with a number of development and infrastructure gaps. A disproportionate concentration of the deprived populations in the sub-region that accounts for a quarter of the world’s population means that the global achievement of the SDGs will not be possible without South Asia achieving them. Cross cutting issues such as poverty reduction, economic growth, job creation, industrialization, inequality (SDGs 1, 5, 8, 9, 10) are related to expanding opportunities which reiterates its significance in the region. SDG 8 involves job creation; all South Asian countries are far behind the target of ensuring decent jobs for all. This is reflected in the fact that among the top five countries in the world with very high proportion of informal employment in the total employment sector, four are from South Asia. As for SDG 9, a recent study (UNESCAP, 2017, “Asia-Pacific Countries with Special Needs Development Report 2017”, Bangkok) shows that the calculated infrastructural indices of all South Asian countries, except the Maldives, are

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much lower than the average of developing countries of the Asia-Pacific and a much wider gap is observed when compared with the average of the developed countries of the Asia-Pacific. This indicates the need for a lot of infrastructural investments in the South Asian countries. If we look at the status in terms of other SDGs, the scorecards are not very encouraging. Also, if we consider SDG 5 (gender inequality) and SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth), there are concerns with respect to the very low level of female labour force participation in most of the South Asian countries, with Nepal being the only exception. From empirical studies, we see that South Asian countries are yet to be on the right track to attain most of the goals under the SDGs. In this context, discussion on the aspects of expanding opportunities to ensure sustainable development seems to be need of an hour. Renewed efforts and a strong political commitment to address the challenges in implementing these SDGs. Effective SDG implementation will further require: outcome-based approaches to multidimensional sustainable development challenges; decentralization to empower local administrations; and institutional reforms to incentivize changes in regulations, institutional culture, markets and mindsets.

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CONFERENCE SCHEDULE Venue: Nepal Administrative Staff College Day I: 04 July 2019, Thursday Inaugural

Prithivi Hall 9:00-10:00 Speakers Narayan Gopal Malego, Senior Director and Chair, Conference Organizing Committee, NASC Ajaya Dixit, ISET Nepal Sk. Tawfique M. Haque, Professor, North South University, Bangladesh Ram Kantha Makaju, Vice Chancellor, Kathmandu University Bhim Prasad Subedi, University Grant Commission Nepal Hon’ble Pushpa Raj Kadel, Vice Chair, National Planning Commission Hon’ble Lal Babu Pandit, Minister for Federal Affairs and General Administration (TBD) Punya Prasad Neupane, Executive Director, NASC Tea Break 10:00-10:15

Keynote Speech: Expanding Public Choices and Market Opportunities Prithivi Hall 10:15 – 11:45 Chair: Deependra Bahadur Kshetry, Former Vice Chairman, National Planning Commission Keynote Speaker: Hon’ble Yubaraj Khatiwada, Minister of Finance

Tea Break 11:45-12:00

Technical Session 1: Public Sector Governance Rara Hall 12:00-13:30 Chair: Shishir Kumar Dhungana, Secretary, GoN Discussant: Uddhab Pyakurel, Associate Professor, Kathmandu University 1. Improving public sector performance: Managing competency in civil service of Nepal Basanta Raj Sigdel & Rajendra Adhikari 2. Accountability in Nepali bureaucracy: What matters? Anil Kumar Gupta 3. Governance in Nepal: An overview of state functioning Dileep K Adhikary 4. Public sector integrity in Nepal: Transparency, corruption and accountability Hari Dhungana, Trilochan Pokharel, Tulasi Sharan Sigdel, Achala Dahal & Geetanjali Upadhyaya

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Technical Session 2: Sustainable Development Goals Janaki Hall 12:00-13:30 Chair: Bisnhu Prasad Lamsal, Secretary, GoN Discussant: Hari Dhungana, Associate Professor, Nepal Open University 1. Be ancient for sustainable modernization idea generation from Bundelkhand Region (Sagar Dis- trict) of MP India Neha Mathur & Tarun Kumar Singh 2. Does social connectivity influence tap water access? Evidence from India Prasenjit Sarkhel & Subhalkshmi Paul 3. Accountability and learning outcomes within poverty framework: A theoretical critique Satyajeet Nanda 4. Quality of public service in Nepal: An agenda for sustainable development goals Trilochan Pokharel, Bhim Prasad Subedi, Rajendra Adhikari, Shiva Hari Adhikari & Anil Kumar Gupta Technical Session 3: Inclusion in Growth and Governance Prithivi Hall 12:00-13:30 Chair: Jagadish Chandra Pokharel, Former VC, National Planning Commission Discussant: Biswo Poudel, Economist 1. Public policies and social exclusion: A literary analysis Sumit Haluwalia 2. e-Governance in Land Administration of Karnataka: A key milestone in inclusive growth Shivaraju C D 3. People’s politics and governance in the countryside: An ethnographic profile of emerging leaders from South India Kasi Eswarappa 4. Gender responsive budgeting: Commitments and implementation in Nepal Anita Poudel & Shilu Pradhan 5. Inclusive governance at periphery and use of ICT: Myth and reality Salahuddin M Aminujjaman

Technical Session 4: Issues in Public Governance Lumbini Hall 12:00-13:30 Chair: Srikrishna Shrestha, Prof, Tribhuvan University Discussant: Bishnu Dev Pant, Executive Director, IIDS 1. Social justice education in STEM: A curricular framework for development and social well-being Sameer Kapar 2. Public engagement and public policy-synergies and diversions: Perceptions from think tanks in South Asia Varsha Pillai & Annapoorna Ravichander 3. Rural-urban linkages through incentive-based water management: A case from Dhulikhel Nepal Tikeshwari Joshi 4. Governance imperatives on strategic management of higher educational institutions in Nepal Kedar Prasad Acharya Lunch Break 13:30-14:30

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Policy Dialogue 1: Creating Investment Environment Prithivi Hall 14:30-15:45 Chair: Maha Prasad Adhikari, CEO, Investment Board Nepal Speaker: Min Bahadur Shrestha, Former VC, National Planning Commission Panelist: Anukool Bhatnagar, MD, Nepal SBI Bank Limited Tea Break 15:45-16:05 Policy Dialogue 2: Devolving Opportunities – Reaching to People Prithivi Hall 16:05-17:20 Chair: Hon’ble Balananda Poudel, Chair, National Natural Resource and Fiscal Commission Speaker: Hon’ble Md. Lalbabu Raut, Chief Minister Province 2 Panelist: Mohan Das Manandhar, Executive Director, Niti Foundation

Day II: 05 July 2019, Friday Technical Session 5: Sub-national Governance Janaki Hall 09:30-11:00 Chair: Reshmi Raj Pandey, Secretary, GoN Discussant: Dinesh Paudel, SIAS 1. Fiscal decentralization effectiveness and regional disparities: A case study on India Swati Jain 2. Transboundary disaster governance between India and Nepal: An opportunity to include commu- nities for leveraging benefits of policies Rajkumar Gade 3. Politicians and bureaucrats’ relation in local governance of Nepal Anil Kumar Gupta, Trilochan Poudyal & Sundar Shrestha 4. Governance landscape in Federal Republic Nepal: Citizenship and practicing local autonomy at sub-national scale Tulasi Sharan Sigdel Technical Session 6: Investment Environment and Market Expansion Prithivi Hall 09:30-11:00 Chair: Yam Kumari Khatiwada, Secretary, GoN Discussant: Puspa Sharma, Deputy Executive Director, SAWTEE 1. Tourism entrepreneurs’ expectation from the Federal Government in touristic city of Nepal:A cross-sectional analysis Niranjan Devkota 2. Creating investment environment for sustainable development: A study of Indian investment policies Vaishali Pagaria 3. Changing political economy of regional integration: A case study of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan Monica Verma 4. Public choice and equitable access to market opportunities: Rethinking regulatory approach to community owned business selling Himalayan natural products Shyam Kumar Thapa 5. Impact of double taxation avoidance agreements (DTAA) on foreign direct investment in Nepal Umesh Raj Rimal & Bishal Kumar Chalise

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Technical Session 7: Contemporary Policy Issues in South Asia Rara Hall 09:30-11:00 Chair: Ajaya Dixit, Policy Analyst Discussant: P Geeta, Professor, Institute of Public Enterprises, India 1. Sport policy and governance in Bangladesh: In search of sustainable development Saidur Rahman 2. Gender gaps and citizen’s confidence in South Asia Narendra Raj Paudel 3. Paradoxes of development projects in Bangladesh: A case study on managing at the Top 2 (MATT2) Mohammad Rezaul Karim 4. The new policy regime of Nepal: Priorities and opportunities Bishnu Dev Pant & Ojeshwini Singh

Tea Break 11:00-11:20

Policy Dialogue 3: Sustainable Development Goals- Where is South Asia Prithivi Hall 11:20-12:45 Chair: Hon’ble Usha Jha, Member, National Planning Commission Speaker: Patrick Duong, Regional Advisor, UNDP Panelist: Sultan Hafeez Rahman, BIGD Bangladesh Panelist: Akhilesh Kumar, Director, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, India Lunch Break 12:45-13:45 Policy Dialogue 4: Governance Reform Prithivi Hall 13:45-15:00 Chair: Hon’ble Bimala Rai Poudyal, Member, National Assembly, Nepal Speaker: Trilochan Pokharel, Director of Studies, NASC Panelist: Sk. Tawfique M. Haque, Professor, North South University, Bangladesh Panelist: Sanjay Pullipka, Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum Library, India Tea Break 15:00-15:20

Plenary: Expanding Opportunities-Integrating South Asia Prithivi Hall 15:20-16:30 Chair: Rajan Bhattarai, Foreign Affairs Advisor of Prime Minister, Nepal Speaker: Arjun Bahadur Thapa, Former Secretary General, SAARC Panelist: R.K. Mishra, Director, Institute of Public Enterprises, India Panelist: Hari Sharma, Political Analyst

Closing Prithivi Hall 16:40-17:20 Mehnaz Rabbani, BRAC Institute of Governance and Development, Bangladesh Swayam Sampurna Panigrahi, Professor, Institute of Public Enterprises, India Mohan Das Manandhar, Niti Foundation Punya Prasad Neupane, Executive Director, NASC

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ABSTRACTS

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Technical Session 1: Public Sector Governance

IMPROVING PUBLIC SECTOR PERFORMANCE: MANAGING COMPETENCY IN CIVIL SERVICE Basanta Raj Sigdel & Rajendra Adhikari

Nepal is in the initial phase of implementing federal system of governance. It is envisioned that the three levels of governments will deliver improved service and holistic development. This becomes reality when the civil service is competent and dedicated to function as per the spirit of the Constitution and government policies. The changing paradigm of governance demands role reorientation of the civil servants. They should possess a set of competencies to perform effectively in their respective role. Mapping and managing competencies of civil servants in the changed context has been one of the critical aspects for improving public sector performance. Nepal Administrative Staff College has taken this novel initiative to define thecore competencies of the civil servants, perhaps milestone in Nepal’s public administration. The initiative is aimed at developing a set of competency frameworks which contribute in overall human resource management functions of the governments at federal, province and local levels. The study is based on the premise that civil servants, irrespective of their positions and specific responsibilities, should possess core competencies- composite of knowledge, skills and attitude- to demonstrate professionalism in their decisions, actions and behavior. The competency mapping exercises in all levels of government revealed that civil servants should have integrity as foundational competency and lead people to deliver results with service orientation and effective communication. The defined competency framework primarily is useful for the Public Service Commission in recruitment of public officials. Similarly, the government can benefit from this framework to prepare human resource development plan and the capacity building institutions can align their programmes to develop those competencies.

Key words: Public sector reforms, competency of civil servants, competency framework, civil service Nepal

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ACCOUNTABILITY IN NEPALI BUREAUCRACY: WHAT DOES MATTERS? Anil Kumar Gupta

Accountability is heart and soul of good governance within the bureaucratic structure throughout the world, and Nepal is not an exception. Time and again, the government of Nepal has adopted various plans, policies, and institutional mechanisms to hold duty bearers accountable for their actions and performance. However, it is a general feeling that the practice and exercise of accountability in the Nepali bureaucracy are still not as expected. Citizens often feel that bureaucrats are being irresponsive and unaccountable, and criticize them for this. In this regard, this quantitative study examined the determinants of accountability in Nepali Bureaucracy. For this, 213 bureaucrats were selected form the central level organizations of the Ministry of Education using the most popular and widely accepted framework proposed by Yamane (1967). After this, the survey was conducted by using self-administrated structured questionnaire, and data was analyzed employing descriptive and inferential statistics as well. The results of the study showed that the bureaucrats working in central level of organization of the Ministry of Education seem to be accountable. Transparency, responsibility, and responsiveness also appear to be good; however, liability and controllability were not found to meet expectations. This scenario reveals that there is a weak controllability mechanism. Similarly, there was a weak system for performance-based reward and punishment. It is interesting to note that accountability of bureaucrats differed by their demographic attributes, results that were confirmed by descriptive statistics. On the other hand, inferential statistics did not produce significant effects. Therefore, it can be said that accountability of bureaucrats was independent, and less or no effect of demographics attributes.

Key words: Accountability, transparency, liability, controllability, responsibility and responsiveness

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GOVERNANCE IN NEPAL: AN OVERVIEW OF STATE FUNCTIONING Dileep K Adhikary

A country is ruled by the political leadership vested into power by its people. How it runs the government affects every citizen directly or indirectly. Nepal has undergone various forms of government before and after the dawn of democracy in 1951 and to the latest with the promulgation of Constitution of Nepal in 2015. This paper is an effort to capture the state of governance in Nepal, in particular, the state functioning led by the ministries. Good governance is an ideal concept as there are voids in state functioning. At the qualitative level it is about the extent of upholding accountability, responsiveness and integrity along with gender equality and social inclusion. And at the functional level it relates to the degree of total oversight of the sector commanded by the ministries and the order of the direction of the policies, the coverage of the programmes, and the performance effectiveness in attaining the much sought results. Joint Secretaries in one third of the federal ministries were approached on what and how the respective ministries carry out the job in their area of governance. Looking at how comprehensively the government is doing its business, the assessment thereof shows that there are gaps in being effective enough.

Key words: Governance, state functioning, public services, holistic approach

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PUBLIC SECTOR INTEGRITY IN NEPAL: TRANSPARENCY, CORRUPTION AND ACCOUNTABILITY Hari Dhungana, Trilochan Pokharel, Tulasi Sharan Sigdel, Achala Dahal & Geetanjali Upadhyaya

This paper presents the findings of Nepal National Governance Survey 2017/18 (NNGS) focusing on a specific theme of public sector integrity. These findings capture the perceptions and experience of Nepali people on different aspects of the integrity in Nepal’s public sector institutions and officials. With these findings, this paper offers critical insight into a theme that corresponds with the growing calls for more responsible and accountable governance in the country. It also sheds light on efforts of the Government of Nepal, which has formally committed to achieve integrity and accountability in the country. We envision this paper to offer baseline data on public sector integrity in Nepal and to encourage further debate and studies on the theme. Furthermore, we expect that this assessment of public sector integrity will be helpful to consider the options about how to respond to people’s demands for more transparent, accountable and honest behavior and decision-making in public sector institutions. Improvement in these aspects is becoming urgent, as expectations forpublic sector integrity and accountability are growing and will continue to do so in Nepal. Firstly, Nepal’s constitution emphasizes good governance and promises civic, political, economic and social rights; the extensive state commitments will inevitably promote demands on how the public officials conduct their business. Secondly, the establishment of representative political institutions provide the people and their representatives opportunities and platforms for questioning the public agencies and officials. The pressure will not only be to deliver more, but also to improve the way in which the government works. Thus, public institutions will be scrutinized at a greater degree for their delivery, process and overall integrity.

Key words: Accountability, integrity, transparency, corruption, Nepal

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Technical Session 2: Sustainable Development Goals

BE ANCIENT FOR SUSTAINABLE MODERNIZATION IDEA GENERATION FROM BUNDELKHAND REGION (SAGAR DISTRICT) OF MP INDIA Neha Mathur & Tarun Kumar Singh

This universe was not in this form, from the ancient time, it was not as scientific as now, it was not as modern as now, even it was not as developed as now, but one thing is lacking in comparison to the ancient time, and that is crisis, which is now in abundant, present time is for the crisis management, in every area of life, and for every part whether it is Humanity, Animals, Forest, Water, Environment, Population, Food, Poverty, Health, Weather, Peace, and plenty of such things. Incredibly, this crisis was not present in this universe as earlier (Ancient Time), and whole world was progressively working towards sustainable development with the approach of hands in the hands of nature, the unknown supreme power has blessed this world with everything, which is essential for the survival of life on the earth. Now the point is to open the discussion on why the present situation is challenge for the survival and sustainable development. This paper is based on the facts and figure showing that even the time has not passed, still we have something to do with the ancient practices to live with modern gestures and sustainable progress, only thing we will have to do is to change our mentality and way of life willful desires to live in modern sole along with ancient practices. Here we have visited ten villages near in the periphery of urban areas, where still lot of hope is sustaining for the sustainable development, only thing is to change the way of administration and with the planning of government policies. One of the suitable example is that, if the dairy production would be shifted at rural areas, then two things would happen, one the demand of packed milk and milk product at rural and taluka level would come down and it will help to supply the pure and uncontaminated milk product with natural stability to the public of urban areas at large. This paper is based on the survey of ten villages for proposing five ideas for the logical adoption by the government.

Key words: Sustainable, development, ancient approach, modernization

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DOES SOCIAL CONNECTIVITY INFLUENCE TAP WATER ACCESS? EVIDENCE FROM INDIA Prasenjit Sarkhel & Subhalkshmi Paul

Extending universal coverage of safe drinking water in rural areas of India is one of sustainable development goals that must be met by 2030. Contemporary assessments of National Rural Drinking Water Program pointed out that public authority in India have failed to reach the target regarding pipe water connection and majority of the rural populace are still out of the ambit of the scheme. In India, water is treated as a public good and might be subject to elite capture and distribution of networks might be biased due to clientalism. In this background, using a panel of 27000 rural household water use data from 2005 and 2012 rounds of India Human Development Survey (IHDS), this paper attempts to empirically investigate whether extent of social network influence the households access to the public water supply via tap water connection. To account for water availability in the district we superimpose average depth of aquifer in each district obtained from central ground water commission. We expect this to characterize the trade-off between the decisions to opt for tap water vis-à-vis ground water sources. We take advantage of the panel nature of the data and verify whether the hypothesized relationship between social connections does actually initiate the change in tap water connection across the two rounds by considering the subsample of households that didn’t have tap water in the first round. To account for the potential endogeneity of the social connectivity variable we also estimate a recursive bi-variate probit model (RBP). In the RBP we estimate social connectivity by introducing community collective action at the district level as an exclusion restriction in the model. Our study provides evidence that households from communities with intense social ties are more likely to benefit from public water supply schemes in terms of having increased access to indoor tap water. We also find that the degree of exposure to media might be a significant predictor of piped water connection. Our result thus supports the government initiatives to promote information communication and education through mass media where 60 percent of the funds are allocated to village level activities.

Key words: Pipe Water, India human development survey, social network

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ACCOUNTABILITY AND LEARNING OUTCOMES WITHIN POVERTY FRAMEWORK: A THEORETICAL CRITIQUE Satyajeet Nanda

There are discussions across theoretical models in behavioural research how material level constraints out of poverty thereby the stigma attached with marginalized socio-political condition (generational transmissions of poverty as well as marginalisation) can influence interplay between agency and beliefs of poorer parents, hence magnitude of their (critical) engagement in the available education options of children, learning outcome. One could question whether pro-poor, novel, participatory type accountability frameworks can potentially influence the aspirations of those parents who belong to marginalised sections. And thereby educational-learning outcomes of the children by encouraging parents being critically engaged with the system would help. It is interesting to examine the ideahow teaching and curriculum can mediate the intellectual as well as social capital, leverages and resultant outcomes vis-à-vis other capital categories (political, social and economic capital). It is also interesting to examine whether the interacting nature of dynamics inbuilt into social contexts, political and economic circumstances and cultural arena would enable rather than inhibiting delivering quality of education.

Key words: Accountability, poverty, stigma, marginalization

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QUALITY OF PUBLIC SERVICE IN NEPAL: AN AGENDA FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS Trilochan Pokharel, Bhim Prasad Subedi, Rajendra Adhikari, Shiva Hari Adhikari & Anil Kumar Gupta

The Nepal National Governance Survey 2017/18 (NNGS) provides a comprehensive database on the perceptions of Nepali people in different dimensions of governance in changed context of Nepal. Following the promulgation of Constitution of Nepal on 20 September 2015, the country entered into the federal structure comprising three orders of governments – federal, provincial and local. They are autonomous within constitutional framework, yet they have to work in tandem to serve the public interests and the overarching commitments of the state. The delivery of these commitments is underpinned by improvements in quality of public service. Our analysis shows that Nepal’s public service is at crossroads. People’s aspiration of accessing quality public service from their nearest service outlets and government’s promise to deliver them through decentralized service delivery mechanisms are reinforcing. The recent transformation in governance system entrusts local government as major service delivery unit. Within a year of newly formed local governments, more than 40 percent citizens tend to visit them for service. As the function of these governments would improve, they would be taking most of government’s basic services. There are noticeable differences in perception of public service environment among citizens by Province and background characteristics. In general, people are optimistic towards improvements in public services. Meanwhile, they also perceive bribing and relationships as common instruments to get things done. These findings provide grounds for preparing service reform plan for Nepali state thatis embarking towards federal form of governance with more power devolved to sub-national governments. Each order of the governments requires citizen oriented service reform plan for strengthening state-people relationship.

Key words: Governance, state people relationship, service environment

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Technical Session 3: Inclusion in Growth and Governance

PUBLIC POLICIES AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION: A LITERARY ANALYSIS Sumit Haluwalia

Each society has a division to a greater or lesser extent but many of them also found in the systematic form. When this division explores in the systematic and greater form it creates the problem of discrimination and exclusion. The absence of inclusiveness is harmful to the nation. So, to understand the various faces of poverty, inequality, unemployment and deprivation and nexus with social exclusion is very important and also to make inclusive development more realistic. African people are excluded from their race, wherein many Asian nations they exclude by their caste and tribal identity. Besides these migrants, refugees, transgender, children, aged, women etc. are also experiencing exclusion. Communalism, casteism and corruption are the biggest challenge to our nation for making suitable public policies and also for their proper enforcement. However, in our country many revolutionary changes are taken place like RTE, RTI, MGNREGA etc. and hence somehow the situation of the poor could be changed but the required result is still far. So for making our policies efficient and effective, the prerequisite is that there should be proper coordination between public policies and social exclusion. Because many socio-economic problems of the large population are directly or indirectly are associated with social exclusion. Inour public policy discourse, this is the greatest lacuna that social exclusion remains untouched or under-estimated under the poverty discourse. However, poverty and social exclusion both are different from each other. Poverty is a cause and consequence of social exclusion but it could be rarely understood in our public policies. The study of social exclusion in our policy discourse is very essential for our country because even many of the developed countries are so serious to tackle the social exclusion and many social exclusion units are working there.

Key words: Public policy, social exclusion, inclusion, poverty, unemployment, South Asia.

19 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

e-GOVERNANCE IN LAND ADMINISTRATION OF KARNATAKA: A KEY MILESTONE IN INCLUSIVE GROWTH Shivaraju C D

Karnataka is one of the major rural-agrarian economies of India as 61 percent of its the population lives in the rural area and out of that 55 percent engaged in agriculture. Though the contribution of agriculture to its GDP has been coming down over a period, still 13.74 million workers depend on the land. In this context, the issue of land, land records and land administration gain an added significance. Considering the increasing number of land disputes, land litigations, and importance of land records, the State of Karnataka has been making attempts to harvest the potential of ICT in addressing the problems of related land administration. As a result, ambitious projects like BHOOMI made a new beginning in the history of land records of the State through computerization of 20 million records of land and ownership of 6.7 million farmers in 2001. However, merely computerization of land records is not sufficient for effective and efficient delivery of services. the State further has taken many e-initiatives such as KAVERI, MOJINI and Crop Updating...etc. to resolve the challenges that are hunting land governance and to meet the growing needs of farmers. This has brought considerable changes in the land governance as well as in the socio-economic lives of people of the State. Despite the fact, many issues related to land administration remain untouched particularly in proper and updating maintenance of land records. Against this background, keeping the concept of good governance and inclusive growth in mind, the proposed study seeks to understand and analyze nearly two decades of experiences of e-Governance in the land administration of Karnataka. It mainly focuses on the maintenance of land administration in the pre- and post-BHOOMI project and its impact on rural economy and society. Finally, the study tries to explore some policy prescriptions for effective and efficient management of land administration in order to enlarge choices of people and expand the base of inclusive growth.

Key words: Karnataka, land administration, bhoomi, good governance and inclusive growth

20 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

PEOPLE’S POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF EMERGING LEADERS FROM SOUTH INDIA Kasi Eswarappa

The government initiatives to enhance the situation of the rural mass have paved the way to Integrated Rural Development Programmes (IRDP) in India. As part of the IRDP, the Government initiated the formation of groups in the villages of rural India with the name as DWCRA or Self Help Groups (SHG’s). With the help of the Government as well as donor agencies, the programme became successful in some parts of rural India and here are the cases where these groups became the symbol of success to neighbouring areas in the rural areas of Andhra Pradesh. The present cases are situated in three backward areas of the Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh, India. These three cases are different from each other but the ultimate goal of the three cases is the same as enhancement of lives and livelihoods of rural masses. The present paper tries to explain how the members of these groups have emerged as leaders in their respective areas and enhanced the lives and livelihoods of the people in general and women in particular in Andhra Pradesh. Three cases are Rythu Sangam (Farmers Club, Chittoor), Dalit Horticulture Club (Anantapur), and Village Organization (Anantapur) which have studied and regarded as the backbone of rural masses in the two districts of Andhra Pradesh. The Three initiatives have shown that people have improved their awareness and enhanced their lifestyle. Further, it also explains how they have strengthened their groups by acting as pressure groups in the system. To conclude, the paper has shown the importance of emerging leaders in the rural areas of Andhra Pradesh.

Key words: Politics, governance, dalit horticulture club, ethnography, emerging leaders, irdp, rythu sangam, and village organization

21 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

GENDER RESPONSIVE BUDGETING: COMMITMENTS AND IMPLEMENTATION IN NEPAL Anita Poudel & Shilu Pradhan

The study aims to identify the commitments and initiatives of GENDER RESPONSIVE BUDGETING (GRB) in Nepal, analyze status of implementation of GRB and explore various lessons for Nepal for effective implementation of GRB initiatives. The research was carried out using the secondary data and also through primary data from key Informant Interviews of about eight stakeholders. Upon analysis of findings, it was found that a good initiative towards adopting GRB is taken by Government of Nepal. However, various improvement areas are found for the effective implementation of entire GRB process through the concerned authorities at Ministerial and sectoral line ministries.

Key words: GRB, implementation, commitments, Nepal

22 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

Inclusive Governance at Periphery and Use of ICT: Myth and Reality Dr. Salahuddin M. Aminuzzaman

During the recent years “inclusiveness” has emerged as an important component of governance discourses and practices. Inclusive governance primarily argues that e-governance could further accelerate citizens’ engagement and ownership and thereby make the implementation process easier and effective. The 7th FYP of Government of Bangladesh, therefore, highlights the importance of inclusive governance by empowering people and creating the demand side of good governance, service delivery, and downward accountability. In line with the broader goals of inclusive governance, the GoB has introduced the Access to information (a2i), a program approach to simplify service delivery process through the ICT from a single access point. The a2i primarily aims at reaching the door step of the citizens especially, in the rural areas, where a significant percentage of people are unserved or underserved of the public services. As against all skepticism, this paper attempts to highlight the unique features andthe implementation process of the a2i program and its implications on the process ofsocial inclusion and development of the rural population of Bangladesh.

Key words: Inclusiveness, ICT, e-governance, service delivery

23 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

Technical Session 4: Issues in Public Governance

SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION IN STEM: A CURRICULAR FRAMEWORK FOR DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL WELL-BEING Sameer Kapar

The advent of democracy, in Nepal, has burdened her people with greater responsibilities and the (access to) education is paramount to development. Equity and social justices are essential foundation and condition for creating an equal, fair and just society, and promote growth. Education is imperative to the success of democracy. However, in Nepal the caste/ ethnicity, regions, and religious groups and between gender and class of people, there remains a vast disparity among them in the access to education. Although education mirrors, embeds and potentially reproduces unequal, unfair and unjust social relations, it also has the power to be an agent of positive social change, leading to a more equitable and just society. It is necessary to make education a medium to promote equity, equality, fairness, and social justice in the community at large, and to help schools to be caring and inclusive learning places in which students see and experience equality and social justice in their daily life. Sustainable Development Goals and social justices are inter-related. There are opportunities for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education to aid in social justice by examining local community issues, including environmental quality and access to health and nutritional services, among other topics. This paper proposes a curricular framework for a social justice- driven high school STEM curriculum that can be implemented in Nepal focusing on SDGs to promote democracy and the freedom to exercise one's full humanity. The proposal elucidates promoting social justice in the classroom by creating a community of conscience. This paper attempts to incorporate lessons of social justice into high school science curriculum and work with students in developing skills; enable conversations about social issues that empower students to voice their concern and question unjust situations in their lives or the lives of those around them. The author aspires that this paper will contribute to the understanding and promotion of equity and social justice in education and role in SDGs for inclusive growth and social well-being.

Key words: Social justice, education, STEM, curricular framework, equity

24 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT AND PUBLIC POLICY-SYNERGIES AND DIVERSIONS: PERCEPTIONS FROM THINK TANKS IN SOUTH ASIA Varsha Pillai & Annapoorna Ravichander

Public participation often conceptually is divided into public communication, public consultation and public participation. Public participation remains the mainstay of all public policy work in think tanks. In developing countries, think tanks are personified as institutions that embody knowledge and expertise and have emerged as strong policy actors. For a long time think tanks were often perceived as working within a limited stakeholder space as far as exerting influence is concerned. Over time given digital media pervasiveness, there has been a shift in this perception and therefore the way public has been engaged has also altered. With the digital media spurred the internationalisation of think tanks resulted in enhanced opportunities to disseminate evidence based research and advocate for policy outcomes. Not for profit, think tanks functioning in South Asia (Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India) have been engaging with diverse stakeholders. Most of them have dedicated teams to ensure better public engagement to disseminate their public policy recommendations effectively. This research paper will use a case study approach to derive insights in public engagement and research on public policy (in different development sectors and issues). This research study of five think tanks based in South Asia will attempt to elicit a perception map of effective strategies in public engagement. The study will aim to also understand at what points of public engagement do the institutions converge in their approach and what tools do they employ and to what level of effectiveness.

Key words: Public policy, think tanks, research, dissemination, engagement

25 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

RURAL- URBAN LINKAGES THROUGH INCENTIVE-BASED WATER MANAGEMENT: A CASE FROM DHULIKHEL, NEPAL Tikeshwari Joshi

Many towns in the south Asia are suffering from water scarcity and people struggling for securing their water needs. Many factors such as climate change, growing population, migration, deforestation and forest degradation and rapid urbanisation making water scarce. Therefore, environmentalists, national and international decision makers are now introducing innovative ideas to secure water for meeting the growing demand at the global change context such as incentive based approach of natural resource management. This paper explores the negotiations and emerging socio-political relationships and alliances that were formed to reach a series of water-sharing agreements between upstream- and downstream- communities. The agreements’ purpose was to secure water access to downstream, rapidly urbanising community. This research explored the negotiation dynamics between two communities with diverse interests for reaching an incentive-based water agreement, focusing on the decision-makers and users of the Dhulikhel Drinking Water Supply System in Nepal. This paper elaborates how incentives are a direct outcome of the interests and relative political and economic capacities of actors, rather than the ‘objective’ rationales and processes that underpin the identification and qualification of ecosystem services and their flows, or the reflection of environmental management costs and economic valuations of such services. This is demonstrated by the breakdown in payment ‘destination’, that is, where recipient upstream communities tend to allocate their cash payments. This paper provides insights into the shifting power relations between local rural and urban socio-political actors during significant political changes in Nepal.

Key words: Incentives, negotiation, actors, ecosystem services, water security

26 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

GOVERNANCE IMPERATIVES ON STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN NEPAL Kedar Prasad Acharya

The Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) supposed to play a catalyst role to transform society through teaching, research, and extension to address the challenges faced by the society at present and in the future. However, it is a miracle in Nepalese context with a few exceptions. The objectives of this research were to uncover governance of HEIs in Nepal and assess how the governance of HEIs contribute to the strategy formulation, implementation, monitor, evaluate and control to steer core business of higher education institutions. Using global higher education governance framework, and strategic management of higher educational institution literature, this research uncovered the governance of higher education in Nepal and its impact on strategic management. Interviews with university officials and campus chiefs and qualitative secondary data sources, the study reveals that exogenous influence of supranational organizations such as the World Bank and ADB is high in framing higher education policies, plans and programs in Nepal. External governance within the country was weak in the past and seems going strong in recent days and the internal governance was strong in the past. Despite of substantial levels of university autonomy, internal governance is becoming weaker and weaker day by day. The result is that HEIs are not able to function properly as it is supposed to do. One of the most important reason behind this is that the intervention from interest group within the higher education sector to fulfill their interest by giving a political flavor for the sole benefits of near and dear in the name of faith based higher education teachers’ union, employee association, university’s teachers’ association and student union. Similarly, institutions with strong internal governance demonstrate sound strategic management practices that steer them to their core businesses in contrast to HEIs with a weak internal governance. It can be concluded that HEIs with substantial levels of autonomy along with strong internal governance can transform itself and play a catalyst role in society not only at present but also for the future.

Key words: Higher education, strategic management, internal governance, external governance

27 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

Technical Session 5: Sub-national Governance

FISCAL DECENTRALISATION EFFECTIVENESS AND REGIONAL DISPARITIES: A CASE STUDY ON INDIA Swati Jain

There has been a growing policy focus on adopting decentralization as a means of inclusive growth, regional balances, social empowerment and improved accountability in the development process. Decentralization has evolved as a theoretical construct from Oates (1972) “Principal of Subsidiarity” to Buchanan & Bremen (1977; 1980), Tullock’s (1962) Leviathan View to World Bank’s (1999) multidimensional functioning. The multidimensional functioning are explained as four categories such as, Political; Administrative; Market and Fiscal Decentralisation. All the four functionings are based on its efficiency and capacity for wider participation of the population. Therefore it helps in reducing the most discussed “Vertical and Horizontal” imbalances for a country. The decentralization experience in the South Asian nations reveal that other than China it has remained in the evolution stage as the focus is more on electoral participation and transferring of resources/grants to the lower tiers of the Government. The evolutionary stage hypothesis gets confirmed with the fact that during 1990 to 2013, South Asia’s share in global poor population has risen from 27.3 percent to 33.4 percent. Individually these countries have been successful in significantly reducing the absolute number of poor people but the regional disparities in terms of basic services, health, education, income, consumption, ownership of productive resources continues to widen. Therefore the paper aim to explain the four functionings of decentralization and status of regional disparities in the context of selected south Asian countries, viz, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Fiscal decentralization appears as an effective tool in reducing the impact of these disparities in the Panel Data Analysis of 28 Indian states with Kerala and Tamil Nadu as the pioneer case. These states exhibit that effective fiscal decentralisation acts as a primary force for other three dimensions of decentralization to follow and therefore ensure better public service delivery.

Key words: Decentralisation, governance, local bodies, regional disparity, south Asia

28 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

TRANSBOUNDARY DISASTER GOVERNANCE BETWEEN INDIA AND NEPAL- AN OPPORTUNITY TO INCLUDE COMMUNITIES FOR LEVERAGING BENEFITS OF POLICIES Rajkumar Gade

India and Nepal, being part of same Himalayan ecosystem, both share benefits of natural resources, such as water and energy. Similarly, they also face challenges of floods, landslides and heavy erosion which affects both countries and has become prime concern for administration on both sides to tackle jointly the wrath of nature. Kosi river basin is such one example, between two countries, which has set a high standard of mature regional cooperation for more than a century for flood management. However, the cooperation between countries are at very high ministerial level for policy making and technical committees have been setup to provide solutions through infrastructure, which keeps people out of frame and sometime there is no scope for people to raise voice for concerns living in same river basin. The primary objective of this study is to explore a spectrum of opportunities available at sub national level for people’s involvement in flood management at transboundary level and leverage the benefits of policies on both sides. The methodology adopted is qualitative survey where group discussions and key informant interviews and observation techniques applied on both sides of the border in the Kosi basin. During the survey a huge array of people were consulted to understand the ground level issues of disaster management which was left out in high level cooperation meetings. It was evident that, both countries have managed to expertise on various subjects such as early warning, data management, infrastructure management, satellite applications in DM, disaster rescue forces and administrative planning for DRR is exemplary. The benefits of the success are still not reaching the communities on both sides, because of no interaction between communities and no mechanism available to share the resources. Loose Community forum have formed on both sides to discuss the practical needs and issues, but needs further support make them inclusive in decision making. An urgent need for framework on disaster risk reduction on basin level for communities between transboundary nations is felt necessary.

Key words: Disaster management, transboundary community forums, disaster risk reduction

29 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS’ RELATION IN LOCAL GOVERNANCE OF NEPAL Anil Kumar Gupta, Trilochan Poudyal & Sundar Shrestha

The relation between the politicians and bureaucrats is one of the central concerns of scholars of political science and public administration since the most influential scholarly essayof Wilson entitled 'The Study of Administration' (1887) and Weber 'Economy and Society (1922). Doubtlessly, success and failure of local government is heavily reliant on politicians and bureaucrats relation. Both, politicians and bureaucrats have realized that their role is viable and prominent for effective and efficient local governance. In this regard, we explored politicians and bureaucrats’ relation in changed socio-political and administrative setting of local governance. For this, we employed qualitative approach where case study was adopted as a strategy of inquiry in three local level institutions (rural municipality, municipality and metropolitan city) by conducting an in-depth interview along with observation in 2018. The result of the study shows that the relation between bureaucrats and politicians is directed by political ideology and administrative appliance. Bureaucrats are highly focused on rules, regulations, and procedure with professional interdependence while politicians are focused on development and welfare of local people. Hence, bureaucrats seem directly accountable to rule and regulation and indirectly to local people while politicians seem directly accountable to people as representatives. Politicians are conscious about rules and procedures for maintaining good governance but they also believe that these are not necessarily always applicable and valid in every situation. In contrary, bureaucrats reproached that politicians do not try to understand legal complications, technical hitches and limitation of bureaucrats.

Key words: Politicians, bureaucrats, rules, procedures and local governance

30 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

GOVERNANCE LANDSCAPE IN FEDERAL REPUBLIC NEPAL: CITIZENSHIP AND PRACTICING LOCAL AUTONOMY AT SUB-NATIONAL SCALE Tulasi Sharan Sigdel

This paper explores the patterns of power relations, social and political interaction, and power resistance at the grassroots. The goal is to look at how the formal and informal institutions, processes and practices shape and reshape the disposition of social actors in sub-national governance field in the light of federal set-up of governance. This explains the processes of how social and political practices have been negotiated with existing cultural ideologies of class, caste/ethnicity and gender. The local states have emerged as key sites of governance and are attracting the attention of a wide range of actors. I illustrate the local states as the ‘locus of struggle’ for both symbolic and material forms, and elucidate people’s own habitus, which reflects the understanding and practice of everyday democracy and governance at the grassroots. Critically engaging Bourdieu’s idea of ‘habitus and doxa’ to reflect local governance practices at sub-national scale in Federal Republic of Nepal, this paper shades light on everyday practices of enacting, negotiating and subverting the decision-making through formal and informal practices at local government. With evidences collected from multiple sites using ethnographic research methods, this paper concludes by highlighting the changing patterns of social and political relations, patterns of interaction and governance practices in a new federal governance landscape. This contributes to critically understand and engage of Bourdieu’s ideas of ‘habitus and doxa’ to understand the complexity of governance landscape and governance practices in Federal Republic of Nepal.

Key words: Habitus, sub-national governance, power-relation, democracy

31 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

Technical Session 6: Investment Environment and Market Expansion

TOURISM ENTREPRENEURS’ EXPECTATION FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN TOURISTIC CITY OF NEPAL: A CROSS-SECTIONAL ANALYSIS Niranjan Devkota

The roles of government remain crucial for the tourism entrepreneurship development worldwide. For regional tourism development of the specific touristic cities, government should understand entrepreneurs’ expectation and protect socio-cultural values. This paper explores entrepreneurs’ expectation from the new Federal Government to protect socio- cultural norms for promoting touristic city – Pokhara, Nepal. The purposive sampling technique was applied to source the information from the respondents resided at Pokhara. The research exploited structured questionnaire technique to collect data from 393 tourism entrepreneurs in order to explore their expectations from the newly formed federal government in Nepal. For the overall understanding of the entrepreneurs’ situation SWOT analysis was carried out. 85.5% of the respondents argued that the new government system has affected their business and 58.27% felt procedural complexities due to new political administrative system. The main strength of tourism entrepreneurship in Pokhara resulted as natural beauty, unique landscape and lakes, and en-route to adventurous destination – ABC but many of the respondents considered growing pollution and unmanaged urbanization, political instability and lack of security for the entrepreneurship as weaknesses. The good flow of the tourist and sustainability of the touristic city are opportunity and threat respectively. The entrepreneurs expect that newly formed federal government should provide business security, formulate appropriate tax policy and provision for business insurance scheme for smooth operation, growth and sustainability of their tourism entrepreneurship.

Key words: Entrepreneurs’ expectation, federal government, socio-cultural values, SWOT, touristic city, Nepal

32 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

CREATING INVESTMENT ENVIRONMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: A STUDY OF INDIAN INVESTMENT POLICIES Vaishali Pagaria

Investment policies of developing countries are very ambitious to attract foreign direct investment or domestic investment and creating an investment environment which brings state of art technology, skill and entrepreneurship with an ultimately goal of economic development of the country. The growth in economic development by involving national resources will bring sustainable development in the long-run. But it’s not easy as it looks. This research paper explores measures taken by Indian industrial policies for sustainable development with special emphasis on the foreign direct investment policy. The objective of the present industrial policy is to attract funds by various measures like creating ‘ease of doing business’ environment by regulatory and legal capacity for managing investment inflows, promoting and facilitation inclusive investment, attracting private investment in infrastructure, strengthening link between investment and trade and promoting responsible business conduct by enterprises. But getting investment is not enough; it must be sustained in the long-run. To achieve sustainable development, a developing country like India has to concentrate on the quality of investment received and not on quantity of investment. The investment must generate employment benefits, technology transfer and increase competitiveness and growth of domestic enterprises and industries.

Key words: Investment policies, investment environment, sustainable development

33 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

CHANGING POLITICAL ECONOMY OF REGIONAL INTEGRATION: A CASE STUDY OF BANGLADESH, INDIA, NEPAL AND PAKISTAN Monica Verma

South Asia has emerged to be the fastest growing region while at the same time it also remains the least integrated region in the world with intraregional trade accounting for just 5% of the total external trade. In 1990s, countries in the region abandoned the import-substitution industrialization model by enacting macroeconomic reforms that has led to an increase in their respective growth rates. As a part of the reforms, these countries also integrated with the global economy at a fast pace. However, this same dynamism has been missing at the regional level so far. This paper aims to study the international and domestic political economy of South Asia from a regional integration perspective. It seeks to understand the current challenges to growth process in the region and if regional integration can be a viable strategy to ensure economic development. It looks at Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan as key case studies to understand their current development trajectory and how integrating regionally may benefit them. The findings of this study paint an optimistic picture of integration in South Asia where challenges such as protectionism in traditional export markets and waning multilateral trade architecture are a threat to the growth rate of the region. But availability of a large intraregional market, economic dynamism in regional economies, tectonic shift in the centre of global economy from west to east are positively influencing the respective national choices with regards to regional integration. This study concludes by noting that the changing political economy has presented regional integration as a viable strategy for securing current growth rates and ensuring economic development in the region where the market and the state actors have started recognizing the importance of integrating economically.

Key words: South Asia, regional integration, political economy, economic reforms, economic development

34 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

PUBLIC CHOICE AND EQUITABLE ACCESS TO MARKET OPPORTUNITIES: RETHINKING REGULATORY APPROACH TO COMMUNITY OWNED BUSINESS SELLING HIMALAYAN NATURAL PRODUCTS Shyam Kumar Thapa

In the fast changing and globalizing world, national level policy choices are essentially bound up with transnational business processes and the degree to which local, marginalized and the poor can have access to market opportunitieswhich significantly shape the policy choices around equity and inclusive development. In this paper, we draw on the case studies of two Himalayan Bio Trade Pvt. Ltd. and Dabur Nepal Limited as a community owned business and multinational company to produce and market himalayan natural products from Nepal, exploring the impact of these businesses on expanding public choices towards inclusive economic development in Nepal. We conclude that the current regulatory approach does not fully recognize and indeed actively ignore the reality of globalization and the opportunities resulting from this to the community owned business or people seeking jobs. Both businesses have sought to enter a niche market - not developed and promoted by other groups previously, but are facing a number of regulatory constraints resulting from a conservationist, technocratic and top-down approach to environmental regulation and economic policies of the country. This paper also shows that a transnational approach to policy influence and deliberation is needed to support and promote regulations that can enable fairer and more equitable sharing benefits from the market.

Key words: Public choice, regulatory approach, globalization, economic policy

35 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

IMPACT OF DOUBLE TAXATION AVOIDANCE AGREEMENTS (DTAA) ON FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN NEPAL Bishal Kumar Chalise & Umesh Raj Rimal

This study aims at measuring the impact of Double Taxation Avoidance (DTA) Treaties on the inflow of Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) in Nepal. Countries enter into DTA agreement to avoid simultaneous taxation for the same income in multiple jurisdictions. DTA also creates enabling environment to attract FDI by sending the credible signal to an investor about stability, fairness, and acquire international recognition. Moreover, the spill-over effect of DTA is expected to transfer technology, generate employment, contributes to capital formation in receiving country via FDI inflow. However, DTA agreements come with various costs. Such agreements generally provide several tax benefits and concession to the businesses operating in the source country. This may result in huge revenue loss for the source country where the income was earned. Similarly, negotiating DTA treaties incur significant administrative resources. Nepal has received investments—regularly and intermittently—from 89 countries altogether since the 1990s at an average annual rate of nearly 290 million during the 1990-2017 period. The country has signed DTA with ten countries during the period. This study focuses answering if, and how much, of the flow of FDI can be attributed to the signing of DTA. We constructed a comprehensive panel database containing the annual flow of FDI from 88 countries for the period of 1990-2017 along with other factors that might affect the flow. We used pooled- OLS and panel fixed effect estimation methods for econometric analysis. The study finds that singing DTA agreement has had a positive impact on the inflow of FDI. Specifically, the country receives between NPR 91.90 to 216.54 million on average more FDI from countries with DTA agreement compare to other countries without such agreement. Besides DTA, bilateral investment treaties and diplomacy also plays a significant role in attracting FDI into the country.

Key words: Taxation, FDI, bilateral, pooled-OLS, fixed effect estimation

36 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

Technical 7: Contemporary Policy Issues in South Asia

SPORT POLICY AND GOVERNANCE IN BANGLADESH: IN SEARCH OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Saidur Rahman

Sports can unify a nation socially and culturally while operating within the national and international political economy. A variety of factors such as administrative arrangements, funding context, capacity for policy delivery and infrastructure development etc. can shape the success or failure of sport, though, in recent days, governments promote sports to reap immediate political advantage while also bringing social cohesion and economic benefits. Like many developing countries, where sports is still seen as less priority area behind poverty and unemployment, the government of Bangladesh facilitates and promotes sports by adopting policies (National Youth Policy 2017, National Sports Council Act 2018), establishing governance structures (national to local), allocating funds and building sports infrastructures (stadiums) etc. As a result, the sports governance institution, like the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), has shown their capacity and ability to manage and promote cricket successful in international level with utmost reputation. Whereas, unfortunately, other governance institutions like Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF), Bangladesh Hockey Federation (BHF) faced a gradual decline both in terms of performance and economic viability. In this paper, I explore sport governance, sports policy, and government strategies to understand the growth of BCB and the demise of BFF and BHF over last couple of decades. From key informant interviews and content analysis (of sport policy and newspaper reports), I seek to explore the governance issues and policy areas contributing to the success of cricket and the decline of football and hockey in Bangladesh. In addition, in this qualitative research, I would further look into the policy gaps and implementation challenges in sports governance and management in Bangladesh.

Key words: Sport policy; sport governance: Bangladesh; cricket in Bangladesh; football in Bangladesh; hockey in Bangladesh

37 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

GENDERS GAPS AND CITIZEN’S CONFIDENCE IN SOUTH ASIA Narendra Raj Paudel

Elimination of gender gap has profound effects on economic dividends. Bridging economic dividends between women and men creates trust among citizens. The more gaps in economics, social and political have greatly influenced in the generation of distrust between women and men. Its ultimate effect goes on democratic governance. As per Global Gender Index Report 2017, South Asia is the second-lowest scoring in gender gap index, ahead of Middle East and North Africa and behind Sub-Saharan Africa. On average, Bangladesh stood in the first position in South Asia i.e 47th rank out of 144 countries whereas Nepal in 111th, Pakistan 109th, India 108th, Bhutan 12th, Maldives 106th global rank. In this global ranking, Iceland stood at the first ranked whereas Yemen at the end out of 144 countries. South Asia adopted merit, quota and reservation inclusive policy to make women’s representation in public institutions politically, economically and socially. However, there is huge gap of women representations in the South Asian governing institutions. In this context, the research to explore gender gaps and its effects on citizens’ confidence is lacking in South Asian perspectives. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effects of socio-cultural factors, economical factors on public institutional trust in South Asia through using the trust data of Nepal (2015), Bangladesh (2016) and Sri Lanka (2017) produced by NORHED project. To draw inferences, percentage, correlations and regression models were employed. As per need, secondary data setson women’s representation at local and central government and civil services will be used to consolidate the study. Despite of patriarchic and authoritarian governing system in South Asia, the study shows that there is correlation in between socio-cultural, political and economic factors with the institutional trust in South Asia. When bridging the gap of socio-cultural and economic factors between women and men has result the institutional trust in South Asia. Consequently, its positive vibes goes to governance to set democratic governance without creating divided society between women and men.

Key words: Gender gap, institutional trust, quota and South Asia

38 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

PARADOXES OF DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN BANGLADESH: A CASE STUDY ON MANAGING AT THE TOP 2 (MATT2) Mohammad Rezaul Karim

In this age of globalization, development of a country largely depends on the mutual cooperation and supports from others. These supports usually come from developed nations and development partners through various development and technical projects. As a part of collaboration, the UK funded Managing at the Top 2 (MATT2) project was initiated to provide practical training to about 2000 top-level officials of Bangladesh Civil Service based on the experiential learning (EL) process. The EL process conceptualized as the understanding and developing of individual, organization, associated stakeholders and clients. This was a two- stage 1500 million-taka project in public sector and lasted from 2008 to 2013. The objective of the study is to analyze benefits and burdens of the project examining the purpose, process and results. This study employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches and is limited to human resource development project. The study found that as an expensive and wider initiative, it produced remarkable success. As an output of the result-based project, 305 performance improvement projects (PIPs) were developed and implemented by the bureaucrats in order to provide better public service delivery. These PIPs also contributed in bureaucratic business process by reducing tiers and taking innovative initiatives. Government employees were benefitted for practical knowledge on project preparation, skill development and, in addition, general people on various services. It was claimed that project achieved almost 100% successfulness in policy implementation. However, it brought burdens for the government and people as it produced unintended consequences. The study revealed that most of the PIPs lasted for the implementation period only and none of the PIPs was carried forwarded by the followers. Because only PIP initiators were the beneficiaries of financial gain and foreign exposure visits and no incentive or mechanism was included for the sustainability. The skills obtained by the PIP team members were not disseminated among the fellow colleagues. The study recommends inclusion of sustainability mechanism in the project that can be done through involvement of PIP initiators and implementing organizations as a regular process of organizational and individual development.

Key words: Development, projects, PIPs, experiential learning

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THE NEW POLICY REGIME OF NEPAL: PRIORITIES AND OPPORTUNITIES Bishnu Dev Pant & Ojeshwini Singh

After facing more than a decade long political turmoil, Nepal took its leap by restructuring the government into federal, 7 provincial and 753 local governments. This restructuring has strengthened the sub-national governments and has invested major decision-making responsibilities and created opportunities to the sub-national bodies. This has also increased people's representation in the decision-making process and has created new opportunities for inclusion of women's and other socially underprivileged groups through representation in policymaking. With these new responsibilities there has been large capacity gap related to the quality of service delivery in the field of health, education, infrastructure, connectivity, taxation, human resources and among others in lower levels of government. Given the context of Nepal's bureaucratic system under a federal structure, this study attempts to investigate the current state of governance system among the three sub-national governmental bodies to gain proper knowledge about public service delivery and new market opportunities that are open for the people. We explore the policy options to achieve good governance, which ensures justice, accountability, equity and promotes development. The study uses qualitative research methods and explores the history of political transition of Nepal, identifies the gaps within the sub-national government and draw solutions to fill in the gaps for better functioning. The findings and recommendations of the study is expected to contribute towards the institutional development of both federal and sub-national governments of Nepal.

Key words: Political turmoil, restructuring, public service deliver, market opportunities, decision-making

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PRESENTERS’ PROFILE (In case of multiple authors, the profile of presenting author is only included this book.)

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Anil Kumar Gupta [email protected] Mr. Gupta is working as a Training and Research Officer at Nepal Administrative Staff College since 2015 where he took a research managership for “Nepal National Governance Survey 2017/18" and Local Government Capacity Need Assessment 2018/19". Mr. Gupta delivers different training session on governance and development for the government officer of Nepal. Mr. Gupta holds MPhil in Development Studies from Kathmandu University. Annapoorna Ravichander [email protected] Dr. Ravichander is currently Head of Policy Engagement and Communication and Training at Public Affairs Centre, Bengaluru, India. She is an experienced professional with a demonstrated history of working in the education management industry. She is also skilled in nonprofit organisations, analytical skills, strategizing, communication, and event management. Bishal Kumar Chalise [email protected] Mr. Chalise is a Senior Program Officer at Niti Foundation, Kathmandu, Nepal. He provides support to Niti Foundation’s Strategic Advisory Group, which makes analysis, guidance, and recommendations widely available to policy-makers implementing federalism in Nepal. Mr. Chalise’s research interests include governance institutions and economic growth. Before joining Niti Foundation, he worked as a research consultant for the Nepal Administrative Staff College, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development. He has also served as Business Development Officer at Nepal SBI Bank Limited from 2008- 2012. He is currently also a visiting faculty member at the Kathmandu University School of Management. Mr. Chalise holds a Master’s degree in International and Development Economics with a focus on energy and climate policies from The Australian National University. He also holds a master’s degree in Business Administration from Kathmandu University. Dileep K Adhikary [email protected] Dr. Adhikari is Researcher, Trainer and Consultant in development management (policy and organizational studies). Previously he was associated with Nepal Administrative Staff College as Senior Director. He was also associated with Export Promotion Committee, Federation of Nepal Chambers of Commerce and Industry. Kasi Eswarappa [email protected] Dr. Eswarappa is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Tribal Studies, IGNTU Amarkantak, Madhya Pradesh, India, life member of Anthropological and Sociological Societies of India, editorial board member of South Asia Research and SAGE Open journals of Sage.

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Kedar Prasad Acharya [email protected] Mr. Acharya is PhD Scholar and has completed MPhil, MBA and MA from Nepal. He has more than 15 years teaching, more than 20 years administration experience in higher education. He has attended and published in several international conferences and is author two books in Nepal’s education system. Md. Saidur Rahman [email protected] Md Rahman is a Lecturer at the Department of Political Science and Sociology, North South University. He teaches courses on Political Science, Governance and Public Administration to undergraduate students. He is also involved in research on Social Movement, Climate Change Governance, Civil Society, Urban Poverty and Disaster Management. He has completed his Master of Public Affairs (MPA) with special focus on Policy Analysis and International Development from Indiana University Bloomington, USA under the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship. Prior to the MPA program, he completed his Master of Development Studies (MDS) from BRAC University securing higher distinction for which he was awarded Vice Chancellor Gold Medal in 2012. He also has a Bachelor of Science degree in Geography and Environment from University of Dhaka. His research interests include Policy Analysis; International Development; Non-profit Management; Climate Change; Disaster Management; Monitoring and Evaluation; Education; Migration. Mohammad Rezaul Karim [email protected] Dr. Karim is a professional trainer of Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre for developing human resources of public sector for 19 years. Educated in Public Administration from the University of Dhaka and in Human Resource Management from the Leeds University Business School of the University of Leeds, England, he did PhD in Policy Management at the Graduate School of Public Administration, National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), Bangkok, Thailand. He is an experienced researcher in the field of public administration. His recent research issues include work-life balance, gender equality at work, gender pay gap etc. He has twenty-eight articles on various issues in different national and international journals in his account. Monica Verma [email protected]

Ms. Verma is a PhD Scholar at South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi, India.

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Narendra Raj Paudel [email protected] Dr. Paudel is an Associate Professor at Public Administration Campus, Tribhuvan University. Prior to joining in the university, he served as a civil servant in the Government of Nepal. He has published in Journal of Social Affairs and Journal of Governance and Innovation and Research Process. He has also contributed more than two dozen articles in national peer- reviewed journals. He wrote two books- one published from Nepal and other from abroad. Recently, he also co-edited a book (Civil Service Management and Administrative System in South Asia) published by Palgrave. He has contributed book chapters published by Springer, Palgrave etc. His research interests include good governance, trust, administrative culture, social accountability, civil service management and policy implementation. He is also a member of professional organizations such as IPSA (2015-2018), IPPA (2017-2018) and PAAN (Life member). Niranjan Devkota [email protected] Dr. Devkota is an economist with the special focus on agriculture, climate change, tourism and cross border activities related issues focusing adaptation. He has over 10 years of experience in the field of economics related research with varietal dynamics. His recent research focuses ranges from development economics especially in agricultural development, tourism, cross- border activities and climate change. He received his PhD degree from Tribhuvan University Nepal. He has experience in impact analysis and model building. He has worked in terms to prepare strategic and implementation plans of several economic issues as a research associates. He has received high level training and capacity building workshop on international co-operation, natural resource management and trade related activities from several international agencies like UNESCAP, NDRC (China), SANDEE (ICIMOD), Hi-Aware (ICIMOD), SANEM (Bangladesh) and from esteemed organizations and universities (online mode). He has command over SPSS, STATA and R programming. Ojeshwini Singh [email protected] Ms. Singh holds a M.A. degree in Social Work (Women Centred Practice) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and a degree of B.A. (Honors) in Social Work from Jamia Millia Islamia-A Central University, New Delhi. She has worked in the field of social development in various agencies in India, as a core part of her academic curriculum. She has served as intern at United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, South and South- West Asia (UN-ESCAP SS-WA) in New Delhi, as Economic Affair Intern and undertook applied research project Review of Access to Energy and its Impacts on Socio-Economic Status of Women in South Asia. Currently, she is working as Social Affair Officer in Institute of Integrated Development Studies, Kathmandu, Nepal.

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Prasenjit Sarkhel [email protected]

Mr. Sarkhel is the Assistant Professor (Department of Economics) at University of Kalyani, Nadia, West Bengal, India. He has more than 11 years of teaching experience of undergraduate, postgraduate and supervision of masters, M.Phil. dissertations. His areas of interest are environmental regulation, non-market valuation, public policy evaluation, public economics and applied econometrics.

Rajendra Adhikari [email protected] Mr. Adhikari, is a Director of Studies at Nepal Administrative Staff College-NASC, Lalitpur, Nepal. He serves as the head of two of the centres at NASC, Centre for Governance and State Management and Centre for Development Policy Management. He holds graduate degrees, in Rural Development Studies from Tribhuvan University, Nepal and Public Policy and Governance from North South University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Mr. Adhikari is a public sector capacity building professional having command on training, research and consulting works in the areas of public policy management, governance, service delivery and institutional arrangements. In the recent years, he has extensively focused on the studies to support the Government of Nepal on structural, functional and institutional arrangements of different sectors as well as local governments, in context of restructuring the state and governance system and implementing federalism in Nepal. Rajkumar Gade [email protected] Mr. Gade is a DRR practitioner, working in the research areas of transboundary disaster governance and policies. Salahuddin M. Aminuzzaman [email protected]

Dr. Aminuzzaman is Professor and the Program Adviser, Public Policy & Governance Program, North South University. Having a long teaching experience of more than three decades, he also serves a sen- ior Professor at the Department of Public Administration, University of Dhaka. He also served as the Chair of Department of Development Studies, University of Dhaka. He has a long teaching experience of over three decades. Professor Aminuzzaman was a senior Fulbright Scholar. He has been a visiting Professor to a number of European, and North American universities. He is a Member, Policy Advisory Group (PAG), Ministry of Local Government, Government of Bangladesh. He also sits in the Editorial Board, South Asian Journal of Policy and Governance. He has published a number of books, including among others Governance and Development Management: South Asian Perspective (2018), Govern- ance in South, Southeast, and East Asia Trends, Issues and Challenges (2015), Governance at crossroads insights from Bangladesh (2013), Understanding Public Policy and Governance in Bangladesh (2012), and Governance and Development: Bangladesh and Regional Experiences, (2010).

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Sameer Kapar [email protected] Mr. Kapar is currently pursuing Doctorate in Education with the University of Toronto, Canada in Social Justice Education. He believes in Socrates’ dictum, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” As an educator, he feels that it is essential to nurture curiosity in students. This is the first step towards making them interested in social issues so that they learn about the world in which they live, their place in it, why things are the way they are and how they possibly could be different, and how they can be the social change agents and global citizens for a better world. As a Fulbright Scholar and with a doctorate in Information Technology, he advocated for providing access to information and appropriate usage of technology for poverty alleviation in Nepal. He feels that with technology and social justice education, Nepal can benefit a lot, and youths have a crucial actor in that process. Satyajeet Nanda [email protected] Dr. Nanda is working for more than decade on various development issues. He is mostly interested to work on socio-psychological theory of human behavior and political philosophy of development. Shilu Pradhan [email protected] Ms. Shilu Pradhan have pursued MBA from Apex College, Pokhara University, Nepal. Her interest areas include Human Resource Management, Economics & Psychology. She has worked in a business consulting firm for about two years. Currently, she is working asa Training and Research Officer at NASC. Shiva Hari Adhikari [email protected] Mr. Adhikari holds Masters in Public Administration with Award of Excellence from Seoul National University, Republic of Korea, and Masters in Demography (Gold Medallist) from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. He has been working in the Center for Project Management, Nepal Administrative Staff College since last 8 years. He is leading a Capacity Development Resource Center Project at Nepal Administrative Staff College. His interest area is anti- corruption, integrity and results based management. He is conducting training and research on the aforementioned areas. He is a Deputy-Director of Studies at Nepal Administrative Staff College. He has worked as a faculty at Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Nepal

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Shyam Kumar Thapa [email protected] Mr. Thapa is a passionate educator and researcher. His teaching assignments include management and economic courses like International Business, Business Environment, Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. He possess high level of motivation and is pro-active team player, organized, result oriented and driven leader with the capacity to take on a complex challenge and encounter them. He holds Masters Degree in Business Studies with specialization in Marketing from Tribhuvan University and undergraduate in Social Science with specialization in Economics and Political Science. He also worked as Daayitwa Public Service Fellow at Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security. His area of expertise and interests includes entrepreneurship and Innovation, International trade and investment, Public economics, Public policy analysis and Private sector development. Sumit Haluwalia [email protected] Sumit is a PhD scholar in the Department of Economics, Central University of Kashmir, Ganderbal, India. He is working on "Inclusion and Economic Well-being of Agricultural Labourers: An Empirical Study of Rural Haryana". He has completed his MPhil with research on ‘Socioeconomic Exclusion of Scheduled Castes’. He is interested in economic and inclusive development based studies. Sumit loves poetry and nature and lives in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India. Swati Jain [email protected] Dr. Jain is a fiscal policy researcher, working as Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Allahabad, and her research focus on governance issues and state’s budgetary behavior in contemporary economic framework of neo liberal regime; exploring the inter- linkages between the global financial and human capital flows and their contribution in the ongoing development process. Tarun Kumar Singh [email protected] Mr. Singh is PG - Psychology (OB), Gold Medalist from Dr. Hari Singh Gour University Sagar MPMBA (HR) Barkatullah University Bhopal MPB. He is doctoral candidate in University Bhopal MP in management . He has 20 years of working experience, out of which four years in All India Radio as announcer (Casual), three years in Media and the rest in education and training. He is member of American Psychological Association and an approved career counselor by Government of India, Ministry of Labor and Employment. He has a record of 10000+ students counseling and over 300 counseling sessions all over India.

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Tikeshwari Joshi [email protected] Ms. Tikeshwari Joshi possess master’s degree in Natural Resources Management and Environment. She has 10 years of working experience in research related to natural resources management. She has conducted research on climate change, governance, gender and inclusive economic growth, disaster risk, forestry and REDD+, ecosystem and ecosystem services, and water resources management. She holds both theoretical and practical knowledge on diverse aspect of forestry and NRM, climate change, gender and livelihoods. Tulasi Sharan Sigdel [email protected] Mr. Sigdel is Director of Studies at Nepal Administrative Staff College. He is doing research on Infrastructures of Democracy: State Building as Everyday Practice in Nepal’s Agrarian Districts, and Political Economy of Local Autonomy in Nepal. His research interests include democratic practices, local governance, development and cultural politics of state building from the grassroots. Vaishali Pagaria [email protected] Dr. Pagaria holds a PhD in management and a Post graduate in Financial Management, having experience of more than 17 years, working as academician and freelance management consultant. Over a period, she has gained diversified expertise in shaping career of management students mainly by enhancing personality, knowledge, attitude and employability. She acts as a think tank and innovator in designing students’ development training programmes based on the assessment and requirements that lead to better employment. She has also published research papers in international and national journals. As a freelance management consultant, she provides hand on management support to various NGOS/NPOs/CBOs/ SSIs on areas like proposal development, strategic management, financial and accounting management, monitoring and evaluation, capacity building, data management, research and documentation, training and development, MIS, etc. Varsha Pillai [email protected] Ms. Pillai, is a former journalist and has been in the development sector for the last five years and is currently Programme Manager, Policy Engagement and Communication with Public Affairs Centre, a not for profit think tank based in India. She is also pursuing her PhD and her research interests include gender advocacy, media and communication.

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SPEAKERS’ PROFILE

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Ajaya Dixit Mr. Dixit served as the Executive Director and currently serving as the Advisor at Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (ISET–Nepal), Kathmandu. Previously, Mr. Dixit served as a faculty at Institute of Engineering, TU Kathmandu and Nepal Water for Health among others. He has published extensively in prestigious journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly the most recent publication relating to Climate Change Vulnerabilities and Ecosystem-based Adaptation (2015). Mr. Dixit’s research interests include water economics, irrigation, hydro-electricity and related engineering and energy, disaster risk management, mainstreaming climate resilience and climate change adaptation. He has published extensively in prestigious journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly the most recent publication relating to Climate Change Vulnerabilities and Ecosystem-based Adaptation (2015).

Akhilesh Kumar Mr. Kumar is Director at Social Statistics Division, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India. He was member of a team to prepare SDGs baseline report for Government of India. The Social Statistics Division is entrusted with monintoring of SDGs progress in India and report to the United Nations. He has been part of Indian delegation to United Nations Statistical Commission to UN HQ Newyork. He also represented Government of Indian in different international forums to share progress on SDGs. Anukool Bhatnagar Mr. Bhatnagar is the Managing Director of Nepal SBI Bank Limited since November 2015. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Science, Master's Degree in History and is a Certified Associate of Indian Institute of Bankers. Mr. Bhatnagar started his career in SBI in 1985 and has held diverse portfolios in Banking-operation, Administration, Credit, Human Resources, International Banking and NRI business. During his illustrious career spanning 32 years in State Bank of India, he held several important positions. Before joining Nepal SBI Bank, Mr. Bhatnagar was DGM (B & O) at SBI, Administrative Office, Indore.

Arjun Bahadur Thapa Mr. Thapa is a Nepali diplomat and former Secretary General of SAARC. He served the Government of Nepal in different capacities including Foreign Secretary. Mr. Thapa also served as the Ambassador of Nepal to the United Arab Emirates (December 2007 –January 2012) and Deputy Permanent Representative/Minister Plenipotentiary, Permanent Mission of Nepal to the UN, New York (August 2006 – February 2007). Mr. Thapa has extensive knowledge of SAARC, BIMSTEC, South-East and Pacific regions.

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Balananda Paudel Mr. Poudel is Chairperson of National Natural Resource and Fiscal Commission, the Constitutional Commission mandated for preparing basic framework and policy of revenue sharing among federal, provincial and local governments. He also served as Chairperson of Local Level Restructuring Commission where he played key role in restructuring of local level that are serving as autonomous local units with Constitutional mandates. Mr. Poudel has also served in the Government of Nepal in the different capacities and took retirement from the position of Secretary.

Bhim Prasad Subedi Dr. Subedi is Chairman of University Grant Commission Nepal. He served as a professor of Geography at Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal. He is a Ph.D. in Geography (Population Geography), University of Hawaii, U.S.A, 1993. He also served as a member at Academic Council and Research Committee of Faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences, Tribhuvan University. Mr. Subedi is also a member of the Faculty Board, Faculty of Arts and Research Committee, School of Education at Kathmandu University. His major areas of specialization are migration and social and gender dimensions of population, social safeguards, ethnic diversification, population aging, and livelihood studies.

Bimala Rai Poudyal Dr. Paudel is Member of National Assembly in Federal Parliament of Nepal. She also served as advisor to the President’s Office and Member of National Planning Commission. She has extensive work experience on different portfolios at government, non-government and development organizations. She is also strong advocate of democratization of Nepal’s public sector governance and improving professionalism. She equally raises voices and writes regularly on women’s empowerment, public sector governance and development.

Bishnu Dev Pant Dr. Pant is the Executive Director at IIDS. Dr. Pant has over 30 years of national and international work experience. A Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute, Dr. Pant began his professional career at the Agricultural Projects Services in 1977 and served for 7 years. He served in the National Planning Commission (NPC), United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) in Bangkok, Asian Development Bank in Manila in different capacities. After taking retirement from the ADB in July 2008 he worked as Professor at the South Asian Institute of Management until he joined the Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS) in June 2010. An applied statistician with over 30 years of national and international experience, Dr. Pant has extensive management and leadership experience. He has managed statistical offices in international agencies, devised statistical programs for less advanced countries, undertaken evidence-based policy research and data analysis.

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Bishnu Prasad Lamsal Mr. Lamsal is Secretary at Office of Prime Minister and Council of Ministers. He has served as Member Secretary in the National Planning Commission, Nepal and as secretaries in different ministries and commission including Public Service Commission, Ministry for Defense, Ministry for Labour among others. As Member Secretary in the Planning Commission, he played key role in localization of SDGs in Nepal and developing framework for implementation. Mr. Lamsal has depth knowledge on Nepal’s development issues and public sector governance.

Bisow Poudel Dr. Poudel completed his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 2011. Currently, Dr. Poudel currently a visiting associate professor at Kathmandu University School and an economic advisor at International Labor Organization (ILO). Dr. Poudel previously worked at Office of Millennium Challenge Nepal (OMCN) and provided advisory services to the National Planning Commission (NPC) in the past. His areas of interest include labor economics, and natural resources economics.

Deependra Bahadur Kshetry Mr. Kshetry served as the Vice Chairman of National Planning Commission (May-October 2007). He has also served as the Governor of Nepal at Rastra Bank, the Central Bank of Nepal (January-July 2009). He was member of Nepal's National Development Council and Mid- Western Rural Development Bank and he had also chaired the Eastern Rural Development Bank. Mr. Kshetry has in-depth knowledge of Nepal’s economy, development issues, public and monetary policy. He is a strong advocate of expanding market opportunities for prosperity.

Dinesh Paudel Dr. Paudel is an Assistant Professor in the Sustainable Development Department at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, the USA. He received his PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota in 2012. One of his current research projects focuses in exploring the inherent relationships and complex entanglements between the rising Asian economies, growing environmental degradations and rapidly expanding rebellious politics in South Asia.

Hari Dhungana Dr. Dhungana is Associate Professor of Development Management and Administration in Nepal Open University. At NOU, he coordinates the program Master of Science in Development Management and Governance (MSDMG), and teaches courses including “Development Philosophy and Theories,” “Development Planning and Implementation, and “Ethics and Accountability”. He served as Governance Expert at Nepal Administrative Staff College (NASC) for National Governance Survey 2017-18 and led thematic paper on Integrity in Nepal: Transparency, Corruption and Accountability. He is also a member of Research Committee at NASC. He is also engaged in sectoral political economy studies in service delivery areas, such as on education sector and disaster risk reduction. His further engagements include political economy studies in river basin management, local governance, and study on governance system in general. 52 3rd Conference on Public Policy and Governance in South Asia

Hari Sharma Mr. Sharma is renowned political analyst in Nepal. He has served as Advisor to the President Office and Office of Prime Minister in Nepal. He also served as advisor to the President Office in Afghanistan. He has served in the government and academia in various capacities. He has years of teaching experience in various academic institutions and departments of political science such as Tribhuvan University’s (TU) Central Department of Political Science, Ratna Rajya Campus (TU), Kathmandu College of Management and the Kathmandu University Media Program. He was a Fulbright scholar at Cornell University from where he received a Master’s degree in comparative politics. He is the co-author of Political Leadership in Nepal and Local Leadership in Nepal. He has also contributed chapters to various books.

Jagadish Chandra Pokharel Dr. Pokharel received Ph.D. degree in Regional Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991. He served as Vice Chairman of the National Planning Commission (NPC) of Nepal two times between 2006-8 and 2009-2010 and in the capacity of Member of the same Commission for five years—1997-2002. During his tenure in the Commission, he was responsible for guiding country’s local governance policies as well as overseeing the implementation of devolution and decentralization policies of the country. His contribution towards designing of special and targeted policies and programs for remote areas, disadvantaged groups, and indigenous ethnic groups is well appreciated. Dr. Pokharel is recognized for his scholarly knowledge on economic policy and plan, development planning and public sector reform.

Lal Babu Pandit Mr. Pandit is serving as the Minister of Federal Affairs and General Administration since last March 2017. In this portfolio, he led the administrative federalism to ensure implementation of constitution federalism. He also served as Minister for General Administration in 2014 and played key role for reforming public sector governance in Nepal. Mr. Pandit has served in different roles and capacities in public sector reform and well received politician in Nepal. He also played role in Nepal’s Constitution making as member of Constituent Assembly.

Lal Babu Raut Md Raut is the first Chief Minister of Province 2, one of seven federal States in Nepal. He is the parliamentary party leader of Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal for Province 2. He is the first Madheshi Origin Nepalese Muslim leader of Nepal to become the Chief Minister. He was elected to the 2017 provincial assembly elections from Parsa-2(A). Earlier, he served as a member of the Constituent Assembly which promulgated the Constitution of Nepal 2015.

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Maha Prasad Adhikari Mr. Maha Prasad Adhikari is the Chief Executive Officer of the Office of the Investment Board, Nepal (IBN) since June 2016. Prior to joining IBN, he served as the Deputy Governor of Nepal Rastra Bank, the Central bank of Nepal. Mr. Adhikari, a career central banker for over three decades, has a profound experience in core central bank activities, including banking regulations, supervision and international finance. He has published several articles on banking regulations and on the implementation of capital framework in Nepali Banking industry. He has also served as the Director in the Boards of large public sector enterprises. He is also a chartered accountant qualified in 1993 from The Institute of Chartered accountants of India.

Mehnaz Rabbani Ms. Rabbani is an Economist by training and currently is Programme Lead for Research, Policy and Good Governance at BIGD, BRAC University. In her current capacity, she is leading research and capacity building initiatives focused on Innovations in Public Service Delivery. Mehnaz has worked both as an academic and a practitioner for almost 15 years. Prior to BIGD, she worked at Save the Children Asia Regional Office, where she has been involved in capacity building of research teams around the region, developing policies and guidance for improved research and knowledge management and development of country strategic papers. Before Save the Children Mehnaz was a Lecturer at McGill University, teaching Development Economics and Agricultural Economics at both undergraduate and graduate levels. She started her career at BRAC, as a Research Fellow. She is passionate about building innovative and effective ways of learning within the development and public sector, practical use of evidence based learning and strengthening networks for capacity building.

Min Bahadur Shrestha Dr. Shrestha is a Ph.D. in Economics from University of Wollongong, Australia was the Vice- Chairperson of National Planning Commission (NPC), Nepal since September 2016. Prior to joining NPC, Dr. Shrestha served at the Nepal Rastra Bank, the central bank of Nepal for 28 years where he served as the Executive Director for six years. He has led and conducted a number of research projects on central bank policies, financial economics and economic development. He has also served as the Senior Economist and the Visiting Research Economist at the South East Asian Central Banks Research and Training Centre based in Kuala Lumpur. Dr. Shrestha also worked as the member of Nepal country economist team for the US Millennium Challenge Corporation’s growth constraint analysis of Nepal. Shrestha holds.

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Mohan Das Manandhar Mr. Manandhar is the Executive Director of Niti Foundation and also leads the work within Niti’s ‘Energy Infrastructure and Hydropower’ thematic area. Mr. Manandhar also serves NASC as the Senior Academic Advisor to Nepal Administrative Staff College (NASC). Prior to his work at Niti Foundation, Mr. Manandhar was a policy advisor to the Government of Nepal’s National Inclusion Commission within the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet of Ministers. He was one of the designers of a research program ‘Social Inclusion Research Fund (SIRF)’ in 2006 to address the issue of exclusion. Mr. Manandhar also worked with the Ash Centre for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He served as a board member of the Government of Nepal’s Alternative Energy Promotion Development Board

Narayan Gopal Malego Mr. Malego holds Master of Public Administration, Bachelor of Law and Diploma in Public Administration. He has experience of working as a Secretary in various ministries (including Ministry of Home Affairs) of the Government of Nepal. He has served as CDO in different districts and as a Chief/Executive Officer of Kathmandu Metropolitan City. His areas of interest are local administration, decentralization, governance and service delivery.

Patrick Duong Mr. Duong is the Regional Advisor on Local Governance and Decentralization in the Asia and the Pacific, UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub. Since 2015, he has been working on ‘localizing the SDGs at the subnational and local level’. He has over 20 years of experience on local governance and decentralization both at policy and technical level. He advised Governments in a number of Chief Technical Advisor positions. Prior to joining the Regional hub, Patrick headed the UNJPLG-Somalia which is the largest global UN Joint Programme on local governance, including UNDP, UNCDF, UNICEF, UN Habitat and ILO. Patrick started his carrier working with NGOs and worked with DFID and the EU in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkan region and Asia. He also lectured international relations and international public law. Patrick is originally from Vietnam; he was born in 1967 in Morocco, grew up in several countries in Africa and studied in France where he obtained a Master in Political Sciences and another one in International Public Law (Université de Paris).

Potaraju Geetha Dr. Geeta is an Associate Professor at Institute of Public Enterprises (IPE), Hyderabad, India. She holds a Ph.D. in Management from University of Osmania, India. She has more than 2 decades of experience in management and development consulting. Her areas of expertise include Participatory Governance and Civic Engagement, Health System Strengthening, Administrative Reforms, Institutional Reforms, Organizational Behaviour, Change Management, and Capacity Building. In the IPE, Dr. Geeta coordinated a number of training programmes and workshops. She has extensively published on the areas of public policy, governance, accountability, citizen charter, public sector reforms/management, disaster and environmental issues.

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Punya Prasad Neupane Mr. Neupane has served as a Secretary for different ministries of Government of Nepal before joining as the Executive Director of NASC in 2010. He has been appointed as the Executive Director for the second term- for next five years in 2015. He holds Master of Arts and Bachelor of Law from Tribhuvan University. His areas of specialization are management, governance, decentralization, gender and social inclusion, conflict resolution and peace building.

Puspa Raj Kadel Dr. Kadel is the Vice-Chairman of National Planning Commission (NPC) of Nepal. Asa chairman, he plays a key role in 15th Periodic Plan of Nepal. Dr. Kadel is mainly responsible for overall coordination of Sustainable Development Goals along with macroeconomic, finance, economy, investment forum and M&E sector of NPC. He served as a professor in Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal. Dr. Kadel also served as the Chairman of Tourism Development Bank Limited and as a Director of Nepal Bank Limited. He holds a PhD in management.

Puspa Sharma Puspa Sharma is the Deputy Executive at South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE). He has been researching and publishing in the area of trade and development for the past 15 years. He has authored and edited research reports, book chapters, policy briefs, briefing papers and articles on trade and development issues, including on regional economic integration in South Asia. Mr. Sharma recently completed his PhD in Public Policy from The Australian National University. He also holds an M.A. in Economics awarded by the Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, and an M.A. in Global Finance, Trade and Economic Integration awarded by the University of Denver, Colorado. He is an alumnus of the Fulbright Programme and the Australia Awards Scholarship Programme.

Rajan Bhattarai Dr. Bhattarai has received his PhD in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He is currently serving as Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister of Nepal. He also served as member of Eminent Persons Group of Nepal and India to review past treaties between Nepal and India and submit recommendation for reform. Dr. Bhattarai has extensive knowledge in South Asian regional affairs. He is also an active politician and Chairperson of Nepal Institute for Policy Studies. He is author of a book ‘Geopolitics of Nepal and International Responses to Conflict Transformation (2005) and edited books on peace and securities.

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Ram Kantha Makaju Shrestha Dr. Shrestha is the Vice-Chancellor of Kathmandu University since 2012. He is also the founder director of Dhulikhel Hospital and one of the doctors registered with Nepal Medical Council. At Kathmandu University, he is the professor of Surgery at School of Medical Sciences. In addition, he has served Kathmandu University in different capacities such as Senator Member, Member of Board of Trustees, Member of Academic Council, Member of Executive Council, and Associate Dean, School of Medical Sciences in different time periods. Dr. Shrestha holds an MD from Austria.

R.K. Mishra Dr. Mishra, Senior Professor, Director and ONGC Subir Raha Chair Professor, Institute of Public Enterprise Hyderabad, a graduate of International Management Programme, SDA Bocconi, Milan, Italy. He has an enormous experience in teaching, research, management and so on. He is a member of the UN Task Force on International Standards of Excellence in Public Administration and Education. He is Vice President, International Association ofSchools and Institutes of Administration, Brussels. He is special invite on OECD Working Group on Privatization and Corporate Governance of SOEs and Asian Network of Corporate Governance. He is also a Member 'Panel of Experts on Reforms in Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs)' set up by the Planning Commission, Govt of India. Dr. Mishra has authored a great number of books and is on the editorial boards of many national and international journals, and publications brought out by publishers of repute from India and abroad. His areas of interest include Corporate Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainable Development, Public Enterprise Management, Corporate and International Finance.

Reshmi Raj Pandey Mr. Pandey is a Secretary of the Government of Nepal. He is one of the most profound advocate of decentralization and strengthening local governance and served in the then Ministry of Local Development for a long time as the Joint Secretary. Mr. Pandey also served as the Principal Secretary in the Office of the Chief Minister and Cabinet of Ministers, Province 3.

Sanjay Pulipaka Mr. Pulipaka is currently working as Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum Library (NMML). He was a Pavate Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, UK, and a former Fulbright Fellow in the Conflict Transformation Programme, in the United States. Sanjay’s areas of interest include Indian politics, India’s foreign policy, China, East Asian security issues, India-US Relations, regionalism and other related domains. Further, he has been closely following the political transition in Myanmar and conducted field research in that country and in Northeast India. He has substantive publication record with three co-edited volumes, policy reports, numerous research papers and Op-Ed essays. Sanjay also has extensive work experience with think-tanks and civil society organisations in India. He has considerable work experience in strengthening participatory political processes, governance frameworks and platforms for wider consultation.

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Shishir Dhungana Mr. Dhungana is Secretary at the Office of Prime Minister and Council of Ministers (OPMCM). He heads Economic & Infrastructure Development and Administration section at OPMCM. He has also served as Secretary (Revenue) in the Ministry of Finance. Mr. Dhungana has good knowledge of Nepal’s public administration, governance and economic reform. He has served in different capacities in a tenure of two decades in the Government of Nepal.

Srikrishna Shrestha Dr.Shrestha is a Professor of Public Administration and one of the prominent scholar of public sector governance. Dr. Shrestha served Tribhuvan University for more than 30 years and also chaired the Central Department of Public Administration. In addition to teaching, Dr. Shrestha provided advisory services to various ministries, public sector organizations and corporate institutions too. Dr. Shrestha writes extensively on public administration, governance and public management. Currently, Dr. Shrestha serves as the Chair and Chief Education Director of Institute of Business and Management Studies (IBMS), Kathmandu.

Sk. Tawfique M. Haque Dr. Tawfique is the Professor of Public Policy and Governance and the Director of ‘South Asian Institute of Policy and Governance (SIPG) in North South University (NSU), Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is also Chair of the Department of Political Science and Sociology of North South University in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is a Ph.D. in Public Administration, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh and did his Post Doc. in Public Administration from University of Bergen, Norway.

Sultan Hafeez Rahman Dr. Sultan Hafeez Rahman, a former Director General of Asian Development Bank (ADB), South Asia, is the Executive Director of the Institute of Governance Studies (IGS). Dr Rahman,a reputed economist, started his professional career in the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) in 1975. Throughout his professional career of 37 years, Dr Rahman has published on a wide range of economic issues. His current research interests are in the areas of economic growth and inequality, ‘green growth,’ macroeconomic policy, financial sector policy, governance and regional economic cooperation and integration. Dr Rahman obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University, USA.

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Swayam Sampura Panigrahi Ms. Panigrahi is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Operations Management from Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB), Odisha and awaiting doctorate upon the final submission of her thesis by July, 2019. She bagged the Best Paper Award in the WIPRO-XUB, Sustainability Summit held at Xavier University, Bhubaneswar (August, 2016). She was also selected for the MSME Fellowship by National Institute of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, NIMSME, Hyderabad, under the Ministry of MSME, Government of India (2016-17). She holds a degree as Master of Technology in Production Engineering for the Batch of 2013-15 from one of the premiere engineering institutes i.e., Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology (VSSUT), Burla (formerly known as UCE, Burla). She has been adjudged as the University Best Post Graduate in Dept. of Production Engineering during her M.Tech and was awarded the Silver Medal by the Vice Chancellor of the University.

Trilochan Pokharel Mr. Pokharel is Director of Studies and Center Chief for Centre for Research and Development of Nepal Administrative Staff College (NASC) and faculty of public policy and governance at NASC. He is the lead author of “Nepal National Governance Survey 2017/2018” and “Quality of Public Service in Nepal- Further Analysis of Nepal National Governance Survey 2017/18” published by NASC. Mr. Pokharel is Gold Medallist in his Master’s Degree and batch topper in MPhil from Tribhuvan University. He also served to Tribhuvan University and Pokhara University as a lecturer respectively. He is also a visiting faculty for 'Democracy and Inclusive Governance' at Nepal Open University. Mr. Pokharel has provided several consulting services to the Government of Nepal and public organizations on public sector reform. Currently, he is working with Gandaki Province for Organization and Management Survey and lead author of 'Handbook of Governance' (under preparation in Nepali). He is Managing Editor of Journal of Management and Development Studies, a peer reviewed journal published by Nepal Administrative Staff College.

Uddhav Pyakurel Dr. Pyakurel is PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India and currently serving as Associate Professor at Kathmandu University School of Arts, Nepal. He is also associated with Nepal Center for Contemporary Studies (NCCS). He contributes articles to journals and newspapers on contemporary issues of Nepal’s pubic governance and international relation. He is the author of ‘Maoist Movement in Nepal: A Sociological Perspective’ (2007).

Usha Jha Dr. Jha is a Member at National Planning Commission of Nepal since May 2, 2018. She has served as a faculty at the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science (IAAS), TU. Further, she is a proven development worker today with an experience of almost two decades. As a development worker, she has experienced working with Ministries, NGOs, INGOs, Donors, UN and National NGOs network group against AIDs.

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Yam Kumari Khatiwada Ms. Khatiwada is currently the Secretary at Ministry of Industry, Commerce and supplies for the Government of Nepal. She has been serving for more than 24 years in various capacities within the government. Prior to her current appointment, she was the Secretary at National Information Commission and Regional Administrator of Western Development Region of Nepal. She has also served as Joint Secretary at Industrial Promotion Division in the Ministry of Industry for more than seven years, dealing with the policy issues of the Industrial sector under various responsibilities such as project Chief of Special Economic Zone, National Program Director of Micro Enterprise Development Program, Chairperson of Cottage and Small Industrial Development Board, and Coordinator of Nepal Business Forum, among others. She has published many articles in several national media outlets on contemporary issues. Ms. Khatiwada obtained her Master’s degree in Public Policy and Management from KDI School of Public Policy and Management, South Korea. She has also completed MPA, MA and Bachelor’s in Law from Tribhuvan University Nepal.

Yubaraj Khatiwada Dr. Khatiwada is Minister for Finance, Government of Nepal since February 2018. He held the position of the Vice Chairman of the National Planning Commission of Nepal during 2015-16 and 2009-10. Further, he served as the Governor of Nepal Rastra Bank, the Central Bank of Nepal during 2010-15. He served the UN System as a Senior Economist in the Regional Centre of UNDP for Asia and the Pacific (2006-2009). He had served the government as a Member of the National Planning Commission, Government of Nepal from 2002 to 2005. He was Head of the Economic Research Department of the Nepal Rastra Bank from 1999 to 2002.

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CONFERENCE MANAGEMENT COMMITTEES

CONFERENCE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Chair: Narayan Gopal Malego Member: Trilochan Pokharel Member: Mohan Das Manandhar Members: Kamal Devkota Member: Kanchan Mani Dixit Member Secretary: Rajendra Adhikari

CONFERENCE SECRETARIAT Mr. Rajendra Adhikari - Nepal Administrative Staff College [email protected], Cell 00977-9841369243

Mr. Tara Prasad Kharel - Nepal Administrative Staff College [email protected], Cell 00977-9851241711

Ms. Roshani Bhujel - Nepal Administrative Staff College [email protected], Cell 00977-9851201046

Mr. Shashi Shekhar Acharya - Nepal Administrative Staff College [email protected], Cell 00977-9843634112

Mr. Sushil Thapa - Nepal Administrative Staff College [email protected], Cell 00977-9849419301

Ms. Anustha Shrestha - Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (ISET) Nepal [email protected], Cell 00977-9841218256

Mr. Kamal Devkota - Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS) [email protected], Cell 00977-9851194784

Mr. Bishal K. Chalise - NITI Foundation [email protected], Cell 00977-9851273555

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ORGANIZING INSTITUTIONS BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), Bangladesh http://bigd.bracu.ac.bd BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), BRAC University is a center of excellence in post-graduate education and policy research, as well as advocacy based on rigorous research. BIGD conducts multidisciplinary research under the four clusters namely, economic growth and development; policy, democracy and governance; gender studies and social justice; and urbanization, environment, and climate change. On the academic side, BIGD offers four Master’s degree programs in Development Studies, Governance and Development, Procurement and Supply Management (MPSM).

Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (ISET) Nepal http://isetnepal.org.np/ ISET-Nepal was established in 2001 as a non-governmental and not-for- profit organization to study and analyze developmental issues of rapidly changing social and environmental context that demand new insights into the emerging challenges to manage resources for sustainable development. ISET-Nepal envisions a society capable of addressing the emerging social and environmental challenges through the improved local institutional capacity to respond flexibly using innovative approaches and sustainable solutions as new issues arise.

Institute of Public Enterprises (IPE), India http://ipeindia.org Established in 1964, the Institute of Public Enterprise (IPE) was established as an autonomous non-profit society with the objective of furthering studies, research and consultancy in Management Sciences. IPE is devoted to systematic and sustained study of issues relevant to the formulation, implementation, review, monitoring, and assessment of policies and programs concerning public enterprises.

Nepal Administrative Staff College (NASC) http://nasc.org.np Nepal Administrative Staff College (NASC) is a national institution for the capacity development of government officials. For more than three decades, NASC has been involved in capacity building of administrators, development managers, and public service providers through various training programmes, management development programmes, research works and consulting services. NASC is also preparing to run academic programmes in public policy, development management, and governance.

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Niti Foundation http://nitifoundation.org Niti Foundation is a Nepali non-profit organization engaged in strengthening Nepal’s policy process through research, innovations, and alternatives. Niti Foundation’s goal is to promote the engagement of Nepalis in the policy-making process and the reformation of Nepal’s policymaking process into one that is democratic, responsive, informed and evidence-based.

North South University (NSU), Bangladesh http://www.northsouth.edu North South University (NSU), the first private university in Bangladesh, was established in 1992. It visions to be and remain a center of excellence in higher education with aim to gain recognition, nationally and globally and attract students, faculty, and staff from all parts of the world. NSU has a regional research and academic center with the partnership of four South Asian universities called Public Policy and Governance (PPG) program. Since the inception, it has drawn the interest of public sector professionals and researchers from Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. This program could modestly be claimed as one of the pioneering center in the South Asian region for higher learning and research on policy and governance.

Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS) http://www.sias-southasia.org/ Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS) was established in 2011 as an indigenous platform for advanced research and scholarly exchange in the South Asia region. It emerges from the pressing need to nurture and promote critical research, scholarship, and teaching in Southasia. It takes an interdisciplinary approach and specializes in advanced studies – research, scholarly publications and seminar series. As an endogenous initiative of the region, it will fill the critical gap in knowledge generation and capacity strengthening by cultivating and promoting more engaged practice of social science in addressing social and environmental challenges.

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