By Our Reporter
When the government unveiled its 100-point governance reform agenda at its first Cabinet meeting on March 26, it set high expectations. Good governance, transparency and corruption control were the key agenda. The promises were ambitious: investigate the assets of public office holders, build an integrated digital asset record system, restructure the National Vigilance Centre, introduce a National Integrity Policy, free public administration from political interference and digitize key public services.
Four months later, the record is mixed. The government has started some processes and formed new committees, but many of the reforms it promised remain stuck at the starting line. This has created a growing gap between what the government claims on paper and what citizens can actually see and experience.
The most visible step so far is the formation of a five-member high level committee led by former Supreme Court justice Rajendra Singh Bhandari to investigate the assets of political leaders and senior public officials. Under Point 43 of the action plan, the first phase will examine those who held public office between 2062/63 and 2082/83 BS, before moving to senior figures who held high office between 2048 and 2061/62.
The committee has been given the authority to collect documents, analyze evidence and make recommendations. The government has also pledged to carry out the investigation impartially and act on its findings. That is a significant commitment. But forming a committee is the easy part. The real test will come when politically powerful people face scrutiny and the government has to decide whether the same rules apply to everyone.
That question has already begun to haunt the government’s anti-corruption campaign. The government has faced criticism for allegedly following an “arrest first, hear later” approach based on complaints. The concern has not come only from the opposition. RSP lawmakers have also questioned the tendency to arrest individuals before first establishing the facts behind an allegation.
His criticism goes to the heart of good governance. Fighting corruption does not mean weakening due process. A government cannot claim to defend the rule of law while allowing accusation to become a shortcut to punishment. Investigation must come before judgment, and enforcement must follow evidence rather than political pressure or public excitement.
The main opposition Nepali Congress has raised a related concern, accusing the government of applying double standards in investigating wealth and corruption. It argues that the government’s zero tolerance slogan has not been matched by equal scrutiny of its own ministers, senior political figures and influential individuals. The Congress has also alleged political pressure on the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority.
These are serious allegations, even if the government rejects them. Good governance depends not only on whether the law is applied, but also on whether the public believes it is applied fairly. If opposition figures face swift action while those close to power appear to receive political protection, every anti-corruption campaign begins to look selective.
The government’s own progress report has made this contradiction more visible. On July 4, Prime Minister Balendra Shah’s government gave itself 87.2 percent for governance reforms in its 100-day report card, claiming that 70 of its 100 commitments had been implemented and work was underway on the rest.
That may look impressive on paper. But citizens do not experience governance through percentages.
They experience it when they visit a government office, wait for a passport, seek a citizenship document, deal with a public official or try to get a complaint heard without relying on political connections.
On that test, several promises remain incomplete. The integrated digital asset record system, which was supposed to be operational within 100 days, has yet to come into service. There has been no clear public progress on restructuring the National Vigilance Centre or introducing the National Integrity Policy and the Second National Anti-Corruption Action Plan.
The pledge to free public administration from political interference has also failed to move at the promised pace. The government said it would introduce the Federal Civil Service Bill within 45 days and remove party affiliated trade unions from public administration. Four months later, the bill has still not reached Parliament and remains under review at the Ministry of Law.
The delay matters because this was not a minor technical reform. Political interference in the bureaucracy has been one of the most persistent problems in Nepal’s governance system. Every government promises a professional and politically neutral administration. Few are willing to surrender the influence that political control over appointments, transfers and institutions provides.
The digitization agenda has also produced uneven results. The government promised integrated, faceless, time bound and trackable services for citizenship, passports, national identity cards and district administration offices. Some steps have been taken, but the experience on the ground remains far from seamless.
Long queues at the Department of Passports in Tripureshwor, particularly among young people applying for jobs in South Korea through the Employment Permit System, show the limits of reform when systems are not backed by adequate capacity and planning. A digital policy is not successful simply because the word “digital” appears in a government action plan. It must make the citizen’s experience easier.
The opposition has also accused the government of politicizing appointments and allowing political influence to continue under a new name. That criticism cuts particularly deep because the government came to power promising to break from the political habits of the past.
This is the central challenge for Shah’s government. It cannot claim to be different merely because it uses a different vocabulary. Committees, action plans and report cards can create an image of activity, but they cannot replace institutional change.
Four months is not enough time to transform a deeply entrenched governance system. The government should not be judged as a failure simply because every promise has not been completed. But four months is enough to show direction. And so far, the direction remains unclear.
The government has taken some steps, but it has not yet produced the kind of change that citizens can clearly feel. Its report card may say 87.2 percent, but governance is not a school examination where the government gets to mark its own answers.
The real report card sits outside Singha Durbar, in government offices, courtrooms, police stations and the daily lives of citizens. Until the law is applied equally, public institutions work without political pressure and reforms move beyond announcements, good governance will remain a promise measured by the government and a result still missing for the public.
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