SANGAM

Highly Analytical
Sangam Prasain

The book under review reflects Krishna Hari Banskota’s decade-long contributions to the country financial and administrative sectors.
As a reformist among civil servants of Nepal, the writer has given a glimpse of the country’s civil service sector and various challenges associated with it.
Being a dedicated civil servant, the author has offered a conceptual orientation to policymakers, planners, and politicians that the otherwise customary administrative system in Nepal could change for the better. But this requires a lot of zeal and enlightened thoughts.
Penned as a ‘compilation or collective work’, the book features a number of contributions of the writer. He has tried to inject a new lease of life to the traditional Nepalese bureaucratic system. The work constitutes a separate and independent thinking of a government official, who is fully dedicated to his duties and responsibilities.
The research-oriented book depicts the writer’s quests and specializations and media observation on him. It shows his untiring efforts to make reforms in the country’s civil service.
His endeavours towards modernising the lifeless government departments and offices have proved that nothing is impossible.
His inquiry into the impact of the country’s good governance, operational of financial health, local bodies, customs, tax reforms and the role of promoting strategic management deserve appreciation.
As a popular saying goes: where there is a will, there is a way, one after reading the book may conclude that the very adage is applied to him.
Appreciating his works, erstwhile Finance Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai has commented, "He (Baskota) always tried to tailor them to those to whom he spoke, promoting so far as possible the revolutionary consciousness and socialist instincts of his colleagues. That is yet another reason without even mentioning why it has been hard to delineate the writer as a reformist."
Baskota’s Economic Development: Thought and Analysis is much more based on national economics that lends a more contemporary flavour to local economic development.
Indeed, it adds brief treatments of the following topics: challenges and possibilities of nation’s development, local public finance, and planning perspectives, reformist personalities, country’s budget and challenges, customs services, love affairs, honors among others.
The subject matter of the book is divided into three chapters. The book is endowed with 14 sections in the first chapter, which incorporates the writer’s views and reviews published in the local newspapers on his working experience and honors he deserved from his extreme toil to uplift any government departments and offices.
The book starts with a sketch of his endeavours to reform the Department of Commerce, under the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies as mentioned by a local newspaper. The honor of his service and his great dedication towards the department assumes his efficiency to improve administration in rapid development giving it a new lease of life.
Similarly, acknowledging his reforms oriented style in different challenging departments gives him a complete credit that any hypothesis rooted on ‘Nepalese administration is impossible to reform’ can be completely removed. Loyalty and dedication are the words that could be coined as part of his life, a newspaper admires his work.
The other part of the chapters incorporates his success story that edifies some critical economic principles on the customs reforms measures. His leadership in the department has enhanced the organizational performance by building image and increasing revenue collection. His result oriented work in the customs department has been well admired. He deserves the service honor.
The second chapter broadly presents the theoretical foundations of good governance and its challenges and opportunities in the context of Nepal. This chapter deals with the fundamental bases of good governance in respect to the political, management and ethical values.
Statistical concepts and techniques, development of models, region-wise balanced growth, role of administration in rapid development, strategies for optimal utilization of scarce resources, uncertainty and decision making, finance and national income etc are well defined in this chapter.
The authors have presented 29 sections, literature in this chapter, which provide the guidelines to the planners.
The third chapter deals with his published interviews. It has 37 sections giving a multiple glimpse that immediately hits core material to local political economics, business development, and regional input-output analysis. The writer has designed the chapter that encompasses discusses of region importance-strength analysis, a critical component of industry, transparency measures, budget targets and his working experiences with some genuine economic players and ministers.
Most of the chapter is appropriately devoted to explaining such notions as ‘improving tax administration’, ‘political climate’, ‘business climate’, ‘budget and gender issue’, ‘budget allocation’, ‘pro-public budget initiative’, ‘governments effectiveness’, ‘budget target’ among other characteristics as an ideal and pragmatic application through the interview.
This interview section is almost strictly a lesson on public taxation and the allocation of government budget, and less on ways in which the government can induce local economic development.
This book attempts to meet the professional, administrative and academic needs, and develop the competence of the new and experienced officers, and other executives of the Government departments, public sector undertakings etc., by presenting the various topics in a proper order.
It offers a number of formulas, examples, models, their analysis and references, along with a proper treatment of the subject. Thus, the book can be viewed through an analytical approach that could benefit the organizations, planners, politicians and the students as well.