Shiv Prasad Neupane, chairman of Likhu Tamakoshi Rural Municipality-6 of Ramechhap, wrote a letter to Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on May 11 and expressed his pain that the village is empty.

He wrote, 'All the population is outside the village. The government should arrange for them to stay in the village. A community school has been built in the village. There are no students. My ward has a population of 6,344. But the budget is only 40 lakh rupees. The rural municipality allocates a round budget without looking at population, geography and revenue. The government should create an environment for the people to live in the village.'

A ward chairman who directly connects with the people at the ground level appealed to the Prime Minister to solve the problem of empty villages and not to let the empty villages become empty any more, to return the people who have gone out to the villages. After Nepal adopted the federal democratic system, there are 761 governments in three levels in the country.

Among them, grassroots citizens have less access to the federal and state governments. Because that government basically works at the policy level, the local government is also the place where citizens' daily needs, recommendations, complaints, and quarrels are expressed. There are 753 such governments. But below this there is another elected structure 'Wada'. Anyone who wants to identify themselves with the name of 'Sarkar'. Wards in the hilly areas, which have the capacity to provide 38 types of legal documents to the citizens, are in trouble because of 'empty villages' and the wards in Terai and urban areas are in trouble because of 'full villages'.

Rising migration, simmering despair

Commentaries filled with despair among ordinary people are rampant in society. Many people seem to be unhappy with themselves. As a vivid proof of this, the graph of increasing suicides in recent years has also confirmed it. Various studies have also identified excessive human migration as a cause of despair. Migrants are also highly ambitious in nature. They want to look/appear to have a more advanced lifestyle than the place they left behind.

As people change their address, their lifestyle changes. When people don't meet the changing lifestyle and reality, that's the point where frustration begins. Hemraj Thapa, Ward Chairman of Ratnanagar Municipality-16 of Chitwan, who participated in the gathering of ward chairmen organized by CPN-UML in Godavari, Lalitpur, in the second week of May, said that there are too many people migrating to his ward and they are in the clutches of many disappointments.

In a conversation with this columnist, Thapa said that because the ward does not have the capacity to fulfill all the aspirations of the people who are migrating, they are spreading a negative perception towards the 'ward government'. The ambitions of stable settlements and their inhabitants are not unnatural. People living in such places consider even small changes as achievements. 

Home to the largest number of migrants in the country, Kathmandu is the epicenter of both hope and despair. Convincing the new people who come every day is like an iron chin for the people's representatives here. In the experience of Prem Thapa, the ward chairman of Kathmandu Metropolitan City-3, there are more people who have migrated than Raithane in Kathmandu. They give different results in every election.

While listening to ward presidents, staying in hotels in Kathmandu or the city has been presented as the theme of 'Buddhi Bilas'. But it has created unimaginable social and legal complications in the villages and inner societies. Ward chairmen are trying to save remote villages from being destroyed.

On the other hand, it is this Jamaat that is sowing the seeds of frustration because the ward chairpersons of the urban and Terai areas are unable to address their aspirations. The society is also facing the above political or administrative discomfort about the social, political and legal difficulties that arise when people focus on only one geography. 

Difficulty in the formation of consumer committee

Dhading's Jamalukhi rural municipality-1, which is under the grip of external migration, has become a legal complication to work through the consumer committee due to the decrease in households and population. Up to 20/30 consumer committees should be formed in the ward at one time. The law does not allow a member sitting in one committee to be repeated in another committee.

Even in that case, the officer who manages the bank account cannot sit in another committee. Citizens above 60 years of age cannot be included in the consumer committee. It has been said that what can't be done, migration has made the compulsion to do that. Even if the same person cannot sit in the consumer committee repeatedly, there is an obligation to keep him in the committee to increase the number.

Due to foreign employment and migration to the city, there is a majority of the population over 60 years old in the village. There are consumers available in the village, and the village governments and ward governments are running by placing them in the committees. 

Migration has not only reduced the population, it has also reduced the number of voters and the amount of money going to villages. The terror of wild animals including monkeys has increased in the village. Ward presidents know how to solve it, but they don't have the power. Therefore, they want to ask that the municipality, state and federal government also recognize that migration is not only a problem of the ward, but also the root problem of everyone. 

did not become a political core issue 

Shivkumar Karki, the ward president of Sindhupalchok's Tripurasundari-3, considers migration to be the main issue of politics. He believes that the people living in the village should be made leaders to sustain the village politics. Because of the leaders who stay in the city and run the party committee in the village, the fabric of the people and the party has loosened.

It is happening that Tathabatha enters the city and takes the position of the village. In some cases, the contemporary political understanding of the people in the village may be low, so the politics there has weakened. Those who build a house in the city and go to the village to do politics have become like guests. Local politics should be taken out of the hands of immigration as they cannot properly identify the problems of the people and do not make high-level efforts to solve them.

The voter list of the leader who moved from the village to the city is in the village, but in the census, they were counted in the city. There is a provision in the constitution to determine constituencies according to population. The Finance Commission disburses federal government grant aid based on population.

Since the census, the census counts the place where a person has lived for more than 6 months. For this reason, strange facts have been observed in some places where the population is less than the voters. Will the declining population and immigration become the main issue of politics? The day politicians realize migration and its socio-political impact, it will become the main issue of politics. 

If the politician joins the production, his workers are also motivated to do such work. Even if five leaders start a small enterprise, at least 25 people get employment there. Which reduces foreign employment to a certain extent. There is a habit of labor. If the local municipality arranges promotion and marketing, the farmers can produce with confidence. The earthquake of 2072 and the covid-19 have also played an important role in making the farmers divorce from the agricultural system.

After the earthquake destroyed the house, there was a flood of relief. which induced man not to labor. A few years after that, the covid epidemic spread. Even at this time, donors of various names brought relief to the villages. This also encouraged the farmers to become dependent by leaving their fields barren. To change this attitude, connecting the farmers with the agricultural system can be the first step towards stability of the village population. Otherwise, after leaving the village and entering the city, the concern of the village will wake up and there will be no lack of teaching the villagers to farm. 

Village revitalization concerns are not addressed unless population and migration are core concerns of the state. In the demographic cycle, births increase the population, deaths decrease it. But migration simultaneously reduces and increases population. Politicians should know. When the people decreased, the voters also decreased, the workers decreased, the size of the assembly also decreased. This is why constituencies gradually decrease. Municipalities are merged. After that, the field of politics will also decrease.