The Civil Service Bill was passed by the House of Representatives with much fanfare. It was agreed in the State Arrangements Committee that no constitutional or government appointment will be made for at least two years after resigning from the civil service or other government service or leaving the service.

However, the bill was passed by the House of Representatives with the provision that when the two-year 'cooling off period' is passed by the parliament, the employees who retire from the special or first category cannot be appointed to the post of constitutional or diplomatic and any other appointment made by the Government of Nepal.

This word 'except' made the 'cooling off period' not applicable to the joint secretary and secretary for constitutional and diplomatic or other government appointments. Therefore, the Chairman of the State Administration Committee, Ramhari Khatiwada, had to resign from the post due to the bullying done by bending the Parliament. This bill is being discussed in the National Assembly. However, the question of restructuring of civil servants has been ignored by the parliamentary discussion.

In democratic countries, civil servants are considered as permanent government. The political leadership and the party that reach the government through the elections keep changing. Their priorities, policies and plans may differ when they reach a different leadership or party government. However, the bureaucracy, which is the main part of the executive, is conducting the permanent power.

Therefore, not only the political leadership, but also the bureaucracy has a very important role in the advancement, development and progress of a society or country. The main agent of the transformation of the state is the personnel mechanism, so the extent to which the bureaucracy is responsible, accountable, transparent and pro-people affects the socio-economic transformation or progress. Naturally, the main responsibility of the country's progress or disaster is the political leadership, but the bureaucracy that holds the reins of permanent power in the state's services is equally responsible.

slogans of good governance and bureaucracy 

Good governance and prosperity has become the tago of most political leaders. These themes have become the mandatory theme of most of the leaders' speeches. However, in practice, the Nepali people are forced to fall into the net of misrule and corruption. According to a study conducted by the Prosperity Institute of the UK in 2023 on 167 countries, Nepal is ranked 110th in the list of prosperity. On the other hand, extreme corruption is happening in Nepal. Nepal ranks 107th out of 180 countries in Transparency International's 2025 corruption list. These statistics confirm that the slogan of good governance and prosperity has failed in practice. 

Economically, the government of Nepal is drowning in huge internal and external debt. Vedic debt alone is about 14 billion, while the government of Nepal's The annual budget of 2082/83 is 19 trillion 64 billion 11 million. On the other hand, remittances are an important source of Nepal's economy. Remittances contribute about 26 percent to Nepal's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Millions of people of Nepal are going abroad and doing hard work and sending remittances. However, uncontrolled large-scale corruption is taking place even with the amount of remittances, foreign loans and subsidies. Basically, such corruption scandals happen with the collusion of middlemen, political leadership and employees who are often in decisive roles. In the parliamentary debate on the Civil Service Bill, the issue of massive corruption within the bureaucracy and its end should have been given priority. There is not much debate and discussion on this issue in the parliament. 

It is the role of civil servants to responsibly implement the laws, policies and programs of the state. The bureaucracy is also responsible for facilitating the exercise of people's rights and providing policy support to the state to address their expectations and needs.

The people are also getting service from the bureaucracy which is naturally responsible, accountable to the people and truly functioning as a servant. However, if we look at the general trend of bureaucracy, people cannot easily enjoy services and facilities without the help of intermediaries and financial transactions. It not only makes a mockery of the slogan of good governance of the state, but also increases people's anger and mistrust towards the government. 

There is a lot of corruption in development projects in Nepal. If one takes a deep study of the government offices from the local level to the central government that looks after the development programs, it is easy to see that the network of corruption has spread in most of the offices. From the selection of the DPR, the contract, the procurement process and even during the monitoring of the completion of the project, there are incidents of small and large financial transactions. In some places, even before the coming of the budget, there have been cases where unplanned budgets have been allocated through transactions with the contractors.

Millions of citizens are forced to pay unnecessary bribes in offices such as customs, cargo, transport, where there is more business. Political leadership, personnel administration and conscious citizens know the fact that a part of civil servants are directly involved in all these activities.

Such serious questions that have a direct impact on people's daily lives did not appear anywhere in the parliamentary discussion of the Civil Service Bill. Why are people's representatives ignoring such a serious issue when the civil service bill is being discussed? Not giving priority to such important issues when discussing the civil service bill is helping to save the corruption, irregularity and bribery in the personnel system, which is contrary to the expectations of the people.

Nepotism and nepotism are the basic characteristics of the Nepali state. In order to receive services from the state, citizens have to have access to or relationship with a political or economic power, family or kinship and need to be cheated is still widespread. In a democratic system, citizens should be able to easily enjoy their rights and services from the state.

is to help and facilitate the work of the people by the employees who are assigned to serve the people by taking salaries and allowances from the citizens' taxes. In most of the government offices, the customers have to suffer a lot. However, the work of accessors, middlemen and relatives is easy. It should be considered ironic that the issue of ending such a practice and creating conditions for people to get services easily is not raised in the discussion about civil service. 

The Civil Service Bill provides for removal from service or dismissal. The bill includes the subject of dismissal in case of criminal charges related to corruption, which will disqualify them from government service in the future. Theoretically, it is positive that such a provision is made in the bill to make the civil sector free from corruption, accountable to the people, transparent and accountable.

The issue of corruption within the bureaucracy may not come out unless there is a system for regular monitoring of corruption by civil servants and strict action is taken if corruption is found. For example, it is necessary to make public the declaration of assets after entering the civil service, to investigate the ownership of one's assets every five years after entering the service, and to strictly punish those who are found to have acquired unexpected wealth or committed corruption. However, such matters do not seem to have entered the Civil Service Bill. 

Civil Service Restructuring

It has been about 8 years since the practice of federal structure started in Nepal. Although the political debate on state restructuring was widespread, there was no necessary debate and discussion on the restructuring of the civil service, an important part of the state's operation. Due to lack of organizational, psychological, cultural and practical restructuring of the civil service, federalism has not been implemented effectively.  To break the story, a high-level governance commission has been formed under the coordination of Prime Minister KP Oli. Although it is said that the commission has been formed with the aim of making the service simple, accessible, fast, responsive and effective, there is no possibility of doing much work in the study and restructuring of the overall civil service. The civil service is still centralized. The chief secretary of the state is appointed by the union, while the employees of the ministry should also be responsible to the union. Therefore, the restructuring of the civil service to suit the federal system is necessary for the effectiveness of the federal system. A detailed study on the implementation of federalism and the restructuring of the civil service Unionization of the bureaucracy is the need of the moment.  Another important aspect is the restructuring of management psychology in the

personnel system. Basically, the bureaucracy is the servant of the people. It is the responsibility of the employees to provide services keeping in mind the expectations and needs of the people. However, from a trend perspective, government psychology dominates within the personnel system. There is still a tendency to consider the ruler more than serving the people. It is necessary for the state to make an action plan for the transformation of the government attitude inherent in the bureaucracy. 

Likewise, the civil bureaucracy, like other government systems in Nepal, is inefficient. After the introduction of reservation system in civil services in 2064, the representation of women, Dalits and marginalized communities has gradually started to increase. However, decisive roles within the civil service are dominated by a single caste. A few women and a few indigenous tribes have started to reach the ranks of influencing policy making, while Dalits, Muslims, Tharu and marginalized communities have rarely reached those positions.

As long as one caste and community dominates, on the one hand, the bureaucracy will be indifferent in the formulation or implementation of policies that address the concerns of oppressed and marginalized communities, while on the other hand, there is a danger that the bureaucracy will be imprisoned within the circle of certain interest groups. As soon as the political leadership, decision-making staff, contractors and suppliers of a project belong to the same community or relatives, there is a greater possibility of political and economic irregularities in collusion.

When staffing is diverse, it can help break down collusive supply chains and monitor irregularities. Not only this, whether it is during policy making or service delivery, diversity in the personnel system can play a role in making policy arrangements according to people's expectations and facilitating service delivery. Therefore, it is impossible to establish good governance without inclusive governance. 

Dominant classes and communities continue to seize opportunities in the civil sector. The conspiracy of not giving reservation in promotion to the group who entered the civil service through reservation is also a product of this. It has not become an easy environment for people who got reservation at the lower level during service entry to reach the policy making level of civil administration through regular process. If there is no system of reservation in internal competition and there is no filling of positions in higher positions from outside, the possibility of the marginalized community reaching the policy making level of the civil sector is very low.