Strengthening Decentralised District Development - Participatory Planning and Monitoring System

Strengthening Decentralised District Development
- Participatory Planning and Monitoring System

After several decades of talk about decentralisation in Nepal, local level planning is still very "centralised." With the promulgation of the Local Self-Governance Act (LSGA) 1998 by the government, there is now scope for development to be devolved and decentralised in the country. With the introduction of the Regulations for LSGA, the stage is set for the DDCs and VDCs to exercise more authority, and responsibility that comes along with it, to develop their villages and districts. It was in preparation for this ‘decentralised’ scenario that PDDP has been advocating the institutionalisation of participatory development process in the districts. The Programme focussed its efforts in making the DDCs efficient and capable of handling devolved, autonomy, and to wean it away from the trend of looking towards the ‘centre’ for the delivery of ‘development’ packages.

The task is a challenging one, for although all local level sectoral agencies in the districts know that development programmes should be based on people’s needs, and that they must be approved by the District Council through the DDC, most agencies have their own processes for identifying and selecting development projects and programmes. These institutions interpret the notion of decentralisation as being applicable to local bodies like the DDCs only. People’s participation is also interpreted similarly. Consequently, policies and practices that were developed with good intentions for local development did not function as targeted. In most districts, the function of the District Council, the people’s forum, had been largely reduced to "rubber stamping" the plans of the sectoral agencies. Planning followed implementation in these districts, contrary to the planning cycle. This kind of isolated sectoral approach to development resulted in weak or missing functional linkages among various sectoral issues and between rural and urban sectors of the economy as well.

PDDP implements the Participatory Development (PD) approach introduced by the former Project on Supporting Decentralisation in Nepal, which lays stress on planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and management of development programmes at the district level with the DDCs in conjunction with the VDCs, sectoral line agencies, and the community organisations. PD thus converges national level development policies and village-level problems and the potential of development at the districts level, and creates an environment in which talents and resources available at the community level for local development are supplemented by those available at the district and central levels.

In order to make the districts’ development efforts more effective, the Programme has been laying stress on all DDCs developing periodic plans and long-term strategies and goals. The LSGA too has outlined for the local authorities at the district and village levels to have long-term vision and goals to guide their development activities. It is only when the local authorities have a clear vision of where they want their district to go, how and when, that they can take a more integrated approach to development.

PDDP has introduced a participatory planning and monitoring process in the districts, which presents a shift from the traditional resource-based planning system to a need-based one. Thus local bodies who earlier used to be limited to formulating programmes according to grants allocated to them from the centre with very little say in the programmes of the sectoral agencies, are now actively participating in preparing integrated plans for the districts by incorporating relevant programmes of the line agencies as well.

These plans are sifted through several tiers from the community to the district council level, and at each level the programmes are analysed, sorted and listed according to priority with the help of information database/GIS maps. Active representation of all related local-level agencies and organisations is sought to prevent duplication of efforts. To ensure the sustainability and effectiveness of development programmes, PDDP stresses on close monitoring and evaluation of on-going projects as well. Similar to the planning process, the monitoring process also takes place at every tier in the local governance system.

The planning process in the district starts with the Pre-Planning Workshop, which provides sectoral guidelines to representatives of the DDC, VDCs, sectoral line agencies, NGOs and other users for the next fiscal year. During the workshop the participants are familiarised with the Project Request Forms, which are then distributed to the VDCs.

The Project Request Forms at the VDCs are filled up by the communities, who list out their development needs according to priority. These forms are then forwarded to the Village Advisory Council Meeting. The Meeting analyses and discusses the programmes listed in the project request forms, sorting them into two categories: one is a list of programmes the VDC can manage out of its own resources, and the other for which it needs district level support. The meeting then endorses and recommends sector-wise prioritised plans for the next fiscal year, and forwards the prioritised list to the Ilaka Level Workshop.

At the Ilaka Level Planning Workshop, selected members of the several VDCs that fall within the Ilaka, along with district representatives of the sectoral line agencies and NGOs, gather together to study the projects requested from their VDCs. Through these participatory workshops, each Ilaka prepares a prioritised development plan that represents the plans and projects approved by the VDCs, together with the technical advice and input from the line agencies.

During these workshops competing priorities of adjacent villages and the priorities of the line agencies are matched with the limited resources available so as to produce a realistic draft development plan. This plan is then forwarded to the four sectoral committees of the DDC for further refinement.

The Ilaka workshops give the village level leaders exposure to the realities of available budgetary resources and the technical constraints on the projects. Conversely, they also provide the unique "face-to-face" interaction between the line agency representatives and the knowledgeable local leaders to discuss about the proposed sectoral projects for the area.

Feedback from the field has shown an extremely promising response to the Ilaka Level Workshops. Local authorities have said that the participatory interaction between the beneficiaries, line agencies and local authorities have turned these workshops into unique and vital "screening" tools. It was seeing the usefulness of the Ilaka workshops that Achham and Baglung DDCs have established Ilaka-offices.

The prioritised list of programmes from the Ilaka Level Workshops is next screened by the four sectoral committees of the DDC. These Committees are responsible for formulating and monitoring programmes that fall under their respective sectors: the Social Development, Infrastructure Development, Forest & Industry/and Agriculture sectors. The Sectoral Committee Meetings, which are attended by the DDC members, as well as representatives from the related sectoral line agency representatives, NGOs and user groups, carefully analyse the programmes forwarded to them from the Ilaka Workshops, and incorporate relevant proposals from the user groups and line agencies into their sectoral development plans.

Some DDCs, realising the importance of these Sectoral Committee Meetings, have started to hold them periodically, instead of just prior to formulating the district development plans. These districts have reported that such meetings, where government officials and development workers gathered around and voiced their problems and their concerns, helped to improve the relations between the officials and the DDC members, and also helped to generate ideas on how to solve problems in the district.

The sectoral development plans prepared by these Sectoral Committees are next submitted to the DDC Coordination Committee for further discussions. The Committee’s job is to integrate the sectoral plans into a single District Development Plan (DDP) to segregate the programmes to be implemented by the district-level institutions, from the central-level programmes, as well as to screen the programmes for any duplication. The proposed DDP is then reviewed by the DDC before being submitted to the District Council.

The District Council, attended by elected people’s representatives in the district and Line Agencies, deliberates on the proposed plans and budget for all the sectoral line agencies for the upcoming fiscal year. After a couple days of discussions, and necessary readjustments, the Council finalises a prioritised DDP and forwards it to MLD and the line ministries through the NPC for incorporation into HMG’s district programmes and annual budget.

The DDP is a comprehensive package that includes a general background of the district, its situational analysis, illustrated by resource distribution maps, relevant data, and also includes policy outlines for each sectoral agency with locational details as well.

This year after NPC received the DDPs, a meeting was held at the Secretariat and the districts’ plans were forwarded to the concerned line ministries and departments with the directive that they should consider those plans while formulating their programmes and budget for next year.

As important as the planning cycle is the district’s implementation and monitoring & evaluation mechanism. PDDP lays stress on the participation of the people and the local bodies in evaluating the performance of the implementing agencies. The DDC, therefore, monitors and evaluates the performance of the implementing agencies backed up by information provided by beneficiaries in the field through a participatory approach. Like the layers of programme planning, their evaluation and monitoring also follows the "trickle-up" system from the grassroots level to the district level.

The monitoring and evaluation process starts with the Ilaka Review Workshops where members of various user groups, DDC officials and representatives of the line agencies measure the actual progress of the projects implemented in the previous years.

Like the Ilaka planning workshops, the Ilaka Review workshops, have also received extremely positive response from the district officials. It is said that the face-to-face interaction between the implementing agencies, the DDC and the grassroots people has created a platform for sound communication between them. These workshops are also excellent forum for the general public to participate and monitor the local development efforts being carried out in the district.

The next tiers in the monitoring and evaluation process are the Review Meeting of the Sectoral Sub-Committees, and the DDC’s Annual Review Meeting.

In 1999 the PD process was practised in the 20 programme districts by following the PDP steps like review at Ilaka and district levels, Pre-Planning, VDC Council, Ilaka Planning Workshop, DDC Sectoral Committee and District Council Meetings. All the functioning Programme DDCs prepared the district plan documents in time (March 1999) and submitted them to NPC and MLD for consideration while finalising the district programme and budget for the fiscal year 1999/2000. After reviewing these plans with the concerned Line Departments, NPC issued instructions to all the Ministries and Line Departments to incorporate these plans in their programming and resource allocation for fiscal year 1999-2000. On an average 70% of budget volume (as compared to 60% last year) proposed in the DDPs through PDP process has received central funding. This shows that the bottom-up planning process adopted by the districts is being recognised by the central level sectoral line ministries and departments. (see charts).

The plans that trickle up from the settlements have been finding funding from various sources. At every tier efforts have been made to link up plans with resources/donors. These kinds of linkages are more apparent in the plans emanating from socially mobilised VDCs... those where PDDP is implementing Village Development through Social Mobilisation Programme (VDP). Many plans prioritised by the communities in such villages and incorporated in their Village Development Plans have found funding either at the village or district levels. Those that cannot be funded are ‘percolated’ up to the next source of resources. (see examples of projects that were linked to alternate programmes/resources).

The districts all organised orientation programmes on Participatory Development Planning to the VDC Chairmen, Vice Chairmen and Secretaries as well as representatives of district line agencies, heads of political parties, members of parliament, Chief District Officers (CDO), and the LDOs.

Palpa and Kailali, where PDDP started implementation in late 1999, reported that they conducted orientation on PDDP and the Participatory Development approach in three stages. First was the orientation to the DDC body, next to the chiefs of different line agencies and the third orientation was provided to the representatives of the INGOs working in the district.

The DDCs used the pre-planning workshops to orient the VDC and DDC authorities on participatory planning & monitoring process. The Workshop also provided the participants with information about organisation structure, policy and directives of the GO and NGO development agencies, nature of work and projects/programmes demand process and criteria. Besides these they were also given orientation on the programmes of the DDC and VDCs, and the duties and responsibilities of the DDC members and VDC authorities as per the DDC & VDC Act.

Pyuthan reports that their pre-planning workshop was held in the district with a participation of over 150 people from the DDC, VDCs, line agencies and NGOs. Prior to the workshop the participants were provided with decision of the previous year’s District Council, directives of NPC and copies of district perspective plan prepared some months ago.

Dailekh, where the Programme started in 1999, reports that the pre-planning workshop was participated by more than 200 people including members of Parliament, DDC body, VDCs, Mayor of the local Municipality and line agency representatives. The workshop started with line agencies and INGOs presenting about their activities for the next fiscal year.

The Report from Myagdi says that the VDC Council was held in all 40 VDCs of the district. In the Councils, the VDCs finalised the programs and projects to be implemented through their own resources and also prioritised the projects for which external resource was needed.

Parbat reports that the VDC Councils were held in all VDCs of the district. The DDC Chairman stressed that a blanket approach of distributing the development budget equally to all settlements of a VDC should be discouraged in VDC Councils and they should be encouraged to prepare long term plan to achieve optimum use of the resource input.

Ilaka planning workshops, the next step towards preparing District Development Plans, were held by all districts. The DDCs set out guidelines and procedures of Ilaka workshops as per their need and convenience. In most of the districts the Ilaka Planning Workshops, as the Ilaka Review Workshops were conducted by the DDCO with the involvement of the POs and the DDCO Planning Staff.

Bhaktapur reports that the DDC’s ownership over the programme was "ensured as Rs. 2000 for each Ilaka workshop was borne by the DDC. Similarly other necessary expense for conducting the workshop was also borne by the DDC."

Achham DDC has provisioned for the establishment of an Ilaka member office in every Ilaka thus institutionalising the Ilaka planning and review workshops as a major step in participatory bottom-up planning process.

Kaski DDC reports – "In order to increase the participation of line agency chiefs, the DDC organised a discussion programme several months before the planning process started. The discussion concluded that not more than two Ilaka workshops will be held in a week to allow line agency chiefs to participate without hampering their work schedule too much." And reports from Dang DDC state: "The Ilaka planning was divided into two sessions. In the first session, the concerned line agencies and NGO representatives presented their annual programmes and budget. In the second session, the participants were divided into four groups, with line agency representatives as the facilitators of each group and the prioritisation of the projects was done." In the workshop, it was also noticed that some of the line agency representatives did not come with written progress report. So, a decision was made that from the next time, all the concerned parties would be sent a letter a week before the workshop to come equipped with programme and budget in black and white.

DDC Syangja held Ilaka Coordination Workshops in the district. The main objective of the workshops was to develop coordination amongst VDCs falling in an Ilaka. Respective Ilaka members were given responsibility of holding the workshops. The workshops held in every Ilaka came with a conclusion that the development activities would be carried out in the future in more coordinated ways.

The plans prioritised by the Ilakas were screened by the DDC’s sectoral committees. Myagdi DDC reported: "All four Sectoral Committee meetings were held under the coordination of Ilaka members. The meetings further improved the prioritised projects from the sectoral point of view and also worked on avoiding duplication of activities. After the meeting, sectoral draft reports were submitted to the DDC Planning Coordination Committee, and after refinement, the Committee then submitted the draft District Development Plan to the DDC."

All the districts have held their District Councils and given final shape to the District Development Plan (DDP) that had come through various tiers of planning process. After this, the DDPs were been sent to the NPC for inclusion in the Red Book.

An analysis of the DDPs submitted by the districts shows that on an average 70% of budget volume (as compared to 60% last year) proposed in the DDPs through PDP process has received central funding. This shows that the bottom-up planning process adopted by the districts is being recognised by the central level sectoral line ministries and departments. (see charts)

While Achham DDC writes that their DDP received 67.3% central funding by budget volume, Bhaktapur reports that sectors like drinking water and irrigation received almost 100% funding, and even other sectors received 80%-90% central funding. Tanahun DDC says that more than 68% of the plans incorporated in the DDP found their way into NPC’s Red Book.

While Banke DDC reported that 61% of the projects incorporated in the DDP by budget volume had received central funding, Syangja reports that only 25% of the total projects (by budget volume) were incorporated in the Red Book.

The Ilaka Review Workshops have once again provided the villagers the opportunity to interact directly with representatives from various implementing agencies. The workshops gave the people the opportunity to participate and monitor local development efforts being carried out in their districts. Participation of line agency representatives in ilakas was mixed. Some districts reported excellent participation, while some complained about their lack of presence.

Table 1: Comparative Analysis of the Proposed and Approved Programmes for F.Y. 2056/57

S.N.	Offices/Sectors	Endorsed by DDC		Listed in the Red Book		Approved Percent
S.N.	Offices/Sectors	No.	Budget	No.	Budget	NO.	Budget
1	Ministry of Agriculture	3	8047	3	7750	100	96.3
	District Livestock Development Office	2	3322	2	4241	100	127.6
	District Livestock Development Office	1	4724	1	3509	100	74.0
2	Ministry of Forestry	3	8745	3	3982	100	45.5
	District Soil Conservation Office	1	1800	1	1796	100	99.6
	District Forest Office	2	6945	2	2186	100	31.5
3	Ministry of Education	3	16557	3	13443	100	81.2
	District Education Office	3	16557	3	13443	100	81.2
4	Ministry of Industry	1	1995	1	1526	100	76.5
	Cottage and Small Industry	1	1995	1	1526	100	76.5
	Development Committee
5	Ministry of Transport	9	6500	9 (3)	3200 (300)	100	49.2
	Regional Road Division	9	6500	9 (3)	3200 (300)	100	49.2
6	Ministry of Health	20	10600	14(1)	5170	70	48.8
	District Health Office	20	10600	14(1)	5170	70	18.8
7	Min of Housing and Physical Planning
	District Drinking Water Office	2	17500	2(7)	15375 (4000)	100	87.8
8	Ministry of Water Resources	6	55311	6	36706	100	66.3
	Nepal Electricity Authority	3	12300	3	9000	100	73.2
	District Irrigation Office	3	43011	3	27706	100	66.2
9	Ministry of Local Development	14	20260	14	13476	100	69.4
	District Development Committee	13	18500	13	12250	100	69.0
	Women Development Section	1	1760	1	1226	100	69.7
	Total	61	145514	55 (4/7)	100628 (4307)	90.1	69.1

Syangja reports that the DDC held a Review Workshop on 30-31August. All sectoral line agency chiefs and Ilaka members were present at the workshop. The chiefs of the line agencies presented the progress of their respective programmes for the fiscal year 2055/56. They also clarified the issued raised by the participants. There after, all participants shared their experiences and learning on the development programme implementation and agreed on ways of coping with the problems. The sectoral line agencies came to a conclusion that all of their programmes should be implemented in close coordination with each other. In the meeting, all sectoral line agencies pledged that they would compulsorily participate in the upcoming planning workshops. The meeting also decided that it would meet once every quarter.

The Ilaka Review meeting held for the first time in Parbat learnt that the record of three years showed that most of the VDCs were not able to make an optimum use of the fund annually allotted to them by the government. Most VDCs seemed to be having a tendency of selecting projects haphazardly. Similarly, the workshop also noted that there was lack a of communication among the NGOs, VDCs and elected representatives (especially MPs) regarding development programmes in the VDCs.

The report from Rupandehi says that the participation of line agencies in Ilaka level review workshops was low.

Pyuthan reports that it held the district level review meeting on 8 February. As there was no elected body the preceding year, the line agencies gave a briefing about their progress. Similarly the DDC’s annual review meeting was conducted on 23 and 24 August at the DDC meeting hall. In his closing remarks to the workshop, DDC Vice Chairman, Mr. Hari Prasad Dhakal said that most of the problems identified in the last review meeting had not arisen again.

The DDC has also formed a Project Monitoring Sub-committee under the coordination of DDC Vice Chairman to oversee the project implementation in the district. The other members of the committee are: DDC’s four sectoral committee coordinators and line agency chiefs (as necessary). It has been decided that DDC’s Planning Officer serves as the member secretary of the sub-committee.

Similarly, Myagdi reports that the two-day review meeting conducted by the DDC reviewed the development programmes being run by the government and non-governmental organisations.

Kavre reports that the DDC organised a mid-term review meeting of the district on 28 and 29 October. The VDC Chairmen, Secretaries, representatives of the local municipality and district line agency chiefs participated in the meeting. On the first day, the line agency chiefs presented their progress reports. The next day, the participants were divided into 16 groups (15 Ilaka and one municipality) and the review workshops were held for each Ilaka and the municipality.

As per the LSGA, the DDCs and VDCs have to prepare periodic plans. The DDCs too, having completed various cycles of annual planning and review, have begun to realise that to achieve a meaningful development achievement that truly satisfies the needs of the most needy, the districts should have long term vision. The DDCs have been assisted in their strategic planning exercises by ADDCN with financial support from PDDP. The ADDCN has helped the DDCs conduct workshops participated by all the stakeholders involved in district development activities. Some districts, which had already undertaken strategic planning exercises of their own accord have been assisted by ADDCN in refining and fine-tuning their long-term plans.

Thus Kaski and Parbat DDCs have finalised their five-year strategic plans, and Kavre and Rupandehi have prepared draft strategic plans for their respective districts.

A series of 5-day strategic Planning Workshops were organised in Achham, Chitwan, Dang, Mustang and Parbat under the facilitation of the ADDCN. The DDCs bore the cost for the district-level logistics of the participants who included representatives from district-level line agencies, NGOs, political parties, private sector organisations, DDC and Municipalities. (see long-term visions of various PDDP-supported districts)

Following the workshops, working committees were formed to coordinate all the stakeholders involved in the preparation of the strategic plan scheduled to be completed by Magh 2056 (Jan/Feb 2000). The committees formed five other specialised sub-committees in order to complete the tasks in time.

Palpa reports that the DDC has formed a long-term strategic planning committee under the chairmanship of DDC Chairman. The DDC, PDDP and LISP/Helvetas have decided to work together in preparing the long-term plan.

Achham DDC has also prepared a 20-year Strategic Plan of the district following a 5-day district-level participatory strategic planning workshop. Similarly, Dang DDC has also prepared a 20-year plan of District Roads. Currently necessary information is being collected. Myagdi DDC has formed a 9-member committee under the chairmanship of the DDC Chairman to formulate the long and short-term sectoral development strategy and vision for Myagdi district. Likewise the District Council in Syangja has approved a 20-year Master Plan of Roads under the Rural Infrastructure project (RIP). The plan includes the construction of 11 dirt rural roads to be constructed by users’ committees and the routine maintenance and rehabilitation of seven rural roads.

Meanwhile, Pyuthan DDC also completed a 2-day workshop of Strategic Planning for designing a 5-year perspective plan for the district. The POs moderated the workshop.

After several years of continuing the participatory planning process, the DDCs have now realised the importance of periodic plans for steering their districts towards sustainable development. Now more and more districts are undergoing strategic planning workshops and working out their long-term visions and goals. With their visions in place, the districts’ yearly planning cycle will always be geared towards that long term goal, and development activities will also be more integrated. And it will also not matter who is at the helm at the DDCs, for their direction will be the same.

The slight disenchantment that local authorities were going through, at the futility of bottom up participatory planning, when the line ministries carried out parallel planning exercises, will most likely be mitigated out now that the Local Self Governance Act and its Regulations have been promulgated. The programme has realised that the local authorities need to be oriented on the provisions of the Act and its Regulations, such that any ambiguities and inconsistencies can be addressed and tackled with effectively.

The challenge for the Programme in making local participatory planning more effective is for it to rely on authentic data. DDCs, VDCs and the community organisations need to be familiarised with the use of resource maps, GIS maps, so that planning becomes more ‘visual’. The capacities of the DDCs need to be further enhanced so that their skills of project selection and appraisal -- on the basis of social, economic and environment benefits -- are enhanced.