SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Visit to Central Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Management, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Wednesday 30 November 2005

Web page: http://www.pactu.edu.np/

The Public Administration Campus is one of the 61 campuses of this very big national university spread out all over the country. The campus is housed in old houses surrounding a courtyard in central Kathmandu.

The Department had organised a big meeting for us with about 50 participants, and we were heartily received by a delegation from the students union before entering the main auditorium.
Most of the participants were teachers and students of the department, some of them with a background in Political Science.

They first informed us about their activities, which is focussed on a masters programme with various types of administration taught (general administration, local, financial and development administration). They admit about 500 students each year for these two year programmes, but the ‘output’ is only about 50 %, with many dropouts due to part time studies. Many of the students are already working in administrative jobs, and many of them are transferred outside Kathamandu.
There are altogether 50 teachers and 18 visiting professors in the Department, catering to about 1 000 students.
Research interests are wide within the field of administration, for example:

• All forms of administrative specialisation
• Labour relations
• Gender development
• Social policy

• Dr. Shree Krishna Shrestha (photo to the left), Head of the Department expressed high ambitions for the research in the future, once the current political crisis had been overcome. The multilingual and multiethnic situation in Nepal should offer a rich field for collaboration with foreign institutions interested in the study of cultural transition to modernity. This would also call for inter-disciplinary research of various kinds. Other important topics for research, that he thought the department should engage in, was poverty reduction, inclusion of marginal groups and the revitalisation of social movements.

Research programmes and projects

• NGOs in development. A programme in collaboration with the Dept. of Management Studies, Tampere University, Finland, and University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Our host Dr. Tek Nath Dhakal (photo to the right) himself wrote his doctoral dissertation on this issue at the University of Tampere in Finland in 2002 (The Role of Non-Governmental Organisations in the improvement of Livelihood in Nepal. Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 868). He has also recently edited an anthology on this topic, published in New Delhi. More information on Dr. Dhakal’s personal web page.
• Good governance (with Japanese cooperation).
• Conflict resolution. Collaboration on this issue is carried out with the Dept. of Administration and Organization Theory, Bergen University, Norway. A Memorandum of Understanding between the two departments was signed in January 2005, during a visit to Kathmandu by Professor Ishtiaq Jamil, Bergen University.
• Restructuring the Timber Corporation in Nepal.

• Krishna P. Pokharel, Professor of Political Science, is studying the current political situation and publishes articles regularly in Himal, the famous Nepali/English language magazine.
• Mrs. Sabitri Aryal is doing a PhD study of women’s micro-finance groups in two villages in the Kathmandu valley. She is registered with the Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya university in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India.
• Mr. Thakur N. Dhakal, National Programme Manager, Support for Peace & Development Initiatives, UNDP, Kathmandu. Mr. Dhakal plans to conduct research on civil society peacebuilding and write a book on it. He is therefore looking for possibilities of linking this effort with international conferences or journals. 

Other persons with whom we interacted at the meeting, and at a dinner reception organised by the Department of Public Administration in the evening at a Kathmandu restaurant:

Associate Professor Ratna Raj Niroula
Mr. Ganesh P. Adhikari, Lecturer in Sociology
Dr. Chuda Raj Upreti, Professor of Political Science. He is also Chairman of the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (RONAST) at Tribhuvan University, and former Chairman of the Tribhuvan University Service Commission.
Prof. Mahendra Narayan Mishra, Center for Development Studies, National College, Kathmandu University
Dr. Govind Prasad Dhakal, Executive Director, Local Development Training Academy, Jawalakhel, Lalitpur, Kathmandu