Smarika of kalidevi

My Model of Education in Nepal

Education in its general sense is a form of learning, in which knowledge, skills, and habits of a group of people are transferred from one generation to the next through teaching, training, research, or simply through auto-didacticism (self-directed learning). Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels or acts.

Until a few decades ago (Rana regime in Nepal), education was reserved for the children of aristocratic and wealthy families. Only few teachers were erudite scholars. Ordinary children i.e. vast majority of children, were obviously not given such an opportunity. Education in that period was exclusively for children of aristocrats and of wealthy families. Modern education in Nepal began with the establishment of the first school in 1853; this school was only for the members of the ruling families and their courtiers. Schooling for the general people began only after 1951 when a popular movement ended the autocratic Rana family regime and initiated a democratic system. In the past 55 years, there has been a dramatic expansion of education facilities in the country. As a result, adult literacy (age 15+) percentage of the country has increased rapidly in short decades in spite of hurdles relating to educational policies and system. Despite of satisfactory outcomes and examples of success, there are problems and challenges. Education management, quality, relevance, and access are some of the critical issues of education in Nepal. Societal disparities based on gender, ethnicity, location, economic class, etc. are yet to be eliminated. Resource crunch has always been a problem in education. These problems have made the goal of education as challenge for the country. The Ministry of Education is the apex body in our nation which is responsible for initiating and managing education activities in the country. The Ministry of Education, assisted by the State/Assistant Minister, provides political leadership to the Ministry. In my way, interacting and holding huge gatherings with intellectuals and educationalist of Nepal, who has lot of experience, determined, has vision and mission to achieve the goal of education in Nepal.

Before planning for any model of education, we should deal with several questions such as “what is education for?”, “It is for whom?”, “What sorts of knowledge would good education give?”, “What are the objectives of teaching children?”, “How should it be practiced?” and so on. There is a dispute going on – Whether education is for practicality or for embellishment; whether education should focus on technical skills that would train a merchant or intellectual professional as quickly as possible. We are faced with the problem whether education shall aim for packing in children’s brains with practical knowledge or giving them intellectual treasures that would make the society more harmonious and worth to live in.

There are a huge academic differences and gap between the western and eastern education systems and policies. I think fusion of western methods, ideas and techniques and Eastern virtue, ethics can be done in Nepal. Both the technocratic and ideal thought is required indeed, for balancing the human behavior and for regulating the function of society in more rational ways. Education seems service motive in western world while it is being profit motive in developing South-Asian nation like ours. I should contribute for eradicating the commercialization of education in Nepal and making it exclusively service motive. Nepal spends more than 17% of its national budget in education sector every year but outcome is not seen as expected to be. The present teaching techniques and curriculum need to be reformed from very primary level and children’s education should be prioritized first.

Education should be given in such a way that it could foster the capacities for self-direction, discipline, leadership and independent judgment. Good education must have both a ‘societal purpose’ and purpose for ‘individual student’. Educators need to be trained genuinely as they are responsible for the future of children and nation. Therefore, for providing students with experiences that are immediately valuable and which would better enable the students to contribute to the society. The traditional education (holistic approach, morality, discipline) and progressive education (more modern and scientific) can be applied in reformed curriculum in Nepal. ‘Freedom for the sake of freedom’ is a weak philosophy of progressive education which needs to be reformed in some ways. I believe that students must experience in order to learn which would fulfill and enrich the current lives of students as well as prepare them for their future.

The traditional education where knowledge was directed from the book and given straight to the students in facts and numbers, is the type of learning style that was taught in earlier days and is now being modified by the new style, progressive education, which is better form of interaction between the teacher and student. So, continuity should be given for progressive education in more rational way. Educationalists need to be encouraged for the development of educational thinking which would be more beneficial and influential in this scientific era. By having a progressive style in learning will help the students gain knowledge more effectively. Curriculum should be developed keeping in mind the ‘whole child’ – that is, to attend to physical and emotional as well as psychological and intellectual growth. In addition, certain forms of education need to be for temporary period of time simply because it needs to be changed and adjusted as the society in general is ever changing.

The curriculum should be set up keeping in mind that the world is growing more modern every day, the children of today need to be educated modernly in order to be successful in the world tomorrow. An educator must take into account the unique differences between each student. Each person is different genetically and in terms of past environment in which they grew up and their previous experiences. Even when a standard curriculum is set up using established pedagogical methods, each student will have a different quality of experiences. Thus, teaching and curriculum must be designed in ways that allow for such individual differences. Learning needs a structure and order, and must be based on a clear theory of experience: not simply as whim of ‘teachers or students’. We should be clear to the question “whether education should be practical and technical” is “of course it should be” but instinctive humanistic attitude shouldn’t be killed from one’s mind is my point regarding education whether it is for Nepal or for rest of the world. I oppose dividing the society into practicality and embellishment; both type of knowledge should be provided. Children should acquire knowledge for material gain as well as knowledge for intellectual pleasure. Education should have both utility and humanity as components. Education must not be a way of controlling children for specific purpose. Rather, it must encourage the children’s natural inquisitiveness and help them to solve problems and gain happiness on their own initiatives. Education is a broader social purpose, which helps people become more effective members of democratic society. The one way delivery style of authoritarian schooling does not provide a good model for life in today’s democratic society. Instead, students need educational experiences which enable them to become valued, equal and responsible members of society.

In the scenario of Nepal, we have tremendous capacity in hydropower, medicinal herbs, minerals, trekking and tourism, agriculture, other sorts of Natural resources, socio-cultural aspects and so on. So curriculum should be made uniquely focusing these fields in higher level as well. Whereby, the students go and set up camp for years, researching the potentialities in such fields and learning practically and theoretically on the spot. Making environment so, government on the one hand is producing its own skill human resources and on the other hand, more potentialities can be known and sustainable development is possible too, through reformed education system.

Though my model of education in Nepal seems quite idealistic, impractical or ambitious but we cannot say that it is impossible here. The only thing required to achieve our national educational goal is Political stability, political commitment, honest bureaucracy, and honest implementation of policies, dedicated manpower and of course optimistic attitude. Education is important, no matter the form in which it is given to the children. We are not half as modern as Europeans and Americans and our children are not able to access the knowledge that the children of western world are. Some people go to west for a better life, meaning that their system is well organized and better than most. If the way they live and the way they educate are better than Eastern world, then they all must be doing something right. We should think about it as well. Applying their good things and eradicating our bad things, we can achieve progress in education. Yes, we can.   

- Vidhya Sagar

Value added tax in Nepal: Some challenges

Indirect tax is the major source of tax revenue of developing country like Nepal. The VAT (Value added tax) as one of the components of indirect taxes. VAT is a scientific tax system, which was first introduced in 1954 A.D. in France has been spreading all over the world since late 1960s. Now, most of the countries are introducing it. VAT was introduced in Nepal on November 16, 1997.

Value added tax (VAT) is a tax imposed on the value added in each economic activity from production to consumption. It means VAT is charged to value addition done to prepare the final product. Ultimate resting place of this tax is the final consumption so that consumers are the sole tax payers of the VAT. Business people only collect the VAT as a mediator so that they don’t bear its burden.

Since, VAT generates less cost to the economy than other taxes, including customs (commodity tax on foreign trade) duties and other domestic trade taxes except retail level sales tax, it is considered an efficient way of generating revenue. Hence, Government of Nepal has adopted policy to develop VAT as the major source of government revenue in Nepal. Now, 13% VAT rate is implementing in Nepal.

Challenges:

VAT could not be implemented effectively yet due to existing political situation. Under such a situation, it was difficult to implement any broad measure effectively let alone VAT. There was a lack of co-ordinate approach and long-term strategy. The implementation side of VAT is yet weak. Its side should be stronger than this, viewing the legal premises, institutional structure, and computer system rational thought towards the VAT and so forth the implementation of VAT also affects to the income tax and custom duty. VAT database was adversely affected as well. It could not be implemented fully and effectively. The level of tax compliance is still very low. Not all potential taxpayers have been registered yet and not all registered vendors company with VAT properly. Some major challenges appeared in the field of VAT are as follows:

Weak billing system

Billing system plays the vital role in the VAT implementation on the basis of invoice, it is determined how much tax payer paid in his purchase, how much hels took from the sales, how much to pay to the government and how much to be refunded. But in practice, the trend of billing system is very low in the market up to yet. In this lack of practice of issuing and receiving invoices in the market has remained one of the obstacles to the effective implementation of VAT.

Book – Keeping

VAT registrants are required to keep purchase and sales books. They can maintain their accounts on computer also with prior approval of VAT administration. VAT registrants are also required to maintain the VAT account. It is a monthly summary of taxable purchase and sales and tax paid on purchases and charged on sales.

Tax – file procession

Tax file entry and procession do not seem to happen in time and the discipline to predede the right – file has not been maintained. As a result, the number of suspended file has unnecessarily increased. Likewise, tax payers, who not subit their file in due time are not informed in time and computer tax assessment also has not been made in time regularly. Due to the increasing number of taxpayers, the problem is likely to increase.

Many exeptions

The numbers of VAT exempted goods and services till large. This large number of exemption works against the principle of VAT and this leads to lose of revenue, transparency, neutrality and efficiency of VAT system and revenue leakage controlling mechanism. And it further leads to the unnecessary complication of the tax system. The exemption does not seem justitiable except in the case of administrative complication. So it has the most complicated problem of VAT collecting system. The revenue collection through VAT is not satisfactory in Nepal. VAT system, which was attempted to establish as a main source of revenue is problematic due to the weak billing system under invoicing has remained as another challenge and so on. The government should be made the effective policy and strategy for VAT implementation.

References

Dahal, M.K. (2004), Nepalese

Economy: Towards building a strong

Economic Nation – State

Irwin, Richard D. Economics of the public sector, Illnois:

Inland Revenue Department, Value added tax annual report

Khadka Rup B. "Value added tax system"

- Babu Ram Sharma  (MA Economics)