Public Policy: Affairs In Nepal

Introduction:

A policy is well formed document that describe principles of actions of any organization, government or an individual. A public policy is directly connected with government. It describe the relationship of government with people. Any policy that impact the general public can be considered as public policy. This article will discuss about the different issues on why public policies in Nepal are not implemented well and are not capable of yielding expected output.

(PC: Bucknell University)

Background

First of all, we must go through the source of policy formulation in Nepal. Theoretically, the policies must be formulated on the basis of Constitutional directions and theory, National Program and Plan, to address demands of the public on specific issue, pressure form the civil society etc. But, we can see that polices have not been formulated solely on these bases, they are mostly influenced by the political leader's interest (not form the political party interest), for the benefits of specific group of people (not for the benefits of common people). This is the challenging problem that policies in Nepal are not formulated on the basis of open discussion, taking the voice of common people, participating the stakeholder in the drafting process.

Problems:

On the basis of above mentioned facts, the major problem that most of the policies in Nepal have been never implemented even though they were very good in principle, is the co-ordination gap between different government entity as well as other policy stakeholders. For example, The Boardband policy is prepared by ministry of communication but it impact other sector of governance as well. So the ministry should study other related policy in the field of information communication technology, before drafting any ICT related policy. The broadband and telecom policy have many similar provision as in  Information Technology Policy that has been prepared by Ministry of science and technology.

In Nepal, Policies are formulated in high speed, sometime within one night if it is necessary for the interest of leaders. They never focused on the  collection of information, facts and feedback related to the issue that the proposed policy is going to address. Also the beurocratic high personal sometime mislead leader due to their own career or posting or similar advantages.

On the other hand, we never prioritize the policy and program, that directly impact the later stage. We proposed so many project and program in a single fiscal year and don't complete a single projects within that year. It is all due to the lack of assigning priority and budget to a single/valuable/necessary project. 

The last but not the least, to implement each and every policy, our government don't have sufficient resource, both qualified human resource as well as financial resources. In addition, Nepal is situated in between two giant country: china and India, both are the evolving power of the world, government policies in Nepal are often influenced by external entities such as Neighboring country, International Donner Agency and INGO's.

Conclusion

To come up with these problems, the policy maker should be aware of that how they can increase the participation of stakeholder during the policy formulation process, about the co-ordination between different implementation agency  and availability of resource to implement the policy. Also, the policy makers also need to negotiate with Donner Agency as well as external forces on behalf of Nation's welfare and goodness.

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Vehicles, Pollution and Kathmandu: A common man prospective

Kathmandu is a hub for all kind of affairs: political, education and tourism. It is one and only a metro city in Nepal. People come to this city for the purpose of getting education as most of the college are catered here. they come to this city to get access to government as the most of government services are centered here.The city is being polluted day by day the population is getting more and more and  number of vehicles is increasing. In some aspect it is due to a private vehicles that individual uses for their transportation and the other side, the expansion of water supply pipe by Melamchi Water Project.

 Figure: Air pollution in Kathmandu (source: Kathmandupost.com)

First, the use of private vehicles increases traffic on the road. It takes more time to reach destination due to the loss of time in traffic. We couldn't reach on time to any place and loss most important business meeting or similar things. More people need more vehicles as they are using it for their own private purpose, the number of vehicles increases and it definitely increase the pollution. The best way of reducing pollution is to make a policy that demotivates the use of private vehicles and promotes  public transportation such as bus, metro train or railways.

Secondly, Not only the vehicles are making Kathmandu polluted, the extension of water supply pipeline under the new water supply project inside the Kathmandu valley called Melamchi Water Supply project is causing worst environment in this city. The day to day road digging and expanding under-ground pipeline creates a lot of dust particles and all air in Kathmandu now days is mixed of this dust. Everyone is feeling very uncomfortable in breathing due to this toxic dust contained air. As a result, people are started protesting against this action and demanding the on time management of dust produced during the construction of underground water supply pipelines.

In conclusion, it can be said that we must take care of environment whenever we are lunching any development related project. It is because the most development related project impacts the environment  and creates pollution. we should be much aware that such development project create minimum hazard to environment. The other side to prevent air pollution is to boost good traffic management strategy and reduce the use of private vehicles. In this regards, the government agency should be more focused to create a atomsphere that everyone could use public vehicles for their daily life activities.

Social Status and Material Possesion cann't judge a Person's Worth

Human beings are social creatures.We live our life with in the premises of society. In a group of people, one judge other for many reasons. Some evaluates a person on the basis of his/her lifestyle and social status, others uses some different criteria to evaluate a person such as his kindness, trust and values. I believe that the judgement made on the basis of one's social status is only for a while and not for a lifetime for the following reasons.

First, physical properties such as house, cars, bank balances and other materials are only for showcase, they can't provide eternal peace and prosperity, even though one possessing these things seems to be happy. To have a sense of goodness and happiness, one should show his/her kindness help to the needy people. For example, when you are walking on footpath and see a old lady trying to cross a road with difficulty and you help the lady , then you feel a real feeling of worthiness.

Second, if we judge people's worth on their social status rather than their good moral characteristics, our next generation will no longer able to learn the human kindness, tradition and social values. To build a good society, we need people with good moral behaviors. It is only possible if we teach our children about the importance of moral characteristic in their future life.

In conclusion, It can be found that the world is full of people who hold a higher value for social status and luxurious good, there are some people who respect honors, helpfulness and traditional norms and values.

Artificia Inelligence: An early Concept In computer Science

Artificial Intelligence

 if you go through dictionary, you may got different definitions of Intelligence and Artificial. Intelligence is an ability that comes to person by birth as well as by learning through out the lifetime. Then what kind of ability can be talked as Intelligent? The answer comes as: the ability to reason, understand, create, learn, plan and execute complex task.

Here is a definition form Webster dictionary: "Intelligence is the capacity to learn and solve problems"

Now the question arise, what kind of problem requires intelligence? Normally the problem that are creative, mathematical and logical requires intelligent to solve it. For instance, placing a right move in a chess game requires a logical reasoning to get a better position then the opponent in a game. So it is a kind of problem that requires a intelligent to solve it.

According to Russel and Norvig on their book, the definition of AI has been divided into  
four groups (in two horizontal dimension and two vertical dimisnion),(https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~russell/intro.html)

Systems that think like humans.	Systems that think rationally.
Systems that act like humans	Systems that act rationally

Horizontal dimension: Human Prospective
Vertical dimension: Machine prospective

System That Think Like Human
This school of thought advocate that it is possible to build a Machine with minds. The advances in biological science and neurosciences make it possible that how brain works for human beings. In near future, it might be possible to determine the cognition process of human mind and translate it to a computer algorithm that when implemented in computer will start working like a human mind. This school consist of other discipline such as cognitive science, philosophy and psychology.

System That ACT Like human

This school is closest to the intuitive definition of AI that most people have. The Turing Test, proposed by the famous computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950, was designed to provide a satisfying operational definition of intelligence. By “operational definition,” I mean that instead of proposing a long and likely controversial list of conditions needed for intelligence, Turing suggested a simple test that could be applied to a system to determine whether or not the system was intelligent. 

The test works the following way: a human being poses some questions to the computer and then gets some written responses back. If the human being cannot tell that the answers were written by a person or not, then the computer passes and is considered to be “intelligent.”

What a Machine require to pass a Turing test?

 - Natural language processing i.e able to communicate in natural language.
-Reasoning automatically
-Store its knowledge what it reads and adds as a knowledge.
-able to learn form past experience-machine learning.

Thinking Rationally: A law of thought Approach

This school try to simplify the process of human intelligent using the logical reasoning process.. For example, ``Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore Socrates is mortal.'' These laws of thought were supposed to govern the operation of the mind, and initiated the field of logic.They believe that it is possible to built AI on the basis of the study of mental faculties through the use of computational model.

 

Chess Challenge Between Garry Vs IBM Machine

Acting rationally: The rational agent approach

Acting rationally means acting so as to achieve one's goals, given one's beliefs. An agent is just something that perceives and acts.

In this approach, AI is viewed as the study and construction of rational agents. In the ``laws of thought'' approach to AI, the whole emphasis was on correct inferences. Making correct inferences is sometimes part of being a rational agent, because one way to act rationally is to reason logically to the conclusion that a given action will achieve one's goals, and then to act on that conclusion. On the other hand, correct inference is not all of rationality, because there are often situations where there is no provably correct thing to do, yet something must still be done. There are also ways of acting rationally that cannot be reasonably said to involve inference. For example, pulling one's hand off of a hot stove is a reflex action that is more successful than a slower action taken after careful deliberation.

One major advantage of this approach is that it is much easier to develop scientifically. The standard of rationality is very clearly defined and very general, while we still do not have a good understanding of human thought and behavior. Moreover, it is more useful to build systems that can do the right thing in a given situation, and solve problems better than humans might, rather than trying to design something that makes all the same mistakes humans do.

In conclusion, It can be assure that machine or computer were built to help people, to simply the life of people and they never were developed to replace the human beings. In the future, even though people would be able to develop a fully capable AI machine, this machine will be surly in control of human beings and could not replace the human in any aspect.

Best Hyderabadi Biriyani

When I reached Hyderabad, I had something on my head that what kind of food I might find here. Since I have never been in India before and of course not in Hyderabad. But my anxiety come to end when I found many restaurant that are serving  food that are my cup of tea. One food that I most enjoyed in Hyderabad was " Biriyani- Hyderbadi Biriyani"

Biriyani is one of the most famous Indian Cuisine in Hyderabad. This dish is so loved by the locals that they eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is made of rice mixed with any other food such as chicken, mutton and even with vegetable. It has named accordingly what it has mixed with such as chicken Biriyani, Mutton Biriyani and Veg Biriyani respectively. Even If you are a vegetarian, You do not have to get disappointed as there is an equally delicious Veg Biriyani available too.

There are many places in Hyderbad to have Biriyani. THe most famous places are Hotel Shadab, Ghouse cafe and Cafe Bahar. Among this, I think the cafe Bahar may be the best choice for you as it offers best qualities Biriyani in reasonable price.This place is very popular and if you are lucky enough, you will get a table instantly otherwise, you  have to join a queue to get a table. But even you wait long, it was worth it, you realize when you get it on your table. 

One you get a table, you can choose from varieties of Biriyani form menu. For example, Biriyani with Chicken, Mutton or Vegetable. My favorite item is Veg Biriyani. It is made of fried rice mixed with verities of vegetables such as carrot, cabbage and beans. When it comes to my table, I feel salivery because it smell of  spices, garlic and aromatic. It looks so delicious for me when I see some beans floating over the rice. I even can not wait for frok and spoon, I take it with my hand. I could not feel its taste with spoon as good as when I use my hand.

Now I have to returned my home country very soon after two week. I have got addiction to Biriyani here. Now I am afraid that I will miss this Biriyani so much as There are no such restaurant that serve delicious Biriyanai like one that I can find here.. The moment someone mention Hyderabad, the first thing that come to my mind is Biriyani. I will really miss this place and food that I have ever got taste here.