Sushant Vadik
As a Himalayan Bank Limited – Daayitwa Summer Research Fellow 2019, I was placed under the supervision of Mrs. Pushpa Bhusal, Member of Province 5 Planning Commission to study the "Effectiveness of Agricultural Subsidy Policy in Enterprise Growth in Province 5". The topic attracted me as the Nepal government have been continuously availing different state-benefits to agriculture sector but little did we know about their implication and effectiveness. With this research, I not only wanted to know the effectiveness of certain type of subsidy but also inspire a practice of evidence-based policy design in the government. From a primary survey in 7 districts in Province 5, I tried to study the beneficiaries' perception of the agricultural subsidy in terms of the Access (accessibility of information, application procedure, etc) and Impact (whether the benefits of the subsidy has been worthy of it). The Impact part in most of the cases (about 80%) seems to have been effective, the other 20% failure owing to internal problems (such as management) and market access issues. The Access part, however, was found to have much issues. Many farmers for examples were found to have paid registration/proposal fees when they were supposed to be free, more than half of the farmers stated that they tried to highlight their political association and/or nepotism with their application and many wanted the information to me disseminated in much accessible sources such as local radios (FM). In general, the feedback was mostly about making the "true farmer" identification procedure more robust by means such as strict monitoring by both internal (subsidy awarding body) and external parties, increasing the accessibility of information, helping in the application procedure to make it easy for farmers to file for subsidy, and also looking into market access and improving value-chain of agricultural products. Apart from the aforementioned research output, the DNPSF was an opportunity for me to understand the Province 5 more, where I originally came from and to understand the bureaucracy and governance structure in the newly established provincial system. The fellowship allowed me to interact with obviously the Province Planning Commission and also the Province 5 Ministry of Land Management, Agriculture and Cooperatives. Both the Commission and Ministry's officials were very positive towards my research attempt and their serious concern inspired me to put in effort for genuine work. Sure, not everything was great and placed there for you to pick up. But that is where we had to learn to face the adaptive challenges. From some officials not agreeing to sign on a generic letter to some parties mocking your research attempt overall, the journey sometimes would tend to get painful. But thanks to the fellows’ cohort, Daayitwa's guidance and NLA's leadership trainings, I learned to tackle them as they came by. The fellowship experience overall has enriched me with exactly what I was aiming for, understanding the Sarkaar from little bit closer and helping it with policy recommendation in the Province I am personally attached to.