Author: Subheksha Joshi
In recent governance debates, Nepal’s rivers, forests, and hills reflect an issue that isn’t typically taken into consideration in constitutional discussions where a federal government struggles to balance authority and responsibility. Not only are sand, gravel, water, and trees significant for the economy, but they are also morally important because they examine the claims of federalism by revealing gaps between the constitutional framework and governance practice, highlighting its weaknesses, and demonstrating how law, power, and actual life are not always in accordance. In Nepal, federalism has carried out obligations and power, a concern noted by the court proceedings and federalism analysis by the World Bank, making it easier for exploitations of other communities to endure hardships, and the state to become less transparent.
The story of Sand and Gravel
Sand and gravel extraction exposes the emptiness of our federal system by laying plain disagreements over establishes and enforce tax and revenue laws across government tiers. In Godawari Municipality, Lalitpur, local officials were hit with charges in 2024 for handing out contracts that seemingly cost the government over a billion rupees in lost revenue. Well, they were eventually let off, though with the Special Court pointing out a glaring contradiction between the local authorities’ power to tax and the way the provincial government sets rate limits under the Local Government Operation Act. It’s now off to the Supreme Court to decide whether or not to side with the lower court. In a nutshell, this isn’t just a process issue, but it is showing how fuzzy constitutional rules can turn everyday local decisions into major battles in the courts, and leave riverbeds ravaged and communities exposed. (The Kathmandu Post, 2024; Special Court of Nepal).
Udayapur is going down a similar road. Chaudandigadhi Rural Municipality approved gravel mining in woodland in 2025 without obtaining environmental clearance, and residents are accusing the municipality police of complicity (The Kathmandu Post, May 8, 2025). Cases like these aren’t failures to do the job. They’re symptoms of a federal system that spreads power around across multiple levels, yet accountability for oversight and enforcement remains ambiguous. In such circumstances, decisions are taken locally, yet regulatory and enforcement responsibilities are shared across provincial and federal bodies, making it difficult to establish who is ultimately liable. When that happens, the legal gap may offer space for diverse parties to interpret regulations in their own way. Local officials will proceed in a way they see fit, because they’re not quite sure how the rules stack up, and the public gets stuck with the fallout from all the conflicting regulations. Sand and gravel are not just raw materials; they’re proving that when the system is all about words on a page, but accountability is nowhere to be found, governance is just a hollow shell.
Water and Hydro projects
Water and Hydropower projects further bring to the fore just how shaky Nepal’s federal system is. As reported by Nepal News (Dec 20, 2025), in Tanahu, the Magar communities have been furious with the Nepal Electricity Authority and the international lenders over dam construction: they want a fair share of compensation for their land and homes that are going to be lost, and for their voices to be heard in their own language. At the local and provincial levels, though, their problems were simply ignored, which meant things only escalated when they took it to international human rights courts. And it’s not just the local level that creates tensions, but the whole provincial governance structure gets in the way too. (Accountability Counsel, 2020).
These conflicts show just how water, well, something that’s supposed to be a shared power between different levels of government, has now become a battleground of its own, with each level of government fighting for control and the environment getting caught in the crossfire(The Kathmandu Post, 2023). The Kaligandaki Tinau Diversion Project, which the federal government started, was met with fierce opposition from Gandaki Province because they thought the water being siphoned off upstream was going to threaten the local ecosystem and the water supply that they rely on (Setopati; Supreme Court of Nepal, October 27, 2024). Even some of the smallest projects, such as the Melamchi Drinking Water Supply, turned out to be battles in disguise when Helambu Rural Municipality started demanding a cut of the profits, and they even went so far as to threaten to shut the whole thing down(Nepal news, Nov 7, 2025).
The Hollow Federalism
Conflict isn’t disorder, it’s actually data and a clear sign that our federalism is really feeling the strain & that we need to get serious about thinking up some real reforms. Rethinking all of the above, it shows that federalism has created a situation where all the responsibility is splintered off to places, but it has never sorted out who’s in charge. Provinces and municipalities are left with the regulatory powers, but they don’t have the means to do anything about it.
In all this mess, it’s the communities out there who are bearing the real costs of this, and the justice and accountability just seem to be taking ages to sort out. Now, that’s not just a case of bureaucratic incompetence or lack of political will; it’s a crisis of ethics. When we see resources that are absolutely vital for people’s lives being treated as just another administrative and political asset, it starts to get worrying. Communities are getting the environmental, economic, and cultural costs, while all the justice and accountability just get put on the back burner, or don’t happen at all. At the end of the day, protest and dissent are no longer just options but a necessity. One only has to look at the state of rivers ravaged by unregulated sand mining, forests being overtaxed or mismanaged, and the contentious hydropower projects to see the evidence that governance is just not living up to its promises in the constitution.
A New Direction for Federalism
Federalism has now become more than just a gamble with how the country is run. It is more like a wake-up call about doing what’s right. It’s all about finding a balance of power, letting local communities take charge, and making sure people get their rights. But when one hands them all the responsibility yet keeps all the power to oneself, that’s just breaking that trust. Out in rural Nepal, the rivers, the forests, and the hills are where the theory of federalism gets put to the test, and it only takes one broken promise to prove that it’s all just words. So, we need civil society and the media to start playing a meaningful role, documenting all the patterns of abuse and bringing the proof to bear for policy reform.
We might think sand and gravel are pretty dull stuff, but in the context of Nepal’s federalism, they’re a canary in the coal mine. They, in fact, reveal the deeper dysfunction at the heart of the system. Returning to the question of how nature is governed, all tied up with natural resources conflicts that force the government to sit up and take notice, change its ways, and make sure it’s not just telling communities what to do, but actually working with them to take charge of their own lives and the resources that keep them going. It’s only when that becomes a reality that federalism will stop being just a hollow promise and will actually start delivering on its promise to bring people some justice, let them have a real say, and hold the government to account within the constitutional framework that federalism promises. But until that happens, natural resources conflicts will keep on being the symptom of a federalism that’s yet to prove its worth.
Author Introduction
Subheksha Joshi is a constitutional law student working at the intersection of jurisprudence, environmental governance, and international law, with a particular interest in interdisciplinary approaches that engage with quantum physics. Subheksha is currently pursuing her Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of Laws (BALLB) from Kathmandu School of Law. Subheksha can be reached at: joshisubheksha777@gmail.com
The views and opinions expressed in the piece above are solely those of the original author(s) and contributor(s). They do not necessarily represent the views of Governance Monitoring Centre Nepal and/or Centre for Social Change.
