Sound Pollution Lawmaking in PiparaRural Municipality: Citizen Participation and Inclusive Governance

There are five pillars on which citizen participation and inclusive decision-making with respect to law/policy making at local government (or any other sphere of government) rests on, namely, transparency, accessibility, deliberative process, awareness and accountability. Local governments have a pertinent task of formulating their own laws/policies under the new constitution. At present there is no mechanism which ensures training of elected representatives despite electoral success. Hence, they are forced to train themselves through learning-by-doing approach. Furthermore, elected representatives, although called ‘lawmakers’, tend to incline towards being law-implementers or law-enforcers. Evidence of this is – the ‘executive’ is more dominant than ‘legislative’ part of local government. This results in lack of incentives among them to adhere to the above-stated five pillars which in effect erodes citizen engagement and inclusive decision-making. International IDEA, through its Coherence Program which was aimed at local government functioning and strengthening through process driven and mentoring approach, engaged with Pipara Rural Municipality in 2024 for law-making on sound pollution regulation. Pipara had been affected by DJs andloudspeakers, and numerous complaints were filed at Palikaoffice.A writ petition was also filed by residents of Pipra demanding immediate action on rampant sound pollution,blaming local government’s inefficiency. Palika had tried different approaches like passing an ordinance to ban DJ instruments. Despite this decision, they could not exercise monitoring and control over the issue. In this paper, authors will present this case study to demonstrate how adherence to steps of law-making process as defined by the Madhesh Province Rural Assembly and Municipal Assembly Law-making Act, the five pillars were achieved but why an ordinance by the palika executive failed to govern the issue. Authors will also elucidate the positives of following the process as defined in law and how it contributed to implementation of the same.