Nepal, Oct. 8 -- The necessity of a government close to the people for providing better public services became unequivocally pronounced, once again, during the recent natural calamity which forced the federal government to declare disaster crisis zones in 14 districts. Several studies have established that the role of local government is extremely important in disaster management. The theory of preference matching states that federal polity increases the allocative efficiency of the resources as the local governments are better informed about the needs of their electorates than their distant federal counterparts. This is exactly the prime rationale of adopting the federal form of the government. But these outcomes are impossible to windfa...