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DEVELOPMENT
DILEMMAS |
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With a per-capita income of just $220, Nepal is one of the world's
poorest nations. Its population of 22 million is rising at such a rate
that it will double by 2030. With agriculture unable to keep pace with
demand, Nepal's "food deficit" is widening yearly. Incidence of disease
is shockingly high, life expectancy is dismally low, the economy is
stagnating, and the country's leaders are all but stealing food out of
the people's mouths.
Nepali schoolchildren are frequently asked to write essays on "What I
Would Do if I Were King". There are, of course, no right answers. Nepal
is sloshing with foreign experts, all clamouring to offer their
suggestions - and money - yet despite the efforts of the past five
decades the country remains economically poor. Some say Nepal's
underlying problems, and the inefficacy of foreign aid, will keep it
forever backward. Others point to tangible improvements that have been
made, such as improvements in child mortality and literacy. Still others
claim that Nepal's problems have been vastly overstated by the
government (to ensure continued aid) and development agencies (to
justify their payrolls).
"Development" is a word like "progress": it means different things to
different people, and all too often is assumed uncritically to be a
desirable end in itself. Throughout the world - not only in Nepal - no
one has yet worked out whether development is in fact a Good Thing, and
if so what form it should take. But after spending time in the field,
many aid workers conclude that Nepalis - who lead rich and elegantly
simple lives, nearly self-sufficient and unencumbered by many modern
problems - have more to teach the "developed" (some would say over
developed) world than it has to teach them.
Pragmatists usually argue that development is going to come anyway, and
communities should at least be given a fair choice as to what kind of
development they want, rather than being forced to choose between
development and non-development. But while no one advocates withholding
aid or denying Nepalis' aspirations to certain material improvements,
many in the development world reckon that Nepali schoolchildren are
probably better able to solve their own problems than foreign experts,
and that Nepalis ought to be the ones who decide what is appropriate
development for Nepal.
Most people agree that Nepal's overarching problem ("challenge", in
development parlance) is poverty , which can be traced to a number of
factors: steep terrain, which makes farming inefficient and
communications difficult; landlocked borders; few natural resources; a
rigid social structure that entrenches the rich against the poor;
ineffective national government; and a comparatively late start (the
Nepalese government did essentially nothing for its people before 1951).
Unable to do anything about these causes, most development organizations
have devoted themselves to alleviating symptoms.
All too often, foreigners (and, it has to be said, some Nepalis) have
tended to view Nepal's situation as a set of problems that could be
identified, measured and solved in isolation. Trouble is, life isn't
like that: tackling one problem often only succeeds in shifting it to
another area. For example, better health and sanitation are obvious
requirements, but providing them increases the rate of population growth,
at least in the short term. Curbing population is no simple task, for it
is rooted in poverty and the low status of women. In the meantime,
agriculture has to be improved to feed the growing population,
deforestation reversed to stop the fuelwood crisis, and industry
developed to provide jobs. Irrigation projects, roads, hydroelectric
diversions are needed & you get the idea. Even if you resolve that
development should be left to Nepalis, education, or at least "awareness-raising"
programmes, will be required to get the ball rolling, and that means not
so much building schools as addressing the poverty that keeps children
from attending classes.
Nepal, being a proverbial Third World "basket case", has afforded aid
organizations and donor nations an opportunity to test a long list of
development theories. One that seemed very promising in the 1980s and
1990s was the integrated rural development project (IRDP) , a more
holistic approach in which various sub-projects are coordinated to
complement each other. The Swiss IRDP at Jiri and the British one in
Dhankuta, now both handed over to Nepali management, are prominent
examples. Unfortunately, such projects run counter to the "small is
beautiful" maxim: they're terribly expensive (and therefore
unsustainable without foreign aid), prone to corruption and, in the end,
limited to tiny geographic areas. Again, there are no easy, pat answers
- only dilemmas.
We've only scratched the surface of complex issues in these pages, and
made many simplifications. Some dilemmas are unique to Nepal, but many -
if not most - are common to the entire "developing" world. The vast
majority of people in the "developed" world are dangerously ignorant of
the terrible pressures building in the poorer nations; travelling in
Nepal offers a chance to witness the inequities firsthand and grapple
with some of the dilemmas, which cannot help but make you re-examine
your own lifestyle
This is how a nation pretends to survive
This is Machhapuchhre, Your Excellency!
And that's Annapurna.
And, beyond that are
The ranges of Dhaulagiri.
You can see them with your naked eyes.
I don't think you'll need any binocular, sir.
We want to open a three-star hotel, Your Excellency!
Will you give us some loan?
Your Excellency!
This is Koshi, that's Gandaki
And, that one, yes, that blue one, is Karnali.
You might have read in some newspapers
That rivers in Nepal are on sale.
But that's not true, sir.
In fact, we have named our zones
In the name of these rivers.
It's our plan to generate electricity from them.
Will you give us some loan?
This is Kathmandu Valley, Your Excellency!
I mean country's capital,
Which contains three cities -
Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur.
Please mind the smell!
You may use your handkerchief, if you like.
It's true we have not been able to build
Either the sewer or public lavatories.
But in the next five-year plan
We are definitely going to introduce
"Keep the City Clean" programme.
Will you give us some loan, Your Excellency!
- Min Bahadur Bist
Health
People rarely starve to death - usually malnutrition weakens their
systems to a point where simple infections prove fatal. It may seem hard
to believe, but more than 50 percent of Nepal's cute little children are
undernourished, and up to 15 percent are clinically malnourished. As a
result, child mortality is estimated at 118 per 1000. That means that,
on average, one out of every nine Nepali children will die before he or
she reaches the age of five; the chances of survival are better in
places like Kathmandu, but conversely, they're even worse in remote
areas. Still, this is an improvement over 1960, when the figure was 300
per 1000 - almost one in three. The introduction of cheap oral
rehydration packets, together with simple immunization programmes, are
largely responsible for saving these lives.
Nepal is one of the few countries in the world where men live longer
than women: life expectancy is 55 for males, 54 for females. Females are
the last in the family to eat (one study found that Nepali girls under
the age of five suffer 50 percent higher malnutrution than boys) and are
expected to work harder (another study estimated women do 57 percent of
all farm work in Nepal). And childbirth is still a very real hazard for
Nepali women: due to poor prenatal care and unsterile conditions during
delivery, the odds of a given pregnancy or birth resulting in the death
of the mother are 1 in 20 - which is especially scary when you consider
that the average Nepali woman has 4.6 children.
Poor sanitation, unsafe water and crowded, smoky conditions contribute
to Nepal's high incidence of disease. Up to 80 percent of the population
are reckoned to be suffering from parasitic infections at any one time,
and 8 percent have tuberculosis . TB kills 16,000 Nepalis annually,
making it the number-one cause of death among adults age 16-49; 50,000
new cases are reported each year, a quarter of them of the "muliple-drug
resistant" strain, which is virtually untreatable. Nepal's per-capita
leprosy rate is among the highest in the world - higher, even, than
India's - with an estimated 24,500 cases. And while Nepal avoided the
AIDS epidemic for many years, it now appears on the verge of a major
outbreak that will strain its meagre medical resources: an estimated
50,000 to 100,000 Nepalis are now infected with HIV, the virus that
causes AIDS. Women employed in the sex industry and men performing
seasonal work away from home have been the main agents in transmitting
the disease from India, while poor blood screening, medical re-use of
needles and ignorance of the proper use of condoms all threaten to aid
its spread. On the bright side, mosquito spraying in the Tarai has
reduced malaria cases to about 25,000 annually (compared with two
million a year during the 1950s), although even this is on the way back
up.
Improved public sanitation is gradually being introduced, and is seen as
the surest way to combat a number of debilitating diseases. However, in
the booming Tarai cities, covered sewers are barely keeping pace with
growth, while village latrines are still rarely found off the popular
trekking routes. Communal taps and wells have been built in many
villages to provide drinking water , yet only about 40 percent of
Nepalis have access to safe water.
Alcohol and tobacco consumption are also significant public-health
problems in Nepal, though as yet they've hardly appeared on the
political radar. In a poor country with low life expectancy, saving
babies is arguably more urgent than fighting cancer and alcoholism in
people who haven't got that many years left to live anyway. However,
it's worth noting that the Nepalese government has a vested interest in
ignoring these problems: it owns the country's biggest tobacco company,
and (like all governments) it obtains substantial tax revenue from the
sale of tobacco and alcohol.
Although the government, aided by United Mission to Nepal and others,
has constructed more than 110 hospitals to date, Western-style
facilities are neither affordable nor appropriate for most villages.
Many of these parochial hospitals lack even a single resident doctor,
since the vast majority of qualified physicians prefer to practise in
the Kathmandu Valley, where they can make much more money in private
practice. A better measure of progress on this front has been the
creation of some 800 primary healthcare posts , where health assistants
(often local people) are trained in traditional ayurvedic practices.
Development industry
Everyone loves to give aid to Nepal. Although tourism is officially
listed as the country's top source of foreign exchange, the development
industry is even bigger. Aid to Nepal brings in $300-500 million
annually in direct grants and concessionary loans, not counting the
value of technical assistance.
Foreign development projects in Nepal fall roughly into three
categories. Bilateral (and multilateral) aid - that is, money given or
lent by foreign governments directly to Nepal - has financed most of the
infrastructure (roads, dams, airports), as well as the biggest IRDPs.
Many smaller projects are carried out by hundreds of international
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ; some of these are well known,
such as Oxfam, CARE and Save the Children, while others are just one
person doing fieldwork and raising sponsorship money in his or her home
country. Voluntary NGOs, such as Britain's Voluntary Service Overseas
(VSO) and the US Peace Corps, generally don't run their own projects,
but instead slot volunteers into existing HMG programmes. Finally,
international lending bodies like the World Bank and Asian Development
Bank act as brokers to arrange loans for big projects with commercial
potential - usually irrigation and hydroelectric schemes.
Many of these organizations do excellent work; almost all are motivated
by the best possible intentions. However, money cannot automatically
solve Nepal's problems, as some of the biggest projects have learned to
their cost. By paying their imported experts ten or twenty times more
than Nepalis to do the same job, the big bilateral missions can cause
resentment or, worse, encourage Nepalis to gather round the aid trough
instead of doing useful work. And to the extent that they import experts
and materials, they undermine Nepalis' ability to do things for
themselves, fostering a crippling aid dependency that now permeates
almost every level of society. In 1983, foreign handouts made up 40
percent of Nepal's development budget; by 1998 it was up to 70 percent,
and accounted for a full 10 percent of GNP. Some wags joke that the
country can't afford to develop, lest it jeopardize development funding.
So why is everybody clamouring to give aid to Nepal? For bilateral
donors, foreign aid is a handy way of buying political influence . China
and India are forever one-upping each other with offers to Nepal, which
they regard as a crucial buffer state; and while Nepal is of less
strategic interest to the main Western powers, they're happy to throw
some small change Nepal's way just to ensure a compliant regime.
Aid is also a means of stimulating the donor country's own domestic
economy: for example, more than half of British aid to Nepal (which
amounts to £12 million annually) is paid directly to British contractors
. Thus the emphasis of aid is usually on Western-style techno-fixes and
economic growth, rather than appropriate technology and
self-sufficiency. Encouraging farmers to, say, irrigate and buy
fertilizers to grow cash crops may raise their income, but not
necessarily their quality of life. It will, however, give Western banks
a capital project to finance, Western contractors an irrigation system
to build, Western chemical companies a new market for fertilizers, and
Western consumer-goods companies new consumers. Meanwhile, Nepalese cash
crops will be exported out of the area, even as Nepalis suffer
malnutrition.
For their part, institutions like the World Bank and its sister
organization, the International Monetary Fund, have reputations for
pushing expensive megaprojects that often prove inappropriate for their
impoverished recipients, and for imposing harsh "structural adjustment"
programmes when debtor nations can't repay their loans. Fortunately,
these institutions finally seem to be moving with the times. In 1995 the
new head of the World Bank scrapped plans for a mega-hydroelectric
project in eastern Nepal, in what seems to be an effort to steer the
Bank towards smaller, more environmentally sensitive projects.
But even when foreign governments and agencies try to step back and do
the right thing, their charity may still have a corrupting influence.
The latest fashionable philosophy is that the best way to get things
done is to finance local NGOs , which, it's assumed, have a better
handle on local problems and solutions than foreign experts. Sounds
great in theory, but what's the result? An explosion in local NGOs for
every conceivable cause, all sounding just as right-on as could be:
"small-scale" this, "women's development" that, "environmental"
whatever. (There are now so many local NGOs in Nepal that at least one
exists simply to coordinate them all.) Unfortunately, some of these
organizations aren't doing much besides writing grant proposals, and the
only development they're assisting is their director's bank balance.
Population
Slowing population growth isn't just a matter of passing out condoms. In
Nepal, as in other countries, children are relied on to do many
time-consuming chores - fetching water, gathering fuel, tending animals
- and are also considered an investment for old age, since there's only
a token state pension to draw on. Moreover, Nepalis tend to have large
families because they can't be sure all their children will survive.
Hindus, especially, keep trying until they've produced at least one son,
who alone can perform the prescribed rites ( shradha) for his parents
after they've died.
While it's not the place of aid workers to contradict Hindu beliefs,
population-control efforts can have little impact unless the status of
women is raised, which to a great extent is a matter of providing them
with paid employment opportunities. Earning income doesn't merely
empower women; it makes it more expensive for them to have children,
since to do so means stopping work. Education can also play an important
part in bringing down birth rates - but the education must be targeted
not so much at women, who already know they're repressed, but at men,
who do the repressing. Many "women's programmes" have failed because
they've assumed that women only need to be provided with the awareness
and skills to improve their situation; in fact they can do little if
their husbands still hold the power.
The other reasons for high fertility could be removed by reducing the
current high levels of poverty and child mortality, and by providing
ready sources of fuel and water to reduce the usefulness of extra hands.
It's often said that "development is the best contraceptive", and
indeed, there is a close correlation between rising standards of living
and declining birth rates. Unfortunately, in most countries this
so-called demographic transition involves a period of rapid population
growth until the birth rate settles down to match the lower death rate.
Some East Asian countries have seen their birth rates fall more or less
simultaneously with their economies' rise, but Nepal is not, alas, in
the same economic league.
At the moment, Nepal's population is still very much in growth mode.
Currently doubling every 30 years, the population has a biological
momentum that is unlikely to be checked in the present generation,
simply because of the number of girls already approaching child-bearing
age. Meanwhile, the government's family planning efforts are still
woefully inadequate: only 15 percent of Nepalis practise any form of
contraception at all. The remoteness of villages makes it all the more
difficult to get the message out.
If Nepal's population doubles or triples, where will all the extra
people live? As it happens, this is not a brand-new situation, for some
parts of the middle hills have probably been overpopulated for a century
or more. Emigration - to the Tarai, India and, more recently, to
Kathmandu and overseas - has always regulated the people pressure.
Significantly, the latest estimates show a notable decline in the annual
rate of population growth - to 2.37 percent, down from 2.6 percent a
decade earlier - most of which is probably due to emigration. Even so,
it's estimated that the country's urban population will double in the
next decade, and most of this increase will be taken up by the Kathmandu
Valley and a half-dozen Tarai cities.
Agriculture
If Nepal's population doubles, food production must theoretically
double, too - a seemingly unattainable goal, given that in the past
decade the country has gone from being a net exporter of food to a net
importer.
Nepal's farmland is already among the most intensely cultivated in the
world. A mere 20 percent of the country's land area is arable; clearing
new land for cultivation only adds to deforestation, so it's preferable
to find ways of increasing the productivity per hectare. Yields are
currently very low even by regional standards - for example, rice and
wheat yields are less than half that of those in China - but of course
that means there's plenty of room for improvement. Various methods have
been tried in Nepal, as in other countries. Agriculture experiment
stations have achieved some success in showcasing high-yielding seeds
and animal breeds. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are now widely
used in the Kathmandu Valley and Tarai, though nationwide the use of
these inputs is still relatively low (one-fifteenth that of China's).
Moreover, they're often misused, due to poorly thought-out subsidy
programmes and a lack of information: for example, many farmers apply
urea (nitrogen), which is heavily subsidized, but not phosphorous and
potash, which aren't, with the result that yields actually decrease. And
in the Kathmandu Valley, where produce used to be organic by default, it
is now often laced with unhealthy levels of agricultural chemicals.
Since Nepal experiences huge seasonal fluctuations in rainfall,
irrigation - which allows monsoon rain to be stored and then used later
in the dry season - is another high priority for improving productivity.
Small-scale community projects are being built with generally good
results, but the big canal systems built by the government and foreign
donors are often inefficient and poorly maintained, and tend to benefit
only the most well-off farmers. It's been estimated that a big
government-built system costs at least eight times more per hectare than
a community-built one. Shallow tubewells are another economical way to
exploit groundwater in the Tarai, where the water table is high.
Tractors and other mechanized equipment don't do much for the yield per
hectare, but they do improve the yield per farmer. Aided by agricultural
loans, an increasing number of Tarai farmers are investing in machinery;
in most parts of the hills, smaller landholdings and stair-stepped
terraces make mechanized farming impractical. While this makes hill
farms uncompetitive in the regional market for staple grains, landowners
with access to roads are compensating by turning to vegetables and other
cash crops. This shift makes a virtue out of Nepal's widening food
deficit, since cash crops earn foreign exchange with which to buy
staples; for this reason, the government has identified road extension
as another agricultural priority.
Stark inequities prevail in Nepal's agriculturally based economy.
Controlled by vested interests, the government has done a poor job of
enforcing land reform , with the result that 63 percent of cultivable
land is still owned by 16 percent of the population. Despite a 1964 law
prohibiting landlords from charging tenant farmers annual rents of more
than 15 percent of their crop, many farmers are locked in a hopeless
cycle of debt and victimized by unscrupulous lenders. Credit is
therefore a pressing need. Various government programmes extend credit
to poor farmers to tide them over lean months, with variable success,
but the official Agriculture Development Bank, which was created to make
loans for simple improvements, has unfortunately grown so bureaucratic
that only wealthier farmers can avail themselves of it.
Most people agree that agriculture must receive the main thrust of
development efforts in Nepal. With about 80 percent of Nepalis still
making their living from the land, it's unrealistic to look for miracles
elsewhere
Deforestation and erosion
In the Nepal hills, population, agriculture and environmental damage
combine in a worrying vicious cycle: the need for more food leads to
more intensive use of the land, which degrades the environment and
lowers productivity, which further increases pressure on the land. An
expanding population needs not only more firewood , but also more fodder
for animals, which provide manure to maintain soil fertility. Overuse of
firewood and fodder results in deforestation , as does any expansion of
farmland, and as a result Nepal's forest area is shrinking by as much as
1 percent per year. Trees help anchor the fragile Himalayan topsoil -
removing them causes erosion and landslides, which not only reduce the
productivity of the land but also send silt down to the Bay of Bengal,
contributing to disastrous floods in Bangladesh.
Or so goes the theory. In practice, emigration seems to stabilize the
cycle, and studies give wildly differing estimates for the rate of
deforestation. The most that can be said is that the situation is
definitely bad in some areas, but not so bad in others. Experts still
don't know to what extent deforestation contributes to erosion, but most
agree that the prime cause is simply the natural sloughing and shifting
of very young mountains.
Even the government now admits it got it wrong in the 1950s when it
nationalized the forests to protect them. Before that, the forests had
been competently managed by local communities; but when the trees were
taken away from them, locals felt they had no stake in their
preservation, and because government enforcement was weak they easily
plundered them. HMG's current policy of community forestry gives local
forests back to the people, recognizing that villagers are in fact very
ecologically minded and will manage their forests responsibly and
sustainably so long as they don't fear re-nationalization. The latest
evidence suggests that this policy has helped to check deforestation in
many areas, and in some cases has even reversed it.
Deforestation is a separate issue in the Tarai , where the trees have
been felled as a matter of policy, to make way for settlers and to earn
money for the government through state-sanctioned timber sales. Although
the vast majority of the Tarai's magnificent native forest has gone in
the past four decades, the rate of logging has almost come to a
standstill in recent years - ironically, because of the collapse of the
government-owned timber corporation. Meanwhile, Nepal has won praise
abroad for setting aside large chunks of what remains as national parks
and wildlife reserves. However, the government can expect mounting
resistance from its own people, who question why such valuable land
should be set aside for tourists and crop-destroying animals.
In recent years numerous other environmental problems have arisen in
Nepal, most seriously in the Kathmandu Valley
Electricity, roads and other technology
Many see electricity - specifically hydroelectricity - as Nepal's
greatest natural resource and a vital engine for development. The
country's steep, mountain-fed rivers are estimated to have hydroelectric
potential to the tune of 83 million megawatts - enough to power the
British Isles. Unfortunately, due to the cost of getting materials and
technical experts into Nepal's rugged backcountry, this potential is
rather expensive to harness. Ironically for a country so richly endowed,
only 15 percent of Nepalis have access to electricity, and the supply
falls so short of demand that the national electricity authority must
resort to frequent load-shedding (scheduled power cuts) during the dry
season.
Yet Nepal's electricity use is soaring at an annual clip of 15 percent,
fuelled mainly by rural electrification and urbanites' growing use of
electrical appliances. Most economic planners see this as a healthy
trend, and regard a growing supply of electricity as essential for
stimulating domestic industry and creating employment. It can also
encourage local economic development, reduce fuel wood use, and benefit
women and children by freeing up time otherwise spent gathering wood.
However, electricity is of no use to people who can't afford it, and it
can only play a limited role in offsetting deforestation: as far as most
rural Nepalis are concerned, wood is free, whereas electricity costs
rupees - and electric appliances cost dollars.
At the national level, however, the increasing reliance on electricity
locks Nepal into an expensive quest for power. Fortunately, the country
has always been able to rely on foreign donors to finance the showcase
large-scale hydroelectric projects which provide most of its
electricity. Diversions have been built on the Kulekhani (south of
Kathmandu) and the Marsyangdi (along the Prithvi Highway), and others
are under construction on the Kali Gandaki (southwest of Pokhara) and
Bhote Koshi (along the road to the Tibet border). Such major projects
have serious drawbacks - they're environmentally disruptive, require
vast inputs of foreign aid (and often give-away-the-store economic
concessions), are magnets for corruption, and put Nepal at the mercy of
foreign experts to operate and maintain them - but if Nepal is to keep
up with its demand for electricity they are probably a necessary evil.
Some economic planners are enamoured with the idea of building even
bigger hydro diversions, not to satisfy domestic energy demand but to
export electricity to neighbouring countries for foreign exchange.
Several are in the planning stages, awaiting a willing funding partner.
One, the so-called Karnali-Chisapani Project, would be one of the
world's biggest: a high dam on the Karnali River in far-western Nepal,
it would have a capacity of 10,800 megawatts (about 20 times Nepal's
entire installed capacity), cost $4-8 billion to build, and displace
60,000 people upstream; the American energy giant Enron is seriously
interested. Another megaproject, Arun III, was spiked in 1995 but could
conceivably be resurrected - HMG is still trolling for other funders.
Microhydro projects can't deliver the kind of power industry needs, but
they are appropriate technology for mountain villages too remote to be
economically connected to the grid. Scores of these have been installed
(both with foreign and private Nepalese funding) to supply electricity
for a few hundred households each.
Nepal is also a good candidate for solar power . The introduction of
locally manufactured solar water heaters is helping to take some of the
pressure off the electric grid and the forests. Though photovoltaics are
relatively expensive for so poor a country, so too is the cost of
extending the grid ($60,000 per kilometre), which means that in remote
areas without hydroelectric potential it can actually work out cheaper
to install solar cells. Biogas - gaseous fuel produced by the
fermentation of organic material such as manure and agricultural waste -
is also proving to be cost-effective; the Dutch government has
subsidized the establishment of local small-scale plants throughout
Nepal.
But at the household level, appropriate technology has to be something
the average Nepali peasant can afford, which isn't much. Several groups
have worked hard to introduce " smokeless " chulo (stoves), which burn
wood more efficiently and reduce unhealthy kitchen smoke. Yet even this
simple innovation illustrates the dilemmas of tampering with traditional
ways: Nepalis complain that the new stoves aren't as easy to regulate
and don't emit enough light, while the lack of smoke allows insects to
infest their thatched roofs. That's one reason why many Nepali
households are converting from thatch to corrugated metal.
Roads , like big hydroelectric and irrigation projects, don't come out
well in cost-benefit analyses in Nepal, though planners insist that
they're necessary for development. They cost far more than Nepal could
ever afford without aid, and are almost as expensive to maintain; many
are hastily built, only to wash away with the next monsoon. The wealthy
- bus owners, truckers, merchants, building contractors - benefit from
road-building, while porters and shopkeepers along the former walking
route lose out. Nevertheless, roads form an important part of Nepal's
development strategy because it's virtually impossible to deliver
services, administer projects, maintain order or even collect taxes in
areas not served by roads. By contrast, footbridges put villages within
easier reach of jobs and health facilities, and enable villagers to get
their produce to market more efficiently, making them perhaps the most
useful and popular type of public-works project.
Death of a megaproject
In 1987, the World Bank selected the upper reaches of the Arun River in
eastern Nepal to be the site of a world-class hydroelectric diversion
projected to cost $770 million. The so-called Arun III project was
conceived as a strategic effort for Nepal not only to meet its growing
demand for electricity but also to earn significant revenue by exporting
surplus power.
Early concerns about the environmental consequences of building an
access road to the site were silenced by the establishment of the huge
Makalu-Barun National Park and Conservation Area, to the west of the
Arun. Some observers questioned the wisdom of a poor country like Nepal
putting all its eggs into such a costly basket, but no organized
opposition surfaced until 1993, when the small Alliance for Energy
charged that HMG had failed to properly investigate more appropriate
alternatives to Arun III. The following year another ad-hoc
organization, Arun Concerned Group lodged a formal appeal with the World
Bank's newly formed Inspection Panel. It was a David-versus-Goliath
proposition if ever there was one: Arun III was precisely the sort of
Third World megaproject the World Bank had been sponsoring for decades
despite objections from the world's biggest environmental groups.
But change was afoot within the lending giant, and Arun III was to
become one of the first indicators of it. Reassessing every aspect of
the project, the Inspection Panel concluded that it was too big an
undertaking for Nepal, allowing too little margin for error and claiming
too great a share of the country's slender development budget. The panel
also found that Arun III would probably drive up Nepal's electricity
tariffs - already the highest in South Asia - by 50 percent, calling
into question the economic justification for building it. In 1995,
incoming World Bank president James Wolfensohn cancelled Arun III,
pledging to redirect the Bank's share of the funding towards eighteen
small- and medium-scale hydro projects and a package of development
assistance to the Arun region.
The decision rocked Nepal's political establishment and, for many,
underscored the humiliating extent to which outside interests control
Nepal's development agenda. Some warned that the loss of Arun III would
mean even more serious power shortages and economic stagnation in the
coming decade. Others expressed relief that Nepal would now be free to
pursue smaller, less sophisticated projects that it could build, operate
and maintain with less foreign involvement
Women
Outside the relative sophistication of Kathmandu, Hindu women are a
long, long way from liberation. In remote rural areas, they're
considered their husband's or father's chattel, given or taken in
marriage for the price of, say, a buffalo - a status reinforced by law.
Orthodox Baahuns, while in the minority, reveal the extent of female
subjugation. They believe a woman is ritually unclean during
menstruation and for ten days after giving birth, and that she must
remain apart during that period and drink cow's urine to cleanse
herself. One study found that 73 percent of Nepali women suffer from
domestic violence . Polygamy , though officially outlawed, is widely
practised in the hills, and if a woman doesn't produce a son she's
liable to be replaced. Abortion is illegal in nearly all circumstances -
even in cases of rape or incest - and is only allowed when the mother's
life is in danger. The maximum sentence for abortion is three years, and
women whose babies are stillborn risk being charged with infanticide,
which carries a sentence of 20 years. Predictably, this results in
unsafe backstreet abortions, which are believed to be the cause of up to
half of all maternal mortality in Nepal.
Sherpanis and other Buddhist women are treated much more equally, and
high-caste Hindu women may easily flout conventions, but even these
women don't enjoy true power-sharing. (Indeed, when it comes to gender
roles, wealthy urbanites can be as traditional as any villager: the
popularity of fetal ultrasound testing services in Kathmandu and the
Tarai suggests that some couples are seeking to eliminate unwanted
females.)
Several development problems already touched on - inequities between the
sexes in health care and education, and the failure of
population-control efforts - arise directly from the low status of women
in Nepal. Another tragic consequence is the trafficking of Nepali girls
for Indian brothels. It's estimated that between 150,000 and 225,000
Nepali girls and women - 20 percent of them under the age of 16 - have
been sold into sexual slavery in India, where patrons prize them for
their beauty and supposed lack of inhibitions. To poor Hindu families in
Nepal, daughters are often regarded as burdens, costing money to be
married off and then becoming another family's asset; when a broker
comes offering, say, Rs15,000 for a pubescent daughter, many readily
agree. This horrific trade is most pronounced in the central hills,
where it has historical roots, since Tamang girls were for generations
forced to serve as concubines in the courts of the Kathmandu rulers. A
prostitute may eventually buy her freedom, but ordinarily she won't be
released until she's been "damaged" - which these days means she has
AIDS. Prostitution is also on the rise in Kathmandu and other Nepali
cities.
So far, the government has shown little inclination to confront this
national disgrace. Concerned NGOs have been left to set up homes for
former prostitutes, who would otherwise be shunned by family and friends
if they returned to their villages. Others are working to address the
underlying causes of the problem - not only poverty in general, but
specifically women's low education and earning power. If women are
educated and enabled to earn money, they won't be seen as a drag on
family finances and are less likely to be sold off.
The women's movement is embryonic in Nepal. Women weren't granted the
vote until 1948, and though the All Nepal Women's Organization was
formed in 1951, women working for social change were forced to operate
underground until the 1990 restoration of democracy. Aid projects and
agencies have been chiefly concerned with setting up cottage-industry
employment for women, so they can earn spare cash as a first step to
some sort of self-determination. Two very successful efforts, the
Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank and the Nepalese government's Production
Credit for Rural Women programme, have targeted women's development by
making " microenterprise loans " to small, self-organizing groups of
women and supporting the borrowers with literacy, family-planning and
other training.
Children and the elderly
Children , like women, are often victims of poverty in Nepal. As already
mentioned, however much their parents love them, in poor familes they
are counted as an economic resource from an early age. Child labour has
always been essential in agriculture, and in the past it was common for
children to work as unpaid servants for village landowners simply so
there would be one less mouth to feed. In the growing cash economy,
children are increasingly being relied on to earn wages as porters,
kanchha ("boys"), and labourers in the carpet, brick and construction
industries. According to one study, 2.6 million Nepali children - 60
percent of the population between 6 and 14 - are engaged in labour.
Another survey suggests that two-thirds of the carpet industry's
workforce is made up of children under the age of 16, a fact that has
led to a boycott of Nepalese-produced carpets in some European
countries.
Not only are these youngsters often forced to work long hours in
unhealthy conditions, and are frequently abused, they are deprived of
their childhood - the right to play, be loved and be educated. The
government has passed laws against child labour, but this is yet another
problem that can only be effectively addressed by attacking its root
cause: poverty.
The elderly in Nepal are traditionally looked after by their sons, but
economic development - which brings increased mobility and beguiling new
possibilities - is breaking down such traditions. Moreover, Nepal's
demographic transition will require an adjustment, as it has in other
countries, as there are fewer young people to support more old people.
All of this means there will be a need for more elder care facilities
and a meaningful national pension (currently a meagre Rs100 per month is
doled out to widows over 60 and men over 75).
Education
Nepal's education system has come a long way in a short time. There were
few state schools before 1951, and they were open only to the children
of elites - now there are primary schools within walking distance of
most villages, and legions of private schools in the Kathmandu Valley.
However, primary-school enrolment is probably well below the official
figure of 68 percent, and actual attendance may be less than 25 percent.
Only 13 percent of boys - and just 3 percent of girls - finish secondary
school. The trouble is that "free" public education is actually quite
expensive for families who depend on their children for labour, and so
in a poor country like Nepal, government-subsidized schools don't always
help the most needy children. The country has made great strides in
increasing literacy , though the gulf between adult males (55 percent)
and females (25 percent) is telling.
Nepal's proportion of qualified teachers is very low (only 39 percent
are trained), so most aid programmes have focused on teacher training.
Low pay is another problem, sapping teachers' motivation and
contributing to an estimated 50-percent teacher absentee rate. Western
workers believe education could be a powerful catalyst for change in
Nepal, but many complain that the current curriculum is geared for
churning out bureaucrats and should be made more vocational and relevant
to a peasant population. Others worry that the sponsorship of education
programmes by foreign agencies leads to a lack of accountability and a
sense that the curriculum is externally designed.
Those who do finish high school and go on to one of Nepal's many
colleges or universities often find that there's no work for them when
they graduate - a common problem in most countries, but all the more
acute in Nepal, whose non-agricultural sectors are particularly poorly
developed. A further cultural complication is the prevalent attitude
towards education in Nepal: equated with high status, it is all too
often pursued merely to avoid physical labour, which carries low status.
This, ironically, has the effect of removing many of Nepal's most highly
trained people from the productive workforce. Frustrated by a lack of
opportunities or just plain bored, the educated youth of the Kathmandu
Valley make up a growing class of angry young men given to revolutionary
talk and goonda antics.
Industry and trade
Nepal needs to create jobs - agriculture simply cannot absorb all of the
country's growing workforce. Unemployment stands at around 14 percent,
while some 40 percent of Nepalis are considered underemployed. Moreover,
a developing nation like Nepal has to produce things, not only for
domestic consumption but also for export, so that it can earn foreign
exchange to pay for the imported technology and materials it needs for
development. That means boosting industry , which in Nepal's case
accounts for a relatively low 16 percent of gross domestic product.
Tourism is Nepal's top foreign-exchange earner, and many see it as the
country's most promising economic engine. But while the industry creates
tens of thousands of much-needed jobs, plus indirect employment in
related industries, this work tends to be menial and seasonal. Moreover,
the economic benefits of tourism are highly localized, and an estimated
60 percent of the foreign exchange earned from tourism goes right back
out of the country to pay for imported materials. True, tourism can
claim some credit for shaping HMG's mostly progressive environmental
record - but it's an open question whether the revenue earned really
offsets the ecological and cultural costs. The fruits of tourism, so
arbitrarily awarded, have turned legions of Nepalis into panhandlers, in
much the same way that aid has done to politicians and institutions.
There are various strategies for exploiting tourism as a development
tool. The one employed by nearby Bhutan is to admit only a small number
of very high-paying tourists, thus maximizing revenue while minimizing
impacts. Another approach, exemplified by independent trekking, is to
encourage tourists to disperse and spend as much of their money as
possible at the local level. Unfortunately, Nepal has so far failed to
pursue any clear strategy. It has tended to go for quantity rather than
quality, and to allow visitors to cram themselves into a few overused
areas, which only degrades the tourist experience and undermines the
industry's long-term viability; this commodity approach to tourism seems
particularly short-sighted in Nepal's case, given its unique assets
(after all, there is only one Mount Everest). The government's big
tourism push, Visit Nepal Year '98 , was a fiasco, as it was hardly
publicized outside of the country, and was accompanied by no
improvements to tourist infrastructure. The resulting bad publicity has
actually produced a decline in visitors.
Until the mid-1990s, carpet manufacture was Nepal's fastest-growing
industrial sector, and looked poised to overtake tourism in annual
revenue. Highly labour-intensive, the industry still generates plenty of
employment and adds lots of value to relatively cheap materials, and it
has also helped to diversify the economy away from an overreliance on
tourism. However, quality-control problems and bad PR over child labour
have turned the boom into something of a bust, while the industry's
economic benefits are now seen to be largely offset by the hidden costs
of exploitation, social disruption and pollution. Nepal's garment
industry has seen a similar rise and fall in exports, though on a
smaller scale.
In many other industries, Nepal finds itself in a classic Third World
bind. It can't profitably produce things like vehicles and computers
because its domestic market is so small (and poor), and importing even
modest amounts of these items quickly runs up a nasty trade deficit .
The government has therefore put much of its energy into stimulating the
production of run-of-the-mill goods for domestic consumption, achieving
dubious successes in some sectors. Beer production, to take one example,
has increased 400 percent in the past decade. In development economics,
this is known as import substitution : for a country short on foreign
exchange, a penny saved is a penny earned. Washing powder, paper, cement
and shoes have seen similarly dramatic increases in output.
Many of these factories have been set up as licensed monopolies , which
give the government more control over the pace of development, but tend
to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few Kathmandu fat cats. (In most
sectors the law requires that all businesses have a majority Nepali
ownership, which makes for some very well-off silent partners.) A few
dozen industries are still run as state-owned enterprises, most of which
are slated for eventual privatization . However, this is a highly
politicized process, and ripe for corruption, since those in charge of a
sale can deliberately undervalue the enterprise and award the sale to
whoever gives the juiciest kickback.
The presence of India as Nepal's neighbour to the south inevitably
complicates matters. Nepal's main trading partner, India has
traditionally levied high import duties to protect its own industries,
thus benefiting Nepali border traders (who can sell imported goods for
less than their Indian competitors), but crippling Nepali exporters
(whose goods become uncompetitive with duty added on). Nepal's closer
ties with India's leadership since the restoration of democracy have
resulted in more favourable terms of trade , and the decision of both
countries to make their currencies fully convertible has begun to make
their goods more competitive in the world market. However, critics
charge that the Congress Party, when it has been in power, has tended to
turn a blind eye while Indian entrepreneurs bought up Nepal's choicest
businesses.
Economic strategy
Development workers advocate all sorts of wonderful-sounding ways to
bring Nepal out of poverty. Economists ask: how do we pay for it? Hard
work and good ideas will amount to nothing unless they're accompanied by
a sound economic strategy .
Alas, Nepal's leaders have paid little attention to economics since the
restoration of democracy. Their tendency to accept whatever foreign aid
is offered, without analyzing how or whether it fits into the country's
long-term plans, has produced crippling economic distortions and wasted
much time in the race to achieve real development. Constant political
upheavals have played havoc with planning, and have made virtually all
decisions subservient to short-term political calculations. These
factors, along with the high costs and risks of doing business in Nepal
(corruption, inflation, exchange-rate fluctuations), have in turn
frightened off foreign investment.
Economists estimate that if Nepal is to make significant progress in
alleviating poverty, it will have to achieve long-term economic growth
of at least 6 percent annually. The country achieved that target for a
few years in the early 1990s, but since then the annual growth rate has
averaged about 3 percent - only just keeping ahead of population growth.
Furthermore, most of the growth has been confined to a few urban areas,
and with inflation eroding people's purchasing power, the average Nepali
has experienced a steadily declining standard of living.
One policy pursued fairly consistently by recent governments is economic
liberalization , which has meant selling off loss-making state
enterprises, reducing restrictions and tariffs on imports, making the
currency fully convertible, and allowing for easier licensing of banks
and other businesses. These actions have helped open the door to a flood
of foreign goods and capital, resulting in a dramatic increase in wealth
and economic activity in the Kathmandu Valley and to a lesser extent in
the urban centres of the Tarai. However, it should be noted that such
policies are designed by and for those who already have the capital, and
they offer little benefit to Nepal's subsistence farmers and labourers.
Wealth is slow to trickle down in a country like Nepal.
Lazily addicted to foreign aid, the government for many years made
almost no effort to support itself through taxation , leading to
potentially serious fiscal imbalances in the 1990s. Under pressure from
international donors and lending institutions, the government has
finally begun to increase its collection of income tax (though this
still contributes only 10 percent of the national budget) and has
instituted a 10-percent value-added tax (VAT) on the sale of most goods
and services. The latter has attracted predictable opposition from the
business community, and may indeed prove to be an unworkable funding
mechanism due to its high susceptibility to graft. Chronically short of
funds, the government is unable to operate its infrastructure
efficiently, makes short-sighted decisions, and has little left over to
invest in improvements; indeed, the government's fiscal inefficiency is
such that it can't even utilize much of the foreign aid being offered to
it.
Kathmandu Valley problems
Solutions often create their own problems. For five decades, people have
been trying to get Nepal to develop - now that it has, in the Kathmandu
Valley , many are nervously fumbling for the "off" switch.
Kathmandu appears to be following in the footsteps of other Asian
capitals like Delhi and Bangkok, albeit on a smaller scale.
Overpopulation is driving a growing rural exodus ; new roads and bus
services are carrying the landless poor away from their villages, while
jobs in the tourism and carpet industries attract them to the Kathmandu
Valley. Many immigrants land jobs and begin the difficult process of
finding a place for themselves in the big city , and a few even find
their fortune there. But there's no safety net for those who don't. They
may end up squatting in the most primitive conditions imaginable - in
unhealthy shacks by the river, in empty buildings, in the streets - and
scrounging a living from the rubbish heaps or prostitution.
While poverty is a perennial problem in the valley, it's prosperity
that's creating the brand-new headaches, starting with traffic and
pollution . Industrial workers get to their factories by tempo or bus.
The more affluent drive their own motorbikes or cars. Goods must be
moved by truck. Tourists take taxis. The result is ever-growing gridlock
and an increasing smog problem from a fleet of vehicles that is doubling
every six to eight years. Those who can afford to are moving out to the
suburbs, and their commuting only worsens the problem. Vehicle emissions
are blamed for an alarming increase in respiratory problems, which occur
at twelve times the national average in Kathmandu. Health experts warn
that children are particularly vulnerable to asthma, allergies and
lead-related developmental problems caused by the appalling air quality.
The causes of this environmental catastrophe are largely political, and
require political will to solve. In the meantime, the introduction of
electric-powered Safaa ("clean") tempos, made possible by a Danish
government grant, is providing a highly visible reminder that there are
cleaner alternatives.
Meanwhile, sheer numbers of people are taxing the valley's other
infrastructure. In Kathmandu, demand for drinking water exceeds the
supply by 50 to 100 percent (depending on season), with the result that
residents in many neighbourhoods have pressure only on alternate
mornings or evenings - most pump what water they can get up to rooftop
storage tanks, and supplement it with deliveries by tanker. Leaks in
underground pipes account for most of the shortfall, but of the water
that is delivered, much of it is monopolized by wasteful tourist hotels
and restaurants. Nobody seems to be talking about fixing the leaks or
improving efficiency of the water supply; instead, most believe the
solution lies in a big $250 million diversion project from the Malemchi
Khola, northeast of the valley, but at the time of writing the World
Bank was threatening to withhold its share of the funding due to
government mismanagement.
Not only is water scarce in the valley, it's also highly contaminated. A
1998 study deemed 50 percent of the capital's tap water to be
"unsatisfactory" - and that was based on samples taken in the dry
season, when the water is cleanest. Most of the contamination comes from
sewage permeating the soil and infiltrating into old, leaky pipes. Only
30 percent of the valley's sewage is properly treated before being
discharged: municipal treatment plants are old and don't operate
properly, and in many areas raw waste is allowed to drain directly into
rivers. Many industries - notably carpet-washing factories - discharge
toxic effluents into the rivers. Such dumping is illegal, but the
Ministry of Population and the Environment doesn't have a single
inspector to enforce the law. Garbage is another problem, not only
because the valley's growing population is generating more of it, but
also because its municipalities still haven't agreed on a permanent
dumping site; and in the meantime, much of it is simply burnt, adding to
air pollution.
The damage that has been done to the valley's culture in the name of
progress is less easy to quantify, but is arguably more profound.
Traditional architecture is no longer valued. Members of the younger
generation are drifting away from the religion of their parents. Guthi
(charitable organizations) are in decline and have been forced to leave
the upkeep of many temples to foreign preservationists. Tourism has
robbed crafts of their proper use, and many performance arts of their
meaning. Work outside the home has disrupted family life, and the influx
of strangers has introduced social tensions and crime.
To some extent, valley residents are prepared to accept these problems
as the price of progress: a little pollution or crime may seem a fair
trade for improvements that keep children from dying and give people
greater control over their lives. But increasingly, Kathmanduites are
worrying that they might have a "Silent Spring" in the making. What will
be the effects on their children of growing up breathing air, drinking
water and eating food that is not only contaminated with germs but also
laced with chemicals and heavy metals? In another generation, when
Nepalis are presumably more prosperous and living longer and expecting
more out of life, will they be haunted by elevated levels of cancer,
birth defects and allergies? And will the nation be able to afford the
cost of treating all the victims of these anthropogenic diseases
Bureaucracy, corruption and fatalism
Many aid workers identify the root cause of Nepal's slow development as
"institutional problems", a euphemism that covers a multitude of sins.
They speak of management bottlenecks, where bureaucrats hoard power to
such an extent that project managers have to spend most of their time in
Kathmandu queueing for signatures instead of getting things done in the
field. They complain that Nepali managers are overly fond of desk jobs
in the capital, regarding remote hill postings as punishment and making
no secret of their disdain for the local people they're supposed to be
helping. (The most coveted position in Nepal is a job that involves no
work and produces a regular pay cheque.) Managers frequently leave the
important work to untrained underlings, preferring instead to pass their
time in seminars and "talk programmes". Slogans and planning targets are
more in evidence than action, while planners tend to favour rigid,
top-down approaches without consulting experts in the field. These
traits aren't unique to Nepal, of course, and indeed many aid
organizations are themselves centralized and top-down-oriented.
But unquestionably, Nepal's gravest institutional problem is corruption
, which seems to plumb new depths with each short-lived government.
There is little tradition of public service at the national level in
Nepal, and a government job with decision-making authority has long been
regarded as a licence to collect kickbacks ("commissions") from those
who desire a favourable decision. The graft is perpetuated by
artificially low salaries and, no doubt, by the sight of apparently
limitless piles of development loot. Government procedures have even
been devised to streamline the process - most bilateral aid, for
instance, is required to be disbursed by HMG "line agencies", each with
its own hierarchy of bureaucrats who expect a piece of the action.
Under the old panchaayat system, corruption was endemic but discreet;
since the restoration of democracy, it has become part of the modus
operandi of all parties, and extends to the very highest levels. The
intense competition for power has politicized , and corrupted, every
branch of the bureaucracy: jobs are awarded on the basis of party
loyalty, not merit; the appointees are essentially ordered to skim off
as much as they can for the party (plus a bit for themselves), and are
given political cover to do so. With each new government comes a wave of
new appointees, producing administrative upheavals. Some observers have
equated such systematic corruption with genocide, because the damage
it's doing to Nepal's economy, and the money it's diverting from needed
projects, is responsible for countless needless deaths. Over the years,
foreign donors have abetted the corruption by looking the other way, not
wanting to jeopardize their projects, but the situation has now become
so bad, with so little aid money actually reaching its target, that some
of the big donor nations have started threatening to cut off the funds.
These institutional problems are themselves only projections of Nepal's
culture, elements of which seem almost designed to thwart Western-style
development. One of Nepal's foremost anthropologists, Dor Bahadur Bista,
argues compellingly that Nepal's greatest handicap is the fatalism
peddled by its Baahun (Brahman) elite. According to Bista, along with
Nepalis' admirable ke garne ("what to do?") attitude comes an
exasperating apathy, and an obstructive suspicion that development
efforts are merely futile attempts to resist fate. Responsibility for
actions and decisions is often passed on to higher-ups (whether a boss,
an astrologer or a deity), and the relationship between present work and
future goals (at least in this life) is glossed over, resulting in
haphazard planning and follow-through. Moreover, Nepali society places a
great emphasis on connections and old-boy networks (called aafno maanche
in Nepali: "one's own people"), which make it hard for members of ethnic
minorities to advance, and on patronage, in which dependents are
rewarded for loyalty rather than skill or innovation. Invaluable as
these traits may be in a traditional village society, in a modern nation
they tend to produce inept government, and foster a grovelling
dependency on foreign patrons.
Prospects
The information presented here isn't intended to make it sound as if
Nepal's situation is hopeless, nor that there is no way for outsiders to
help. Newcomers to the field tend to be the gloomiest ones, while people
with a longer perspective are able to cite many major improvements. The
political situation does indeed look very bad, but although Nepal will
continue on its fitful development journey, one is tempted to say that
things can only get better.
As a traveller, you too are playing a part in Nepal's development. With
the right mixture of know-how and humility, you can be an agent of
social change just by being yourself. Spent wisely, your money can bring
tangible improvements to villages and families. In addition, there are
plenty of good causes you may feel inclined to donate money to when you
get home: with a little effort you should be able to see a few in action
during your travels, and judge them by their fruits
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