Misplaced plan and programmes

By PROF M L SINGH

Though Nepal completed the implementation of Ninth Plan and is soon to embark on the Tenth Plan, it is still the world’s third poorest country because more than 50 percent of its population continue to live under poverty. The reasons for this unfortunate state are: (a) Plans are highly centralized and most of the development works are centred in some selected areas only. They are often formulated without making need assessments of the concerned people and provisions of maximum utilization of the local material and human resources.

(b) The priority areas covered by the plans are the development of roads, agriculture and education. Many plans exist only on documents with wonderful policies and targets but far from ground realities. Also major plans/ projects are sponsored by donor agencies. Donor agencies manipulate the proposed policies and targets of the plans to suit their interests.

(c) There is no continuity in plan’s policies. Successive governments often manipulate the priorities set in the plan and, in many instances, the plans are discontinued. Also most of the plans/projects, instead of being public oriented, are capital oriented. As a consequence, only a few privileged people enjoy the benefits from the programmes implemented. Administrative cost while implementing plans often exceeds the technical cost. It is said that only 25 percent of the cost allocated for a project are spent on actual work.

While a few regions of the country manage to develop and some people are getting benefits from the plans, most of regions have remained unaffected by these plans and people in these regions are living under subsistence level. Due to the adoption of a capitalistic approach in development plans, the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing day after day, creating dangerous social and economic imbalances in the country. One reason of the present Maoist movement may be due to frustrations created as a result of increasing gap between the rich and the poor.

Plans/projects formulated and implemented are often of such nature that all materials required are to be imported from foreign countries. As a result, a substantial amount of money is draining out of this country. Also in most cases, the economic benefits generated from such plans are less than the
investment and maintenance costs incurred. Besides, the products in neighbouring countries are much cheaper than the similar products produced in this country. This means Nepalese products are not getting proper markets even in this country.

There are a few attempts to utilize Nepal’s own human resources in the development works. A large number of Nepalese labourers are not only migrating to India and Arab countries but also to Australia, the US and the UK. This is creating a critical population polarization in the country. Lack of skilled labour force in the country is attracting labourers from neighbouring India thus accelerating the volume of immigrants in this country. This indicates that there are plenty of works in Nepal for foreigners but not to Nepalese themselves. This is a classic example of misplaced planning.

All these facts indicate that the development plans implemented in the country are not in consonance with country’s needs but such plans have been misplacing the general people, widening the gap between rich and poor.

Most of the development plans should be of local in nature. Different plans for different places should be launched according to the resources available there. Assessments and surveys of local resources - both material and human - should be made before launching a local level planning.

Local human resources should be tapped and the skills of local people should be upgraded to make them competent enough to take part in the development of their locality. Activities should be launched so as to retain the population in their locality. Also attitude of the people should be changed, giving preferences to white colour jobs to labour intensive jobs, along with due respect and dignity for any kind of work.

Instead of adopting foreign models of development, plans in Nepal should be based on its own models and requirements. Also the development activities should be changed from tradition prioritised sectors to new sectors. For instance, agriculture practices in hills should be changed from traditional cropping to new activities such as fruit, herbal cropping, animal farming, etc. Products produced by these practices will definitely have unchallenged markets in the neighbouring countries. Along with roads, rope ways should be developed. Production and consumer centres should be linked with such ropeways.

As far as possible, minimum priorities should be given to foreign sponsored projects and any political interference in development plans should be taken seriously. Since the planning are to be based on population parameters, major population data at local level should be made available regularly in short periods. For this purpose, VDCs and municipalities should be given the tasks of maintaining records of the population in their localities every six months as regards to population size, births, deaths, migrants as well as their potentialities and the publications of the data every year. This activity should not be confused with the existing vital registration system practised in this country.

Present practice of depending on foreign aids and loans for launching development works in Nepal should be discontinued. Major expenses for the development works can be met by generating income through immediate development of Lumbini area alone. There are millions of devoted Buddhists all over the world who want to make pilgrimage to Lumbini and spend their money in Nepal. In spite of such income generation potentiality of Lumbini, it is not understood why actual development of this area has not taken place though many plans and programmes to develop it have been formulated since the last four decades.

Let us stop making Nepalese confused with nonsense plans and programmes. Seminars, inaugural ceremonies and lectures are making our lives more complicated. Irrational new acts, rules and regulations in administration have further turned things from bad to worse. What Nepal to day needs is peace and development.

Strenghthening moral education

By LAXMAN KHARAL

Finally, we got the responsibility of running the Sankhadevi English School at Lubhu transferred to us. After realising the need to improve the school infrastructure including water supply and sanitation facilities and the quality of teaching, the next important thing that struck my mind as an advisor and supporter to my wife was how we could strengthen the dimension of morality. I knew that the highest form of morality could be better achieved by basing things on spirituality. With this in mind I began to visualise a serene common room set up in the school with sublimating music in the background and a small, beautiful and lighted statue of Sarasoti in front, for students to draw the required doses of spirituality. It would be a place where yoga (given to the world by the East) and some techniques of super learning (based on the latest in the field of mind technology in the West) could be taught. The serene room could also be used for allowing children committing severe mistakes to cleanse themselves by confessing before the Sarasoti. This would replace the common practice of punishing children by teachers who themselves are often wrong in the act of punishing, often causing a negative impact on the psychological development of the children. The serene room could also be used for releasing the staff’s wisdom, creativity and compassion by clearing away psychological blocks through suitable forms of meditation.

As the idea was well-appreciated by my wife and nephew, I said to my self, "why not discuss it with my master, Dr Vikasananda, too". I thus asked for an appointment which I got immediately after his live interview on the morning FM. It was my wife’s first meeting with the master. After great laughter from the master breaking the ice, we soon got into the topic.

The master reminded me of the spirit of the term spirituality, which is to bring out an individual’s spirit (essence), and is different from religion. He commented that setting up of the serene room and introducing yoga and techniques from mind technology are okay but placing the Sarasoti there would be working more towards religion, religion in the forms that have existed and fragmented society. My wife also raised the question of how to deal with the query of our son who often asks why a particular teacher in his school behaves in such a rude way. He scolds even on being asked questions. The master gave a practical example of how he made a child, through affectionate indirect questioning, confess his mistake. The child used to tear up paper into pieces and throw them here and there, against his campaign of keeping his ashram premises clean.

It turned out that along with the introduction of yoga and mind technology practices, it would be equally important to protect children from the bad traits of the teachers they might have. The psychological environment of the school should be very healthy, a situation in which the planes separating the three layers of students, teachers and management are dissolved with feelings of compassion and support pervading them all. It is a situation where children are not scared after making a mistake, but rather the committing of mistakes are taken as a means to elicit learning, where children are allowed to do what they want in small progressive steps thus giving them the opportunity to learn by themselves, where discipline is directed to working towards reality against the current practice which is oriented more toward creating situations of fear and threat.

Fighting corruption

By RAJENDRA K KHETAN

As Nepal is preparing to host the Nepal Development Forum meeting (previously known as the Nepal Aid Group) for the first time in this country in early February, issues like good governance and controlling corruption have come to the fore with added emphasis. As donors will be raising questions about the outcome of millions of dollars poured into a number of development programs in the country, corruption and mismanagement would emerge as major obstacles in ensuring judicious use of limited resources.

I am not being too pessimistic. Of course, we have come a long way in terms of development of infrastructure as well as in terms of social indicators, when compared to the fifties when we opened up our country to the rest of the world. But we can undoubtedly say that we would have fared much better in achieving physical and social progress if we had been able to control corruption and maintain transparency in all spheres of our social life.

The constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal, 1990, has envisaged an equitable and just society built on the pillars of multiparty democracy. Successive governments after 1990 have adopted the policies of economic liberalisation and market economy. While the opening up of the economy has opened new
opportunities for a few, it has also added the burden on the vast majority of people.

A top bureaucrat recently said that there is no governance in the country, let alone good governance. Good governance, in essence, aims at delivering to the people, not at ruling them as their masters. Transparency and accountability are two inseparable parts of good governance. Unfortunately, political instability, divided political leadership and weak bureaucracy have left governance in disarray. The result of which we can see in our day-to-day life.

Speaking on behalf of the private sector, I must admit that we businessmen, too, have been responsible in bribing officials to get our jobs done. Donating to political parties is seen as a common practice but the private sector, which is the major donor, has never lobbied for transparency in the political parties. At the same time, we can’t ask others to be transparent, if our deals are shady. We will reach nowhere by blaming the system alone.

Discretionary authority to government officials, loopholes in the laws, rules and regulations, a traditional judicial system and a poor legislature have all added to the problem of corruption. Lack of professionalism in a major section of the media and a weak civil society have not helped create public opinion.

Coming back to the private sector, we have laid more emphasis on bending the rules rather than fighting for a transparent and functioning system. The result is that we have to pay bribes at every step of decision-making. With 12 years of parliamentary experience and the country suffering from unprecedented crisis due to insurgency, the time has come for all members of society to vow to fight corruption unitedly. The great King Prithvi Narayan Shah, in his immortal ‘Divya Upadesh,’ said both those who pay bribes and take bribes are equally guilty. We can’t clap with one hand.

So, the private sector must lobby for a transparent and accountable system that will help in reducing unseen costs in the growth of economic activities and thereby in the overall development of the country. Last and not the least, we will have to build and strengthen popularly elected, accountable institutions to fight the menace of corruption, and not support unaccountable institutions which themselves are likely to grow into more seats of corruption. Let’s hope that this week’s NDF meeting and the 10th plan will address this.

(The author is president of Nepal-Britain Chamber of Commerce)