Promoting Handicraft Industries
Right Policies Needed

By Khilendra Basnyat

NEPAL, which has a proud tradition of handicraft skills, is still famous for its handicraft products. Out of more than one thousand and three hundred registered in Kathmandu Valley, about one thousand and two hundred handicraft related industries are said to be under operation.

In the past, artisans of artistic and decorative goods such as statues, bells and other temple adornments maintained a high degree of skill and aesthetic value that such items were traded outside the country. These activities were practised at the local level with little attention to the institution of the process.

Handicraft industries contribute a small proportion to the national income. Ownership in handicraft industries is always private in the form of either a private firm or a private limited or partnership companies.

Handicrafts such as bronze and brass in Lalitpur, pottery in Thimi, wood carving and painting in Bhaktapur testifies that traditional genesis is still living.

No doubt, Nepalese handicrafts can play an important role in export trade, especially in exports to the north. However in the absence of appropriate programme to modernise the traditional indigenous techniques that are to be ascertained are slowly disappearing. Consequently, agricultural commodities began to play a significant role among Nepalese exports and the majority of Nepal’s imports became processed goods. Undoubtedly, this gave almost monopoly control over her trade to India.

Despite some advantages of handicrafts, the technology used in such industries is of subsistence nature and fails to maintain equality and costs at desired levels. Consequently, such industries are unable to compete with foreign goods.

The isolation and stagnation of ideas, in addition to the tendency of the inhabitants living near the Indian border to depend on the Indian market for goods, hindered technological advances. It is too late to bring in suitable and low-cost technology and familiarise entrepreneurs with it.

In fact, the seeds for the Nepalese textile industry were sown in the nineteenth century. The Anglo-Nepali trade treaty of 1923, which provided for a policy for free trade, gave a severe blow to our cottage and craft industries.

The effort to return hand-made goods to a position of respectability began before the revolution. In this regard, one of the earliest development projects was the establishment of a training centre for handicrafts in Kathmnadu with the aid from the Ford Foundation. However, the emphasis on crafts was latter shifted to the basic manual skills which in some cases did not testify to be useful or realistic taking into account the limitations of employment opportunities.

Since shortcomings have been felt on the part of the affiliated bodies in the variety of training programmes, they can be conducted smoothly through the accumulation of fund from district development committees and other concerned organisations.

In order to promote handicraft industries, marketing training should be conducted for the staff of handicraft sales centre and retail outlets so that they need not depend on intermediaries for selling their products, and buyers need to wander in search of such products.

Nepal’s great potential in skilled handiwork has been demonstrated by its curio industry and craft goods to be seen all over Kathmandu. Actually, it is necessary to have a fair degree of sustainability in these skills in new areas of handiwork. The cost of such handiwork is so high in developed countries and so low in Nepal that even with transport costs added, this handiwork could probably be sold at thirty to forty per cent below the prices of such goods produced in Europe.

Precision goods and jewelry have not flourished in our country. Since they have great demand in the world market, a determined effort towards establishing new industries in precision goods and jewelry should be a part of the government policy for overseas exports.

Despite steady growth, Nepalese handicrafts are one of the major export items. In 1999, the country earned about seventy million rupees by exporting handicrafts to over sixty-five countries of the world.

What is worth noting here is that Nepal is the only country that sells handicrafts of religious importance. No doubt, these items may be promoting Nepal in the international market.

Since the past few years, with the changing trends in shopping among the tourists visiting Nepal, many entrepreneurs engaged in handicraft business have taken up the pashmina business. Some handicraft businesses in Kathmandu valley have closed down their shutters because they have not been as profitable as in the past.

As pashmina has displaced quite a significant part of the handicraft business, either the handicraft sellers have to opt for pashmina or close down their shops.

In fact, handicraft business has dropped as compared to the previous years because the number of visitors is going down and there are a few spending tourists.

The inflow of Indian goods has a negative impact on the handicraft business in Kathmandu because over seventy-five per cent of the handicraft goods available in the market are Indian ones. In the past, there were only Nepalese handicraft products in markets, but nowadays duplication of Indian goods are found everywhere. This has adversely affected our handicraft goods.

Since plastic goods continue to replace the traditional woods and related ones; those, who have been engaged in the production and sale of the wooden pots for years, have been staying idle because the occupation yields no money. In the past, the wooden wares made by some wood workers were taken to Tibet for sale.

Most of the handicraft items have a steady growth of eleven to fifteen per cent over last five years except for the past fiscal year.

The handicraft business may virtually collapse if necessary steps are not taken to increase the number of tourists in our country. Apart from this, the highly potential handicraft needs to be given high priority for its development. In this context, right policies have to be formulated.

Electricity Tariff Hike & Other Questions

By Mohan K.C.

THE 16 per cent of the consumers of electricity have already started paying, though it will be shown only in the bill coming from Ashwin, the higher tariff rate for electricity. This comes at a time when there has to be a better utilisation of the managerial skills in running an organisation. The leadership quality that is essential in running any organisation has to be honed so that with the minimum of resources a maximum of returns will materialise.

The country can produce, as per estimates, over 40 thousand megawatts of electricity but at present only about 0.5 per cent has been produced. This indicates that heavy investment required for hydro-projects has been the main deterrent. The local resources are insufficient to heavily invest money in the development of hydroelectricity projects. The terrain is another hindrance and this is what increases the price of execution of any such project.

Herein, a moot question arises as to how long we will be depending on foreign loans and grants. The grants in aid have been somewhat fading in terms of the amount of loans that the country is taking in. It is a serious matter that hefty amounts have been borrowed by this cash-strapped nation. If the returns are adequate through the utilisation of the loan amounts then it can be justified. But the country as such has tough time meeting the demands of debt servicing. As it goes in the days to come the scenario will prove to be still grim as it is at present.

As per the production in the country, it has not even touched the 400 MW mark. This has meant that those who avail this facility are only limited in number. It has already been mentioned that only about 16 per cent of the population of Nepal have access to electricity. This also includes the industries which guzzle a major portion of the electricity produced in the country. This is a time when industries have to be given preference as the prosperity of the country depends how fast they develop.

Though industrial development has to take place, it does not mean that it will displace agriculture as the prominent contributor to the GDP. Yet, with the fragmentation of land and low productivity, it has become necessary to give priority to the industrial sector. But the development of this sector is far below expectation.

Far from having adequate and uninterrupted supply of electricity in a country rich in water resources, the people have several times faced load shedding schedules. This might sound strange if the resources are concerned but the reality speaks for itself.

As far as the question concerns the raising of the electricity tariff, the Nepal Electricity Authority has tried to justify it in its own way but which is far from satisfactory to the ordinary consumers. The ordinary consumers mostly belong to the household variety and even the small industries. In this context, the dues owed to NEA by big industries and even hotels amount to over millions of rupees. It seems NEA which is unable to realise the dues has adopted this technique to boost its earnings.

The other area where NEA has failed is checking leakage whether technical or otherwise. When electricity leakage amount to almost 25 per cent of the total electricity produced, it is gross negligence on the part of the management to go for increased rates instead of finding means and ways to check electricity leakage. As it was mentioned the other day, even if the leakage is reduced by 50 per cent, it will be enough to reduce the electricity charges by almost 18 per cent. Isn’t this a valid reason why the NEA management must spruce up its functioning style?

Instead of increasing the tariff to cover up its faults it would be better if it does the streamlining works and earn more profit without increasing the rates at random as and when it likes. There can be an option if the private sector is also allowed to go in a big way to tap, sell and distribute electricity. May be this will set a competitive mood and the tariff will be reasonable and not hiked at any moment.

This is easier said than done. The case of the LPG companies speaks for itself. Though there are a number of companies in distributing LPG the price has remained inflated. There may be other reasons for this. Still there is reason to be concerned for the state of affairs. So checks and balances have to be in place if electricity does not cost more to the consumers than the actual selling rate.

There are data to suggest that the production cost of every kilowatt of electricity is more than double or treble to that of our neighbours. How this happens is the big question that can be fired. There are many elements that go to making production costs unreasonably high. Commission, corruption, inefficient management, leakage and so on add on to the actual costs.

NEA has already increased the electricity rates howsoever unreasonable it may be from the consumers’ point of view but one thing that the consumers are convinced is that efficient management will be able to reduce it. The challenge now is to come up with management reforms to make bring about efficiency and at the same time collect the dues from defaulting consumers without delay and thereby provide relief to the other harassed consumers.

Anti-AIDS Campaign In Rural Thailand

By Vijay Joshi

SIX women with HIV sit in the makeshift sauna, absorbing the acrid steam laced with herbal medicines in the hope it will ease their chronic fatigue.

In a village nearby, a crowd is being regaled by a puppet show in which the hand-held dummies tell the story of a family devastated by the teen-age daughter’s misadventure with unsafe sex.

The sauna and the puppet show are just two front lines in a unique war being fought against AIDS in a rural Thai community - a war whose commanders are monks, students, ex-prostitutes, nurses, doctors and patients.

United Nations experts say it is rare for so many sectors of a community to come together to share their expertise and knowledge in a concerted campaign to tame the spread of the AIDS virus.

Volunteers spread the word about AIDS, promote condom use, care for patients in their homes, provide herbal medicines, give spiritual guidance and counsel the depressed. And sometimes they are simply a friend to the dying.

"People were hopeless before, but now they know they are not alone," said Dr. Somsak Supawitkul, the deputy chief of the provincial health office and one of the pioneers of the project.

"The first impact of the project was to put the smile back on people’s faces. It made us feel that we had some success," he said.

Started in 1991 by the Mae Chan community hospital, the project was hailed this year by the United Nations Development Programme as a "good practice" that can provide lessons to other communities around the world.

"Mae Chan has shown that even if people are dying you can still turn the community around. It is never too late," said Lee-Nah Hsu, manager of UNDP’s Southeast Asia AIDS Project.

Since she documented the success of Mae Chan on a UNDP Web site, Hsu said, she has been flooded with e-mail requests for information, including one from a Muslim religious leader keen to help HIV patients in his community.

Mae Chan, home to 120,000 people, is a fitting place for the programme. A hilly and lush farming district, it is in the northern Chiang Rai province, part of the infamous drug-producing "Golden Triangle" straddling the border regions of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.

Chiang Rai is also the AIDS capital of Thailand. Its 1.25 million residents constitute just 1.9 percent of the country’s 62 million people but account for 10 percent of its AIDS cases.

Nearly 1 million people in Thailand have been infected with HIV. Of them, 300,000 have died.

Health experts think at least 200,000 lives were saved by a successful condom promotion campaign in 1990-91 that is estimated to have brought the infection rate down by 80 percent.

But the World Bank warned recently that Thailand’s government is ignoring prevention strategies. Since 1997, spending for prevention projects has declined by half and now accounts for only 8 percent of the national AIDS budget, about 5 cents per Thai.

Mae Chan is striking a different path with its motto: "Prevention is better than cure."

A decade ago, adults with AIDS here were so sick they couldn’t take care of their children. Neither could they handle farming. Spouses were being abandoned. Neigh-bours were avoiding neigh-bours. Fear was rife.

Hsu, the UNDP officer, tells the story of Takham Huaychai who lost his only son to AIDS six years ago. In keeping with Buddhist practices, he organised a feast but nobody turned up. Hurt by the people’s attitude, he opened his land to HIV patients to grow vegetables.

That sowed the seeds of involvement by everyday people in the community.

Meanwhile, desperate hospital authorities faced with overcrowding were turning to monks for the care of patients.

Overcoming their reluctance to dabble in anything to do with sex, the monks distributed traditional herbal medicines. The herbs don’t promise a miracle cure, giving only symptomatic relief from infections such as lesions or cold or from fatigue.

Some monks gave sermons or simply listened to the sick, a soothing balm to many who were shunned by society or were near death.

Somsak, then the head doctor at Mae Chan’s only community hospital, realised the clergy’s power to provide spiritual healing. He cleared a room in the hospital where 50 monks now take turns giving sermons every weekday.

Somsak also set up a day care centre at the hospital where HIV patients talk about themselves, not unlike group therapy. They grind herbs for medicines and make embroidered cloth handbags, wicker baskets and other handicrafts for sale.(AP)