The Forthcoming Tenth Plan
Emphasising Local Participation

By Uttam Maharjan

ECONOMIC development is essential to uplift the living standard of people. For this, various ramifications of an economy need improvement. Planned development strategies can supply inputs to bring about improvement in such sectors as agriculture, industry, tourism, hydropower and education.

Nepal has embarked upon planned economic development since 2013 BS, when the first five-year plan was started. The current Ninth Plan is at its last leg. And the Tenth Plan is commencing from next fiscal year (2059-60).

In Nepal, many development infrastructures have been built and development models tried over the last 45 years. But there still exists a multitude of problems such as poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, lack of clean drinking water and unsystematic sanitation.

The government has initiated several programme for improving the lot of people but these programmes have not been fully successful. As a result, we are still facing such problems as low savings, low capital formation, a widening budget deficit, an economic imbalance and heavy dependence on donors for development projects.

Development planners in Nepal tend to repeat plans, programmes and policies from the previous ones. In most cases, the targets set in one plan cannot be achieved and hence are carried forward to the next plan. However, it would not be judicious to drop a target simply because it could not be achieved in the previous plan. Rather, the reasons for failing to achieve the target should be identified and a new, different approach adopted to meet it in the next plan.

A review of the previous plans shows that although the goals set were excellent, the implementation aspects was very poor. As such, prominence should be accorded to implementation and follow-up aspects to make any plan successful.

It is important to appraise the sector where investments are to be made. It is found that investments have been made in many unproductive sectors, thus draining productive sectors of much-needed investments. So it would be prudent to divert investments from unproductive to more productive sectors.

Now the time has come to evaluate the targets met in the previous plans, the factors responsible for leading to their accomplishment, the bottlenecks encountered in the course of meeting them and so on. Likewise, on the part of the targets that could not be met, the factors responsible for hindering their accomplishment should be identified and analysed. Such an appraisal with corrective measures would provide the forthcoming plan with useful inputs on the basis of which necessary strategies may be formulated.

Development is a continous process which is made possible by the contributions of people from all walks of life. In fact, it is imperative to pool resources together and harness them with the help of human skills and technology. The principles of economies dictate that limited resources should be utilised to produce maximum benefit for people. Similarly, Benthamism or utilitarianisms postulates maximum happiness for a maximum number of people. To ensure that the general public get maximum benefit of development, economic development should be accelerated. For this, cooperation from all sectors is a sine qua non.

Local participation in development activities is helpful in identifying common needs of people and formulating strategies accordingly. After all, the prime aim of any development plan would be to uplift the economic status of common people. That is why, measures need to be taken to enlist maximum participation of local-level communities in formulating and implementing various plans and programmes. This will help strengthen local bodies. This is also one of the hallmarks of decentralisation.

It is believed that the main goal of the forthcoming plan will be to alleviate poverty by creating employing opportunities and initiating income generation programmes. But poverty alleviation is not an easy proposition as shown by the current Ninth Plan which has aimed at reducing poverty to 32 per cent but it has remained at 38 per cent. This clearly shows that the goal of poverty alleviation is unlikely to be achieved by the end of the current plan.

As mentioned above, there are several ramifications of the economy that need to be simultaneously improved so as to bring about economic development to a desired extent.

Agriculture is the mainstay of our economy. But for lack of modern technology, facilities like irrigation, improved inputs, markets and competitive skills, the agricultural sector has not improved as expected. The importance of agriculture in an agrarian country like ours is very overriding. The development of this sector could lead to the development of others sectors also.

Similarly, the industrial sector is not looking up nowadays. Tourism industry, which is a big spinner of foreign exchange, is now passing through a bad patch for domestic and international reasons.

The skills of local people have remained untapped for lack of training and employment opportunities. These skills, if tapped properly, could contribute to the development of small-scale industries. Attention should, therefore, be paid to developing local appropriate technology in the forthcoming plan.

Some of the targets of the forthcoming plan will be to reduce poverty to 30 per cent from 38 per cent, to reduce the population growth rate to 2 per cent from 2.4 per cent and maintain the economic growth rate at 6-6-5 per cent.

As the main goal of the plan will be to alleviate poverty and eliminate unemployment and semi-employment problems by strengthening the base of economic development, it is imperative that the plan be formulated in a realistic perspective with special emphasis on monitoring/follow-up and implementation aspects. For this, a strong political commitment is indispensable. It may be hoped that the forthcoming plan will contribute to bringing about overall development of the country by making remarkable improvement in the living standard of the general people and contributing to social justice on the basis of the concept of the welfare state.

Empower Women to Fight Hunger

By Uma Koirala

"FIGHT Hunger to Reduce Poverty" is the slogan of this year’s World Food Day given by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). FAO has a belief that the first step to reduce poverty is to fight against hunger. FAO has said, "A sharp focus is needed on hunger and agricultural development within the boarder objective of poverty reduction".

We have seen it by ourselves that poverty is most painful when people are never able to lift themselves out of it, and remain chronically poor passing down poverty to their children.

If we look back, one of the greatest transformations of the 20th century has been the unprecedented progress in eradicating global poverty. More progress has been made during the last 50 years than in the last five centuries. In the industrialized countries people have shown that it was humanly possible to eradicate abject poverty that is below the threshold of minimum opportunities. Developing countries, too, made rapid progress, especially after achieving independence. For example, Malaysia’s experience shows that dramatic transformation is possible in just one generation. In the 1970’s 60 per cent of their population was living below poverty line which was reduced to 21 per cent by 1985 and to 14 per cent by 1993. In one generation mass poverty affecting more than half the population was dramatically reduced. More efforts are going on with various crash programmes to wipe out the poverty from the world.

But the progress made in eradicating poverty has been uneven, both geographically and in time. The challenge of global poverty remains large. More than a quarter of the people of the developing countries live in human poverty, without the very minimum of opportunities and a third of the population live below the minimum income line of US$1per day. The last decade of the 20th century is a decade of marked unevenness with slowdowns and downturns for many people and countries. War and conflict, continued environmental degradation, spread of HIV/AIDS, quantitative and qualitative failures of economic growth, emergence of "New Poverty" in the industrialised countries are some of the leading causes of widening poverty globally.

As we all know, Nepal is one of the least developed countries in the world with 22.3 million population, of which nearly 90 per cent is dependent on agriculture. We also know that until 1990/91, the total food grain production was sufficient to feed the population. But over the years, the rapid increase in population, open boarder, low productivity, and political-crisis and the resulting migration of people leaving their land barren etc have changed the country into a net importer of food items, at present. The food balance sheet of 1998/99 has estimated that the country had a food deficit of 181,879 thousand metric tons during that fiscal year. Food deficit is one of the indicators of widespread poverty in the country. The apex planning authority - National Planning Commission - has also conceded, "Poverty has stood as a serious challenge to the country". Forty-two per cent of the total population has remained below the absolute poverty line, and among them 17.1 per cent are counted as ultra poor or the poorest. The incidence of poverty is 2.6 times higher in the rural areas compared to the urban areas.

Poverty is multi-dimensional and it is the issue of human dignity also. It demands a multi-dimensional measure that goes beyond income and focuses on various dimensions of human lives affected by poverty and there might be many priorities. Besides increasing agricultural production, empowerment is a necessary tool to eradicate poverty. Everywhere it is a starting point - to empower both men and women so that they can break the vicious circle of hunger and poverty.

Gender equality is a necessary priority to reduce poverty. Men and women are not affected by poverty in the same way. As everybody knows, the predominant section of the Nepalese people is employed in the agriculture sector. But if we take into account labour input, according to population census of 1991, women’s contribution is relatively high: 91.5 per cent and 74 per cent respectively. Women are working both as wageworkers and self-employed. Only around 13 per cent of all the working women are wage employed and earn about 4/5 of what the men are earning as wages.

Women are the last members to eat food in the family. This is an example of gender disparity. According to Dr. Meena Acharya on an average women earn 12 per cent less than what men earn as daily wages in the non-agriculture sector. In this sector only 7 per cent of the female population are engaged and among them 2.6 per cent are as wage employed and rest are self-employed. Women do all the household and other outside income generating activities equally but they are less benefited. They are only increasing their workload by doing all ascribed and prescribed role in the society but have very nominal decision making power and have no/very little personal property.

Gender disparity is rooted so deeply in the Nepalese society that women have no enough food to eat though she does more work for the family. Male members have overall command upon household income in majority of the households. The absence of property right and unpaid domestic work has made the women poorer. If half the population of the nation is getting poorer how can it go on the path of progress? The State must lunch crash programmes to eradicate gender disparity by means of law and other interventions, so that the people can fight with hunger very strongly and reduce poverty.

Snorer, The Illusory tiger

SECOND convention of the United Democratic Party was being held in Rajapur. It was conducted in a three-acre mango garden on the east bank of the river Karnali. Hundreds of delegates from different parts of Nepal were assembled with enthusiasm at Rajapur. They lodged in about twelve tents temporarily erected for the party convention. One of the tents was very small and it could accomodate only six persons. Kashi Prasad Shrivastav, Lochan Shumsher Thapa, Grishma Bahadur Devkota, Keshavchandra Gautam, Shivahar Singh Pradhan and myself shared it. K.P. Shrivastav was the general secretary as well as the winner of parliamentary general election with highest votes, in Marchawar, Bhairahawa. L.S. Thapa also was a winner party candidate from Kathmandu. G.B. Devkota was the secretary of publicity in the party, K.C. Gautam was the working committee member, S.S. Pradhan was the editor of party news-weekly Samyukta Prayas and I was his assistant (later executive member). Party-president Dr. K.I. Singh took lodge in a seperate shared by Parshuram Bhakta Mathema, one of the senior executive members of the party. Food was served from the same kitchen to all delegates. Those who wanted extra food had to fetch it from the market at their own cost.

The first day convention was over in the evening. Some of the delegates went to visit Rajapur Mandi (bazar) and some went to see the river Karnali very closely. Some stayed in the camp and enjoyed music. After dinner, we had informal talks between ourselves and we slopt at nine p.m. But I found it hard to get sleep as I was unaccustomed to sleep with other persons. Then I started counting sheep. But before I could count ten sheep, G.B. Devkota started snoring. I lifted my head and watched other companions. They were calmly sleeping. Devkota began to snore more and more loudly. While taking breath in, his nose played stereo with the bass turned up. Then in breathing out, the bass rose in a crescendo and drowned me out. I found it very hard to keep awake even, not to talk of sleep. I could not awaken him and complain against his loud snoring because he was senior to me in party hierarchy. I could not leave the tent and go somewhere else. On the one hand all the tents were fully occupied, and on the other, it would have been against party discipline.

Instantly I was struck by a mischief. Why not to switch the microphone on and place it by Devkota’s head ? There were about twenty large loudspeakers hung on different tree-branches and poles in the camp. "Everyone will be awakened by Devkota’s snoring on the lively microphone and that will compensate me." I did the same and lo, instead of hearing Devkota’s magnified snore, I heard more than one Royal Bengal Tiger roar around me. The local Tharu farmers sprang out of their huts picking up scythes and spades and shouting Baghawa (tiger). All the party delegates, although awakened, crumpled in bed inside. Only Dr. K. I. Singh came out of his tent with a rifle on his shoulder and himself, "Where is the tiger ?" There was nobody to reply. I switched the current off and there was no roar of the tiger. Dr. Singh came to us and Devkota complained to him against me saying that he was the tiger, a very cruel animal created by Khanal. Dr. Singh looked at me and asked how I could be so unwise. K.P. Shrivastav spoke for me and he explained my mischief to the president justifying it to some extent. He also added that a heavy sooner deserved it. Dr. K.I. Singh also laughed heartily and advised his publicity chief not to publicize snoring at least. He returned expecting not to be disturbed again until morning . And it was sooner, the illusory tiger who could not sleep the rest of night.