Failure Of Development Projects
Some Clues

By Bimal Khatiwada

A NUMBER of infrastructure projects like road networks linking various parts of the country, irrigation projects to boost agricultural production, hydroelectric power stations to provide electricity for household consumption to industrial development have not been successful to the extent investments made on them either through domestic sources or donor supports. Such failures could be attributed to several factors. Among other things, uses of sophisticated and non-adaptive technologies, projects designed and implemented with no contemplation of sustainability aspect and absence of transparency within the entire system may be regarded as the main contributing factors for such failures.

Participation

One of the essential ingredients for a successful project is people's genuine and effective participation in all its phases right from designing to mompletion. Such a consideration would subsequently ensure beneficiary's sense of ownership. Similarly, indigenous knowledge of local people could some times contribute more than the textbook engineering knowledge.

Contribution either in the form of knowledge sharing, cash or in-kind helps to create ownership of beneficiaries ensuring sustainability of a project. This can be supported by some examples that bridge at Ward No. 2 of Bhandara of Chitwan District, which was constructed at a total cost of Rs. 228,000 as against the government's estimate of Rs. 1.1 million. Another example: in Ward No. 1 of the same VDC, the community has completed the four-km long irrigation canal at Rs. 64,000 for which government's estimate through its East Rapti Irrigation Project (ERIP) was Rs. 1.4 million.

All round development of the society can never be achieved if environmental consideration is ignored. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is considered a vital part of project design. In old days, mere cost/benefit analysis was a major tool to launch any project. However, for instance, no serious environmental analysis were carried out before the execution of some of the then major projects like Trishuli, Devighat and Sunkoshi Hydropower Projects. Doubts are being expressed whether a thorough EIA was carried out on even most recently executed Puwakhola Hydropower of Illam. But for sure, most of the development projects have been executed in the absence of this vital consideration and have brought serious environmental damages to the society and the nation without leaving much room for their immediate correction. Such projects consequently have caused silting problem, downstream drought and pollution with reduced carrying capacity.

Studies have revealed that projects will sustain only if they adopt demand driven approach. If projects are forcefully implemented, often termed as Helicopter solution, without considering people's interest and aspiration, they will eventually die. Hence, people's needs should be assessed first in order to ensure project's sustainability.

Apathetic attitudes and weak coordination of and among major stakeholders (for example, Department of Irrigation, Department of Agriculture, Nepal Agriculture Research Council (NARC) and other agricultural extension services) are other key factors for project failure. These institutions, which are in fact established with the objective to promote agricultural productivity in a country, have failed in service delivery as expected. Hence there is a need to establish a strong coordination within and among different line agencies and stakeholders in order to maximize their efficiency and effectiveness. For this, each staff's roles and responsibilities must be clearly and distinctly defined.

It is a well-recognised fact that human, financial and technical resources have never been our limiting factors that hinder the pace of development. We must feel proud of our surplus labour forces and other international financial and technical supports. But the irony is that there have never been even distribution and proper utilisation of these resources among these intended beneficiaries. This may be attributed to policy guidelines that have been formulated from above without having thorough situation analysis.

Most of the poor people who are living in the vicinity of forest have to intensively rely on forest for their livelihood, as they have no choice and as a result, everybody inevitably has to bear its negative consequences in the future. The policy has always been in favour of rich with meager benefit going in favour of poor, which is evident by Water Resource Prior Appropriation Right Act-1993. This act apparently tends to favour rich, as poor people due to their inefficacy to afford to get hold of such source will always have to stand back to receive residual benefit. Hence policy should be formulated in favour of both the groups.

An increasing trend in handing over the project to pseudo users' groups has also remained another contributing factor for project's failure. Most of the developmental projects are being handed over to such groups without having a proper assessment of their preparedness in handling the project.

Performance

Weak and futile monitoring and evaluation practices of the implementers have resulted in the misjudgement of project performance capacity. Therefore, there should be participatory monitoring and evaluation mechanism established in order to have correct analysis of the project performance. This would ultimately help any project achieve its long-term commitment. Last but not the least, social mobilisation is equally essential for any project to win success. This would help create awareness among the beneficiaries.

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