Rural Electrification

NEPAL Electricity Authority (NEA) is planning to leap forward in the process of expanding its services in the country. A news story has it that NEA, in its bid to provide better services to the people, is making preparations for distribution of electricity on community basis in the rural areas. This new community-based approach of NEA, the sole authority to supply electricity in the country, is to benefit maximum number of people, especially those living in the far off rural areas, who are deprived of electricity from the central grid. The new concept has been announced with the objective of providing electricity services to the people in a more simplified, effective and reliable way with the active participation of community. At present only about 15 per cent people have access to electricity facilities. The situation in the rural areas is even more precarious. So far only six per cent people living in the hinterlands enjoy electricity facilities at their homes. Although NEA has been making electricity available to more than 30,000 households every year, the demand far exceeds the supply. As a result, more than 78 per cent rural people are still deprived of electricity. The new scheme is, thus, expected to make these rural people direct beneficiary.

Power is the major engine for social and economic transformation of the people. In view of this, His Majesty's Government has accorded high priority to harnessing Nepal's hydropower potentials and providing electricity to every household. Nepal is rich in water resource and if fully harnessed, it will generate more than 42,000 megawatt of hydropower. Nepal has, thus, pinned its hope on the generation of hydropower for its economic prosperity. However, Nepal has been unable to fully harness its immense hydropower potentials due to lack of necessary fund and technical capabilities. The government has eased policies and legal provision to make them investor-friendly in order to bring more private investment in the hydrpower sector. Some private companies have already been involved in generating hydropower in Nepal. This has helped NEA in having more power and ensuring regular and adequate supplies. At present, NEA has some surplus electricity. The new community approach of the NEA is also directed to involve the community and private sector in both generation and distribution of electricity in the rural areas, which could be more sustainable and effective in meeting the growing demands of the people.

Aid Them

ACCORDING to the survey carried out by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other donor agencies in 25 districts, the number of people displaced by the seven-year-long Maoist insurgency, as per a news item carried by this daily the other day, could be much higher than estimated by the donor agencies. As per the report, there are more than 10,000 displaced persons "who have been forced to live like refugees within their own homeland". However, a source at the Home Ministry said that the number mentioned in the report could be a gross underestimate as the ministry has yet to receive data from at least eight districts. Whatever the exact number of the internally displaced persons, what goes without saying is that they are definitely in their thousands. And, worse still, in dire need of whatever support that both the nation and the civic society could muster or avail to ameliorate their current problems and suffering. For, in an agrarian country like Nepal where the vast majority of the people are small farmers who eke a subsistent level of livelihood by toiling away in their small plots of farms dispersed throughout the mountains, hills, valleys and plains of the country, to be forcibly displaced from their farms is not only akin to being dislodged from their sole means of survival but also being forced to exist in a socio-cultural limbo. It could be for this reason that arable land is a much-coveted property among the Nepalese as it not only plays a central role in their economic well being but also in the continued sustenance of their socio-cultural moorings. More worrying to note is that such internally displaced persons, in search for possible opportunities to survive, could become the ready causes of additional problems like encroachment of protected parks and public forests. Or, for that matter, even in the creation of shanty towns and slums, both of which are considered by law enforcement agencies as the most likely breeding grounds of social ills. As such, if the nation and the civic society were to be spared from the visitations of such problematic socio-economic and cultural aberrations, then the government needs to come up with immediate measures to provide the internally displaced persons with immediate succour and relief. Towards this end, the concerned authorities should mobilise all available resources to implement internally displaced person-specific short and long-term schemes.