Book Review (Spotlight Weekly)]

Prosperity For Democracy

A prominent academic tries to establish what Nepal's development thinkers have missed

By Yuba Raj Pandey

This book contains 21 chapters dealing with 21 different topics. Development brokers benefiting from democracy is the last topic. This chapter tries to draw a real picture of the situation of Nepal and shows the way to carry the nation out of its problems. In fact, this chapter may be taken as the summary of the whole book.

The author concludes that almost every plan and budget in Nepal has failed to strike a balance between demand for and supply of real savings. As a result, most of our investment requirements are financed through foreign assistance.

He is again right when he says that foreign assistance is regarded as easy money that is grossly misused. He thinks that planning efforts in Nepal are wrongly shaped, handled and monitored and that foreign interest penetrates into our development thinking and efforts. But he is confident that Nepal possesses a high potential for economic development.

Dr Sharma is of the opinion that our stress so far has been on the demand management approach of economic policy and we are creating high demand pressures through increased supply of money, government's budgetary deficit, increased size of foreign assistance and expanded supply of credit mostly in trade sector.

The author maintains that our policy exercises in the past were made in favour of investors from India. This situation of special economic relation of Nepal with India has kept an additional burden of risk and uncertainty for third country investors. Dr Sharma shows the need of a major structural change with stress on the country's inherent reality and vis-a-vis the fast movement of technological space.

The writer appears anxious about the peripheral nature of the country. He talks about this problem in different chapters. He considers Nepal as India-locked even in policy choices and effects and compares its situation as that of a periphery nation whose job is to serve the interest of a center extracting cheap labor and raw materials and in turn selling finished products.

Dr Sharma discusses the role of economic development in strengthening democracy at the grass-roots level. According to the writer, economic development should increase the overall happiness of society by a change in the material conditions.

The book tries to explain the different important aspects of the Nepalese economy. Perhaps the considers that the different subjects dealt in the book are able to highlight the missing links of development thinking in Nepal. The book is very useful in identifying such missing links to make corrections.

As the book is a collection of articles, it lacks consistency in the presentation of the subject matter. Some articles are more general and easily understandable, whereas others are too specific. Most of the subjects are dealt with briefly in a formulaic manner. If the writer had been able to update certain articles written years before this book was published, it would made the volume more useful.

Inspite of such weaknesses, the writers has made a positive contribution in the field of development economics in Nepal.

Name: Nepal: Missing Elements in Development Thinking
Written by Dr. Gunanidhi Sharma
Published by Nirala Publications, New Delhi
Edited by Nav Raj Kanel and Neelam Kumar Sharma
Price: Rs. 472