Nepal needs a new development strategy to alleviate poverty and to ensure sustainability.
By Surendra R Devkota, Ph. D.
After all everybody loves money: no matter be they the Maoists, non-Maoists, royalists or professionals. Because we all are “economic man” and always would like to maximize our own self-interest. Even though, scientifically, we are “homo sapiens” but modernization paradigm has substituted it by “homo economicus”.
Whether the human genes are like that or has been influenced by the surroundings is the research agenda of scientists and philosophers, but just wondering on the economic behaviors of modern human beings in the contemporary society because it is very difficult to dissociate from not wishing for money whether staying inside the Singha Durbar or roaming in the jungles.
One of the diseases of the Nepali economy is there are too many rent seekers who are trying to have big share of pie rather then making a big pie. The Kathmandu based policy makers, donors, bureaucrats, and businesses are both proponents and key stakeholders of rent seeking activity. Political workers are new brokers of the rent seeking business. Their trickle down approaches are now reaching towards some regional and district headquarters and so-called city centers. In fact, socio-economic development philosophy is guided by rent seeking behaviors.
Last week’s White Paper on Nepal’s economy presented by Finance Minister Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat revealed an example of royalists’ greed and misuse of money and authority. People in different corners in the country had also witnessed how political business fostered in past decade. Recent news about a claim by the Maoists to support them by the tax payers’ pocket was really troubling. Further business communities including so-called non-resident Nepalis who were whining around the royal tail until a couple of months ago were also for nothing but just to self-enhancing their greed.
“Parliament has empowered itself with exclusive rights, responsibility, and accountability, so do need local government bodies with a coherent system of accountability, institutional and financial decentralization, ecological, and economic rights along with civil liberties.”
All these money making and loving stakeholders’ self-fulfilling interests are subject to constraints of people’s feeling and aspiration. No one can meet two goals at same time and without any constraints. On the other side, since past century, Nepal is struggling to meet basic human needs such as an adequate supply of food, water, health care, shelter, and minimum education, which needs to be sustained economically, environmentally, and socially.
To this regard the traditional economic growth model of Nepal to increase per capita gross output over the population growth rate may not herald any substantial change. Likewise, modernization paradigms of urbanization, industrialization, and commercialization are virtually creating rent seekers and a society with many classes. Rather, Nepal needs to overhaul its socioeconomic development philosophy that should equally emphasize other pillars of development, including ecological and social capital, because sustainability cannot be achieved on part, it should address the whole system. If the government is committed to insuring non-decreasing social welfare—a form of weak sustainability—this may not necessarily improve all deciles of households equally, because of a huge disparity of income and resource endowments.
Nepal needs a new development strategy to alleviate poverty and to ensure sustainability. Socioeconomic development philosophy and policies including institutional reforms are necessary to alleviate rural poverty. Villages have been relegated to the bottom in terms of availability of socioeconomic development institutions as well as resources where the crux of problems exists. This needs to be reversed in order to sustain the village economy and to reduce the level of poverty.
Therefore. in order to break the vicious cycle of poverty vis-à-vis under-development, each VDC should be assigned as a socioeconomic development unit. To complement the VDCs, a district unit can play a developmental planning and monitoring role. The village and district are politico-administrative units, which have to deal with lots of socioeconomic problems, but have an insignificant resources and rights. Institutional reforms to strengthen the local government units are essential so that they will be complemented by economic and development planning, and implementation facilities.
Once VDCs are ensured through basic socioeconomic developmental structures like health clinics, basic education, technical assistance to farmers, local community infrastructure, and conservation programs, local communities would become sustainable with reduced income disparity. Institutional arrangements are the necessary foundations for vibrant economic systems, poverty alleviation and sustainable development cannot take place without them.
Economic growth is, of course, a basis to augment the income level of people. But that may not necessarily be the sole, or even the most important, factor in reducing poverty. In addition, there exist many households deprived of basic endowments like land, or skills (education), and even economic sustainability would be impossible for them. To this end, investment in at least the 1st, 2nd and 3rd deciles households is urgent that may include households socio-economically discriminated against like Dalits.
In other words, poverty alleviation strategies should exclusively target these households, say all types of Dalits and ethnic minorities, to enrich their human skill as well as quality of life, and break the vicious circle of poverty. These docile households have yet to receive the effects of so-called trickle down effect of modernization, which may take decades if not a century. In the words of the late visionary leader of the Nepal Congress B. P. Koirala, “Our capital is the people. We don’t have machinery, and we don’t have financial capital, we have labor. So we have got to motivate our people for development purposes. And that motivation can be provided only by institutions that are democratic and responsible to the people and reflective of the aspirations of the people.”
For 21st Century, Nepal ought to address the social sustainability, enrich the human capital, and enhance our social capital along with ecological sustainability to complement sustainable economic development. Recently, parliament has empowered itself with exclusive rights, responsibility, and accountability, so do need local government bodies with a coherent system of accountability, institutional and financial decentralization, ecological, and economic rights along with civil liberties.
Since immediate election of local government is out of sight for a while, it is imperative to have an interim council comprising all political parties in order to speed up local socio-economic development endeavors. Sustaining rural economy, society and resource bases are goals for future Nepal rather than populist and rent seeking plan, policy, and program at the center
Dr. Devkota is a Faculty at the World Learning, Vermont, USA. A short version of this article also appeared in Friday’s The Kathmandu Post daily. Please send your comments to [email protected] or [email protected] — Ed.)
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