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NEPAL

NEPAL. One DP’s perspective Ed Doe, CIDA ADB, Manila – July 6, 2010. My perspective. I arrived in Nepal after the Jan Andolan in April 2006 and before the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in November. The “New Nepal” was in the making and, in my view, still is.

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NEPAL

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  1. NEPAL One DP’s perspective Ed Doe, CIDA ADB, Manila – July 6, 2010

  2. My perspective • I arrived in Nepal after the Jan Andolan in April 2006 and before the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in November. • The “New Nepal” was in the making and, in my view, still is. • I am optimistic. Many things are possible. • Here is my attempt to tell you why.

  3. How do I see it? • Nepal is a country in the throes of a profound socio-economic revolution. • As a development practitioner, how I interpret it depends on my perspective on two levels. • Am I aiming for short term or long term results? • Is my focus is on sustainable development or on the peace process?

  4. Revolution? • The dictatorship of the Rana PMs had, until 1950, cut Nepal off from the world. • Education was the privilege of a very few who were loyal to the regime. • Land ownership was largely feudal. • Political succession was hereditary and, for the Ranas, frequently violent. • The king was a god.

  5. Revolution (cont’d)? • Starting from so far back, Nepal has changed remarkably. • But vestiges of the earlier regime remain. • And many continue to be excluded by: geography, caste, class, gender, ethnicity, culture, religion, language and education. • It is not surprising, therefore, that grievances can be exploited and frequently lead to violence.

  6. Short term results • Nepal is prone to natural disasters – e.g. floods, droughts, landslides, earthquakes. • As well, famine, malnutrition and disease need immediate responses. • Many of the things required for the peace process to succeed are also short term. • This creates a tension with sustainable development activities which a longer term perspective.

  7. Sustainable development • The foundations for sustainable development are missing or unevenly distributed. • Providing things like transportation and communications infrastructure, education, health services are obvious. • However, ending social exclusion, improving governance, guaranteeing security and access to justice are less so.

  8. The Political Challenge • Politics in Nepal are driven by zero sum competition. • The leadership style is top down, paternalistic and dominated by higher caste males. • Young people tend to be excluded and you are young until you are fifty at least. • The majority of those leading now learned their politics before 1990.

  9. The social challenge • Nepali society is split into many cross cutting categories, making the mounting of collective effort difficult. • Even the castes are characterized by their own class structures. • The insurgency and aftermath opened the Pandora’s box of identity politics. • Many grievances are still not being addressed.

  10. The economic challenge • Nepal is virtually unique among South Asia economies in that it has not grown significantly for the last 15 years. • The lack of employment has driven large numbers of young people abroad or into political party youth leagues (up to ½ of 15 to 34 year-olds are outside the country). • FDI is scared off by insecurity and the difficulty of negotiating a long term deal.

  11. The geographic challenge • Nepal is a “large” diverse country located between two huge ones (India and China). • Natural lines of communication run north-south and are connected in the Terai. • Much population is dispersed in the hills with difficult access to markets & services. • Federalism could divide the country into haves and have nots.

  12. Root Causes • Much of the peace process is focused on short term processes. • Yet, for sustainable peace the longer term challenges must be adressed. • Maoist insurgency’s biggest successes were at the local level in remote areas. • In my view, that is where CIDA must focus its efforts.

  13. CIDA’s Focus • Giving communities the tools to deal with the challenges. • As a modest donor in Nepal, most of our efforts are not national in scale. • However, by linking up with ADB and others we are supporting one very exciting and challenging national intervention: the Local Governance & Community Development Progam (LGCDP).

  14. LGCDP • LGCDP is a top down effort to make governance more bottom up. • How? By giving local government and communities the resources, tools and capacity to interact more equally. • Resources = block grants from the center. • Tools = mechanisms for community priority setting and holding local government accountable.

  15. LGCDP (cont’d) • Capacity – for local government, training to manage substantially increased resources in fiscally responsible ways. • Capacity – for communities, a new approach to social mobilization to give marginalized community members more of a say in priority setting. • Bottom line – (re)connecting government and people.

  16. Peace Building from Below • Many DPs are continuing community based activities in parallel to LGCDP. • In PBB, communities divided by the conflict are reconciled around reconstruction and development activities. • Whereas LGCDP is government led, PBB is civil society led. • The hope is that they will reinforce each other.

  17. Sahakarya (Cooperation) • DPs have learned how to support community-based development projects. • However, the challenge is to make them sustainable … when the project ends. • LGCDP is, in some senses, an experiment designed to bridge that gap. • CIDA extended Sahakarya to see if it could hand over its results to LGCDP.

  18. Developing Democracy (DDN) • The Constituent Assembly was elected to draft a constitution for the “New Nepal”. • One risk was that after the election, the process would revert to being top down. • Although not the only one, CIDA was the first DP to reinforce advocacy and profession CSOs to have an input.

  19. ADB & CIDA’s future in Nepal • ADB and CIDA have cooperated in the past on tube well irrigation in the Terai. • CIDA is co-financing LGCDP with ADB. • Our priority going forward is “stimulating sustainable economic growth”. • For a DP with a “modest presence”, that is a big challenge in a “large” country. • Perhaps CIDA and ADB can complement each other’s efforts once again.

  20. Conclusion • The challenges are great and the risks are high. • However, I am optimistic. • Having come from so far back, the longer term trend to me is clear and it is up. • The migrants are not refugees. The vast majority will come home and demand better of their politicians and leaders. • Some may become leaders themselves.

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