NEPAL

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.