Articles

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• Mary Des Chene

  In the Name of Bikas
  This editorial introduction to the special bikas (development) issue of Studies of Nepali History and Society is concerned with the gaps between the rhetoric and the realities of bikas in Nepal. Its central assertion is that, although bikas is defined and described in terms of social betterment, modernization and in other positive terms, it has in fact become a transnational capitalist industry that is above all in the business of profit-making and self-maintenance. Whatever improvements may be realized in the living conditions of poor Nepalis - those in whose name the bikas industry conducts business - are merely by-products of an industry that primarily benefits the managers and orchestrators of bikas. Understood in these terms, the rhetoric of bikas-as-social-welfare can be seen as a language that serves usefully to mask the real nature of the bikas industry. The editorial places the development of the bikas industry within Nepal in a historical context, examines its profit-making aspects, and critiques the production and reproduction of unreliable information about the state of Nepali society, on the basis of which bikas programs are planned, financed and implemented. It argues that creation of conditions for effective improvement of living conditions for the majority in Nepal will require a cooperative and concerted critique of the bikas industry by practitioners and by academics whose disciplinary theories and methods lend bikas work the stamp of scientific validity.
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• Tatsuro Fujikura

  Technologies of Improvement, Locations of Culture: American Discourses of Democracy and 'Community Development' in Nepal
  This article considers the implications for Nepal - a place often described as a 'development laboratory' - of American 'community development' discourses. The 1962 document, ÒWhat is Community Development?Ó is closely analyzed. That document elaborated some of the central ideas upon which one of the earliest American development projects in Nepal, the ÒVillage Development ProjectÓ (1954-1962), was based. The article examines contradictory implications embedded in the structure of community development [CD] discourse, encapsulated in such notions as 'aided self-help'. It also discusses a peculiar, socio-psychological (rather than political) construction of 'democracy' as a central feature of CD discourse. Several after-the-fact evaluations of the Village Development Project are also analyzed, and the peculiarities of their discourses shown to derive from the construction of Nepal as a 'development laboratory'. Although many retrospective accounts describe CD as a minor, failed experiment of the past, the article suggests that CD has had a significant structuring effect on subsequent development policies, policies which have contributed to the expansion of the Nepali state bureaucracy. The article concludes with an argument that despite being deployed in an altered socio-political terrain, many current approaches to 'poverty eradication' through 'participatory development' suffer from blindness to history and large-scale political formations and from a reified notion of 'culture' in a manner similar to that of the earlier CD discourse.
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• Bikas Pandey

  Local Benefits From Hydro Development
  This paper shows that the construction of hydroelectric projects in remote areas of Nepal, whether to supply urban load centers or to export energy to India, is unlikely to result in economic development for the regions where they are built. It further shows that the larger projects are unlikely to enhance national hydropower construction capability. Mountain districts will need to demand either investment in infrastructure such as irrigation, which directly meet their needs, or a share of resource rents if they are to benefit from the exploitation of their water resources. The less remote and the more economically developed districts may also opt to invest in small hydropower projects designed primarily to electrify their own districts. Such 'District Hydros' have the additional advantage of using and enhancing technical capability which already exists in the country. The planned Arun III hydro project, Phase I, and a smaller district hydro project, Andhi Khola, are compared to substantiate the arguments put forth.
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• Kamal R. Adhikary

  Naming Ceremonies as Rituals of Development
  This paper examines how the bikas-talk (development-talk) of the 1980's, was infused with nationalism to emphasize the common goal and happiness of all Nepalis of any social or ethnic group, and how this rhetoric of inclusion of all groups contradicted some of the bikas activities. Several cases of change in place names are examined, with particular attention to Sanskritized place-names imposed as part of bikas activities and marked by naming ceremonies. The paper argues that this erasure of indigenous history and cultural symbols, far from achieving the stated aims of creating a unified national culture and inclusive sense of belonging, instead displayed the hollowness of the rhetoric of inclusiveness that was so central to Panchayati bikas-talk.
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• Bhushan Tuladhar

  Kathmandu's Garbage: Simple Solutions Going to Waste
  The fairly effective waste management system that existed in Kathmandu prior to 1951 could not keep up with the rapid urbanization and socio-economic changes that Kathmandu witnessed in the latter half of this century. In response to the deteriorating situation, a major project was launched in 1980 with financial and technical assistance from the government of Germany. However, centralization of waste management services without proper coordination with the municipalities, and dependency on donor expertise and finance ultimately led to the collapse of Kathmandu's waste management system. Following the termination of the German project, Kathmandu is now left with confused municipalities, an incapable central government and a bankrupt institution which had been created for the sole purpose of managing Kathmandu's solid waste. Today the Nepali government is once again begging for international assistance while simple solutions such as small labor intensive composting plants and incentives for the private sector to get involved in waste management, are being overlooked. This article analyzes the institutional and political factors that have led to the present situation and concludes with a set of recommendations for resolving Kathmandu's solid waste management problems. Return to 1(2) Contents

• Katharine N. Rankin

  Planning for Equity: Ethical Principles from Newar Representations of Finance
  As policy planners in Nepal embark on a path of global economic integration, they have given little thought to how the neoliberal economic philosophy underlying this official economic strategy will articulate with alternative logics of economic rationality operative in Nepal's diverse communities. This paper thus begins by tracing a particular social constitution of markets in the Newar town of Sankhu, once an important commercial center on the historical Kathmandu-Lhasa trade route, where economic pursuits are justified by social uses of wealth. Then it considers how subordinate groups -- with special emphasis on caste and gender -- develop strategies to pursue their material and political interests within the dominant logic of social investment. This emphasis on inequalities within social systems in turn points to possibilities for new kinds of social relations resulting from encounters of local economic actors with emerging labor and commodity markets. The paper concludes with some practical recommendations for ethnographers and planners on discriminating between emancipatory and regressive political prospects in these new social relations.Return to 1(2) Contents

Literature Review

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• Shizu Upadhya

  The Status of Women in Nepal - 15 Years On
  This review essay examines five recent publications on Nepali women. Three survey studies, Women in Politics in Nepal - Their Socio-economic, Health, Legal and Political Constraints by Suresh Chalise and Milan Adhikary, Women Graduates in Agriculture and Forestry Development by Milan Adhikary and Women, Development, Democracy - A Study of the Socio-economic Changes in the Status of Women in Nepal (1981-1993), and two statistical profiles, authored by Savitri Singh and Meena Acharya, respectively, are reviewed. Written fifteen years after the USAID/Tribhuvan University multi-volume study entitled The Status of Women in Nepal, the review examines current findings to determine the extent to which women's status has improved in the interim. It also assesses the quality of contemporary women's studies in Nepal, and identifies ways in which future research could be improved.Return to 1(2) Contents

Commentary

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• Manjushree Thapa

  Ta'Angzoum among the Cows
  This new short story by a Nepali fiction writer portrays the colliding worlds of some of those who are described by bikas discourses, and some of those who circulate descriptions of "the people" in pursuit of their own agendas. Return to 1(2) Contents

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