Book Review Pages
The Kathmandu Post Review of Books
Vol. 2, No. 5
Issue Coordinator: Kumar Pandey
Martin Chautari for
CSRD and The Kathmandu Post
Return to KPRB Main Page
Return to CSRD Main Page
Return to SINHAS Home Page
Essay
Reviews
- Die Tharu in Chitawan: Kenntnis, Bewertung und Nutzung der natürlichen Umwelt im südlichen Nepal (Ulrike Müller-Böker)
- Unconvincing Explanation for Two Asia's Development (Cal Clark and K.C. Roy)
- Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations (Catherine Caulfield)
- The New Yorker, June 23 & 30, 1997 (Special Double Issue on Indian Fiction in English)
Attitudes Towards Development: A Look Back at Kulekhani
Kumar Pandey
We have just been through a period of load shedding and we can look forward to more of it later this year. The past load shedding was to allow for rehabilitation works at the Kulekhani Hydro Electric Project. Maintenance required at the Marsyangdi power station will result in power cuts later this year. It does not seem right that these relatively new power stations are having to go through some major rehabilitation works, indicating clearly that there are problems in our energy sector. I will use the Kulekhani hydroelectric project as an example to illustrate some changes required in thinking about Nepal's power development.
High dams and storage capacity
The Kulekhani power plant lies in the mid hills of Nepal. The possibility of draining various small rivers into the valley to generate electricity from 85 million cubic meters of stored water to meet the national peak demand made the Kulekhani hydropower project attractive. The study for this Project began as early as 1963, but the actual construction works began in 1977 and was commissioned in 1982. Out of the US$120 million required for the project, about US$115 million was loans from the World Bank, Kuwaiti Fund, Japanese Government, and EEC, and US$5 million was a grant from UNDP.
In the main national supply system, there is a special need to have the potential to supply power during peak demand hours and dry months. Peak demand hours in Nepal occur during the evenings and the mornings. There is also higher demand in the winter months of November, December and January when it gets dark earlier, requiring more energy for lighting and heating. Incidentally during these very months the river flows are reducing. Prior to constructing the Kulekhani Project, options considered for meeting the peak demand were projects having seasonal storage capacity, run-off-the-river type hydropower stations (without storage capacity), or having thermal generation. (The consultants, it seems, did not look at the option of daily storage schemes, which could also be an option). Of the options considered, a project with seasonal storage capacity was seen as the best option, and hence Kulekhani was built.
Present problems
When high dams are built they are designed to accumulate a certain amount of debris below the inlet of the tunnel. This volume beneath the inlet of the tunnel is known as the "dead storage" area. A storage scheme can be effectively said to be "dead" when it runs out of the dead storage area. When the Kulekhani reservoir was built, it was estimated that its dead-storage area would last 100 years. In their Project report, the Japanese consultants, based on their pre-feasibility study carried out in 1974, claimed, in no uncertain terms, that there is no need to worry about siltation problem in the Kulekhani area.
In 1993 a heavy rainfall added almost 300,000 cubic meters of silt to the reservoir. Since then the hills around the reservoir have been so prone to erosion that the annual sediment accumulation in the reservoir continues to be about 300,000 cubic meter. At this rate the dead storage area of the Kulekhani reservoir could be filled by 1999. Today no technology exists which allows flushing of silt from high dams cheaply. Therefore, to keep the Kulekhani project alive, a Kulekhani Disaster Prevention Project, at the cost of US$40 million was formulated, with another loan-assistance from the Japanese Government.
So where did we go wrong? How is it that our nation invested 120 million dollars in a project which had to be given a new life, with additional 40 million dollars, within 15 years of commencement of operation? The answers should not be looked for on a project by project basis, but rather from a much wider perspective. What in fact is in question is our attitude towards development. How do we want to develop our resources? Who do we want making decisions for us? Why should Nepalis not take charge of their development? Some of what we need to think about in making development decisions is discussed briefly.
When built in the late seventies, Kulekhani-I was the largest hydropower project in this country. The floods of 1993 have made it clear that in investing in Kulekhani, Nepal had placed too many eggs in one basket. Once the Kulekhani project was out of commission in 1993, there was rampant load shedding, the foreign consultants were recalled and the country had to pay a heavy price in repairing the broken system, as well as for the lack of electricity. The actual maintenance works this past summer were also handed over to the Japanese and the Chinese, precisely because Nepali experts could not be trusted with providing advice for this large project. Because the Kulekhani project was too large for Nepali technicians to undertake and for Nepal to finance by herself, foreigners made the decisions for us, which we have learnt, was not in our best interest.
Selection of projects should reflect Nepal's commitment to develop herself using all available resources within the country. For hydro to be accepted as a major resource, the Nepali people must be able to benefits from it. Projects that do not envisage making electricity available to all Nepalis at affordable prices, or for the industrial sector at competitive prices, cannot be said to be of national interest.
Lessons
Disasters of much higher proportions than the Kulekhani will continue to occur if our planners do not pay adequate attention to how national resources are developed. Today we continue to promote projects like Pancheshwor, West Seti, Karnali-Chisapani, Sun Koshi and Sapta Koshi high dams. Nepal does not have the capability to design, construct, operate and manage these systems. We have learnt that we cannot trust the reports that have been furnished by foreign experts. There is a desperate need to confirm what they have reported by our own studies. If one had known that a third of the initial investment would have to be spent in the project only 15 years after it came into operation, then the Kulekhani project would not have been viable. The present chaos in our power sector, is a cumulative effect of not making the right decisions in project selection and implementation. If we continue to turn a blind eye to these issues, even after these major let downs by foreign planning and money, the best we can hope for is more load shedding in the future.
(K. Pandey is an engineer)
Return to Contents of this Issue
Return to KPRB Main Page
Return to SINHAS Home Page
Die Tharu in Chitawan: Kenntnis, Bewertung und Nutzung der natürlichen Umwelt im südlichen Nepal (Erdwissenschaftliche Forschung, Vol. XXXIII)
Author: Ulrike Müller-Böker
Publisher: Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1995
Tharus of Chitawan
Karl-Heinz Krämer
This book is presented as an extraordinary post-doctoral thesis following the author's many years of field study in Southern Nepal. In the center of observation are the Tharus of Chitawan. The first four chapters of this book deal with the regional, topographic, climatological, historical, social and cultural conditions.
The Tharus and some other minor ethnic groups living in this area since earliest times have developed some kind of active immunity against the wide-spread malaria because of their modest trend to mobility. It was Prime Minister Bhimsen Thapa, who after the Anglo-Nepalese war (1814-16), for the first time tried to preserve the undeveloped forest and swamp areas for strategic reasons. Later the Ranas (1846-1951) followed the same policy of conservation, but by claiming it as their private hunting area. They also tried to exploit the economic potentials of the fertile region. However, compared to the outer Tarai the Chitawan area still remained a thinly populated peripheral region.
After the abrogation of the Rana system Chitawan became an immigration area to relieve the densely populated mountain region and to provide areas of arable land for the growing population of the country. The resettlement politics of the government, started in the mid-fifties, and the successful control of malaria led to an extremely high population growth in the early sixties. When the government lost control over its resettlement programme in the mid-sixties, King Mahendra ordered the forest to be "cleaned" of illegal settlers, which included old Tharu villages, and made it a royal hunting reserve, which it has been until today.
But this cleansing could not solve the problem of illegal settlements in Chitawan. Most of the migrants from the mountains settled in Chitawan because of economic distress in their home areas. Besides, there were also a number of well situated families, who tried to extend their economic activities upon Chitawan. Infrastructure developments in the area further propagated the problems of settlements.
Within a few years Chitawan faced the same process of confiscation of ethnic land by elite mountain groups, that had been typical for the development process of the modern Nepalese state, and which is now denounced in public by ethnic organizations: Many of the indigenous families lost their land; the traditional shifting cultivation of the autochthonous population was no longer allowed; the jimindari system encouraged devious land transactions; there were no owner guarantees for Chitawan's indigenous population; the colonists simply cultivated fallow land disregarding ethnic systems and property rights; former cultivators had to sell their land for sums far below its value; there was no initiative from the government to prevent the sell-out of Tharu land, etc.
In 1973 the Royal Chitawan National Park was founded. Today it is one of Asia's most important natural reserve areas attracting tens of thousands of tourists every year, which constitute a further burden for the region.
Chapters 5-8 of the book are concerned with the author's ethno-ecological approach. She classifies the physical and agriculturally used environment from the viewpoint of the Tharus, including their reactions to floods and erosions caused by the river. The author explains, how the Tharu's ideal adaptation to their natural environment has been defunctionalized since the early fifties by the intensive population growth and the resulting shortage of land. The Tharus' traditional agriculture of shifting cultivation in combination with silvo-pastoralism was replaced by permanent field cultivation dependant on regular use of fertilizer. But the necessary intensification of cultivation was managed by the Tharus only in part.
The traditional technology of the Tharus, too, is the result of a century-old successful adaptation to their natural environment. But the population pressure and its consequences make the supply of natural materials more and more difficult. Since access to the National Park is restricted, it has become extremely difficult to utilize resources available there. Today the Tharus complain, that the National Park, founded as an institution for the protection of wild animals, and used by the tourism industry, has nullified their traditional rights.
In the context of applied development research, the author's ethno-ecological approach is an addition to and systematization of participatory methods of evaluation and planning. The treatment of the problem from the view of the affected people fulfils the approach of development from below.
(Krämer, a historian, has written several books on Nepal)
Return to Contents of this Issue
Return to KPRB Main Page
Return to SINHAS Home Page
Comparing Development Patterns in Asia
Author: Cal Clark and K.C. Roy
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 1997
Unconvincing Explanation for Two Asia's Development
Saurav Dev Bhatta
Both East Asia and South Asia began the post World War II era as areas of developing nations. Within the past five decades, however, the East Asian economies have not only overcome the shackles of poverty, but have actually become formidable players among the First World nations. South Asia, on the other hand, is still struggling to escape the poverty trap. How can we explain this dramatic divergence in the economic development of these two regions? Clark and Roy attempt to tackle this challenging question in a mere 198 pages.
The bulk of this three-part book analyzes how well the development patterns of these two regions can be explained in terms of neoclassical economics and the development state model--the two dominant paradigms of development. Beginning with a brief overview of general development debates during the past three decades, the first part outlines the statistical profiles of the East and the South Asian economies. It argues that the contrasting economic performances of these two regions at first seem to vindicate neoclassical logic which attributes East Asian success to the free market and South Asian failure to state meddling. But closer scrutiny reveals that the state in East Asia has consistently influenced the economy using both market-conforming and market-distorting policies. Similarly, South Asian failure has more to do with the ineffectiveness of state intervention than with state intervention per se. In fact, the book claims that both regions actually followed the common development strategy of upgrading their economies towards advanced agricultural techniques and industry.
Part two presents brief case studies of several countries in an attempt to further illustrate the shortcomings of the neoclassical and statist paradigms. It individually reviews the economic structures and strategies of all the East Asian nations, including Dengist China, and shows that these countries have very different economic structures. The Korean economy for example, is dominated by the state and large business groups, while at the other extreme, Hong Kong is dominated by small-scale business operating in a near laissez-faire environment. The book maintains that flexibility is the common denominator and key to the economic dynamism of these "Confucian Capitalist" economies. And this flexibility is not merely a function of the market or the state, but is rather a result of the synergism between market, state and society. By the same token, the lack of economic flexibility is the main reason behind South Asian stagnation. This claim is based on a case study of India, which is presented as the representative South Asian nation.
Part three, the final section, concludes by re-emphasizing the inadequacies of the neoclassical and statist theories in explaining the contrasting experiences of East and South Asia. It therefore proposes to analyze national development in terms of a more inclusive "state-in-society" approach that views both state and market as embedded in a larger institutional context of cultural and social forces. Perhaps the key to successful economic development, it claims, is the existence of a strong state and a strong society. But this point is not developed further.
Perhaps the most useful aspect of this book is its general overview of the development patterns of the East and South Asian nations. However, readers familiar with the voluminous literature on East Asian economic development will be particularly disappointed by the superficiality of the analyses presented here. And anyone interested in South Asia will question how the authors' almost exclusive focus on India can be justified when discussing this region.
The most conspicuous weakness of the book is its failure to answer the central research question - why the East and the South Asian economies diverged so dramatically. Asserting that local cultural and social factors play a crucial role in development merely amounts to belabouring the obvious. Such assertions are meaningful only when specific socio-cultural factors that critically affect the national development process are isolated, and their effects are substantiated by concrete examples. Unfortunately, this book does not make a serious attempt to isolate such factors. It only goes as far as reviewing some of the unsubstantiated conjectures made by other social scientists such as Max Weber - whose claim that Confucian culture inevitably invites economic stagnation, has by now been relegated to the dustbins of history.
The book also fails to discuss the policy implications of the final conclusion - that successful development requires a strong state as well as a strong society. In fact, it does not even explain what constitutes "a strong society". Hence readers looking for new insights into the process of economic development will probably find this book a disappointment.
(Bhatta is an electrical engineer and a student of planning)
Return to Contents of this Issue
Return to KPRB Main Page
Return to SINHAS Home Page
Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations
Author: Catherine Caufield
Publisher: Macmillan, London, 1996 (432 pp)
Price: Rs. 975
World Banking On Illusions
Seira Tamang.
Very much in line with Graham Hancock's "The Lords of Poverty", Catherine Caufield's book Masters of Illusion is aimed at revealing the hidden dynamics of the World Bank, an institution that has become an integral part of global relations. While as critical as Hancock's Lords, Caulfield's Masters is less acerbic in tone and more "balanced" in so far as Caufield reveals a complex interplay of internal and external dynamics which combined with the Bank's driving logic of giving out loans, constitutes a reality that is very different from the world imagined by the World Bank.
The historical origins of the Bank and the different emphases and contributions made by its various Presidents, serve as the backdrop for a description of the onslaught of lending frenzies, debt crises, debt servicing loans, structural adjustment programs and other policies that have dominated Bank activities through the years. The answer to each of the problems has always been to lend more. Caufield notes that having lent huge sums to debtor countries so that they can service their loan debts and cut down on social expenditure in accordance to structural adjustment policies, the Bank is currently making new loans in order to restore services in such fields as health and education. As in the 1970s, it appears that what is important is not the ability of the government to pay back loans, but that there be an everlasting supply of new loans.
Liberally interspersed between such accounts are examples from all over the world that go beyond official Bank rhetoric to reveal how people and places have really been affected by such loans. Based not only on accounts written by groups that monitor and lobby the Bank, but also her own investigations in various parts of the globe, Caufield paints a very sad picture of the consequences of Bank activities for the poor and the environment. From Bank funded dam projects that displace thousands from ancestral lands and incorporate non-existent or very poor resettlement programs to farming programs that ultimately only benefit the already wealthy, to thousands of acres of Amazonian forests cleared for settlement projects that were never feasible - the cases are as endless as they are globally dispersed.
Internal dynamics of project evaluation reports that are never read or changed to suit Bank priorities, increasingly more academically qualified but inexperienced employees, "superfluous" economists that are turned into environmental economists, hugely over-optimistic reliance on "best case" scenarios (an example cannot be resisted - with the Arun dam project: it was predicted that the average Nepali would be willing to pay 53 cents per unit of electricity, when Americans in Washington pay 7 to 8 cents), and statistics that reveal that since 1981, 40% of all World Bank loans have been pushed through in the last 2 months of the fiscal year, are but morsels of the information included in such chapters as "The New Maharajahs" and "Supremely Self-Confident". The potency of such analyses stem from the numerous, anonymous interviews conducted with Bank employees. These "insider voices" further reveal not only the non-homogenous nature of the World Bank, but also the manner in which dissent, objections and opposing views are removed and smoothed over.
Especially interesting are the political dynamics which govern external relations of the Bank, manifest in several ways. The more well known is American clout - World Bank loans for projects that may provide competition for American industries have been stopped or cut. On the flip side, where Washington has had at stake potential future influence in an area, even clearly exaggerated (or corrupt, depending on one's point of view) estimates for projects, are granted over the objections of local Bank representatives. An understated, but more "open" political maneuver is the extent to which the Bank governs the internal policies of a country. That India, for example, under the pressure of the Bank, changed 21 major pieces of legislation, shows the willingness of the Bank to intrude on the sovereignty of (desperate) countries.
Furthermore, there is the more controversial record that not only does it not have a history of a strong stand for human rights, the Bank has had an almost lending preference for military and not democratic regimes. Non-democratic systems have been the most effective at enforcing hugely unpopular structural adjustment and other measures.
The emphasis on wider political forces and momentum does not mean that Caufield leaves untouched one of the favorite topics of "Bank Bashers" - the individual Bank employees with their high salaries and perks and cultural ignorance of the countries in which they are supposedly "experts". Particularly delightful is her choice of illustrative quotes - after an across-the-board salary cut-back of Bank officials following American congressional investigations into their salaries, one loan official complained that the then President of the Bank, Robert McNamara, "was trading part of their livelihood to help the poor".
Apart from the lack of footnote numbers which makes looking up references somewhat puzzling, but probably adds to the book's immense readability, Caufield's book is very successful in its aim to undermine the illusion of a global institution working, and working successfully, in the best interests of the poor and poverty stricken nations. Much can be gained from reading such a book in a "bikas" driven country - not the least being that project failures, corrupt officials, state callousness and bureaucratic apathy is not culturally unique to Nepal. That's to say, there is aphno manche, chakari and fatalism elsewhere as well.
(S Tamang is a Ph.D candidate in international relations at American University, Washington DC)
Return to Contents of this Issue
Return to KPRB Main Page
Return to SINHAS Home Page
The New Yorker, June 23 & 30, 1997 (Special Double Issue on Indian Fiction in English)
A Passage to Indian Fiction
Samrat Upadhyay
Halfway through the June 23 & 30, 1997 (double issue) of The New Yorker magazine (circ. 600,000) - a well-respected journal among the American literati - we find a black-and-white photograph of nearly a dozen brown people, smiling into the camera. Among these faces, we might recognize the face of one bearded man: Salman Rushdie, whose 1981 novel Midnight's Children not only won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize but also become known over the years as The Booker of Bookers.
But who are the other people in the picture? They are the creators of what has been termed as "the hype of the Indian novel," a burst of outstanding fiction from the subcontinent that has had critics, especially Western, raving about the possibilities of Indian fiction in English. The very fact that a respectable magazine like The New Yorker, on the eve of 50th anniversary of Indian Independence, has devoted a double issue to Indian fiction in English points to this new craze: Indians are producing some of the most exciting fiction in the world today.
In an introductory essay, Salman Rushdie provides a succinct but illuminating history of Indian writing in English (sometimes called "Hinglish" but more often "Indian English"). The ironic thing about Rushdie's piece is that while it is a well-written survey of Indian English and the prominent writers who are still shaping it, its central claim is outrageous. Rushdie maintains that prose writing created by Indian writers working in English "is proving to be a stronger and more important body of work than most of what has been produced in the eighteen 'recognized' languages of India." - all this while admitting that most of what he's read of non-English writers is in translated works! It is one thing to say that Indian writers are producing some world class fiction in English today, but quite another to compare it to other "regional" literatures in such a spurious manner. Apart from this hyperbole, readers will find Rushdie's article insightful and entertaining. Rushdie also leaves no stone unturned in blasting those Indian critics who look at this new literature skeptically, who say that it is an upper-middle class luxury that doesn't sufficiently draw on the ancient spiritual/literary traditions of India. These critics ignore that language is an evolving thing, and that English - although a legacy of an imperialist regime - is now as much a part of India as any other language. To ignore literary possibilities in English is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Moreover, as Rushdie rightly points out, the new literature in English doesn't only portray the bourgeois concerns but also embraces diverse Indian realities, "rural as well as urban, sacred as well as profane."
The other faces in the photograph reveal an array of authors, old and new: Anita Desai, the grand madam of Indian English novel, author of Clear Light of Day and In Custody; Amitav Ghosh, author of The Shadow Lines and In an Antique Land; Rohinton Mistry, a vastly popular writer of social realism with two fine novels under his belt, Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance; Vikram Chandra of the Red Earth and Pouring Rain fame; and the latest hot-hot Bengali-Keralan Arundhati Roy, whose fans fawn upon her personal beauty as much as they admire her innovative The God of Small Things.
Of the several pieces of fiction published in the magazine, the most impressive one is by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who shows that she still remains a master of the short story form. The story she tells in "Husband and Son" is of an aging married woman who befriends a young male dancer as her husband increasingly turns ascetic. The woman, through the young dancer, is transported back to the old days of her own romance with her then-young husband. Although the dancer ostensibly treats the woman like his mother, there are strong sexual overtones throughout their association. When finally the dancer leaves the area after a scandal with a tutoree, the woman realizes that the real target of her desire is her husband and not anyone else. "Husband and Son" is a beautiful story about misplaced desires and our perennial search for love.
Another powerful piece is Amitav Ghosh's essay, "India's Untold War of Independence," the story of 40,000 Indian soldiers who formed the Indian National Army and turned against the British colonial government as well as their former comrades. Ghosh takes the reader through the racism Indian officers encountered in the colonial army and their subsequent revolt.
Abraham Verghese's personal essay "The Cowpath to America" chronicles the passage of a young medical doctor from Madras to the corridors of American hospitals. A reflection on "comparative medicine" of sorts, Verghese's piece comes to the conclusion that even in medicine "one of the most important things America had to offer was the "choice of how one could live and work."
There are other delights in The New Yorker issue: a beautiful poem by Orrisan poet Jayanta Mahapatra, who is also included in the Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry; a tribute to the legendary R.K.Narayan; and a fine short story by young Kiran Desai (daughter of Anita Desai), a comic saga of a man who climbs a guava tree to escape domestic concerns and turns into a prophet.
All in all, The New Yorker issue pays a resounding tribute to the growing possibilities of Indian English and is destined to be a collector's item.
(Upadhaya is a Doctoral student in literature at the University of Hawaii)
Return to Contents of this Issue
Return to KPRB Main Page
Return to SINHAS Home Page
Last changed: 98/08/14