Dinesh Prasain

Developmental Practices In Nepal is an outcome of a seminar organized by the Central Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tribhuvan University with the support of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in February 1997. Edited by two Nepali sociologists, the book contains six papers by Nepali social scientists and a summary of the seminar discussions.

In the first chapter, Chaitanya Mishra provides a succinct overview of the career of the currently dominant developmental discourse at the global and the national level. Mishra contends that the plurality in the conceptions of what constitutes development and how it should be pursued virtually came to an end after the modern developmental era emerged immediately after World War II under the aegis of the increasingly hegemonic western capitalist establishment. Since then, in a one-way Western monologue, development has been equated solely with economic growth rendering concerns with other crucial components such as equality, democratization and social cohesion as irrelevant. Mishra implies that this specific conceptualization of development was tailored to serve the interest of the global capitalist establishment rather than the poor and marginalized sections of the population. That the gap between the rich and the poor at the global and national level started increasing at an unprecedented rate precisely with the emergence of the modern developmental era is the logical conclusion of this process.

Mishra attributes the development failure in Nepal to such a global atmosphere and also to the action of the small section of self-serving brokers of development at home who preventedthe evolution of indigenous notions and practices of development. He argues that development can take root only through deep and plural struggles which in turn can take place only through "incessant politicization of all dimensions of development." However, he is silent about when and how such a process can be set in motion. Hence his otherwise insightful essay contains ideas which at times strike one as ideal rather than achievable.

In "State-led Development Strategy in Nepal" Kishore Kumar Guru-Gharana equates development solely with economic growth. He quotes extensively (so much so that sometimes the reader feels that she is reading not Guru-Gharana but the different authors he quotes) to prove, what is already a conventional wisdom, that economic growth can be achieved by the best possible mixture of the market and the state. Guru-Gharana is all praise for the East Asian Tigers, whose developmental success he says hinged on good governance rather than democracy and suggests Nepal should follow suit. The criteria by which good governance is to be judged, according to Guru-Gharana, is accountability, transparency, predictability, openness and rule of law. He is unclear as to how good governance is possible without democracy. If the reader is in the mood to read a list of clichés on the advantages and disadvantages of planned and free-market economies and the need for striking a balance between them, she should read this article.

Badri Prasad Shrestha provides a more balanced view on "State-led Growth Strategy in Nepal." Shrestha's main point is that despite the planned process of development for a long time, Nepal's economy remains dualistic with an increasingly affluent modern sector and a vast, stagnating rural sector. He argues that the state should gradually withdraw its participation in the modern sector while expanding its participation in the rural sector, with especial efforts directed at the rationalization of the agriculture and greater allocation of government funding to the social sector. He adds that decentralization is the key to fast economic development. He, perhaps unjustifiably, sees great hopes in the newly formulated 20-year Agricultural Perspective Plan which, he implies, will bring about "dramatic change in the Nepalese economy in terms of higher growth rates, substantial alleviation of poverty and correction of dualism." The problem with Shrestha is that he seems to see a neat correlation between economic policy making and development while ignoring other intervening variables (such as the socio-cultural structure and different perceptions of development among actors at different levels of the polity) which affect the way plans are translated into practice.

In his paper "Market-led Development Strategy in Nepal" Shankar Prasad Sharma presents a straight-out-of-the-textbook view on how full market orientation would pay in the long run despite certain hiccups in the short run. He provides details of how the Nepali government is aware of this 'fact', what steps it has already taken and how the country is already showing encouraging developmental trends. Sharma's paper reads like a typical report submitted to the IMF by a pliant Third World bureaucrat.

In Chapter 5, Meena Acharya presents a critical and informed analysis of the "Non-Government Organization (NGO)-led Development Strategy in Nepal." Having set a theoretical framework for the rationale for NGO activism in development nationally and internationally, Acharya goes on to analyze the (I)NGO sector in Nepal. Alhough conceding that (I)NGOs in Nepal have made some contribution in channeling resources to the poor, she points out that they leave a lot to be desired. Despite the rhetoric, their activities lack transparency, and are top-down, informed by their own interests and not those of the intended beneficiaries. Moreover, many NGOs are set up just to siphon off the available donor funding. She calls for better NGO-INGO-government coordination. Acharya sees a need for soul searching among the NGOs to "reexamine whether they are adhering to the basic principles of volunteerism, cooperation and caring, paramount to the good functioning of NGOs." Although Acharya reverts to trite ideas at times, there is much that is useful to students of development in her paper.

In the last paper on "People/Community-Based Development Strategy in Nepal," Krishna B. Bhattachan puts forward a bold idea that genuine grassroots development is possible only if we switch to a paradigm which recognizes caste/ethnic groups as the key agents of development. He attributes the failure of the past development programs for their misplaced adherence to induced (as distinct from indigenous community based) approach and blames the mainstream developmental practitioners as being biased against the ethnic groups and 'low castes'. He criticizes the prevalent assumption among developmental practitioners that communityhood/peoplehood is defined just by territoriality, neglecting its caste, ethnic, linguistic and religious dimensions. Although original, his ideas fail to take any direction even after 40 pages (the paper is a cumbersome read and the reader wishes that it had been properly edited for coherence). He reverts to a too simplistic sociological analysis by giving prominence to only one variable of caste/ethnicity in analyzing development, and seems to have missed the point that development failures are bound up with complex and intricate interrelationships among the global, national and local historic, economic, political and cultural forces. Moreover, Bhattachan is silent about how his caste/ethnic based developmental paradigm would respond to the realities and needs of heterogeneous (both urban and rural) caste/ethnic areas.

Except for a couple of stimulating articles, the book fails to move beyond the mediocre development debate so prevalent in Nepal. Rather than providing fresh and theoretically robust perspectives, most of the authors resort to clichés, textbook rhetoric and unsubstantiated generalizations. There are plenty of editorial errors. These shortcomings notwithstanding, the book is successful in bringing together ideas and experiences from prominent Nepali social scientists and brokers in various developmental experiments in Nepal.

(D. Prasain is doing an MA in sociology at TU)