Our Perspective

• Nepal in the booming South

  15 Mar 2013

  

  As development experts would tell you, there is no theory of development as such, but only of underdevelopment. Experts can explain why certain countries have failed to develop, but they can not necessarily prescribe a definitive development path that can lead country X or Y to prosperity. As the rise of the countries in the global South who have adopted different models than that of traditional welfare state in the North shows, there is no one size fits all solution. Each country, including Nepal, has to find its own way. The Global Human Development Report 2013 which was released late yesterday in Mexico endorses this view of multiple development paths and paints a very hopeful picture of the state of global development. It hails the rise of the South and documents key interventions that have allowed the region to grow rapidly. The Report observes that the economic growth of developing countries is influencing global financial architecture by introducing indirect competition and pressuring traditional donors—away from the terms set by ‘Washington consensus’—to pay greater attention to the needs of the developing countries.  “Overall, the rise of the South is infusing new patterns of resource accumulation into the global financial system and building Read More

• Off-grid Prosperity

  24 Jan 2013

  
  Photo credit: The Kathmandu Post

  In September last year, I was in Kharbang Bazar, Dagatundada VDC in Baglung—several hours’ drive from the district headquarters on a muddy seasonal road—to witness the transformational changes ushered in by a basic service that many of us may take for granted: access to modern energy.  The catalysing effect of modern energy in the form of a 75 kilowatts (kW) micro hydro plant on the development of this village is self-evident. Noodle and soap factories have flourished; school dropout rates have decreased because kids have time to study at night under the light and, in fact, enrollment in the public school has increased because it provides modern computer education; quality of health services have improved because vaccines can be stored in refrigerators, x-ray and pathological laboratory facilities are now available within the village; and the level of public awareness has risen with the introduction of local community radios and access to computers and the internet. A milk vendor does not have to worry about his unsold milk spoiling any more. He can preserve it in a chilling vat. Women do not need to wake up at four in the morning to mill rice and flour in traditional labour-intensive mills.  Access to Read More

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