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Voices From the Field
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Intervention in the education sector is the most important factor raising the socioeconomic status of Nepal’s many communities, according to the majority of participants in consultations across the country. Few would dispute that finding.
Yet to improve education, development agencies should form partnerships with grassroots organizations instead of imposing it through centralized planning.
“Local organizations are best aware of local needs,” said one participant. For example, when landless peasants in one district were given land without education in basic farming skills, they sold it at the first opportunity. Their living standards were not improved, and the resource was wasted.
Such specific insights have made the intensive, participatory approach that went into the making of the Asian Development Bank (ADB)’s country strategy and program (CSP) for Nepal so important. By engaging in and using the results of extensive consultations, the new CSP is a substantially different document from CSPs of old. It reflects the hard-won knowledge of local groups and designs programs that link goals with specific and measurable desired results.
In preparing the CSP, ADB organized consultations in five districts of Nepal in December 2003, as well as a consultation with women representing ethnic groups from the eastern region. The Nepal Resident Mission summarized the findings from the process in Voices from the Field, a complete review of what locals had to say.
The first step in the process was to identify the stakeholders, with the goal not to maximize the number of participants, but to optimize the quality. A total of 119 representatives participated in the regional workshops, including women’s groups, ethnic groups, and dalit organizations (considered the lowest in the caste hierarchy), trade unions, bar associations, municipal leaders, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), press unions, local government, the private sector, and the Ministry of Finance. This diverse array of stakeholders set the agenda, while ADB only organized and listened.
The contacts gained will not only serve the ongoing consultation process needed to keep the CSP focused on results, but will also help ADB navigate extremely difficult waters stirred up by Nepal’s worsening insurgency.
Indeed, while stakeholders overwhelmingly stressed the importance of education to development programs, they identified political instability and poor security as the main constraints to implementing projects. And all consultations concluded “that development can proceed even in a conflict environment if the right approach is adopted, such as implementing programs that either ensure local participation or that are demanded by local communities.”
Local stakeholders were asked for feedback on poverty and its causes, and to recommend short-term poverty reduction measures, the development needs of their region, and their perceptions of the risks.
In Voices from the Field, their responses were organized to look at development needs in areas, such as agriculture, water resources, the inclusion of women and other disadvantaged groups, and the building of infrastructure—particularly roads.
“Local organizations are best aware of local needs“
- Participant in a local consultation workshop
In the section on agriculture, for example, Shankar Man Singh of the Nepal Chamber of Commerce in Kathmandu suggested that “there should be a renewed focus (on agriculture) with commercial interests and market forces in mind. Looking after agriculture without a view to the market will be nonproductive.”
Other stakeholders in the eastern and central regions suggested that development agencies help set up milk collection centers. Ironically, milk sales in the areas hit a low when production hits a high, and the limited number of collection centers cannot keep up. Farmers are forced to sell at low prices or drink their product.
In urban centers, participants stressed the need for vocational training programs to boost skills and improve employment opportunities. Many industries in Biratnagar and Birgunj, for example, must rely on Indian workers because of a lack of local skilled laborers.
Insights from the consultations varied from the general to the specific. Looking at water-resource projects, for example, stakeholders complained that some water projects had not been completed even after years of implementation. They called on ADB and others to monitor water projects closely, and called unanimously for comprehensive reviews of the projects.
Voices from the Field closes with a chapter on connectivity—roads, airports, and rural telecommunications links. An overwhelming number of stakeholders gave priority to road development. They demanded the construction of specific road links. Roads and telephones not only link farmers to their markets and children to better schools, but they also link development professionals better to the people they are trying to help.
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