Off the Wall Newsletter April 2015
With
Dragker Ri 6793m in the background and Dragnag Ri 6801m in the distance,
trekkers head up the snowfield towards Tesi Lapcha 5755m, the pass linking Rolwaling
to Khumbu.
The delay
in removing the Airbus 330 was due to the lack of emergency equipment and heavy
lifting gear in Nepal. On Nepal's
request, a Super Hercules aircraft was despatched from Kalina, India and reached
Kathmandu on Thursday 5th with 25 technical personnel and a
7.5-tonne Damaged Aircraft Recovery Kit (DARK). The Indian team is the only one
of its kind in south-east Asia. At least 27 international carriers operate over
80 International flights into Kathmandu daily, many of these would have been bringing
in tourists for the beginning of the season. By Saturday the 7th March over
50,000 international passengers had been stranded with 280 international
flights cancelled. Domestic flights were not disrupted.
The lack
of a suitable aviation tug resulted in a normal heavy road haulage tractor
(lorry minus its trailer) being commandeered so that the plane could sit on the
trailer coupling bed and be towed away. The
airport was finally opened for international flights late on Saturday 7th
March, a great relief for the estimated 21,000 passengers stranded in
Kathmandu.
This was a
very lucky escape for all concerned, and despite the fact that the area was
covered in fire retardant foam extremely quickly, it does beg the question how
ready is Nepal for a major incident?
Do you believe what you read in the papers?
This
headline appeared in the Himalayan Times on the 17th February.
There is a
real difference between what happens in Nepal, what the media reports and the
reality, and what potential trekkers and tourists perceive. As if Nepal is not
suffering enough from incidents that could be held as being beyond the control
of man there are as many equal actions that could be avoided. On the 17th March the political
parties called a general strike for April, in fact several general strikes and
some of a multi day duration. Why; because there is no progress in agreeing the
general principles of the constitution (now overdue by nearly 10 years). I
won’t (or can’t) go into all the details involved here but suffice to say that
there will always be winners and losers and in this case those in power will always
be the winners and the rest ...the losers. ‘Tourism’ is a big money spinner in
Nepal, it might not figure highly in the general figures banded about in GDP
terms, however it is certainly the oil that keeps those people living in the
middle hill districts alive and operational. The strike was called on the 7th
April and there was intense negative political comment on social media.
However, the ‘bandha’ was lifted for the following planned two days. Did
someone see sense?
How much
more do the powerful leaders in Nepal need to do to shoot themselves in their
own ‘tourism foot’? Nepal needs to wake up to the fact that not only are there
other mountain destinations outside of Nepal but that there are real
‘adventure’ destinations around the world. There are many agencies in Nepal
‘crying’ over the lack of tourists this season; but they need to look at their
national leaders and political activists and ask ‘What are you doing to us and
why?’ They also need to look at what they are doing to themselves. As a result
of the avalanche on Everest last season one company had over 250 Nepali staff
working for them, sadly none of them were able to set foot on the mountain.
Despite the fact that the agency had received full payment from the clients,
which was not refunded, the Nepali staff did not received their salary on the
basis that they did not complete their contract. Those staff, allegedly, all
resigned from that particular company. Nepali operators are taking over the
business rankings previously held by international operators offering credible Everest Expedition support at lower prices than the
non-Nepali operators. Nepali companies are offering Everest in the $25K-35K
range while non-Nepali from $40K to $65K range. However, there is a huge
difference in what you get for your bucks, in many cases it is not what you
might read on the tin - buyers beware. With the Nepal and Tibet governments
controlling much of the costs today with permit fees and set requirements for
wages, insurance, the treatment of Sherpas, cooks and porters a base price has
been effectively established, any organisation offering less than that will
have to be making a saving from other directions, from the standard of support,
logistics and equipment or in the reduction in their staffing costs and numbers,
I guess it certainly won’t be coming out of their own profit jar.
Everest 2015
Another
recent announcement was that a ‘new’ route had been planned to avoid the danger
spots of the Ice Fall. In fact the route is similar to that used a couple of
decades ago and simply puts into effect a better risk assessment. The line will
now follow to the right of the ice fall nearer to Nuptse, finally exiting
slightly right of a middle point at the top. However, the guides are not happy
as this will add several hours to their time in the ice fall despite the fact
that is will be a safer line. The route will be technically harder with at
least one section involving four vertical ladders tied together. The route had
over the years moved to the left as the terrain is easier going and thus faster
for both clients with less mountaineering experience and guides who sometimes
pass through the ice fall several times a day.
Interestingly,
the Swiss put ropes on the Matterhorn when and for what purpose?!
Since the
report of the 17th February the Nepal Government has announced that
the permits issued in 2014 would be valid up to 2019. Insurance cover for the
Nepalese climbers has now been increased and now ranges
as follows: Sirdar 15 lakh, High Altitude Worker 15 lakh,
Liaison Officer 12 lakh, cook 10 lakh, kitchen helper 8 lakh, porters 6 lakh,
medical coverage 3 lakh, rescue coverage 10 lakh (rescue is per team). A lakh
is approximately US$1,000.
It was
reported in the Himalayan Times 31st March that David Breashears,
the film director behind the first Everest IMAX film and a key mountaineer
involved in the rescue attempts on Everest in the 1996 tragedy, when many
people were caught up high by an unexpected storm, is at Base Camp to ‘support’
the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) in the fixing of the route
through the Ice Fall by providing his aerial photographs of the area.
There are
reportedly 287 foreigners who have Everest permits plus 300 Sherpas; 22
expeditions form Nepal and 7 from Tibet. 2015 is on track for 500 to 600
Everest summits, about the same as in previous years.
By the 3rd
April it was stated that the route had been pushed up to Camp 1.
Amongst
those on the ‘list’ are a team from the India Army and a team of 15 British
Gurkhas. The Indian climbing team will consist of 34 members who will split
into two groups, one plans to collect more than 8,800 lbs. of non-biodegradable
garbage and equipment that's been discarded by climbers while the other group
makes a summit bid. For the ‘record breakers’ Matt Moniz and Willie Benegas
plan a ski descent of the Lhotse Couloir, the Spaniard Killan Jornet is going
to attempt a speed ascent without supplementary oxygen while Kenton Cool,
Rupert Jones-Warner and Ralf Dujmovits are planning to set other new records on
Everest. German climbers David Göttler and Daniel Bartschalong along with the
Canadian Raphael Slawinski are attempting a new route on the mountain. Source http://www.dw.de
It was
reported on the 7th April that 15 patients including 11 foreigners
were airlifted from EBC back to Kathmandu suffering from altitude symptoms
while more than 150 were being treated by the Himalayan Rescue Association health
clinics at Base Camp and at Pheriche. The weather is not seasonal with snow
still falling in Base Camp and on the mountain. The
Everest media hype has already started; check-out the BBC World Service, plus
at least 3 international TV stations are based in EBC.
I guess
we’ll only know the full story after it’s happened.
Zanskar
I know
it’s not Nepal but I had mentioned in our previous newsletter that we were
going .. and we did!
Zanskar is
a remote area of NW India and in winter it’s pretty cold, -30°C, cold enough to
freeze even the fastest flowing rivers, and the Zanskar River is one such river.
Traditionally the locals used this frozen river as the main trading route to
get their produce, butter, to Leh when all other options were closed during the
winter months. Now the ‘Frozen River Trek’ has caught the imagination of many
people who trek along it ever January and February.
At an
altitude of around 3500m it does not pose too great a problem, but, the
surrounding hills can reach 4700m thus keeping this river gorge almost totally
in the shade during the winter. Camping in sub-zero temperatures is a skill and
a skill worth brushing up on before you go!
The course
of the river often changes as the ice builds up and sometimes the route takes
you along rocky ledges to avoid the water. However, it is worth considering
that unlike ‘normal’ trekking this terrain offers little friction, a slip at
best could be a bit painful, the ice is rock hard, as a medium option you could
get cold and wet, but you certainly don’t want to be going into the river, it
does not take too much imagination to realise the potential of that ‘wrong
move’.
The
essentials; a good sleeping bag, a good layering system (clothes) and the
ability to develop the Zanskar Shuffle within the first few days of the trek.
Walking in local ‘wellies’, the best footwear for the job, is pleasantly easy,
getting them to go in the right direction on the mirror smooth ice is a
different matter. Yak Tracks are worth considering if you find maintaining
balance difficult while skating. A good combination of activities, if you have
limited time, is to complete a shorter 7 day Zanskar River trek and then to do
a short, higher altitude trek where you see more of the local life-style. These
treks can be completed using ‘home-stay’ self catering style accommodation in
the winter.
It’s
difficult to get the views into perspective. Having spent so long in Nepal, all
the Zanskar mountains, under their winter blankets of snow, appear to be much
higher than the actually are.
A great
time was had by all and we are definitely going to add this trek to our list
for the next winter season. If you are interested then please drop me a
line.
Is Nepal waking up to the resentment felt over corruption?
On April 2nd
it was reported that the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority was
taking 52 people to court on corruption charges amounting to 790million NRs.
(approx 7,900,000 US$) The list includes the Government Secretaries for the
Forestry Commission and for the Law Commission and the suspended head of the
Nepal Tourism Board.
Anniversary Time
All of Nepal’s
8000m peaks were climbed between 1950 and 1960, Annapurna 1950, Everest 1953,
Cho Oyu 1954, Kangchenjunga and Makalu 1955, Lhotse and Manaslu 1956 and
Dhaulagiri 1960 so 2015 is the 60th Anniversary of the first ascent
of both Kangchenjunga and Makalu. Each mountain tended to get known by the
nationality of the first ascent expedition, for example Annapurna was climbed
by Maurice Hertzog and Louis Lachenal thus it’s ‘French’, the expedition to
Everest was British, however, Ed Hillary came from New Zealand while Tenzing
Sherpa from Nepal.
Kangchenjung is the only
8000m peak to have a British first ascent, the climbers, George Band and Joe
Brown. The interesting point is that Kanchenjunga is more ‘British’ than you
would think.
The old hill of
Darjeeling was granted to the British in 1835 by the Raja of Sikkim, this was
ultimately used as the stepping off point for many of the early expeditions to
the Kangchenjunga area, a long time before it was considered a mountaineering
objective. Up to 1852 it was thought that ‘Kangch’ was the highest mountain in
the world.
1945 Darjeeling
Himalayan Railway
|
In 1951 a small expedition
led by Gilmour Lewis and then in 1954 by John Kempe set out in an attempt to
explore the upper Yalung Glacier with the aim of finding a route that ‘might
go’ in readiness for the expedition due to leave England in 1955. They did
indeed find a likely line and this was successfully climbed in 1955, it was the
line that both Sir Douglas Freshfield and Aleister Crowley (UK) had identified
many years previously, a broad white mantle of snow that lays across the front face
of Kangchenjunga at around 7500m. 
On the basis of
the favourable reports submitted by Lewis and Kempe to Sir John Hunt both the
Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society decided sponsored the 1955
British Kangchenjunga Expedition. Permission
was first required from the Sikkim so in 1955, the expedition leader, Charles
Evans, made a special journey to discuss the situation with the Dewan (Sikkim’s
equivalent to the Prime Minister) representing the Sikkim Durbar. An Agreement
was established that permitted the British expedition to attempt the mountain
providing that any summit bid would stop short of the actual summit. Should a
boot be placed on the very pinnacle of Kangchenjunga it would be viewed as an
act of deliberate desecration. The observance of this Agreement was respected
by all subsequent mountaineers until relatively recently. The British nine-man
expedition left Darjeeling on the 14th March 1955 and made their way
into the Yalung Glacier. After many weeks of toil, some bad weather and
difficult terrain George Band and Joe Brown reached the summit on the 25th
May, closely followed by Norman Hardie and Tony Streather on the 26th
May for the second ascent.
George Band commented that on his expeditions they never allowed Nepali high altitude workers to move through the difficult terrain
without a member of the climbing team escorting them up and back down again.
What a
different scenario to the commercial Everest expeditions of today.
Makalu, however, is a
completely different story. Tucked out the way in a remote corner of Nepal
Makalu seemed to escape the close scrutiny of the mountaineers and explorers of
the day. In 1954 William Siri led an American team into the Makalu Barun
National Park, not only was this the first expedition to Makalu but it was the
first American expedition to the Himalaya. Their choice of route had many
objective dangers and the expedition had to be abandoned at 7100m.
It is a
reflection of the times that Terray, in his book ‘Conquistadors of the Useless’
states that, while considering future mountaineering objectives, ‘two possibilities remained, either the
fourth highest mountain in the world, Lhotse, or the fifth, Makalu. The first,
Lhotse, is no more than a southern outlier of Everest, and three-quarters of
the route had already been done [by the Swiss and British]. The element of
exploration would therefore largely be lacking. Makalu, by contrast, was a
magnificent isolated peak in the heart of a wild region.’ What a contrast
to the thinking behind the expeditions of today and the commercial situation on
Everest, little sense of exploration there.
The French settled
for Makalu and requested permission from the Nepalese government for their 1954
expedition, however, this prompted a response to the effect that the American
expedition had already been granted a permit for that year. The French, on
reflection, felt that the Americans would have little success on their chosen
route as it posed several technically difficult sections, and not without
considerable danger, they would wait until 1955.
However, in
October of 1954, the French sent a reconnaissance expedition to the Makalu area
during the course of which they made the
first ascents of the subsidiary summit of Kangchungtse with the leading pair of
climbers of Jean Franco, Lionel Terray,
being supported by Gyaltsen
Norbu and Pa Norbu, a few days later they climbed Chomo Lonzo this time Jean
Couzy accompanied Terry. The French
were well prepared in terms of their improved equipment. However, the long
approach march presented them with many obstacles at the height of the monsoon
and many detours had to be undertaken to enable the safe crossing of swollen
rivers. After nearly a month Base Camp was established at the foot of the west
face with the intention of following a subsidiary ridge to join with
north-north west ridge and then onto Makalu’s north face. After several ‘acclimatisation’
climbs the expedition team quickly established three camps to 21,000ft. Terray,
Franco and two sherpas reached the summit of Makalu II. It was then decided to
climb Chomo Lonzo so as to get a better view, of the so far unseen, north face
of Makalu. With sufficient knowledge of the complete route the expedition
returned to France.
In 1955, armed
with the modified, tried and tested, equipment and the details of their
intended route the expedition made rapid progress and with surprisingly little
difficulty reached the summit of Makalu on 15th May with Terray and
Jean Couzy in the lead team, Franco, G. Magnone and Gyaltsen Norbu summitted
the next day, followed by Bouvier, S. Coupe, Leroux and A. Vialatte. The
expedition accomplished its objectives so efficiently that it led Terray to
write ‘Victory must be bought, the price,
suffering and effort, and without the clemency of the weather combined with the
progress of technique had sold us this one too cheaply. I had got their not
only without having to fight but almost without fatigue. After the
expedition Jean Franco prophetically announced that ‘As the Himalaya are yielding up their last eight-thousanders, the
Golden Age will only last a few more years. Ascents of lesser known summits by
routes of extreme difficulty, however, hazardous will begin.
Funding Nepal
The UK Minister
for International Development, Desmond Swayne, visited Nepal in February to
discuss the future of UK development support, including how to build on more
than 100 million pounds committed by the UK for the financial year 2015/16.
Nepal and the UK have a long standing relationship of nearly 200 years. The UK
is looking at how to support Nepal in its efforts to graduate from the position
of one the least developed country in the world by 2022.
A report
submitted by Thomas Bell to the International Development Committee echoes the majority
of feelings here in Nepal. There are several interesting issues being raised
with regard to foreign aid and the misappropriation of funds. The enquiry into
DFID’s programme in Nepal appears later in this Newsletter under the title ‘Politics Again’. However, on Facebook one
comment posted by Raj Gyawali
seems to echo the sentiment of many Nepalese against aid agencies.
Well done Tom Bell -
how can we help in the process? A bit fed up of how AID AGENCIES have:
1. Created a parallel governance system of committees
which is leading to the public being complacent about the need of a proper
government - hence there is no pressure on the Constituent Assembly to complete
the constitution and bring the country on a proper road of progress
2. The waste of ‘development money’ in well meaning
but poorly strategised projects - it could have been done so much better - In
tourism in particular, TRPAP and GHT are classic examples, as you rightly point
out!
Exchange Rate
In Thamel today 144/-NRs to the £1
Finally A tale of Caution
There are good
and bad trekking Agents in Kathmandu, there are honest ones and there are ones
they will try to make the extra buck out of you. Do your research well, get
references from other people who might have been to Nepal, who might they
suggest.
A group recently
visited Nepal, they obtained the appropriate quote for their first Nepal
Experience along with recommendations. However, they then went and booked a
hotel on line, organised their trip on line and basically took the advice
provided, but, then using that made their own arrangements. Sadly it did not
turn out well.
Let the people
with experience do the job of organising, just make sure all parties involved
understand each other’s expectations and be honest with each other.
Is this what
it’s all come down to over the last 62 years?!
If you want to
know about misappropriation of finances read on.
Politics
Again
Report
submitted by Thomas Bell:-
1.
I have over ten years experience of working in Nepal; as a journalist (for the Daily
Telegraph and the Economist), and latterly as a consultant on Nepali
politics. I am also the author of a recent book on the social and political
history of the capital, entitled Kathmandu (ISBN 9788184005783). This book contains a chapter on the poor
performance of international development efforts in Nepal over the past six
decades, which has attracted considerable attention among the international
community in Nepal since it appeared in September. A relevant excerpt was
published in the local media here:
2.
I believe that the interest my views have attracted partly reflects the very
widespread skepticism that exists in this country as to the efficacy and
appropriateness of much donor aid. This skepticism is by no means limited to
DFID, which may in certain respects be better than some of its counterparts,
but neither by any means does it exclude DFID. Such skeptical views are commonplace
among the public, and are also frequently expressed in private by the staff of
donor agencies, including DFID. I offer the following points in the belief that
only by recognising the deep problems in Nepal's development efforts to date
can we expect better in future. These points are made partly in response to
your committee’s recent hearing with the DFID minister Desmond Swayne.
The
record of foreign aid and the significance of corruption in the Nepali system
3.
It is of course true, and has often been remarked upon for decades, that
corruption is prevalent in Nepal. However there is a big difference in
understanding this as an obstacle to better governance, or as the very raison
d’être of government. If one says, “Oh, too many people are hired in the
government because they are someone’s cousin” this seems to be something that
one can work around. If one understands that the purpose of the state in Nepal
is to extract resources for the enrichment of individuals and the sustenance of
political and business networks, and therefore for the maintenance of those
networks in power, then this leads to rather different conclusions about the
efficacy of pouring in development money in search of growth and good
governance. Government in Nepal has always been and remains an essentially
extractive enterprise. For example, a health ministry with 73% absenteeism
among civil servants is not in fact an institution whose purpose is to provide
health care, whatever its name. Congratulating one’s self on the strength of
one’s contacts in such a ministry, and believing this will soon start paying
dividends, is a version of the illusion which has characterised six decades of
(for the most part) failed aid delivery.
4.
If I may recommend one fairly short publication which describes this political
economy it would be “Impunity and Political Accountability in Nepal” by Aditya
Adhikari and Bhaskar Gautam with Surabhi Pudasaini and Bhadra Sharma, published
last year by the Asia Foundation here:
http://asiafoundation.org/publications/pdf/1333.
This gives an essential description of the context in which aid interventions
take place.
5.
I believe that it is mistaken to think that the government “doesn’t understand”
or “needs educating”. In fact they have been receiving similar development
messages for years and are quite adept at repeating them to give encouragement
to donors. Rather, the government is very successful at what it does, which is
advancing the interests of its members, their clients and core constituencies
at the expense of the wider population. This is shown by the fact that (despite
bitter competition at the top) many senior politicians and officials have very
long running and secure careers. In short, the current model is ‘sustainable’ -
not withstanding failed service delivery and enduring poverty. One of the
things that helps to make it sustainable is that it is in effect underwritten
by the indulgence and enduring optimism of the donor community.
6.
Take the example of tourism, which your committee has discussed. It is not
because officials “don’t understand” its potential usefulness to others that
the national airline is in chaos, or that the airport is only semi-functional,
with 4 hour waits to retrieve luggage and stray dogs on the runway causing
flights to abort landings. Rather, those in power have served their short-term
needs by bleeding the national airline dry and treating the airport as a cash cow
for the sale of offices and customs fraud. (By the way, DFID’s Great Himalayan
Trail project which you discussed - worth around £2m so far, I believe, and
implemented by SNV - was said by those who worked on it to be such a waste of
money, with so little to show, that even they were shocked.)
7.
You saw the lamentable standard of the local health posts, which DFID is
supporting, on your visit. Despite aid, this has been the case for decades.
Improvements in health statistics almost certainly come about primarily through
urbanisation and people’s improved access to private services thanks to
remittances. Similarly, one might question whether the recent very large
hydro-power investments come about primarily through DFID’s support to the Investment
Board, as they are understandably keen to proclaim, or largely thanks to
circumstances relating to India and its relations with Nepal. I think one must
be rather skeptical of the way in which credit is claimed for certain outcomes.
In my experience, those familiar with almost any project or programme in the
Nepali development sector commonly say (at least in private) that it falls far
short of the claims which are made for it by its sponsors or implementing
agencies. People sincerely praising a project of which they have knowledge -
‘off the record’ as it were - are relatively rare to meet. This includes many
of DFID’s activities.
8.
I think Nepal’s experience of development aid is now too long, and too
consistently disappointing, for it to reasonable to readily believe that while
most of what happened in the past didn’t work well enough, the latest iteration
of these schemes is somehow markedly different. Little of what is being done
now is without precedent in the past, and there is little reason to think that
more foreign aid will bring the change that is sought. The hopes of
international policy makers are repeatedly reposed in renewed recognition of
the ‘problem of corruption’, for example, and mechanisms such as user groups
and local committees - which are not new and have repeatedly failed to bring
accountability, due to the nature of power in these communities. On the
contrary, such local committees are often packed by political appointees for
the purpose of capturing resources. Nepal is not poor and badly governed for
want of foreign aid money, technical advice or government ‘capacity building’.
9.
Nepal is poor because of public corruption of the sorts described above, and
the ‘mafia’-like behaviour of politically backed cartels and other similarly
exploitative, value destroying and anti-competitive practices in the private
sector. For example, transport cartels raise costs and also pollute Kathmandu
with filthy exhausts, despite the law, with impunity. Cartels and ‘syndicates’
also exist in other key sectors including drinking water supply, food wholesale
and energy supply. Of particular long term concern are the widely reported and
politically backed ‘mafias’ corrupting the education system, for example
through the licensing of sub-standard medical schools. Another particularly
egregious area in which such practices exist is in the ‘manpower industry’ -
sending migrant labourers abroad. Often this is extremely exploitative, but
enjoys powerful political backing. Given that the migrants’ remittances are the
backbone of the economy (contributing around 25pc of GDP), and also the
principal reason for recent gains in poverty reduction in Nepal, supporting
reform of this sector to protect workers and help them earn more, while
investing their earnings to better long term benefit, should be a big issue for
DFID.
Rather
than focusing on ‘fragility’, it should be recognized that Nepal is trapped in
a ‘sub-optimal equilibrium’
10.
At the heart of these issues - in so far as they relate to the development
sector - are two sets of incentives, which go against what I believe is
generally taken to be the desirable logic of policy making.
11.
On the one hand, development agencies wish to increase their budgets (DFID’s
recently doubled in Nepal, and others’ are also rising). Thus, at a time of
weak governance during the current political ‘transition’, aid has
significantly increased even as the capacity to spend it effectively does not
exist. It is well known that the government has long failed to spend its full
development budget every year. (Only around three quarters of the development
budget [capital as opposed to recurrent expenditure] has been spent in recent
years, up from about half a decade ago.) Much government spending is routinely
deferred to the very end of the financial year, in what is widely understood to
be a strategy to escape scrutiny. Nevertheless, development aid continues to
increase. The development agencies themselves also typically have large sums
remaining at the end of each year (DFID being a case in point), which they then
scramble to spend before next year’s (increased) budget arrives. Their need is
to disburse their funds, and they are therefore widely recognised in Nepal to
be reluctant to withdraw from corrupt or underperforming projects and
programmes.
12.
I think the ICAI is absolutely right to say that DFID does not appear to have a
fully developed strategy for dealing with the fact of corruption as it exists,
and that it is reluctant to take action in cases where it comes to light,
partly so as not to upset its relationships (and therefore, presumably, its
ability to disburse more money). For example, DFID refused to acknowledge
corruption in the use of local development block grants until I exposed it in
the Economist a few years ago (http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2011/05/aid-and-corruption-nepal). However the ICAI was quite
wrong to suggest that petty bribery is the main way in which corruption harms
to poor. As I hope is clear from what I have written, it is grand corruption
which robs the poor of services and livelihoods, and indeed of hope for their
future.
13.
Meanwhile, the government knows very well that development money will continue
to flow regardless of the enduring failure to deliver results. The period of
increased aid revenues during the peace process has coincided with a large
increase in perceived corruption, as measured by Transparency International.
Enduring corruption and the failure to deliver domestic growth undermines
democracy, ensures continuing under-development, forces workers to go abroad
and contributes to episodic political crises by excluding the majority from
access to power and resources. However, remittances and the reliable supply of
aid help to make this stagnation sustainable and, beneath the crises, in a
sense relatively stable. Nepal is trapped in this situation, and aid programmes
which don’t deliver genuine reform contribute to sustaining it. ‘Genuine
reform’ would mean undermining business cartels and syndicates, for example,
and tackling the politically backed ‘mafias’ which seek to profit though the
corruption of the (private as well as public) health and education systems.
14.
It’s important to note that the strong expectation that aid will continue at
current levels means that donors have relatively little ability to influence
the government to do things that they may not wish to do. It frequently appears
that the government will play along with the donors’ agenda provided that it
comes at no real cost to the status-quo. When the status-quo is threatened by a
perceived ‘international agenda’ (eg for the ‘social inclusion’ of
‘marginalised groups’) the government reacts strongly against that, as DFID
experienced in 2012. The agencies (DFID being a case in point) then retreat, so
as not to upset their relationships.
15.
I think that funding NGOs as an alternative to working through the government
is in fact no alternative. Many NGOs are also corrupt. Clearly the country
needs a better government, which should be supported. In practice this may be
something of a moot point, however, since many NGOs are controlled by the same
or similar people and sections of society as hold sway in politics and public
administration.
Supporting change
16.
To help Nepal escape this trap development agencies including DFID need to
change the incentives created by the aid economy. It should be recognised that
an underperforming programme or project has not merely failed to deliver its
stated objective, it has also paid for something else with that money (usually
the empowerment and enrichment of corrupt people, deeper inequality, weakened
public accountability, loss of faith in the system, etc). Rather than simply
throwing money at the wall in the hope that some of it will stick, less aid
might actually be more beneficial - if a much higher proportion of it constituted
really good programmes and projects. In areas that are underperforming I
believe DFID and others should be much more willing to withdraw, and to say
clearly and publicly why they are doing so. Evidence of corruption should be
given to the police, and that should be publicised (this never happens now).
Where appropriate, people should be fired (again, this is startlingly rare).
Above all, there should be strong demands to deliver measurable progress in
uprooting the cartels, ‘syndicates’ and ‘mafias’ which seek to profit by
further undermining the dysfunctional health and education sectors, which
exploit migrant workers, increase transport costs, and so on.
17.
In conclusion, the problem is political: there should be strong, public, transparent,
discomforting pressure for reform. This would go against powerful and deeply
entrenched political interests, but if DFID is not attracting opposition from
such quarters it probably isn’t supporting real change. This implies a
fundamentally different manner of working for agencies such as DFID, which
measure their success by the scale of their disbursements and attempt to avoid
riling the government. Ever more free money - with the usual bromides about how
it will work this time - is the very opposite of what Nepal needs. The
willingness to spend less money, if properly explained, and especially if
coordinated with other donors, could actually increase DFID’s political
leverage (and public credibility) in Nepal. Public credibility would especially
be increased if action were taken to clean up the very well funded but
underperforming wider development industry - a powerful vested interest in
itself - where it is widely perceived that corruption is rife and incomes are
not justified by performance (see paragraphs 7 and 8 above). Implementing such
as approach would require courage and determination, and a stronger ability to
analyse and manage the country’s social and political situation than is
currently in evidence.
The scandal in public education
Him and Her in
Zanskar
|
I hope you
find some interest in these ideas. There are of course many better qualified
than me to advance this kind of analysis, or other similar analyses. I believe
such views are quite common now. For example, only today this article appeared
in The Kathmandu Post: http://www.ekantipur.com/2015/03/18/opinion/democracy-in-crisis/402953.html
This
edition of our Newsletter is slightly heavier than normal. However, I think
this report is worthy of inclusion in its entirety so that readers are fully
informed of the underlying situation within Nepal with regard to foreign aid
and its usefulness.
I hope
that spring turns into summer with all the best of what those seasons bring..
for our Australian friends I guess that is autumn in to winter!
The very
best to all
April 2015
