Hydropower is our most valuable natural resource but we have been wasting it. There are many reasons for this. Nepalis have deep suspicion of India, the 'big brother'. Our policymakers and hydropower specialists alike have not been able to come out of that "cheated" feeling from the projects forced by India, namely, Gandak and Koshi barrage. So it was not for nothing when a hue and cry was raised over Tanakpur agreement and later when the Mahakali treaty was forced through during the reign of UML-led minority government. I guess the Nordic countries never had to go through such problems.
Nepal, for a long time, rightly or wrongly, believed that India must rely on hydropower from Nepal to meet its energy needs. The illusion was that India had to please Nepal to get hydropower. But India developed nuclear power and started looking to Bhutan to meet its energy needs. In Bhutan, India found an ally ready to let India dictate its hydropower development.
The result is that Nepali hydropower specialists and policy planners are now divided. Some believe Nepal should have followed Bhutan model and let India develop its hydropower mainly for export to India. Others still argue that Nepal should develop its hydropower resources first to meet domestic needs and only then think about exports. Then there is the suspecting population which believes Bhutan model would have entailed 'virtual surrender' of our national sovereignty.
In early 1990s there was a policy shift of major donors like The World Bank, Asian Development Bank and some governments regarding hydropower development, primarily influenced by strong lobbying from INGOs (International River Commission, for example) and home grown environmentalists and rights groups. They focused on negatives of big hydropower projects as the issues of resettlement of displaced people and negative environmental impacts were not addressed. A test case of Nepal's resolve to harness its water resources was Arun-III, which, unfortunately, was cancelled when The World Bank, under tremendous pressure from anti-hydropower lobby, withdrew its support. The result is that Nepal continues to suffer from chronic load-shedding.
This coincided with a shift in government policy. It now allowed private investors to apply for licenses to develop mini-hydro projects. This was done to decentralize hydropower development and spread benefits to the entire population; and also to spread the risk from hydropower projects. In few years, licenses for all potential rivers for hydropower development had been booked and a strange situation emerged. Unscrupulous hydropower mafia emerged and made hydropower a trading commodity. It took almost ten years before the government took action and now things seem to be moving.
It would however be wrong to say that nothing has happened in all those years. Private investors have invested huge amounts in this sector. Nepal had also learned 'bitter lesson' from two earlier projects built with foreign direct investment (Bhote Koshi and Khimti projects with American and Norwegian investment respectively). The lesson was regarding the signing of power purchasing agreements in US dollars.
Hydropower sector seems at last ready to move forward. That's not to say Nepalis have properly dealt with the suspicions about India, or with the discussion of 'fulfilling domestic demand first and then export' or 'export to balance the trade deficit', or other inhibitions. Policymakers have grown mature and now are able to extract the best deal: free electricity, equity participation, shares for project-affected people and many more. The biggest testimonies are the Upper Tamakoshi project being built with our own resources and commercial banks investing in such projects.
The other positive sign is the Power Development Agreement (PDA), Power Trading Agreement (PTA) and the recent declaration at SAARC summit that has made cross-border power transmission easy, offering huge potential for joint SAARC initiatives in hydropower development and power trade among countries in the region.
So much for hydropower. The next sector that the ambassadors have focused on is education. Nepal has been investing a lot in education. The level of awareness is so high that no one needs to convince parents to send their children to school. Till early-1970s we had a good mix of public schools and some good private and mission schools. Those private and mission schools were affordable (in terms of fees) to average Nepalis. But the quality of education wasn't good enough for certain groups as they continued sending their children to mission schools in India.
Yet the worst phase in education in Nepal came when New Education Plan was enforced in early-1970s. This regressive Plan has done enormous damage to education development, for example: a) a Sanskrit University (demanded by no one) was opened at great cost, b) all private schools were nationalized, c) 'Nepalization' (instruction at all levels in Nepali with the use of textbooks translated into Nepali language) was introduced at all levels of education because of which non-Nepali speaking citizens were put into disadvantage. This list grows.
In the following years more parents started sending their children to English-medium schools in India. After almost a decade it was recognized that the new Education Plan was a failure and a reverse policy was enacted. Private schools were encouraged in Nepal and soon these schools had become a big profit-making business.
Before the Institute of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine came into being, Nepali engineers and doctors were trained up to graduate level in foreign countries, made possible through generous scholarships. The Nordic countries came into the picture much later. Now the situation has changed; very few foreign scholarships are available. Many Nepalis either have to study in Nepal by paying exorbitant fees, or go abroad on partial scholarships, mainly to Australia, the US or Nordic countries, or on a self-financing basis. Nepali parents are willingly spending fortunes to get best education for their children.
The Nordic examples, however impressive, are impractical in Nepal. On suggested educational loan, I believe Nepali banks used to have provisions for educational loans. However, it had to be abandoned for practical reasons. Banks couldn't extend loans sufficient to pursue studies abroad. The loan takers were not confident of repaying.
The ambassadors' suggestion of 'public educational revolution' is no more than daydream at this point. The private sector has invested so heavily in education across the country and at all levels that the situation is irreversible. Have the Excellencies done preliminary calculations as to how much will it cost to realize this dream and how long?
The policy of privatizing education cannot be reversed so the approach should be to upgrade public education if citizens are to get a level playing field. Excellencies will have to do more explaining about the 'revolution'. This revolution should concentrate on imparting 'civic education' at all levels. Here, the Nordic countries can definitely help and this can be done in both private and public schools.
Excellencies have not commented on the forestry sector in which Finland had invested so heavily and also on governance sector in which Denmark and Norway have invested. Besides hydropower, potential sectors where Nepal has advantages are tourism and natural resources management (mainly medicinal plants and herbs). Other areas where the Nordic examples could be valuable are social security and sustainable healthcare.
The author was with the Department of Housing, Building and Physical Planning under the Ministry of Urban Development am49.tuladhar@gmail.com
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