Numbers, data and projections are useful when dealing with natural resources such as water and hydro-electricity because they explain physical phenomenon. In Nepal, the mention of 83,000 MWs, the country’s theoretical hydropower potential estimated in a doctoral thesis in the 1960s, is a national hobby. Projections, however, are value based and assumption driven. Most numerical projections are top-down affairs, conducted by people with technical proficiency. Invariably, they end up excluding the general public, the very people such projection are meant to serve. The result is often domination of a particular worldview leaving out all other possible alternatives.
Because they are used to justify one policy option over other, numbers, data and projections are often source of conflict in the world of water resources development. Data is viewed as being important from technical, engineering and economic perspectives. But the social characteristics and role played by information and statistics are rarely acknowledged resulting in disputes over numbers or data. Fortunately, such conflicts are relatively easy to resolve than those resulting from differences over relationships, ideology and interests. Nepal’s interest are provisioning of reliable energy services, equitable water management and sustainable development, using renewable sources that include hydropower generation. Rather than export raw-electricity, these energy platforms must first serve Nepali people and Nepal, create new jobs and help build a flexible but resilient economy supporting diversified livelihoods.
Without energy, work and productivity suffer. Nepal’s small industrial base is coming to a grinding halt due to power outages, union politics, everlasting bandhs, chakka jams and bad governance. Commercial entities, service and agriculture sectors are on decline. Even hospital services cannot operate because of the lack of electricity due to prolonged outages. Local FM stations have had to stop broadcasting altogether while private TV stations have had to voice their dissent by cutting back five hours of air time. Students use candle lights for studying at night. A number of fire accidents, theft and burglary directly related to power outages have been reported.
Prime Minister Puspa Kamal Dahal has acknowledged that drafting the new constitution is impossible without adequate energy and electricity. At the very least, this admission should underscore the fact that energy independence and security are Nepal’s primary needs. His government, however, remains beholden to an export-oriented hydroelectricity development model that is supposed to yield ‘billions of rupees” of annual revenue.
“We need the revenue”, our political and bureaucratic leaders keep reminding us, “because Nepal is very poor and resource starved”. Hydro-dollars are supposed to bridge our severe resource gap. What is not explained, however, is why despite the Nepali governments receiving billions of dollars as loans and development aid in the last 60 years, Nepal remains one of the poorest countries in the world.
This begs a fundamental question: why has development failed so miserably in Nepal? Not because our government had no money; on the contrary, often there was too much easy money. Aid money that came to into Nepal also bolstered rent-seeking propensities. Successive past Nepali governments have been unaccountable, irresponsible and relied on a culture of afno manche than professionalism. Rhetoric and promises that could not be met ran high. It was clear that financial resources in the hand of our government did not automatically translate into prosperity for its citizens. Our two and half year old new Republican order has already inherited this characteristic. Will it be any different now? If yes, within what governance system?
Nepal’s hydropower development path has remained hostage to three basic flaws: a) hydroelectricity is a commodity and should be developed as an exportable item, b) financial revenue to government means economic development and c) regulated water from proposed reservoirs has no value.
The basics are different. Energy is a fundamental input to production process. Without access to reliable and affordable energy, no society can even function, let alone prosper. Export of electricity can be considered akin to out-sourcing the entire national production system; while it might yield some revenue as site rent to the government, it will not go to people and areas that really need it. Financial revenue stream from one sector such as hydropower may also lead a decline of the industrial sector, often called the Dutch Disease. Nepali newspapers routinely report that officials of District Development Committees use hydropower royalties in unproductive investments. This export-led model also disregards the buffer regulated water from proposed reservoirs in Nepal would provide to agriculture in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Nor does it account for the social and environmental externalities due to submergence, which should be intrinsic components of cost-benefit calculus.
Twelve years ago, in 1996, when the government of Nepal and India signed the Mahakali Treaty our leaders had promised that Nepal’s annual revenue would be 1 kharab 27 arab (127 billion rupees), that the developmental sun would rise from the west, that Nepal would become an Asian leopard. Representatives of Western governments also echoed the chorus. Both the numbers and the promises were fraudulent claims. And despite the rhetoric of electricity export, Nepal remains a net importer of energy: of both fuel and electricity. In 2007, Nepal received more electricity from India than we sold across the border.
In the prevailing governance structure and sophism of hydro-export the expectation that prosperity is achievable is a myth. Yet such a path fuels our popular imaginations, shapes national discourse and guides our national policies.
Conventional wisdom conceives development as a progressive journey from the traditional to the modern. Though the notion of modernity is contested, the journey is supposed to encompass processes of change--much of it autonomous but also engineered and directed. This journey takes time, incurs costs and requires hard choices to be made. Such choices can privilege an individual or a group over another, with disproportionate risks and benefits. As we move ahead, we must be willing to see things we do not want to see and acknowledge realities that might be completely out of our comfort zones.
Lack of reliable energy, human insecurity and politics of intolerance take us away from our comfort zone. Rather than a collective and spirited resolve out of the impasse, many Nepali are going deeper into their cocoons. I too have been concerned more about myself and the immediate. I now own a solar panel, an inverter and, worse, a small generator for the office. The last two technologies exacerbate the crises further. An inverter uses grid based supply while the generator uses fossil fuels and generates green house gases. Despite these supplemental technologies, efficiency has been severely compromised.
Yet not all Nepali consumers connected to the national grid enjoy the choices that I do. In fact, a majority of the Nepalis (about 60 percent) lack access to supply of electricity. Unfortunately, in these hard times, our capacity to see the plight of fellow humans remains in jeopardy.
In his book The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith laments about not seeing poverty in the United States. Writes Galbraith,
“We ignore it because we share with all societies at all times the capacity for not seeing what we do not wish to see… But while our failure to notice can be explained, it cannot be excused. ‘Poverty’, William Pitt (British Prime Minister from 1783-1801 and again in 1804 and 1805) exclaimed, ‘is no disgrace but it is damn annoying.’ In the contemporary United States it is not annoying, it is a disgrace.”
The ongoing energy insecurity indicates serious flaws in our national energy development approach. It should force us to see things that we do not want to see: that access to reliable and affordable energy is our primary need. Scholars studying calamities and disasters suggest that a crisis is an opportunity to change prevailing practices. This energy crisis should offer us a window to innovate and begin making real differences to the lives of all Nepalis.
Otherwise paraphrasing Galbraith we can say that not seeing hydroelectricity for what it is--an input for social and economic progress in contemporary Nepal--is not annoying, it is a disgrace.
adbaluwatar@wlink.com.np
(Ajaya Dixit lives in Kathmandu and studies the intersection of water, climate change adaptation and society. His new book in Nepali Dui Chimeki ko Jal Yatra covers India Nepal water relationship. He makes a case for a pluralistic and self-reliant approach to water resources development and management.)
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