A Tale of Two Four-Wheel-Drives

BIRATNAGAR – Both the Kosi Project and the Sunsan Morang Irrigation Project (SMIP) take water from the Kosi river as it descends to the plains from the eastern Nepal hills, but the similarity ends there. The Project´s target is to irrigate more than 600,000 hectares of land in Bihar, while SMIP has a more modest goal of 66,000 hectares for Nepal.

However, a look at the vehicles that ferry the project bosses around might give the opposite impression. The Kosi Project chief drives his own Willys jeep, a World War II model, which came to the Project when construction began in 1954. His Nepali counterpart is chauf-feured in a three-million-rupee Toyota Land Cruiser.

As long as compansons are being made, let it also be said that while it cost the SMIP NPR 300,000 to water each hectare of land in Sunsari and Morang, the Kosi Project was able to do it for less than NPR 65,000 per ha. Four decades ago, India was a net importer of foodgrains and Nepal exported its surplus. The situation is just the reverse today.

The Indian project engineer makes do with an open jeep, spends money in India, consuming (most likely) everything Indian. The Nepali boss, on the other hand, drives around in a foreign-made four-wheel drive on a road built by the World Bank, lives on rice imported from Burma, Thailand or India, and (most likely) drinks Scotch bought at duty-free shops by foreign contractors, foreign consultants, or by himself, while on ´study trips´ to foreign countries.