Rural development projects: Programmed to forget the poor

The cause of the poor directly and indirectly constitutes the basis for practically every foreign-aided development project in Nepal. The state of poverty in this poorest of poor countries manifests itself in many ways, and this provides many opportunities for "donor intervention" in the form of the projects. Because Nepal has all along been a poor, rural country, it would have been natural to assume that this fact would be taken into account in designing development projects. In reality, however, international as sistance programmes have not been consistent in providing for rural development. Following American assistance for community development in the mid-1950s, and the subsequent Indo-American competition in this field in the late 1950s, the Swiss-aided Jiri Multipurpose Development Project (1964-70) was the only foreign-aided rural development project in Nepal during the entire decade of the 1960s. It was not until the reorientation by the World Bank of its lending policies to poor countries during die early 1970s that rural development projects became part of a legitimate as well as fashionable aid portfolio for many donors. The period between the mid-1970s and early 1980s saw the initiation of seven major rural development projects, which covered almost one-third of Nepal´s 75 districts.

EXTERNAL PRESCRIPTION
A study of rural development projects of the past decades show a reluctance on the part of the donor agencies to encourage national assessment of problems and needs. It is a task that they prefer to handle themselves, to the extent that they display intolerance of national initiatives, probably because they would lead to designs that differ from the donor´s prescriptions.   Indeed, an enormous row broke out in 1978 when a team of Nepali officials working in a Royal Palace-related think tank produced a policy paper on Nepal´s rural development under the title, Integrated Panchayat Development Design. This report emerged at about the same time that a World Bank team working from the local Soaltee Hotel had just delivered to their Resident Representative a Strategy Paper on Nepal´s Rural Development