You are right in a way. We Nepalis really need to assess where the aid is most needed, and as they say, put the money where the mouth is.
We spend lavishly in cocktail parties in the Embassies and junket foreign tours of the officials yielding nothing, and on the other hand, we beg for money from foreign donors to buy vitamins to give to our kids.
The sad example is the Health Ministry, which depends so much on outside donor funds even to fix their own chairs while the Ministry funds nothing but an incompetent bureaucracy. How can you expect the Health Ministry to prevent diseases from its urine smelling corridors of its offices in Ramshahpath, Teku and elsewhere? Shame on us. You only need to visit their toilets to see how much they practice on the hygiene they are supposed to teach the general public. Shame on them.
All parties, including some fair-minded donors, have said that the unplanned and unmanaged aid to Nepal has done more harm than good. Example: The Rapti Development Project was run with donor funds for over two decades with crores of rupees, yet not much was accomplished. In fact, the same region became the initiator the Maoists movement. If the true development had reached the people, I am sure the movement would not have received as much support from that region. Rather than churning up high fly theories, we really need to address the root cause of the Maoist movement and support for it. It is generally the donors with upper hand with their money who negotiate with the HMG on the aid. Instead, due to chronic lack of sufficient homework, the HMG, at the end, accept what is offered to them.
Besides, like HMG negotiators, different donors have their own priorities and biases, which do not necessarily always go in the interest of the people. HMG is so used to taking the foreign aid that they often take even World Bank loan and ADB loan as grant in aid, not realizing that they have put even our unborn grandchildren into the debt or tuppibhari reen.
I know it is not as simple as I paint it here, but let us presume that in 2004 the donors, including loan, or grant whatever expended $40 million in different sectors in development in Nepal. Let us say this is against the $160 million as agreed with HMG, both bilateral and multilateral, for that year. So, $40 million, being only one fourth of the total agreed amount, we can see where this money was spent and whether or not the work $40 million was carried out. You will be amazed to see even as little as 30% of the amount was spent for the actual beneficiaries that were initially intended for. That is the sad part of the handling of foreign aid in a country like Nepal.
There is no consolidated report or a compendium on how much aid money was agreed with Nepal, bilateral and multilateral, including UN agencies, yearly, and how much was received and used on what and where? Perhaps we need to seek one more area of aid and that is to bring out the aid information yearly, but I would be surprised if the donors would agree to it.
So, if the aid was not reaching to the people, what is the need for it?
Yes, the aid cut will definitely hurt the poor Nepalis but, in the long run, it will teach us something to
live without it too.
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