1. General
2. Lessons Learnt from Rapidly Developing Neighbouring
Countries
3. Poverty in Nepal and Government’s Policy and
Strategy
The
Millennium Development Goal and Nepal:
3.1
Engineering Human Resources in Nepal
4. Conclusion
1.
General
Poverty is a deprivation of essential assets and
opportunities to which every human is entitled. Poverty is
better measured in terms of basic education; health care;
nutrition; water and sanitation; as well as income,
employment, and wages.
It is proven by history of human civilization, and a well
accepted fact that poverty reduction is directly linked with
engineering interventions. Every measures to fight poverty
and enhance quality of life of people through building of
infrastructure facility, be it access, irrigation,
hydropower, water supply, school and hospitals, tourism
development etc. naturally demands expert engineering
solutions. Trade and industry can foster only when enough
infrastructure facilities are made available. Thus, none of
the target development is possible without developing basic
infrastructure. For example, to develop health sector, health
post or hospitals are to be constructed. Similarly, to
develop education sector, physical infrastructures like
schools and colleges are to be constructed. To develop
socio-economic conditions of poor farmers, irrigation
systems, farm to market roads etc. are to be constructed. To
generate electricity, hydropower systems or nuclear power
stations are to be constructed. Basic necessity for
processing and production will need industrial setup. To
initiate any development infrastructure, it has to be
studied, surveyed, designed, estimated, contracted and
supervised during implementation. All these requires
engineering solutions. In this context, Engineering is the
backbone of development and poverty alleviation of any
country.
2. Lessons Learnt from Rapidly Developing Neighbouring
Countries
The remarkable success that
China has achieved in reducing poverty over the last two
decades is largely due to its massive investments on
infrastructure - extending toll roads, power and water
services, and improved communications into the more remote
west.
Meanwhile in India, construction projects employ at least 31
million people, of whom more than half are extremely poor
migrant workers, and many are unskilled women. The Delhi
Metro Rail Corporation, for instance, is pioneering an 8-year
improvement programme in Health, Welfare and Safety standards
for its 20,000 labourers. Here engineering and reduction of
social deprivation are at direct face with each other. The
Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yozana (Prime Minister Rural Road
Programme), and Gramin Rojgar Yozana (Rural Employment
Programme) are all targeting development of rural
infrastructure, provide them better access to services and
facilities and aim at poverty alleviation.
Our small neighbouring country- Bhutan, has gained leaps in
alleviation of poverty through construction of hydropower
projects and export of power to India. The 336 MW Chukha
Hydropower Project was constructed in 1988. At present, Tala
Hydel Project of 1020 MW capacity is under construction.
After commissioning of this Hydel Project, within next few
years, it is expected that their per capita income will be
much more than 1400 US $ established in the year 2003. As a
result, even now, there is ‘Zero’ population below poverty
line in the country. Nepal is also very rich in hydropower
potential, almost double than that of Bhutan, which yet
remains largely un-harnessed due to the lack of political
commitment.
Lately, it was realised that there are series of backdrops in
the prerequisites for development as lack of policy reforms,
lack of commitments, lack of innovativeness, and lack of open
mind sets value added judgement and lack of knowledge based
infrastructure.
3. Poverty in Nepal and Government’s Policy and
Strategy
Though Nepal is one of the richest countries in natural
endowment is, however, one of the poorest countries in the
world. The country has geographical and topographical
diversities, unparallel natural scenic beauties scattered
across the country, enormous biological resources, cultural
heritages, religious pilgrimages, trekking and mountaineering
attractions/challenges with high prospects of tourism
development, herbal plants, large hydropower potentials and
other economic potentials. One of the major reasons of Nepal
falling in the poverty trap is basically lack of
infrastructure facilities. The rugged topography and fragile
geology have made infrastructure development a challenging
task requiring appropriate engineering interventions. Now,
Nepal is ranked 140th out of 177 countries with Human
Development Index (HDI) value of 0.504 (UNDP, 2004). In 1996,
42 % of all Nepalese were living under absolute line of
poverty. Eight years later (in 2003/2004), this figure has
dropped to 31 %. (CBS/World Bank, 2005). During a workshop
organized by the World Bank (May 11-12, 2005), economists and
researchers gave five reasons for declined tendency of
poverty in Nepal, one of which was increased role of private
sector due to infrastructure development in transportation,
communication and electricity, which is the contribution of
engineering science.
Poverty is greater in rural areas in the country, especially
in higher-altitude and less accessible regions and among
lower castes and ethnic minorities. Measures of human poverty
tend to mirror the more traditional measures of income
poverty.
The
Millennium Development Goal and Nepal:
At the Millennium Summit of September 2000, the Member States
of the United Nations adopted the Millennium Declaration,
which aims to bring peace, security, and development to all
people. The Millennium Development Goals, drawn from the
Millennium Declaration, are a groundbreaking international
development agenda for the 21st Century to which all nations
are committed. One of the major intent of The Millennium
Development Goal (MDG) is to halve absolute poverty in the
world by the deadline of 2015. Target 9 and 10 of the MDG
categorically demand to Integrate the principles of
sustainable development into country policies and programmes
and reverse loss of environmental resources; reduce by half
the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe
drinking water; and achieve significant improvement in lives
of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.
Nepal is one of the signatories to the Millennium Development
Goad (MDG) Declaration. Since then, Nepal has committed
itself to attaining the MDGs. The Nepal Millennium
Development Goal, Progress Report, 2005, NPC, HMGN/UN states
that ‘in spite of the impressive progress in human
development, and the emphasis on good governance and social
inclusion in its poverty reduction strategy in Tenth Plan,
Nepal’s development has been limited by a number of
constraints which include, inter alia, its rugged terrain and
innumerable rivers and rivulets (about 6,000) with inadequate
infrastructure, little resource endowment, high transport and
investment cost, weak governance, and high population
growth’.
Nepal has gone through planned development efforts since
1956. The ongoing Tenth Plan (2002-2007) explicitly
identifies poverty reduction as the overriding objective of
development efforts in Nepal. The Plan makes a sole objective
of achieving a remarkable reduction in the poverty level from
38% (at the beginning of the Plan ) to 30% by the end of the
Plan in 2007.
The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) of the Tenth Plan
enunciates the following four major pillars for poverty
reduction:
Broad based Economic Growth
Social Development
Targeted Programmes
Good Governance
The first pillar of PRSP, i.e. Broad Based Economic Growth
highlights on the needs of policy, regulatory and
implementation level interventions in agriculture
development, improved irrigation facilities, rural
electrification, sustainable forest and environment
management, industrialization in priority sector, opening up
more tourism destinations and improving tourism
infrastructure, expansion of road density, communication
infrastructure and information technology and foreign
investment. All these can only be achieved through
application of appropriate engineering technology.
Living between the two rapidly developing economic giants,
who are accounted as the future superpower of the World in
next two decades, and living at neighborhood of Bhutan, Nepal
is still searching and endeavoring to find lasting solution
to reduce poverty. Time is rich to learn lessons from the
neighbouring countries and march ahead for real achievements,
which will largely depend upon development projects through
engineering interventions.
3.1 Engineering
Human Resources in Nepal
Till a decade back, there were very few engineers produced in
the country through assistance of friendly countries,
particularly India and the then USSR. It is believed to some
extent that the development efforts of Nepal was adversely
affected due to lack of adequate numbers of engineering
professionals in the country. However, at present, the
country has more than 22 engineering colleges producing about
3000 engineers yearly in the country. In addition, some 1,000
engineers get graduated every year from abroad. At present,
the total Engineering Human Resources in Nepal exceeds 12,000
in number.
In the above background, laxity observed in the past
hindering development of infrastructure facility due to lack
of enough engineers and technical resources is expected to
change dramatically in future. The encouraging quantity and
quality of engineers being produced within country is
expected to fill in the gap of technical manpower and
contribute in the construction of development infrastructure
utilizing the skilled manpower within the country itself.
This will definitely have a long-term positive impact in the
poverty alleviation efforts of the nation.
4.
Conclusion
Indicators of development of
any country is a strong infrastructure base, be it roads,
irrigation, hydropower, water supply, buildings etc. Without
basic infrastructure facilities, the country cannot make
available basic social services to the poor. Existing
socio-economic condition cannot be changed and poverty
remains prevailing. Engineering plays a primary and pivotal
role in building infrastructures and achieve the Millennium
Development Goal. But, traditional engineering approaches
have not always reduced poverty, for example where externally
conceived projects have been imposed without appreciation to
local needs and conditions. To address this, the engineering
needs to be designed and delivered in sensitive relation to
its context, and to be focused on outcomes not
artifacts.
In country like Nepal, there is huge task of construction of
infrastructure facilities, both basic as well as
developmental. Committed and efficient engineering solutions
are needed to accomplish this.
Lessons from the past should be learnt, and mistakes should
be rectified. We all must try to know how the fast growing
economic giants like China, India, South-East Asian countries
could make such rapid economic progress, and analyse what
sort of policies did they follow to attain this. Such lessons
learnt must be practically applied with full commitment of
the government.
One of the strong means to achieve intended development with
positive and future looking approach is by placing the right
person in the right place. Only politicians, economists and
bureaucrats should not be given priority to make in-charge of
national development planning and policy-making process. Here
too, we must learn lessons from China, India, and South East
Asian countries, where technocrats and engineers have been at
central play of national development planning. Technocrats
have become president and prime minister. Indeed they have
been very successful, and we can see what they have done in
their country. Thus, we also must adopt this trend, as
technocrats are also people, who are the cream of
intellectuals, they are better educated, have respectful
position in the society are oriented to ground level
planning, and are trained for long-term vision.
At the end, we all agree that alleviation of poverty,
enhancement of quality of life of people and an overall
sustainable development of the country is only possible
through dynamic and broad-based economic development for
which adequate and efficient infrastructure facilities are
must. Only adequacy of infrastructure facilities attracts
development activities in the country like agriculture,
trade, commerce, industry, tourism etc. Development of
infrastructure can be done only through engineering inputs.
This indicates the vital importance and mandatory linkage
between infrastructure development, engineering and its
contribution in poverty alleviation.
From the above, one can conclude the important role of
engineering and demand of technical human resources in
addressing poverty in any country.