FOREIGN DONORS INTEREST IN LANDLOCKED NEPAL -Nepal is in crisis today with no proper development of infrastructures and a crisis associated with the particular form of relations of production (class relations), with the failure of any social class to develop the productive forces sufficiently to provide the necessary expansion of economic base to support a rapidly growing population and with the particular form of the contemporary state Elements of that crisis, in manifest form, include growing food shortages; environmental deterioration; and unemployment, resulting from the structural underdevelopment of the agrarian economy; the extension of rather than the intensification of cultivation; rapid population growth; and from the virtual absence of employment opportunities in agriculture. For the vast majority of peasants and workers in Nepal, the crisis which reflects the structural underdevelopment of the economy is persistent and chronic; the reproduction of deprivation and poverty, which is a function of the continuing underdevelopment of Nepal, manifests itself nationally as a crisis, and for the vast majority of the rural and urban population as constant hardship, uncertainty and desperation.Nepals dependency, apart from that on India, is on foreign aid and this dependency has been increasing. There is a danger of institutionalization of such aid and donations which might diminish the motivation of the people for personal achievement and hence undermine peoples participation. As Nepal, being a poor and helpless country, the ready provision of foreign aid emulates an expected pattern reinforcing a sense of dependence and a helpless mentality leading to slackness in motivation for self-improvement.Transparency is an essential precondition for accountability, for enabling citizens and those that represent them, parliaments and civil society, to hold to account all organisations involved in the aid process – donors, governments, implementing organisations and contractors, as well as to improve planning and coordination and to reduce wastage and corruption. Transparency can also facilitate the informed and committed participation of all stakeholders in all stages of the aid process, from project design to implementation, improving the effectiveness with which aid is used.The long-term ambition of aidinfo is that all resources for poverty reduction should be fully transparent so that all stakeholders in developing countries can plan, participate and contribute to the poverty-reduction effort, and in donor countries, tax payers and contributors to voluntary agencies can know where and how their contributions are being used and what they achieve.However, finding and understanding information on aid in Nepal, as in many aid receiving countries, is complex. Nepal receives aid from up to 50 bilateral and multilateral donors, more than 150 international NGOs and thousands of national and local NGOs. Many different people would like to know more about aid flows to Nepal to help ensure that aid money is spent in accountable and effective ways.In Nepal, we are working with a number of NGO-partners, initially over a six-month period, to strengthen their knowledge and skills to access, analyse and use information on aid, and to gather evidence on the best tools and methods to make aid information accessible and useful to a wide variety of people.These organisations will act as information intermediaries, working at different levels to address the five areas identified during the consultation: availability, accessibility and analysis of aid information, capacity development and evidence, as well as exploring ways that better information on aid can support the gathering of feedback from the intended beneficiaries of aid-funded projects.Using technology to support aid transparency .Technology offers huge opportunities for increasing accountability mechanisms and engaging civil society and citizens more in the development process. Technology can facilitate the process of gathering information and making it more accessible, and as more information about aid becomes available, the potential increases for technology to support this. For example, sms could be used to alert people in a particular community to aid allocated to their area, and to gather feedback from citizens about services in their community, and link it to the funding source.We will work with the vibrant local technology community in Kathmandu, to develop solutions that are appropriate for the context and developed with a full understanding of the incentives and challenges for potential users to engage with them-HIT and RUN AT BRIDGES IN NEPALS MAJOR HIGHWAYS:TEST and EXAM.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 02:49:17 +0000
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