Development in developing country

By Sabin Chakradhar

Nepal is a developing country with huge natural resources and huge potential to develop. Recently, along with the political turmoil, the country went through lot of transformations, especially the capital city Kathmandu. In the process of getting developed, some destructive image of the Kathmandu Valley could be witnessed during last few years.

It started with the demolition of the buildings for the widening of the vehicular roads inside the city. Many houses were pulled to ground so that the infrastructure development could take place. As most of the buildings were built in the time before the municipality Bylaws were introduced, they violate one or the other rule of the code. And many of the buildings that were built after the introduction of the Bylaws did not follow them because it would limit the built-up area of the building which is very expensive in the city. When the government announced that only the owners who built their building not violating any codes will get the compensation of the demolished buildings, there was lot of dis-satisfied owners. And despite the protest from several small groups of owners, the demolition process did not stop.

The development (or demolition) process lasted for more than the double of the intended period. It was a very hard time; dust covered the streets of the valley at all times, traffic jams made it difficult to drive and the dust and pollutions made it difficult to walk. And the situation became even worse when it started to rain; all the dust and debris turned into thick sludge and flooded the streets and roads. The government did not give any attention towards any of these issues. The reason may be: the government hardly managed the fund for the project so they could not afford any extra cost for the safety measures or manage the side effects etc. Whatever the reason was, our daily life was being hampered largely by the process and also our health was at great risk. But like most people in the valley, I consoled myself that it was for the development of the city.

After two years of painful development process, project was finally completed around my house (in few places it is still in progress), the roads were widened and everyone seemed happy about it. But after few more months, another group of people started to dig the hole in the newly created asphalt road. And when we asked they said they were sent by government to manage the Dhal Nikas (Sewarage system). And I think to myself, besides the political reasons, the reason our country is not developed is not the lack of resource or manpower but it’s the lack of co-ordination among the departments within the country and the lack of efficiency. It does not take a genius to figure out that the sewerage works need to be executed before the roadwork but due to the lack of co-ordination; they end up wasting both money and resource in completing the same work twice. Tragedy is: this is not the first time it happened, we fail to learn from our mistakes every time. But then again we are listed as the developing country and there is a reason why.