Fundamentals of Prosperous Nepal

-Janardan Sharma Prabhakar

Along with the political transition, Nepal has been engrossed with various economic problems. The global recession penetrated into the Nepalese economy impacting directly or indirectly. Moreover, political instability, corruption, financial disorderliness, merely profit-oriented investments, lack of confidence towards the banking sector among the people due to the failure in timely payment for the depositors, failure to promote productive sector, swarming imports and unbridled cross border smuggling of goods and services taking benefits of the open border between Nepal and India show that the country's economy has been deteriorating for long. Similarly, the country's economy could be measured through the state of it foreign currency reserves and balance of payment (BoP). Similarly, the recurrent expenditures of the government have surpassed the capital expenditures. Government has severely failed to construct development infrastructures so as to support in production. The budget of the government centers on the ministers and their henchmen. It rather promotes corruption and commissions instead of providing relief to the people at large. No budget targets to expand the productivity and production sector of the country. The backbone of the Nepalese economy, agriculture, is itself marginalized. Likewise, we are still practicing traditional agriculture system. The feudal land ownership system still exists. No one has given attention towards modernization of the means of production. And the country has not been able to tap the potentials of its locally available natural resources.
Given the situation of the country, the formation of its future strategy is very challenging. It is very challenging to get rid of such problems with out a radical reforms in the existing values. The main guiding principle is politics. So, the country should focus on drafting a new constitution as per the will and aspiration of the people to address every issues and move towards building the country a prosperous and sovereign one.
Similarly, political change is one of the crucial factors. The remnants of the feudal system should be eliminated for preserving the newly born republic and institutionalize it. Every organs of the government should be democratize and the access of the people should be guaranteed. People should have rights to speech, religion, health, employment, education, food, cloth and shelter. The participation in every sector should be inclusive and proportional restructuring the existing state structure.
The first measure to free the country from the existing feudal economy is the adoption of revolutionary and scientific land reform providing land to the tillers, modernizing and commercializing the agriculture. The government should come up with special and focused programmes to promote agriculture sector.

Similarly, the labour force should be enhanced with appropriate skills and trainings. The existing shortage of skilled manpower should be address urgently. The measures to protect the forest resources should be taken launching huge awareness campaigns to highlight the importance of forest. Likewise, to end the existing power outage and promote other industries, special programmes to generate power from micro, small and medium hydropower plants should be launched at village and district levels.
The tourism industry is one of the most potential sectors in the country. The country has many more opportunities to cash its cultural, geographical and natural heritages if appropriate programmes were introduced.
Similarly, other potential sector could be to set up industries based on locally available resources such as cement, iron, chemical fertilizer, herbal and other agriculture products and substitute the imports. The state should priorities export-oriented industries with ample subsidies, tax waive and grants.
If the state focused on the above mentioned sectors with its due priority, it will be a basis towards building sovereign economy. Thereafter, the existing trade deficit and balance of payment situation would also improve. There should be appropriate policies and mechanisms to utilize the remittance of the migrant workers in the productive sectors and sector of national interests. Therefore, for sovereign and free economy, the state should be able to create a kind of development wave among people with huge awareness campaigns, people

Source: Gateway Magazine