Friday, 3 Feb 2017, 11:00 - 12:30. 6th Floor staff room, Chrystal Macmillan Building. (This is an update of the previously advertised date of 1 Feb)
Dipak Gyawali (Nepal Academy of Science and Technology): Development: Has the Age of Aid Ended?'
[Global Development Academy, Centre for South Asian Studies and Social Anthropology]
“Development” became the new religion (“Dharma”) of our times, starting in the late 19th Century and picking up messianic zeal after the Second World War. Although it initially saw competing discourses – and Nepal is a classic case of the presence of almost all these varying approaches from American and Indian to Chinese, Russian and others – by the early 1980s, it had become a Western Development Agencies led “thing”. However, it has been argued that the underlying premise of the “Triumph of the West” in Development, almost coeval with the collapse of the Second World communism, was based on a kind of fatalism, expressed through the philosophy and program of structural adjustment, wherein the inherent belief was that these Third World Countries would never “develop”, that that at best they could be disciplined to pay back exorbitant loans that had been addicted to or had foisted on them. The result has been political upheavals, rise of extremist ideologies and a general sense of drift, MDGs and SDGs notwithstanding. This talk, using the findings in a recent book with the speaker as one of the editors (https://www.routledge.com/Aid-Technology-and-Development-The-Lessons-from-Nepal/Gyawali-Thompson-Verweij/p/book/9781138656918), will look at the history of the “development industry” in Nepal and its current state. Using Cultural Theory (Theory of Plural Rationalities), it will then go on to argue what a new Age of International Cooperation might have to look like as the procedurally fetishized Age of Aid whimpers towards an ignominious end.
Speaker: Dipak Gyawali is Director of Kathmandu based non-profit organisation ‘Nepal Water Conservation Foundation’ and Pragya (Academician) at Nepal Academy of Science and Technology. He is a hydroelectric power engineer and a political economist who, during his time as Minister of Water Resources, initiated reforms in the electricity and irrigation sectors focused on decentralization and promotion of rural participation in governance. He also initiated the first national review and comparison of Nepali laws with the guidelines of the World Commission on Dams.