Damaru Lal Bhandari

Kathmandu, May 11:

Even as insurgency is time and again attributed to economic disparity, policy makers and planners are known to pooh-pooh the idea of allocating enough budget for the development of the backward regions. This is being taken as the classic case of officialdom standing divided on fundamental issues.In fact, with government agencies formulating budgets for the upcoming fiscal year, while chiefs of every offices are racing against time to see to it that they get enough budget., vying for the attention of the National Planning Commission (NPC) mandarins and others is Remote Area Development Committee (RADC). Interestingly, NPC and Ministry of Finance functionaries speak for halting but not spending the allocated budget. Instituted in 1965 to wean away people settled along the northern border from the belief that they were Tibetans, RADC general officer has come a long way. But lamentations are it is not being treated before the officer.

Two areas attracting sheep from Australia and apples from Canada as tools of socio-economic development. But what is missing s the initial drive." Imagine are the low we have hit. There are people who do not want to see enough budget is earmarked for the remote areas," said Kharel even as he added that the budget to the tune of Rs.150 m for the current fiscal falls short. Budgetary increment 60 per cent per year. The commitment of the erstwhile regime can be gauged from the fact that RADC was initially headed by erstwhile incumbent prime minister Surya Bahadur Thapa, following sensational revelation that the people settled across the remote northern border were neither aware of the fact that they belonged to Nepal nor they were in a position to eke out a living. He also presented a case for evolving the ageny on the line of council even as it gets to lead the development agencies including the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGOs). However, NPC functionaries have flayed the allegations that RADC was being short-changed. While 13 districts in the northern flank fall under the remote area tag, 9 more have mixed number of Village Development Committees (VDCs) falling in the remote area nomenclature.

Solukhumbu, Jumla and Dolpa, among others, are fully remote while districts like Rolpa and Gorkha, among others, have mixed number of VDCs as remote area. "We have reports which suggest that insurgency could be stemmed if development agenda is pursued in truly institutional manner. In fact, this is something which can be done with RADP at the helm of affairs," Kharel said. However, the claim that RADC is doing well and should be encouraged has been defied by the former chairman of National Planning Commission (NPC), Prithvi Raj Ligal. "We had reservation against the way it works. There is much room to question the implementation, execution and monitoring of the project," Ligal said, by way of setting the record straight.

He also added that "the NPC had implemented an identical programme for the remote region just because RADC was not upto the mark."