Recently, CEAPRED, an NGO, organised a workshop on the honeybees in the Himalayas in cooperation with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which has been funding a two-year project for promoting honeybees in four village development committees of Kavre district. The project is run with the objective of “reducing poverty and conserving bio-diversity” by strengthening the capacity of community-based organisations and of those at central level.

It was found that 359 farmers, who have been organised into 21 bee-keeping groups, were able to increase the number of bee-keeping households from 125 to 265 — a 212% increase — within a short span of two years. Also, against the traditional practice of harvesting 2.13 times a year, the farmers now harvest honey from their hives 4.12 times. The per hive harvest yield too has increased from 2.42 kg to 3.91 kg, and their average annual per hive production has jumped from 5.10 kg to 10.25 kg. The average per household income of Rs.130 from bee-keeping has quintupled to Rs. 695.8.

Since the experience was considered valuable particularly for marginal and landless farmers as it has helped enhance their income, the project was deemed successful. However, the project still suffers a few setbacks like marketing the produce, reluctance of farmers to buy new hives to replace their traditional Khope and log hives, inadequate skills in queen rearing and colony separation and predating hornets and marten.

What was not discussed both by ICIMOD and the partner NGO in the meet was the fact that almost four million other farmers in the country owning less than 0.5 hectares too could benefit from this initiative.

This lacuna is particularly telling, given the fact that the international centre for “integrated mountain development” would soon be celebrating the silver jubilee of its establishment, but Nepal, its host and one of the most mountainous and poorest countries in the world, is yet to adopt its innovations. The bee project, as it stands, keeps only two categories of people happy, the handful of farm households in Kavre, and the NGO and ICIMOD professionals, who, to say the least, remain busy because of it.

Contrast this with Nepal’s own innovation in forestry development that has immensely contributed to the conservation of its bio-diversity and enhancing the quality of life of the people in all the three ecological regions — the hills, the mountains and the Tarai. Starting in 1978, the World Bank and FAO had funded the Community Forestry Programme which was being implemented through the then Village Panchayats and was getting nowhere.

But a change in the forest related legislation in 1988 legally empowered the user groups — a concept innovated in 1979 based on a 1969 ethnographic study of centuries-old irrigation system in a Jumla village by the then Royal Nepal Academy — to manage their own forests. In about a decade’s time, the forests were well on their way to regaining their pristine glory and the desertification alarm quickly became history.

At the heart of this innovation has been good governance conditions that characterised the functioning of the forest user groups. All members participate in the decision-making process, which makes management transparent and leadership accountable to the members, rich and poor, men and women, high and low caste. It was only after this novel restructuring of institutional arrangement that the stakeholders could demand of the forest officials to hand over their forest so they could manage it themselves.

This change not only made the whole programme demand-driven, it also effectively redefined the role of the Ministry of Forestry. Its officials no longer behave as the lords of forests; instead, they act as guides of the forest user groups.

However, despite the loud avowals of the political leaders, the ministry of forest

happens to be the only ministry among 19 that functions on the demand-driven mode. No other ministry has so far found it fitting and necessary to emulate the change even as the National Planning Commission itself — an agency charged with the task of redeeming Nepal out of its chronic backwardness — continues to find comfort in its cocoon.

The challenge for any non-governmental organisation, donor, or an agency working for change in Nepal, is to redefine its mandate as an innovating organisation committed to bringing about reforms in the system at large. Only then will a larger proportion of population stand to benefit from their work. This would require a thorough reorientation of project structure and strategies. Otherwise, their tiny initiatives like the bee-keeping in Kavre would remain more or less an insular exercise, designed to promote, however unspoken, only their own vested interests.

Shrestha is a development anthropologist