Achieving Development in One Year

By: Bikal Dhungel

This article has been written in Nepalese political context. Since the establishment of democracy, Nepal never had any single Prime Minister who remained a full term, most of them left in less than a year. As a result, development projects suffered. Development project takes a longer time horizon. It needs a careful planning after a timely survey about the feasibility of the project. Then comes the challenges of resource utilisation and implementation. In one year, it is barely possible. So, the government simply ignored development. It launches 'business as usual' budget that is not oriented towards economic prosperity. This will not generate any results, any growth or any prosperity. It will impede growth. When the governments know in advance that their time is going to be brief, all they do is to enrich themselves and their kins. This political clans are better off but the country people are worse off. So, this article gives a small hint what can a government do if it is to stay one year or two years if it wants to get credibility for having kick-started growth.

To make the issue simpler, consider your own life, or imagine a life of anyone you know. There are many issues in your life which are really important, for example the food you eat, your character, your moral intelligence, your good looking body, your hairs and obviously your education and your skills. I dont know which one of this is most important for you. For some people, having a good character is most important whereas for others, a good look is important and for others, education might be important. Imagine, you wake up everyday, 2 hours you spend on eating the best food you like, then you practice good character for another hour, then you work on your body by doing exercise or going to gym, other two hours you clean your house because cleanliness is also important, then you study 3 hours, spend another 2 hours to acquire skills and remaining time you go to buy foods talk with your parents or friends, then you sleep. With this routine everyday, you might end up having a big problem in the future because you are doing everything but not specialising in anything. As a result, you are probably a jack of all but master of none. The society does not care about jacks, they care about masters. A Baker is a master of backing and he makes money out of it. A teacher is a master of teaching who will also make money out of it. Likewise, A doctor, engineer, pilot, mechanics, they have their own specialisation. To acquire this specialisation, they must have spent some handsome amount of time. To be a doctor, one should go to college for at least 5 years. In this 5 years, she should work like hell. Most students even dont sleep well and dont have social life. All they have is library time, labs, readings etc. And in five years, they become masters. Then their skill pays off, they become rich and should no more spend long days in the library. They work and remaining time, they can spend time doing things they like. If they would have a routine as mentioned above, working on character, taking time to eat food and studying only 2 hours a day, they might take 20 years to finish studying Medicine.

What I want to tell from this story is, a country is same like an individual. To become rich, it should specialise on producing some goods. In economic terms, its called comparative advantage. It should only produce one good where it enjoys comparative advantage and import others. Now lets come back to the government. The job of the government is to pay a path to growth so that the country can achieve economic growth. Specially if it has so limited time, it should not try to solve all the issues. It should not use the limited resources it has on wide range of things where it cannot generate considerable success. It will only be a drop in the ocean. Rather, it should focus only on the sector where there is a possibility of growth. It should identify a sector where it can achieve growth, then invest only there. Of course basic things like healthcare and education is important, but a country should not try to solve all the social problem in the fixed term because at last, there will be no result and the money will be gone and again people will blame that the government has failed. In today's context, it is seriously important to bring technology home. Only bringing foreign technology through foreign direct investment or other forms of technology transfer, can a country kick-start growth. So, a country like Nepal should focus only on increasing productivity by bringing better technology.

What evidence shows in this matter is, when a government target social problems first before economic development, a large amount of money is required, which developing countries often lack. Even if it became successful for example in achieving 100% literacy rate, perfect equality of wages, best governance etc, what then ? What after that, there are no new jobs available which will make no sense in having equality or best social indicators. Even the governments should ignore good governance goal, they should only focus on economic growth. The opportunity cost of concentrating in social policies is huge. They cannot afford to be socially just but economically poor. In the case of depressive economic situation, no matter how social the country is, that will lead to civil war in extreme cases. To be democratic first and then grow or to grow first and then become democratic is the dilemma developing countries face today. No country that achieved high economic growth was a democracy. Only when they were rich, democracy started to flourish. Moreover, take the example of Somalia. You cannot go to Somalia and talk about empowering women, installing democracy and creating equality. Empty stomach needs food, for food you need jobs, growth, then only democracy sustains. Otherwise, it will only be a waste of time and money trying to install it. So, first message I want to give to donors, especially developed countries are, do not waste your money in improving good governance, democracy etc in least developed countries. If you really want them to be prosperous, concentrate on growth. Target a sector that is likely to achieve growth.

What the developing countries can do themselves is, find out why the particular sector which is likely to be your comparative advantage is failing to develop. Find out what are the bottlenecks of it. Then discuss how you can prevent this bottleneck. Then bring the policies, reform your financial sector if necessary. As long as you do not provide financial liquidity to those who have good ideas, you will never grow. Once you bring policies, check the feasibility and then implement it. Then monitor it. If it works well, continue supporting, if not, withdraw the support and concentrate on other sector but be fast.

Having said that, from personal experience, I say that the culture of political parties is one of the main bottleneck of developing countries. When you take a long time to bring a new policy, change this but while you change, make sure that the policy or law change is being misused by particular person, company for their own profit in the cost of society.

To make it short, when there is a government like Nepal that generally exist only for a year, if you concentrate in one sector that will generate growth, you will be successful than when you try to solve all the problems from the past. Specialize, focus, dont be a jack of all, be a master of one.