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The United States offered Nepal $500 million in grants for the construction of transmission lines and strategic roads through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). It was meant to be a transformative deal: a grant large enough to unlock in one stroke the most important chokepoints in Nepal’s power sector.

Instead, the MCC project got mired in a debilitating national debate, forcing the government to delay its discussion in parliament. Why did a transformative deal evoke such a fierce public debate?        

Many have attributed this to Nepal’s usual political squabbling or some geopolitical machination. But such simplistic explanations cloud other meaningful reflections.

No matter how the government comes out on the MCC, there is plenty to learn from the debate itself.

The debate showed that political power in Nepal is more diffuse than is believed.

The public debate only flared up late in the process, as the compact was to be presented in parliament. The debate’s speed and intensity surprised many.

Prior to the start of the debate, public communications around the compact were sparse. The collective set of public comments by handlers, both in the MCC and the government, presents an illuminating picture of presumptuous arrogance: the old presumption that if you convince five people at the top, everyone else will follow.

Nepal has changed. Welcome to the cacophony (or inconveniences) of democracy.

In the 12 months since the start of the debate on MCC, Nepal has borrowed approximately $500 million—equivalent to what the MCC offered—from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. Why should these borrowing not be subject to the same level of transparency, discourse, and parliamentary approval? Who will be held accountable if these loans prove unproductive?   

Where the debate will lead us is unclear, but the discourse itself is critical to establishing accountability.  

The debate exhibited that the promised benefits (for example employment, income, economic growth) from building thousands of megawatts worth of hydro power plants are either not tangible enough or the public doesn’t believe it.

By the time the debate had started, load-shedding had ended and the benefits of MCC projects centred entirely on illustrating the economic gains from new power plants. These benefits were estimated and presented.

Against the promise of so much benefit, opposition to the MCC centered on perceived loss of sovereignty. Why was it that so many Nepalis were drawn to arguments about the perceived loss of sovereignty despite the opportunities for economic benefits from building new power plants? Because, not many in Nepal believe in these economic benefits.

Nepalis care for electricity and having adequate supply. But the idea that building many new power plants will lead to tremendous growth just didn’t resonate enough. Why? Perhaps because, thus far in Nepal, the process of building hydro plants has benefited only a small group.     

The tragedy for the MCC is that load-shedding ended three years too early. If the MCC project had arrived in parliament earlier in the load-shedding era, and had it argued for an end of power cuts, the compact would have passed immediately. End of load-shedding—highly tangible, we all felt its pain. Prosperity from building new hydro plants—too abstract and hypothetical, which only a few have enjoyed so far.

The debate also highlighted the need for Nepal to establish centers that could serve as sources for credible neutral information.

The MCC compact with Nepal was an innovative design but also a complex structure, clearly new for Nepal at many levels. It required an act of parliament, a bilateral agreement with a third country, an odd inclusion of a small investment in “strategic roads” within a project on the power sector, and raised questions about Nepal’s ability to compete in Indian power markets.

There was enough in the agreement for everyone with a point of view. This was exactly what happened as the debate exploded. The discourse spun out of control, feeding a frenzy from the absurd to the fantastical.

Where should ordinary Nepalis turn to for reliable and credible information while in the midst of a scorching debate? To answer that question, those in authority must first acknowledge that ordinary Nepalis have a right to know, and second, that their views matter.        

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With growing numbers of urbanizing corridors in all seven provinces, urbanization has become an unstoppable force in the country’s development. This, coupled with booming e-commerce, is a major driver of growth, in what is a tested route to high economic growth for developing countries. Countries in South East Asia and Africa have taken these paths to developing vibrant economies. But we in Nepal also lack a coherent approach to developing large-scale connectivity projects that facilitate both urbanization and e-commerce.

Underpinning the importance of urban development, the government adopted the National Urban Development Strategy (NUDS) 2017. Going beyond, the government, with technical support of the Asian Development Bank, started a separate unit of Urban Planning and Development Center (UPDC) under Department of Urban Development and Building Construction (DUDBC). The center has been conducting research and building a knowledge pool required to advance sustainable urban development. Under UPDC and with the ADB’s financial support, a multi-disciplinary Urban Corridor Development study was completed in 2019, both in the east and west, laying a foundation for economic corridors in both areas. The government has already initiated the process of implementing corridor development in Province 1 and Lumbini Province, again with ADB support.

Recently, the World Bank also provided $150 million to improve urban governance and infrastructure projects in municipalities of two strategic urban clusters: eastern-Tarai region (Province 1 and 2) and western region (Gandaki and Lumbini Provinces), complementing government efforts to expedite Nepal’s urbanization. The World Bank’s support in urban development has come at the right time: there is a critical need to help municipalities enhance their urban governance and develop cross-municipalities infrastructures such as road, solid waste management, drinking water as well as education and health services. Nepal is at a crossroad of transforming urban governance by empowering local governments in the new federal set-up. The support of both the World Bank and the ADB in this needs to be in line with the spirit of constitution for there to be meaningful cooperation among local, provincial, and federal governments. The support for municipalities should also be done in close coordination with provincial governments.

One big challenge identified by scholars with Nepal’s three-tier federal model is ensuring seamless communication and cooperation among different tiers. It is vital that federal government agencies and our development partners accommodate all stakeholders, from top to bottom, for the institutionalization of federalism and achievement of the goal of prosperous Nepal. We need to keep emphasizing this, as we are yet to fully emerge from our unitary mindset.

Urbanization is also linked to rural-urban linkages and correlates with migration. People’s movement in search of jobs and better health and education services also call for robust and sustainable urban infrastructures. Environment-friendly urban cores attract upwardly mobile people. The coronavirus pandemic has reminded us of the importance of a balance with the larger eco-system; it is critical we do not blindly follow traditional growth models.

Our local and provincial governments desperately need to ensure better infrastructure and public service delivery. And this is exactly where the development partners come in—not just to fund old-style projects but also to invest in preserving our heritages and natural resources. The whole process of development and prosperity should thus be revisited. Doing so starts with the development of our urban cores the right way.

I hoard books and I cannot lie. This is the one habit that probably helped keep me sane during the lockdown. However, all my life, I’ve had to deal with inquisitive family members and friends who wondered if I actually read all the books I bought or if I was simply showing off. In my defense, I eventually get around to reading at least 70 percent of the books I buy.

But, really, who, no matter how voracious a reader, reads every single book they buy? That doesn’t mean we buy books to fill up our bookshelves or post pictures with them on Instagram. Readers will agree that when we buy books, we have every intention of reading each one of them. It’s just that invariably we will go out and buy more books before we have finished the previous selections. That’s just how it is.

My habit of hoarding books started during childhood. Now, I will conveniently shift the blame on my dad. While he never let me have more than one chocolate or one toy whenever we went out shopping, my dad never set a limit when it came to buying books. He would let me pick as many as I wanted. Sometimes, I wanted a dozen—comics and books both. And I got them. I don’t ever remember a time we went to a bookstore and I walked out with just a book.

Now that I’m married to a voracious reader, the hoarding has gotten worse—there are two of us doing it. We probably spend a major chunk of our salaries on books, when we travel most of our luggage is filled with books, and we gift each other, and our friends, books at almost every occasion.

Both of us also enjoy sharing what we are reading. We post about our vacay book hauls—piles that are at least two- to three-feet high and weekend reads on social media. The response is almost always along the lines of: “How do you find the time to read all this?”, “Do you actually read them all/really fast or are you just posting to make people jealous?” and an indignant, “No one can read this fast. You were reading something else two days ago.”

The thing is when you love to read, you cannot not read. I always need a story in my head. I’ll go crazy otherwise. Every family has its drama and, to make matters worse, I don’t necessarily like people. Thinking of these fun fictional characters gives my brain the break it needs from the theatrics of daily life. So, I read—compulsively, obsessively. I read on the stationary bike. I read during commutes—when the car’s stalled and I can put the vehicle in neutral. I read during tea breaks when my colleagues are busy ‘catching up’. I read whenever I can, even if it’s just for 10 minutes. 

Sometimes, I read a book in a day, other times it takes me a couple of days and some books I finish in a week or a month. And while I definitely buy more books than I could ever possibly read, every book I haven’t gotten around to reading and is gathering dust on the bookshelf is on my to-read list. And no, I’m not posting photos of one book after another just to get on your nerves—just like you aren’t posting food or cocktail hours photos to get on mine.

If you focus on the errors of others

Constantly finding fault

Your effluents flourish

You’re far from their ending. (Dhammapada, 253)

Thus spake the Buddha. But we keep focusing on others. We keep finding fault in others. The other person is bad. They are unholy. They are evil wrongdoers, robbing us of our rightful privilege. They are blocking our way to heaven. We need to correct them. But the result? Our sufferings grow—we are far from their end.

How many of us have experienced that?

History is proof that we have caused great sufferings because we have found faults in others and have tried to correct or win over them. We have fought gruesome wars. But we have never learned. We are all too keen on ostracizing and marginalizing 'those faulty people' so that we can enjoy ourselves. Others must be somehow sidelined so that we can protect our race, our class, our land, beliefs, scriptures, skin color, the shape of nose, and what not. So our fight is justified. The fights we fight and the wars we wage are right.

But are we ever happy? When we try to correct or defeat others, our miseries grow. As the Buddha says, winning only gives birth to hostility. Losing, one lies down in pain. Killing, you gain your killer. Conquering, you gain one who will conquer you. Insulting, you will gain one who will insult you; harassing, you will get one who will harass you. And so, through the cycle of action, he who has plundered gets plundered in turn, the Buddha adds.

We don’t hear many world leaders speak like that. Quite the contrary, we are constantly taught to teach others a good lesson. We are constantly taught to think us versus them, tit for tat, an eye for an eye. We need to correct others, because we are right and they are wrong.

A plain logic would be that something righteous should be right for all. If it is righteous, it should bring happiness to all. It should unify, not divide. If something brings pain to others, then pain remains in human experience. How can a righteous thing keep pain alive!

Nothing that puts others in pain can ever be righteous. It can't be holy if it teaches that a whole lot of people are evil just because their noses are a little bigger or smaller than ours. After all, who created all those people? Who are we to judge?

From a Buddhist perspective, the thought that we are right and the others wrong stems from a distorted view. It is due to misplaced associations. Instead of fixing others, it is better to fix yourself. Conquering others would not be the righteous way to happiness, but conquering your own imperfections and weaknesses would be. As the Buddha says:

“Though one may conquer

A thousand times a thousand men in battle

Yet he indeed is the noblest victor

Who conquers himself. (Dhammapada, 103)