If you were a leader with power in Nepal. And you were going to make a 20 year strategic plan for Nepal to take it forward, what kind of a plan would you make?


First off, i would address the extreme poverty. Planning for folks who do not get to eat twice a day. I would implement several micro loans. Someone in Africa is handing one Bahkri per mother, the first born Bakhri goes to the next mother in line. After few bhakris a family is sustained with its babies and milk. This is not a prosperity but a survival for those who would not survive otherwise. Another example is to let those folks work in the government owned land. Hand some government land to community of the poor and let them work on it for lets say 5 years each and let them keep the crops for those years without any fees. Again these are just the examples, something else may work in our Nepalese contex. This needs to be researched and tested until we find something that will work for us.

Secondly, address the foreign employment. Lets figure out what the world labor market needs, if koreans need factory workers, lets work on pooling the best factory workers for them, if Isrealis need baby sitters lets arrange baby sitters for them,, in the same way nurses and IT workers for the west, Laborers for the middle east. So far the foreign employemnt has been for those who can come up with at least 1 lakh rupees, what about the ones who do not even have 2 thousand, can we create a government pool for those...the government pays for the initial cost interest free for the firs six months. In addition, the government does various training/education program in each district with a detailed/honest information on risk/reward and financial aspect of foreign employment. Can the government afford to subsidize the first air ticket? Can the government establish offices in those gulf countries to make sure the their citizens are not abused?

Third, Sell tourism and Religion, Hire a global marketing team, Invite Global Celebrities, Make them ambassadors of the religions, do not be afraid to spend some money in marketing at the begining, create spiritual camps in lumbini and pashupati, create a transparent financial bodies around pashupati and lumbini. Establish the brand first, once the brand is established business will follow soon after.

Fourth, promote and educate people in farming specialized products such as Clove, Alaichi, Tea, and herbs such as yarcha gumba, the handicrafts, focus on speciliazed productions and import the mass product from india and china.

A start on those things mentioned about should get us out of extreme poverty withing 5 - 10 years. Once the extreme poverty is eradicated we can exploreHydroelectricity potentials.

Again, my thoughts are to increase our per capita income to 2000 - 3000 per year. This is not a dream to make Nepal Singapore or Japan as most of our uneducated and shortsighted leaders boast.

Once we get there we can think about getting further ahead.