Poverty
Nepal is one of the 30 poorest countries in the world. In the fiscal year 2015-6, the average weekly income was 1,556 Nepalese Rupees. That’s about £10.50.
Agriculture forms the base of the economy. Two-thirds of the population make their living from farming. The industrial and commercial sectors are also based on agriculture; processing and trading the tobacco, sugar cane and pulses that are grown.
An agricultural economy needs water
Nepal has plenty of water. The average annual rainfall is 1,600mm, about twice what we get in the UK. Unfortunately, virtually all the rain falls in the monsoon season between June and September. As Nepal is a mountainous country all that water heads to the Indian Ocean at an alarming rate. So the Nepalese economy is dependent on an infrastructure of dams and irrigation channels.
Historically these were built by the local farmers with whatever materials came to hand. So the farmers had two jobs, working the land and maintaining the dams and canals.
Aid and investment
To ease the situation, many aid agencies have invested in Nepal, using modern materials and equipment to build new concrete dams. These need less maintenance, freeing up the farmers time to do something more productive. The aid agencies were helping to lift Nepal out of poverty, or at least so they hoped.
Dams are the sort of project that large aid agencies love.
- They are a visible sign of activity.
- The need for them is easy to explain, so they attract investment.
- They work well with foreign government aid programmes that provide cheap industrial machinery.
- Civil servants also love to show how they are contributing. So local permissions are easy to obtain.
A waste of money
The economist Elinor Ostrom studied these projects. She came to the unlikely (and unwelcome) conclusion that the aid agencies were wasting their money investing in big concrete dams. Over the long-term, they did little to promote economic growth and often prevented it.
The soft system
The problem with the large modern dams was that they didn’t need much maintenance. That after all was the point. They were built to reduce the amount of time spent maintaining the infrastructure, freeing farmers up to do other things.
- The farmers down the hill would help those at the top maintain the dam.
- Those at the top would help those lower down clear and rebuild the irrigation channels.
Unfortunately, when the dam didn’t need maintaining, there was no longer any incentive for the farmers at the top of the hill to help those lower down with the irrigation channels. So the farmers downstream were left to help themselves, and the irrigation systems gradually fell into disrepair.
Because they didn’t understand the human system, the builders of the hard technological solutions broke it.
The solution…
Was to invest in upgrading the irrigation channels and not the dams. This maintained everybody’s incentive to cooperate. Though, of course, a concrete ditch doesn’t look nearly so impressive in a charity’s annual report as a dirty great big dam.
The soft interactions between people are more powerful than hard technology. Something to consider when you are planning your next technological breakthrough.
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Image by Hartwig HKD
Read another opinion
Amen. Well said.
And as it relates to other matters, technology is just a tool to facilitate or to help people do the things they need to do.