THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

6. Specifically, while the Project Memorandum claimed that every
attempt would be made to encourage self-sufficiancy and self-help in the
communities, previous experience had shown that such programmes needed
careful planning, There was no provision for this in the Memorandum,
Sean considered the problems most likely to arise in implementing the
project would stem from the institutfonal constraints of the relevant
government department, In the Forestry Department, only 50% of staff
were normally to be found in post at any one time, none were trained in
community forestry, and all were liable to be transferred across Nepal
regularly and at short notice. The local pancavat was another crucial
political institution apparently not taken into account in project
planning.
Sean also questioned the underlying premisses on which the project
was based, Since 30% of the Kosi Hi1 1s area was said to be covered by
forest and woodland, and 63% of egricultural and settlement areas with a
residual cover of trees, he felt that a good case for aid to the sector
on environmental grounds did not appear to have been made. He further
pointed out that the stated aim of increasing community managed and
private forests in four districts by 6,300 ha in a five year period (at
a total cost of t3,468,000) was not much better than that achieved under
the much-criticised KHARDEP, and muld not even match the estimated rate
of degradation (2,500 ha per year or 12,500 ha over five years),
7, Cf. Sacherer's experience as a development anthropologist working
for a Swiss development project in Nepal: l~obviously (in retrospect),
one lone anthropologist was a much easier and safer tar~et for all of
the latent hostilities toward the organization hierarchy than forthright
criticism of those who held the contractual and financial powerW
(1986:253),
8. My experience seems to have paralleled Sacherer's again: "I came to
realize that the very fact I had been hired by the European office and
sent out to do a survey which involved certain questions about project
politics and impacts, made me not only perceived as an outsider, but a
possi ble management spym (1986: 2531,
9, A panc-, divided into its constituent wards, was the basic unit
of state political organization, There were 39 WB in
Sankhuwasabha district.
10, An analysis of the population distribution of the Yakha and its
implications is given in Chapter Three,
11, Of Dhankuta, BhoJpur, Terhathum and Sankhuwasabha, the four
districts covered by the 'K3' project, only Dhankuta was served by a
road.
12, Cf, Sscherer. She found some of the questions asked of her were
realistic and relevant, but others (such as 'how will the social,
economic, cultural, and political behavior of the people in the project
be influenced through all the project activities (long-range 20-year
objective of the study)?') were so broad they were "basically
unanswerable by present day social science methods" (1986:252), The
difference between us was perhaps that her questions were asked by