NEPAL

The government of Nepal (8) has striven for many years to eradicate ignorance, poverty and ill health. Massive injections of money and effort have been poured into education and development in a series of large projects. These excellent intentions have failed to produce the required results in spite of education, the growth of industry, high technology and the so-called Green Revolution.     Many initially apparent successes have created larger problems than they have solved. The rich, educated, influential towns-people comprise but a fraction of the population and are still growing even further away from the masses of poor villagers. Annapurna from the Pokara Lumle Trail, Nepal).

• Education,
• technology,
• industrial and agricultural production,
• trade and
• economics

are geared more and more to modern methods which suck the profits away from rural communities and into the hands of the powerful few. The so-called "trickle-down" effect of this wealth creation is quickly absorbed by middlemen and fails to raise the living standards and self-respect of the poorest sector.

To reverse this trend the need is for a completely new and integrated approach to rural education and development. This, being village rather than town-based, can inspire such self-respect among the rural people, enabling them to

• regain control of their own lives and economies,
• turn their villages once more into self-reliant, rewarding and happy communities, and
• prevent urban drift.

The late General Aditya Rana's Anara Model Farm Project, based near a poor Terai village aimed at this result by working from the grass-roots upwards using locally available resources. During the six months I spent helping Rana with his project, I was deeply impressed by the good intentions at all levels, the creative manual skills amongst the villagers and the warmth and trust showed by all I met. The poverty, particularly in Kathmandu, was appalling. The erosion and flooding caused by bad forestry and ill-planned irrigation projects made Rana's model farm an essential step in the right direction.

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