Can Nepal achieve double digit growth

The caretaker government led by Prime Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai have been stressing on double digit growth. The budget preparation is going on full swing and it is, according to finance minister, supposed to prepare a base for double digit growth.
The idea of double digit growth in itself is not bad but in absence of policy and political stability coupled with weak law and order situation domestic and foreign investors are losing confidence on the country. The political uncertainty has made the investors flee the country as some of them have already started campaigning for the law to invest abroad.
Not only the investors but also the common people — that the UCPN-Maoists claimed to be fighting for — are confused. The gap between haves and have-nots is increasing. In the last one decade, the Gini-coefficient — that measures the income inequality among the entire population of the country — has increased from 34 to 47.3 indicating that the gap is widening further.
But the UCPN-Maoists, instead of creating investment-friendly environment to attract investment that could create job and bridge the gap between rich and poor, are involved in further lengthening the political transition for their political interest.
After a decade-long people's war — in their own words — that took lives of thousands of Nepali youths, the UCPN-Maoists are concentrating now on state capturing instead of developing the nation.
It took over half a century and thousands of people's sacrifice for UCPN-Maoists ideologue Dr Bhattarai to understand that Nepal needs to create jobs that could only reduce the inequalities in income level.
It was in 1959 that Nepali Congress government led by BP Koirala had envisioned of increasing national income, bringing about the fundamental changes in the agriculture, providing adequate social welfare programmes for the people, solving the problem of unemployment and reducing the inequalities in income levels and the distribution of wealth.
But the incumbent Prime Minister, who is prescribing the double digit growth has anything different in the budget for the fiscal year 2012-12 to offer to the people from what BP's government had in 1959, over half century ago, said.
The budget presented by the then finance minister Suvarna Shamsher on August 9, 1959 had cautioned against excessive dependence on foreign aid for development projects. But Dr Bhattarai led government has planned to get commitment of over Rs 100 billion in foreign aid instead of creating jobs inside the country that is only increasing the country's dependency on foreign aid.
Though, the UCPN-Maoists led government time and again claim to create employment and bring inclusive growth, it was Nepali Congress government led by BP Koirala in 1959, that had outlined employment creation and inclusive growth as BP Koirala strongly believed that economic disparity will bring friction and tension in the society. He was a visionary and had foreseen conflict in the making that the UCPN-Maoists led in 1996.
But after a decade long armed conflict that was based on the widening gap in the society between the rich and poor, the UCPN-Maoists came to power but failed to deliver.
For a decade, youths of this country were forced to the jungle and after a decade, with uncertain future, they are forced to search their destiny in the Gulf countries. Dr Baburam Bhattarai came to power on August 28, 2011 and by the end of the 10th month of the current fiscal year some 313,093 youths have left the country in search of greener pasture, due to the government’s failure in creating jobs for them.
Prime Minister BP Koirala on June 26, 1960 — at a press conference of the second five-year plan — had spelled out his goal to create 50,000 new jobs and increasing national income by 30 per cent. BP Koirala knew that the country has twin problems – unemployment and poverty, and without creating employment and more investment on agriculture, the economy cannot grow.
If the UCPN-Maoists are claiming that the country has moved forward, they are wrong. The country is rather moving backward to half a century as the UCPN-Maoists ideologue Dr Bhattarai is prescribing the same solution for the country what BP Koirala did in 1959.
For a decade from 1996 to 2006, the UCPN-Maoists destroyed the infrastructure and agriculture forcing the people to leave their farm and shift to the urban areas for security, and after they entered into the peace agreement in 2006 and ascended the power being the largest party in the Constituent Assembly, they destroyed the governance, policies and the hopes of the Nepalis by forcing the industries to shut down increasing unemployment and destroying the economy.
As it was not enough, instead of promulgating the Constitution, they forced the Constituent Assembly to death on May 27 and send the country to never ending political transition. Never in the history of the country, the political parties were so weak and the society so divided.
Its not that the UCPN-Maoists have not understood that political system alone cannot guarantee peace and development in absence of economic growth but the largest party siding with the regressive forces forced the country to the unending turmoil for its own interest. They seem to be obsessed with their party thinking that the party is bigger than the country. But parties can never ever be bigger than the country; Dr Bhattarai might take another half century to understand it.
The UCPN-Maoists used the power to hijack the economy and captured the state as they have been repeatedly claiming but the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML never took it seriously adding the woes of the people further.