Rural Poverty

Poverty is one of the major characteristics of underdeveloped, undeveloped and developing nation. Absence of any things which we are in need of is poverty. Definition of poverty does not only mean lack of sufficient incomes but lack of many other things like education, safe drinking water, political participation and so on. Poverty is a result of social phenomenon, which is the result of social and economic inequality.  

Poverty is the condition of lacking full access to fundamental human needs such as food, shelter and safe drinking water. Poverty is a condition measured only in terms of living standard and resources of a given society at a particular time. Poverty is not only lack of basic needs but lack of anything which we need is poverty. So, poverty is not only cause by low revenue. Deforestation, intensive farming are some of the environmental factors that cause poverty. 

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Indigenous Technologies in Nepal

Indigenous people in Nepal are practicing variety of simple local technologies that have been developed from their long term traditional knowledge and experiences. The concept indigenous denotes that they are locally generated within an existing cultural and social tradition using local tools and knowledge.

In Earlier writings it has been suggested that local indigenous technologies are sustainable, practical, maintainable and equitable. The reason behind was that those technologies have the following characteristics:

v  Low capital inputs

v  Can be maintained by existing organizations

v  Closely adapted to local physical environment

v  Fit existing systems of ownership, obligation and authority

Indigenous knowledge and technologies that can be found in different sectors, such as transportation, agriculture etc. are considered as wealth of Nepal. Such technologies have helped to enhance the self-reliance of rural peoples, particularly rural farmers. 

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Local Appropriate Technology – Nepal’s Experience with both Technology

Appropriate technology is the technology that is designed with special consideration to the environmental, cultural aspects of the community. With these goals in mind, appropriate technology typically requires fewer resources. When a community solves their own problem on their own terms, they have a sense of control, and there is a strong likelihood that the solution will work with the guidance of an expert. Implemented technologies will be appropriate for their cultural values and lifestyles, will be made of materials that can be obtained locally. Building a mutual trust is the first step in the exploration of a problem. Once a trust is built, the community will be more willing to work alongside the outside workers to solve their problem in their way. When the problem is solved in a way that the community is comfortable with, there is a much greater likelihood that the technology will be used and will benefit the community.

Some more sectors where appropriate technologies have helped the rural people a lot in meeting their daily needs and provided the opportunities of income generating as well.

Some are as follows:

Electricity can be provided from solar cells, wind power or micro hydro, with energy stored in batteries. Bio diesel and straight vegetable oil can be appropriate and cheaper than fossil fuels.

Rocket stove improves fuel efficiency and reduces harmful indoor air pollution.

Appropriate technology in the context of Nepal has great significance because the country is not in a position to afford or to import high and erudite technologies. Therefore, technologies that are made of using the traditional knowledge, experiments and with the locally available resources are useful for the rural people. In Nepal, various appropriate technologies have been established and endorsed by different organizations. Some of them are: sudhariyeko chulo (improved cooking stoves (ICS), pani ghatta (watermills), biogas, solar PV systems and solar thermal energy devices such as solar dryer, solar cooker, solar water heater, passive solar heating, etc. The advantage of appropriate technology in a developing country like Nepal are manifold. Due to lack of proper infrastructure and financial constraints in investment in science and technology, it may play an important role in solving contemporary development challenges.

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Traditional knowledge of resource management

Traditional knowledge in general sense is handed down knowledge from the old generation to new generation. It is an old knowledge and often may be transferred through oral form. Traditional knowledge implies the static and low level of change. Local villagers’ perceptions and their control and management of common properties and natural resources. The culture is defined as obtained acquaintance that people use to interpret experience and to generate social behaviour.  The traditional knowledge of the communities passed down orally. 

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Rural People’s Knowledge

Rural people’s knowledge has been developed based on the long experiences. Their knowledge is very helpful in agricultural practices and in conversation of natural resources. Rural people’s knowledge and modern scientific knowledge are complementary in their strengths and weaknesses. In this way, modern scientific and sophisticated knowledge is disseminating to inform and uplift the rural masses. For the rural poorer people, exotic cattle are usually either impossible or unattractive as investments. Rural people’s knowledge has been variously described as people’s science, ethno science, folk ecology and village science. Local knowledge is tempting for its simplicity. Knowledge of the observable environment is also often very detailed. A strength of rural people’s knowledge is the faculties which maintain, extend, and correct it. Such rural knowledge is at the same time vulnerable and adaptable. Rural people’s knowledge can be underpinned and enhanced by a richness of discrimination.

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Indigenous Knowledge System and Development

Indigenous knowledge is unique to a particular culture and civilization. Indigenous knowledge as potential resource for rural community. Building on local knowledge, the basic component of any country’s information structure, is the first step to assemble such capital. Sharing knowledge with the poor is the most effective when we also solicit knowledge from them about their needs and circumstances. Indigenous knowledge is sometimes used to include the agricultural knowledge of local farmers or settler.

Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge are often used interchangeably. Indigenous knowledge is a long term knowledge. It has the predictability capacity. It has passed from generation to generation throughout human civilizations. They have acquired their knowledge and skills over many generations and have developed sophisticated methods for managing their environment and social relations. The indigenous knowledge is the local people’s knowledge and therefore this knowledge system can be used in resource management, systems of irrigation and drinking water control, appropriate energy development and pasture management.

Indigenous knowledge provides the basis for problem solving strategies for local societies, especially the poor. It represents a significant component of global knowledge on development issues. Indigenous knowledge is an underutilized resource in the development process. Understanding indigenous knowledge can increase receptiveness to consumers. Indigenous knowledge is an imperative part of the survives of the poor. It is an essential part of the local ecology. Indigenous knowledge is the ideal outcome of a successful transfer and dissemination. 

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Local Institutions Building for Sustainable Development

Local institutions are very helpful to organize the disadvantaged and dis-empowered to work for social justice and defensible development. If we reassure and sustenance organizations of local people, it enables them to play an answerable role in development with proper knowledge and utilization of the local resources.

In the community level, community based organizations are formed and developing as a self-governing institutions. They have been intensely functioning to know the goals of sustainable development in the community level by focusing on various ecological managements, monetary growth and community growth works by means of using participatory approaches of development. Local institutions helps to develop the capacity to plan and implement integrated local natural resources management. Local institutions helps to reduce the pressure on natural forests by operating income group deeds, saving and credit systems, private agroforestry systems, community plantation, etc.

Therefore we can say that indigenous people or community based institutions are as old as the community themselves. Indigenous institutions are mostly culture specific. All indigenous institutions are primarily community based and characterized by homogeneity in its composition in terms of ethnic groups. 

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Rural Livelihood Diversity in Developing Countries

Livelihoods are also about creating and embracing new opportunities. A livelihood is considered to consist of the possessions, actions, and privileges that enable people to make a living. Possessions may consist of natural resources, aptitudes, information, assistance, and employment opportunities. It is important to realize that assets are not only natural resources, such as land-living, marine, fisheries, crystals, but they may also include social, political, human, physical and financial dimensions. Actions are things that people do to gain a living and these will usually be based on available assets. Activities may be based on acquired information and assistance, thus education and training has a prominent position in a sustainable livelihoods approach to sustainable development. Information and assistance may also be acquired through traditional, cultural processes. Entitlements refer to those things that people may rely upon because of legal or customary rights. It may include the mutual the mutual support structures that are often included with village life in many different cultures. It brings all relevant aspects of people’s lives and livelihoods into development.

Rural livelihood is defined as the process by which households construct a diverse portfolio of activities and social support capabilities for survival and in order to improve their standard of living. Having alternatives for income generation can make the difference between minimally viable livelihoods and destitution. The diversity of livelihoods is an important feature of rural survival but often overlooked by the architects of strategy. In this sense, diverse living systems are less susceptible than expanded ones. A livelihood is environmentally sustainable when it maintains or enhances the local and global assets in which livings depends. It may include the mutual the mutual support structures that are often included with village life in many different cultures. It brings all relevant aspects of people’s lives and livelihoods into development.

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Culture and Traditions in Development: Ethical Vision and Policy Directions

Traditions is rooted in any culture and it is very difficult to over pass those traditions during implementation of any development projects. Tradition is a part of a culture in society and hence to consider traditions and traditional knowledge while formulating development projects is essential. Traditions guide local people in every aspect of their life. Innovations, means to development, occur in every society, simpler or complex, primitive or advanced. Culture and traditions are major determinants of development. However, every culture and traditions do not help in development. Culture is one of the major factors that influence development.

The fundamental connection between culture and ethics is ethical considerations are product of particular cultures. Cultures fifer from society to society and also within a society. In a society people with different cultures live. So, when we make development projects and report it to the local people, it is difficult to access and predict the type of response our messages and actions will produce because our society is composed with multicultural people. Everyone has dignity and self-respect in their society and culture. Everyone wants some level of dignity, respect and a feeling of worth. It is our contention that an ethical stance gives this respect to every human beings. So, development workers must give worth this respect to every human beings.

All people have right to be equal and equal right to be different. All cultures have some similarities in their cultures. A complete and honest intercultural ethic grants similarities and recognizes differences. Culture essentially is a business of evolving values and norms in a free and open atmosphere. Hence, all groups of people having their own culture are to be integrated in the development process. 

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Culture and Civilization with its Behavioral Aspects

Civilization includes all the materialistic developments of the world which are the products of human advancements. It includes material or concrete things used by human being such as house, household commodities, and different kind of apparatus, instruments, weapons, pots and any means of conveniences. Both civilization and culture are changing but the rate of change of civilization is much faster than culture. Civilization, the comfortable condition of modern society, passes from one society to another easily but culture, the value, attitude and beliefs of a society takes a long time to change. Civilization has precise standard of measurement but not culture. The products of civilization are more easily communicated than those of cultures. Culture and civilization are interdependent to each other.

Behavior of man reflects his culture as culture has great influence in humanoid beings life. Culture includes performance learned intentionally or unintentionally through different formal and informal modes – that exert influence directly or indirectly on the individual in a society. Culture is one particular kind of observable behavior which behavior is the rest of observable behavior. We should study culture in behavior, not in of it. Culture as a constitutive part of development. Culture factors influence economic behavior. Both culture and civilization are man-made. One is for ease and luxury and other is for his pleasure and delight.

Development today does not refer to the economic development, but the overall development of society and its people. People cannot exist in isolation, they live in groups, compete with each other and interact in many ways. There are also different symbols which reflect the development of individuals and civilization. The cryptograms may be different in different civilization but there are different symbols which are used to reflect different aspects of society. Culture can help a country in economic development. The cultural factors influenced by religion are the principle obstacles to modernization. 

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Culture and Development Process in Rural Development

Study of anthropology, as well as development, culture is one of the major dimensions of development. Culture is one of the major branches in anthropology and without considering cultural aspects, no development projects can be successful. Culture and development together studies the role of culture on human beings and their development. This is the study of role of culture on development action of human beings in group and vice versa. Culture generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and prominence. Culture is manifested in melody, fiction, image and statuette, cinema and film and other things.

Most of the human behavior comes from learning and communicating with other socialized being. Human beings acquire some characteristics and become social by associations with other people. Culture may be started as embodiment of customs, traditions, spirits, views, feasts, delusions, organizations, etc. Culture consists of mode of life created by man and includes all the arts and artifacts resulting from symbolic interaction among men. A particular culture consists of the mode of life characteristics of a particular society. Culture is a process and involving culture in development implies the shift from goal oriented planning with open ends and branching goals. 

Culture is an essential dimension of development. The core of culture is a system of knowledge and a set of shared ideas. It catalyze local level development through communities using their diverse social, cultural and economic resources. Diversity strategies of human development and capacity building for knowledge based dynamic societies. It helps to support their cultural norms and values for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. Culture includes behavior learned consciously or unconsciously through different formal and informal modes that exert influence directly or indirectly on the individual in a society. Everyone knows that people may specify a norm or rule for proper behavior in particular circumstances in fact not everyone. Every man/society believes that their culture is superior then other’s culture. 

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Development Discourse assemblage with Social Science

There is increasing recognition of social science knowledge in development discourse. In recent times, social science has been significantly observed as a discipline capable of making major contributions to an understanding of what hinders and facilitates the development practice. Prior to that date, there was a prodigious impact of economics in the development programs and policies. There was completely absence of Anthropologists and Sociologist within the development community. Much of past beliefs about the exercise of non-economic social sciences become now out of date or vanishing. Discourse subsume performs and provisions, with very factual possessions. The progression discourse is dynamically interrelated with development practice, affecting the actual design and implementation of projects.

Considering development as discourse has raised important question about the nature of development knowledge and its interface with other representations of reality. Development is just taken as an organizing discourse, Anthropologists views the development discourse as inconstant, and they can service to transmute growth discourse from within. They preach that growth dissertation is liable to change than being monolithic and static. The discourse can be changed and new practices and knowledge can be and are introduced. The discourse is also far more diverse and challenged. Development discourse is fundamental to how the world is represented and controlled by those power and social science has much to say about it.   

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Inevitability of Anthropological Knowledge in Rural Development

Rural development involves extending the benefits of development to the poorest among those who seek a living in the bucolic area. Hence, rural development is a plan intended to develop rural people, especially those who are socially, economically and politically retrograde and underprivileged. Rural development does not only means monetary enrichment of society or people, but overall development such as empowerment, participation in all development activities, right to speak and vote, access to education and health services, access to law and all the basic needs of life.

Development is the eradication of poverty, but today poverty does not only mean economic poverty but it means human poverty, such as lack of education, health services, low life expectancy at birth, empowerment, etc. Rural development is a strategy designed to uplift the living standard of people living in rural areas who are deprived of basic needs of life. It is simply not possible to neglect the poor any more. They are loudly demanding their share in the development process. In Nepal, where development and welfare programs for the very poor have always been accorded higher priority, (though those programs have not been success due to different reasons) the one overriding objective of all major government socio-economic plans and programs today is all alleviate wide spread poverty.  

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Development and Practicing of Anthropology and Critique

Development is a universal problem which has drawn the attention of third world or developing countries to the identical problem. Different rehearses which were used in the past are viewed as antecedents of development, thought the term development was not used at the time. Development anthropology is the application of anthropological knowledge, theories, methods, and approaches for the purpose of betterment of people of particular societies. Development anthropology implies both an approach in applied anthropology and a specialization and modernization of anthropological knowledge on development field.

Development anthropology refers to the application of anthropological perspectives to the multidisciplinary branch of growth studies. It takes global development and global aid as key substances. The various influences on the local populace, environment, social and economic life are to be examined. They prepare development projects which are compatible to the local ethnic systems. They influence native peoples to develop their self-mechanisms to face environmental problems. Anthropologists are most aware of the human problems while formulating development policies. Anthropologists conduct detail field work to collect sufficient information required for the project. 

Practicing anthropologists also known as vested interest anthropologists. Those anthropologists who choose to trade their ability or information to the market. Basically they become consultants and they do whatever the official customized to do. Many of these classification anthropologists call themselves advocacy anthropologists. Anthropologists have commenced the study of human problems involved in the technological changes which are taking place in all underdeveloped areas.  

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Development as Freedom, Liberation and Empowerment

Development is considered as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. Growth of GNP or of individual incomes can be very important as means to expanding the freedoms enjoyed by the members of the civilization. But freedoms depend on social and economics arrangements as well as political and civil rights. Similarly, industrialization or technological progress or social modernization can substantially contribute to expanding social sovereignty, but choice depends on other influences as well. The relation between individual freedom and the achievement of social development goes well beyond the constitutive connection-important as it is.

Development requires the removal of major sources of unfreedom. Freedom in central to the process of development. Overcoming these problems is a central part of the exercise of growth. Development of freedom is viewed both as the primary end and as the principal means of development. The removal of substantial unfreedoms is constitutive of development. Although there has been a lot progress in health, education, trade, commerce and communication yet there are many new problems as well as old ones.

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Why Third World Diversities and Dilemmas for Development Discourse?

The world has been divided in First and Third World. The problems are more serious to the poor groups and they are the most victims. They are suffering from poverty, displacement, unemployment and so on. Affluent groups are not losing since they are in better position to adjust to change.

Development is not undertaken to provide opportunities to any particular group. It seeks to promote wider national interests for the benefit of all. For the same reason, the environmentally harmful technologies, the dependence on non-renewable resources, and even the possibilities for tragic calamities are also seen as acceptable risks. Social, cultural and political systems reflect an innate human attribute of decision-making on what is good or what is bad, and together decide the direction for development.

Still, there is no doubt that without irrigation works, it is impossible to meet the demand of growing populations for food; without hydro power the programs of industrial growth will come to a halt; without transportation and such basic amenities as housing, water, etc. the life in cities just cannot move on. The fact also needs to be faced that the process of development affects different groups differently. Some stand to gain, while others lose. This seems to be a continuing dilemma in development. 

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Monolithic to Polycentric Notion for Development Discourse

Monolithic notion of development has tried to define and understand the development process as static and unchangeable while polycentric notion defines the development process as changeable. Polycentric notion states the development discourse can be modified by the introduction of new objects and variables that could be introduced in time intervals.

It is based on the conventional notion of transfer of technology providing technical information passed form the experts to the ignorant. The approaches are based on the one way model of development, communication which is incompatible with a focus on participation of the people. It is based on the materialistic and mechanistic philosophy born of the west and rejects the reinforcing material, social and spiritual part of non-western society. It has a national framework and pays little attraction to the interest of the group for whom the development is meant for.

The development concept is conceived and implemented by a central authority which determines priorities as well as the areas and strategies of development without prior consultation with people about their feelings and needs of development.

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Remote Sensing for environmental resource mapping

Remote sensing is the science and art of collecting, obtaining, analyzing, information of an impartial sensations or area acquired by a device that is not in contact with the purpose, zone or portents under research. Remote sensing is the outcome of development of science and technology. Although, it has wide range of application for environmental source investigation, supervision, demonstration and mapping. It is increasingly been used because of its different positive aspects such as repetitive use in all seasons with high accuracy in different context.

Remote sensing is the mechanisms, systems and devices to observe the earth's surface at a distance and to interpret the images obtain in order to acquire meaningful information of a particular substances on earth. The characteristics measured by a sensor are the electromagnetic energy reflected on emitted by the ground apparent. A true colorful is made sensitive to the primary colors by coating three separate color layers – blue, green, red. It is also cost effective inaccessible parts or areas such as, high altitude mountain at the time.

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