| Author | Bhandary, Uddhab Kumar |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no.RD-01-09 |
| Subject(s) | Rural development projects--Nepal--Kaski
|
| Note | A thesis submitted m partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Science, School of Environment, Resources and Development
|
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | Nepal is predominantly a rural country where severity of poverty is higher in the
rural areas. Decentralization act is not much functional due to lack of systematic data, lack
of information on poverty-stricken area, and easy and understandable techniques for
assessing poverty and development situation.
The research has attempted to examine existing DDC database, its adequacy, its
application and further improvement in planning in rural development in Kaski of district,
Nepal through a series of interaction with local planners, local leaders and personnel. The
available numerical data is applied to assess and compare poverty and development
situation in all 43 VD Cs of the district. VDCs were categorized on the basis of income but
it is felt that categorization of VDCs by income alone is not justifiable to predict the
poverty situation ofVDCs and hence social wellbeing index as a proxy of poverty measure
is computed. These two are compared with other sets of composite indices directly or
indirectly reflecting poverty to assess overall situation at VDC level. In another effort, a
series of maps are prepared using individual and composite indices from GIS, to assess and
compare the VDC situations. Statistical techniques are applied to assess the linkages
among indicators and their relationship with composite indices.
The finding reveals that income and social wellbeing - an index a proxy of poverty
measure have weak relation with other individual and composite indices of development
indicators. The indicators such as rural population density, area of VDC with slope greater
than 30 degree, distance of VDCs from the district center and distance of VDCs from the
road head, road density have high correlation with other poverty and development
indicators. Similarly, percentage of thatched roof houses, overall literacy, and percentage
of cultivated land has good correlation with the poverty and development.
In the existing database of the DDC, few natural resource data, health related data
such as child and maternal mortality, birth rate, and other thematic data are to be integrated
for poverty planning. Also, the DDC has to bring consistency in data and uniformity in
standardization of data with other organizations. Similarly, poverty situation assessment is
to be made not only from income and proxy indices directly reflecting poverty but also
from other development related indicators or composite indices constituting sectoral
development indicators. Mapping is an effective tool to assess poverty and make visual
communication of development situation among VDCs for comparative understanding.
It is recommended that increasing few staff at VDC and keeping VDC database
updated, improving amenities of DDC information unit and improving coordination with
other data manager help to enhance existing DDC database quality. It is also strongly
recommended to follow the methodology used here for Village level poverty analysis in
Nepal and other developing countries, with off-course some modification. This
methodology is simple, as 0 to 1 scoring transformation technique used here is easier to
compute composite indices from indictors with opposite nature by simplified manner,
which is demonstrated clearly through this research. The VDC assessment and comparison
using mapping technique is also simple and applicable at local levels. |
| Year | 2001 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Environment, Resources, and Development (SERD) |
| Department | Department of Development and Sustainability (DDS) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Rural Development, Gender and Resources (RD) |
| Chairperson(s) | Routray, Jayant Kumar |
| Examination Committee(s) | Soparth Pongquan ; Shrestha, Rajendra Prasad |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | The German Academic Exchange Service
(DAAD) |
| Degree | Thesis (M.Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2001 |