Thursday, December 23, 2021

December 23: Prashant Kishor, MCC, Milan Pandey, Ranju Darshana



To MCC or not to MCC I wish I could say this has been a civil discourse about legitimate concerns over hegemony, but unfortunately, it has been an embarrassing display of political fraud with wilful mischaracterizations for short-term political gain. ............ Conspiracy theories propounded by political hacks have been given free air time on national television, and reproduced wholesale in print without so much as a rejoinder. Legitimate voices, even while raising relevant concerns, have too easily succumbed to personal attacks and mischaracterizations in their arguments. .......... the people have gotten more and more radicalized by blatant disinformation circulated by political actors with vested interests ........... Death threats have even been issued against government officials. A taxi driver casually remarked to me recently that politicians were preparing to “sell the country”.

In every chiya pasal, chautara and bhatti, the conversations appears to be that the MCC will allow American troops to build a base in Nepal and will turn Nepalis into American slaves.

............... an alternative to USAID’s largely bureaucratic and ‘soft development’ focused approach. The MCC would provide time-bound grants that would be administered by the grant-receiving country itself through an independent agency (as opposed to a USAID country office) and focus largely on physical infrastructure ............ Countries who wish to receive the grant also have to apply for themselves, as opposed to being chosen by the US. They have to present their priority areas for investment and ‘compete’ for funding. So far, 25 countries have signed and completed their MCC compacts; eight are currently in development; seven are being implemented; two have been terminated by the MCC itself, and one (Sri Lanka) has been discontinued. ..........

Multiple governments, including that of the Nepali Congress, the CPN-UML, and the Maoists, all worked and negotiated with the MCC in order to present Nepal’s proposal.

............ Nepal will receive $500 million as a grant for two projects — an Electricity Transmission Project that will “build around 315 kilometers of double circuit high capacity 400 kV transmission lines and three new electricity substations”, and a Road Maintenance Project that will work on over 70 kilometers of road on the East-West Highway in Dang district. The electricity project will receive $398.2 million while the road maintenance project will receive $52.2 million. Nepal itself will also have to chip in $130 million of its own for administrative, logistical, and other costs. ............ The MCC requires Parliamentary approval in any country that it operates in. The US has argued that Parliamentary ratification will allow “transparency and an opportunity for Nepalis to understand the project.” .......... Frequent changes in government tend to land large-scale infrastructure projects in limbo (see Melamchi) and as the MCC Compact is a five-year contract, the projects need to be completed in time.

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