Nepal can probably learn more from Vietnam than from the West

I would like share with you all some of my thoughts that may or may not deserve a place in this blog:

When I have been outside of Nepal, I don't think I have thought as much about my country as I have done in the past five weeks. Of course, much of this stems from the fact that Vietnam (at least Hanoi and the countryside) looks very similar to Nepal. But I would attribute it more to the fact that I am studying a developing country for the first time.

In Nepal, people always look up to developed countries like the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, and so on. So I have always thought that the road to development lies only in the expertise of these countries. And probably when I go back home to Nepal and tell my relatives and neighbors that I went to Vietnam to study, they will probably think that I wasted my time here. But this Global Seminar is the one time I could connect whatever I was learning inside and outside the classroom to my country. In the past five weeks, I have realized that I had been underestimating the value of knowledge one developing country can impart to another one.

I am not necessarily talking about the rapid economic development that is happening in Vietnam right now and how much Nepal could learn from it. Of course, that is a big lesson that Nepal could take from Vietnam. But from a personal perspective, when I studied the Vietnamese history and how the landless tenants and the peasants were oppressed, how they were mobilized using Leninist ideas, how they were motivated to fight a war, I feel like I have come to better understand the lives of the people in the countryside that led to the beginning of the 10 year-long civil war in my own country that supposedly ended in 2006. It is fascinating for me to learn that the communist revolutions in Vietnam and Nepal had so many similarities. Literally, when I was reading about the Vietnamese people in the 1930's, I could visualize my own people and how miserable their lives are.

But yet, Vietnam has been able to overcome a lot of challenges and has been able to march on the road to economic development in recent days. And I think, in practical terms, Vietnam's story would be more relevant to Nepal than an American or a British story. When I hear bits and pieces about America's or Britain's historical events, I cannot connect to them in the same way I can connect to a Vietnamese historical event. I think it has a lot to do with the type of people that inhabit these two different societies, the type of culture they have had, the type of economic systems they have had and the historical paths that these countries have taken. And clearly, Nepal is more similar to Vietnam on these grounds. I think this extends to the stories of economic development. Western countries and the Asian countries have different people, society, economy and circumstances. Hence, whatever works in France may not work in Nepal. The business model of Sweden may not work in Nepal because the Swedes may have a different way of doing business than the Nepalese. The agriculture machinery the Americans use may not serve the Nepalese as well because the land distribution in the US is different from that in Nepal.

Thus, I think it is time to stop, look back and evaluate Nepal's development strategy. It might be better for Nepal to look up to a country more similar to itself for advice than going for a country far above in the development spectrum that has different types of people, cultures, and societies. And Vietnam is not a bad option.