Looking at Development and Donors

Looking at Development and Donors is a collection of essays written by Dr Devendra Raj Panday over a span of almost 27 years on the topic of development, foreign aid and donors. Despite, or perhaps because of, the many avatars that the author has taken over this period – Nepal’s head of the foreign aid division and finance secretary in the 1970s, finance minister in the first post-1990 interim democratic government, development specialist and a leading figure in civil society today – the essays display a remarkable consistency. His writings offer penetrating critiques of changes in the development world and their effects on Nepal, Nepali elites, development, democracy, civil society and notions of what is political. The cumulative critique of development and foreign aid in this volume emphasizes the importance of thinking anew the basic questions of why Nepal has not developed and the complex historical and current intended and unintended consequences of foreign aid.