I would like to invite you to very exciting seminar by Dr Manohara Khadka on aid and exclusion in community forestry to be held on June 18 in Kathmandu.

Over the past few years, we have read reports and listened to presentations that attribute exclusion in local community forestry practices to some local elites or the exclusionary power structure. But is exclusion is wholly a local phenomenon? Dr Manohara Khdka has an uncommon but a very sensible finding here: local level exclusion in Nepal’s community forestry (CF) is actually more because of the exclusionary, class-insensitive and apolitical approach of aid agencies that ostensibly claim to achieve just the opposite. Dr Khadka argues that ‘aid has a role to play in exclusion’ as it has remained a key input to the development of CF in Nepal since the eighties. I found this claim consistent with wider literature on aid and developmental impacts in Nepal.

So for her, it is now time to interrogate not the local level ‘elites’, but the national elites in the policy and aid circles (perhaps including ourselves) about how they reinforce the local, exclusionary power structure, and secondly, whether they have themselves walked the talk of ‘inclusion’.

Her evidence proves that these second-order elites have adopted ‘techno-scientific and instrumental view’ too frequently undermining the participatory philosophy. Her research indicate many overt and covert configurations of power and self-serving enterprises. Dr Khadka does not aim to provide a recipe of inclusive policy process, but certainly challenge all to think beyond the boxes, and offer a clear take home message: how could be policy and aid actors operating at national and international circles actually be held accountable to the poor and excluded groups to whom they claim to serve?

I hope you find this topic interesting and engaging, and would be able to join the presentation of Dr Khadka (and also discussions) on June 18 at 3-5 pm at Department of Forest Training Hall at Babarmahal, Kathmandu. As you are aware, this is the fifth presentation of the National Forest Policy Seminar we started March this year.