Development discourses and the making of the "American Valley."

After four years of the establishment of diplomatic relations with Nepal, the American-styled development experiment in Nepal started in 1951. The US government provided the first symbolic foreign aid under the Point Four agreement for mineral exploration and survey along the Himalaya (Skerry et al. 1991; Gurung 1970, 262). Although the population census of Nepal started in the Rana period, the systematic record keeping of the population of Nepal started only after the establishment of the Department of Statistics in 1950 with the support of the United States. Before the census, the UN and the Government of India provided census training to Nepali personnel in 1949, and later a

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UN expert also helped in statistical analysis. The first "modern and complete census" was conducted in two phases: the first one started in 1952 and the second was started and completed in 1954 (NOS 1954). The information was collected from different "zones" and "blocks" from each district to facilitate population census. Districts maps were used to delineate each census block and information of an individual name, age, caste

affiliation, religious affiliation, gender, language, literacy, occupation, and others social data were collected from each household (DOS 1954). Moreover, by the land surveys of India and Pakistan conducted in 1914-1926 and 1945, the US Army Corps of Engineers, also published a land-use classification maps of Nepal in 1955.

Many United States Operation Mission (USOM) publications also represented Nepal as a "long-isolated", and "blank slate" without a socioeconomic and political history of colonialism and thus a suitable space for an economic development experiment (Skerry et al. 1991, 36; Blowers 1973). The census, in particular, discovered the rapid growth of population between 1941 and 1954. It noted that more than ninety percent of the population depends on subsistence agriculture. It also stated that about ten percent of the land areas of Nepal was under cultivation, two third of the cultivated land belonged to big landowners, and landless peasants and tenants farmed most of the land (NOS 1954). Moreover, USOM publications represented most of the mountainous region as steep and "fragile" with a "high population density" and as unsuitable for extensive farming. In contrast, Tarai plains were represented as the only suitable areas for extensive farming (e.g., Bowers 1953; USOM/Nepal 1961; Pant 1956, 11). This classification of Nepal territories into different longitudinal zones and binary representations of Tarai valley and

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people in contrast to the mountainous hills rationalized the development interventions carried out in the Tarai plains after the 1950s.

After 1952, the US, in particular, started to provide major foreign aid and

technical support under the project called the "Village Development Project," which was also known as "Tribhuvan Village Development programme" in Nepali publications. Through USOM initiatives, the US provided foreign aid and technical assistance to help Nepali people to "progress," "modernize" and to "break the bonds of mass misery" and improve a standard of living (USOM/Nepal 1961). In 1954, the US funded the first major foreign development intervention. After individual aids and projects, the USOM began the Rapti Valley Multi-Purpose Development Project (RDVP) in Chitwan Valley in 1956. A leading Nepali member who was involved in the development of the first five-year plant (1956-1960) describes the overall project as "the model project" to show how Nepal needed to do economic development (Pant 1956). The project expected to establish “the American Valley” in the Rapti valley of Chitwan (US Dept. of State 1961, 20; Rubin 1964, 226). More specifically, the USOM Nepal project director in the foreword of a review publication describes the purpose of the project was to tackle common problems such as "disease, poverty, and ignorance" of the Nepali people and to improve the standard of living. That followed USOM initiatives to "help them to help themselves” and “to break the bonds of mass misery"49 _{(USOM/Nepal 1961). The modernization and}

development project included programs such as malaria eradication, road construction, resettlement, land distribution, agriculture expansion, industrial development, forestry,

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and others (USAID 1961; Mishra 2007). As claimed by many scholars, it was indeed the fight between the US, Russia, and China to control non-aligned nations through the tactic of development. When the US-sponsored Village Development Project and the model RVDP project were going on in the Chitwan Valley after mid-1950s, Russia was helping Nepal in building a hydroelectric power station, and China was surveying a road through the Chitwan area (Rubin 1964, 226).

In particular, the first program started in the valley was the Malaria Eradication Program in 1952 until 1961. It involved training Nepali men to spray DDT powder (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethene), map preparation and spatial classification of Tarai region, spraying in all places including inside houses, barns, huts, water bodies and marking homes. In 1959 alone, the team sprayed DDT in more than 420,203 houses. Moreover, the post-Rana government with the support of USOM also started initial resettlement of people from the hills to Chitwan’s Rapti Valley. The project included the resettlement50 of landless and flood-affected hill population for the expansion of

cultivation (Shrestha 2001, 202). The RVDP project aimed to contribute to local and national economic development through the cultivation of food and cash crops in the Tarai plains, and restore "the natural ecological balance of the Himalaya sub-mountain region." The project also attempted to reduce "population pressure" in the hills through

50 _{The development initiatives were primarily guided by the cold war diplomacy (detailed in Chapter 3).}

They aimed to relocate flood and landslide affected landless population from the hills to the Tarai and enhanced more labor power to bring more land under cultivation (Shrestha 2002, 202). Some argue that King Mahendra deliberately promoted the clearance of forest in the southern border of Chitwan (Thori area bordering northern India) and the resettled hill populations for national security purposes. As northern Indian population was rapidly growing in the Tarai region, due to the eradication of malaria, and as the result of an open border, King Mahendra, who was hugely nationalist, initiated hill migration to promote Hill centered Nepali national identity.

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resettlement in the Tarai and to reduce forest degrading practices such as shifting

cultivation in the "fragile" mountains (Pant 1956, 11). It opened up 1200 square miles of fertile land, and 50,000 people were resettled in the valley. The USOM also selected the Rapti valley because of its geographic location as the agricultural and industrial products from the valley could be easily exported to the Indian market because of its proximity to Indian borders (USAID 1961). They provided eight acres of land to each household and established eleven schools (US Dept. of State 1961). RDVP worked through government committees or offices that had the power to allocate and regulate land distribution. Although initially intended to distribute land to landless and flood victims of 1954, "the RVDP's handling of land allocation was marked by rampant malfeasance, nepotism, and patronage" (Kansakar 1985,114 in Shrestha 2002, 205).

Moreover, the project helped to form a Village Development Council in each village. The panchayat or the "nine-man" council functioned as the intermediary between the people and the project team and also functioned as a self-help group in which people participated in projects relevant to daily life including the construction and maintenance of water canals, wells, irrigation, etc. (UoM 1970, 9551). The project helped to establish more than 3400 village councils in Tarai and social and economic development such as road construction and sawmill establishment (Shrestha 2001, 202; Mishra 2007). Following a project to eradicate malaria, the US helped to open up a 56 mile, two lane gravel road connecting Kathmandu valley.

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