Themselves IPS news reports appear daily in English, German, Finnish, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish. Villagers in this remote settlement in the kingdom's western plains bordering India would be excused if they felt far away from the movers and shakers in Nepal's capital 1,000 km away. In Supauli and thousands of other villages across Nepal, people have stopped waiting for assistance from Kathmandu and have revived the traditional community spirit to organise self- help. During the monsoons, Supauli's fields are flooded, and the village is even more cut off than usual.
Children have to negotiate treacherous flooded paths on their way to school.
Similar community organisations across Nepal are organising cooperatives to run community biogas plants, build trails and bridges and to learn income-generation skills. Seeing that there is energy and commitment for self-sustaining development in rural areas, the government in Kathmandu is also taking interest. The project, in a way, is trying to prepare local people to organise themselves, to manage their own affairs effectively, and to strengthen communities,'' says an official at the Local Development Ministry in Kathmandu. With the realisation that Kathmandu has to let go in order to allow progress at the local levels, the Nepali government with the consensus of political parties, is set to introduce a bill on decentralisation in the current session of Parliament. For decades ''decentralisation'' has been a buzzword that rulers of the day paid lip service to but were never serious about implementing.