What Shiba Sharma has done for her village of Sisaniya in Dang district cannot be measured in dollars and cents. Being a trained nurse has helped this elected village leader come up with different priorities. While VDC chairmen in other villages would go for roads and bridges, Shiba's concerns are day-care centres, immunisation programmes for children, or spreading awareness to pig farmers to control the spread of a deadly encephalitis epidemic.

Shiba's medical background makes her passionate about raising the health standards of women and children in this village on the East-West highway. And she strongly believes that the first line of defence against communicable diseases is proper information on prevention. Her community has just finished a campaign to get every villager to construct latrines. Then Shiba got a bright idea: why let the waste go waste? So she has got her own biogas plant at home hooked up to the latrine so that there is more gas production. Following her example, other village families are following suit. This has reduced their dependence on the surrounding forests, and the trees have started growing back.

Shiba finds it much easier to convince the women in her village about health matters: "Women are naturally much more effective in spreading awareness, they take the message to their children and to their husbands." The other aim of this energetic leader is to build enough schools and upgrade the quality of the education so that children grow up with knowledge that is more relevant to their daily lives. "Education is no good if you are just cramming all the time from text books to pass exams," she says. Shiba is often called on to deliver babies, treat children, and even make house calls to tend sick water buffaloes.

With local elections due next year, Shiba is not sure she wants to stand again from her Marxist-Leninist party. "There are some things you can't do as a VDC chairperson that you can do as a political activist," she says. Like contesting a member of parliament seat, maybe?