Kedar Sharma's profile of Hari Prasad Pandey ("Mea Culpa," #92) has factual mistakes. Arun III was a $1.083 billion project, not $400 million, and was cancelled in August 1995 and not in 1993. Pandey's tenure in the UML cabinet lasted only six months from December 1994 to May 1995, during which he directed a ministry review of Arun III. It showed that on all civil construction counts the project was four to five times more expensive than the private sector rates in Nepal. Three years earlier, Nepali Congress' Basu Risal had taken a similar initiative that culminated in his unceremonious sacking. Hari Pandey's audit too was not palatable to his UML bosses, who dumped him back in political limbo. It was during his replacement Pradeep Nepal's watch that the communist government wrote to the World Bank that "we agree to all the conditionalities" on Arun III, despite having previously called them "harmful to national interests". Notwithstanding this grovelling, the Bank withdrew support for the project on grounds that the economic "risks were too great for Nepal". However, Pandey is right in feeling guilty about not promoting alternatives to Arun III during his tenure: his own subsequent investment in the 3 MW Piluwa Khola hydro in the Arun valley ("Hari the hydro entrepreneur," #82) makes much more economic sense than Arun III, and the UML still has no political vision for such an approach.

Dipak Gyawali,
Lalitpur