Daniel Lak's angry call for those in the "development industry" to speak about the current state of Nepal is well aimed ("A developing crisis", # 121). Having both worked within the development machinery ourselves, this criticism strikes an uncomfortable nerve. There is now a move towards hiring consultants-and consequent diverting of funds-to continually re-analyse the situation. The focus of what needs to be done, and how that needs to be done is shifting, for example like working on issues around conflict displaced people and figuring out new ways of working in conflict effected areas. Many analyses have been done but the impact of the policies and working practices of the development agencies themselves are all too often omitted. What appears lacking in the public domain is much evidence of analytical self reflection, and the lack of analysis and focus on some of the development organisations' practices themselves. These are frequently based on ideologies of privatisation and marketisation, for example. Yet despite many practitioners (and we include ourselves here) best intentions the effects of what we do, may be quite different to what is intended. We only have to think of the rise in the number of private pharmacies and the increased expenditure for many marginalised ill, frequently on useless profit driven treatments, as one possibility. Might they further enhance poverty and marginalisation for many and thus feed a disenchantment that fuels directly the rise of increasingly violent and radical ideologies? Questions like this are vitally important to pose and research in these current times, and not just reject as being too ideologically focused. Given the influence development organisations have in Nepal, their absence in these analyses results in an increasingly distorted picture of the way in which the current situation is represented. There is now a desperate need to redress this gap to include the aid machinery itself in any further critical analyses of the current situation, however uncomfortable that may be.

Dr Ian Harper and
Sandra MacDonagh by e-mail