Britain's Department for International Development (UK) has agreed to give Nepal ?19.5 million to support programmes that would facilitate pro-poor governance. The money is to be used over an eight-year period in projects to improve governance. The Prime Minister's Office is the counterpart to DFID's Enabling State Programme (ESP), chiefly because governance issues overlap different government agencies and departments. Without any pre-conceived projects, the ESP will provide funds for activities formulated by Nepalis. "The idea is to get Nepalis to conceive, design and implement activities to improve governance and take responsibility for the outcome," says Sailendra Sigdel, ESP national programme adviser. "It's a programme seeking not to build bridges or roads but to change behaviour."

ESP essentially aims at making Nepalis capable of taking charge of the change they want and involving them in the entire process. It hopes to enable or facilitate "change advocates" to function as pressure groups to bring about the desired changes in governance. Though an idealistic goal, DFID seems convinced it is worth a shot. Which explains why-unlike most projects funded through bilateral grants that budget as much as 40 percent of programme funds to pay advisers from donor nations-ESP has just 4 percent of the kitty set aside for External Technical Assistance. Even that will be spent on monitoring. "We'll be closely monitoring the programme to ensure no specific interest group hijacks it," says Michael Lowe, ESP manager.