Counterpoint: Ropeway to Alto?
The World Bank has actively pushed roadmaking in Nepal, calling roads the "backbone of development'. Mechanised transport provides access to markets, so that farmers shift to cash crops; and in turn, roads are necessary for those trying to reach the farmers with external farm inputs like fertilisers and seeds. Robin Jenkins' classic Road to Alto documents this process of "the development of underdevelopment'. Alto in Portugal was a self-sufficient economy, with a stable, sustainable agricultural pattern practiced for centuries. There were no major disparities, and people helped each other during the occasional drought. The community didn't need many external inputs. This utopia could have gone on forever, but for the coming of a six-kilometre tarred road. The farmers moved to cash crops and the cash economy; soon, the village was not producing enough food for itself and became dependent on external seeds, fertilisers, finance. The middlemen gained the most from this conversion. "The old socio-economic structure, where everyone had their place and nothing much ever changed, no longer exists. In its place there is a system in which any land becomes increasingly seen as a potential source of profit. The old stability and predictability has gone forever, to be replaced by the competitiveness and the mentality of a gold rush. All because of six kilometres of tarred road.'
These dilemmas could apply to ropeways as well, as they, too, seem to bring in "development' to areas that are "backward' and inaccessible. What will this new access do to communities that have kept their cultural and socio-economic systems going? Already, in Barpak, some villagers have taken to growing sugarcane for outside markets. What will happen to subsistence cropping? As for the anticipated rise in tourism, Nepal is already feeling the footprint. Trekkers have littered Nepal with 50,000 kg of garbage and each trekker uses up as much fuelwood daily as a Nepali household does in a week.
Thus, questions must be answered by advocates of new forms of development. These communities, writes Jenkins, are "not just a backward pocket of resistance to progress. They and their increasingly subordinated culture are far more relevant to the future of mankind than any of them would ever believe'.