Pramod Dhakal: Innovation & Human Liberation Blueprint of Nepal

Pramod Dhakal, PhD, is a board member of the National Innovation Center and the Nepal Science Foundation Trust. He is also the author of Reinterpretation of Eastern Philosophy (2019). He holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology and MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Dhakal’s diverse career spans roles as a high school teacher, university faculty member, senior engineer, software developer, system analyst, software architect, senior consultant, senior scientist, head of a university department, and manager of engineering research and development. His work has primarily focused on teaching, software, telecommunication systems, and engineering research.

In this write-up, he presents a blueprint for innovation and human liberation in Nepal.

Planning

The National Planning Commission has released its 16th five-year plan for national development this year. It prompts a crucial question: “Seven decades of planned development! Where are we?” This also underscores a fundamental issue: planning without “systems thinking” can lead us nowhere. For too long, we have pursued “national development” without a clear definition of “development,” and without a clearly established national goal. Our fixation on economic development, blind to sustainability, self-sufficiency, and liberty has resulted in mixed results at best. Is there anything for which the world could come here to learn from? Do we have any largely aspiring national goals?

Right national goal

How about human liberation! This foremost human aspiration has eluded generations of planners. The current planning model, which glorifies a “GDP-oriented living” where we are called diligent and dutiful if we work hard and work for money. When life’s aim is financial wealth at the expense of well-being, we end up accumulating other collateral costs of hardship. When the value of intellectual richness and the pursuit of balanced life are forgotten, what we get is the current paradigm of development. And, in Nepal, a toil to mend the same old cloth. In such a system, human liberation becomes a lost cause. We become hardworking with no time to think about life, living, and liberation.

Hardworking: Basis for development

Not really. Not all hard work is equally productive. Hard work in intellectual spaces that drive science, philosophy, innovation, productivity, and system improvement brings tangible progress, but we are hardworking in physical activities and not in the work of the mind. People in rural Nepal are extremely hard-working, whether they are living in the villages or working in the Middle East, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, or elsewhere. People in developed nations may not work as hard as we do. But with all that hard work and toil, rural Nepal looks like a sinkhole of deprivation—financially, intellectually, and physically. Despite having vast potential for it, our villages are not attractive places for living in the age of knowledge, technology, and urbanization. Under the current mode of development planning, the villages are emptying out at an alarming rate, which is unfortunately considered normal. The rural economy is sick, and rural life is losing its attractiveness despite all the hard work.

Missing elements

Systems thinking is the most acutely missing element in Nepal. Effective planning requires understanding the complexity of the world by looking in terms of the wholes and their relationships. Nepal, however, is missing out on systems thinking and systems development. Rather, the country is being littered with plans for myriads of projects with a wishful thinking that they will automatically lead to systems improvement. This is making Nepal a land of projects and not the land of good systems. Consequently, Nepal has been left out in so many frontiers. Our model of development is akin to buying and making the best parts to make a car in the absence of system engineering. Collection of good parts does not make a functioning car without proper assembly. That is the reason why decades of disbursing grants for seeds, seedlings, plastic, and mini-tillers without systems knowledge failed to bring sustained improvement in agriculture and living. When a system is facing problems due to many interacting factors, only systems thinking and systems development bring desirable results.

Power systems thinking

The power is that it results in more fault tolerant and resilient systems. And, a robust system is better prepared to tolerate a faulty component but it is nearly impossible to build a robust component that can tolerate a faulty system. In the existing approach of planning, we develop projects hoping that they will improve our systems, which often does not happen. Why? When the fault is in the system itself, the value of improving a component may be little. In a project oriented thinking, one work may not even be mandated or funded to look after the other affected areas. It is allowed to assume that someone else is responsible to mitigate the collateral effects. Systems thinking focuses on the resilience of the whole system in which improvement of a component nearly always guarantees an improvement in the system. System thinking takes responsibility for the functioning of the whole system, and so is responsible also for collateral effects of one work on others. 

Example of system

Consider a “4444 system of living,” where a family of four lives on one ropani of land by integrating four different pursuits: four hours of work or earning, four hours of study, four hours of innovation or creation, and four hours of relaxation. This system is achievable with systems thinking but not with current planning methods. If Nepal’s 753 local governments were tasked with developing such systems and given the freedom to innovate, much progress would emerge. Such systems would be intellectually stimulating, attract talent, and offer a dignified way of living. This pursuit would propel us into intellectual development, human liberation, and advances in science and technology.

In a systems approach to planning, we would be earnestly recognizing the extent of our natural endowments or inherent strengths, which would otherwise go neglected. For example, let us look at a few of our strengths that have gone unrecognized at present.

Vertical space: The foremost innovative agricultural system in the world at present has been the “vertical farming system,” where industrialists and scientists are teaming up to create the basis for vertical farming using steel, glass, plastic, chemicals, electricity, water, and artificial light. Their infrastructures start depreciating from the day they are constructed. In Nepal, kilometers-tall mountains are created by nature, using never degrading materials, with an abundance of natural light, and water naturally flowing downstream. This infrastructure never depreciates. Who is better endowed for vertical farming than a country like Nepal? No one.

Solar radiation: In Nepal, on an average day, nearly 4,500 kcal energy is radiated on one square meter of land by the sun. Nutritionists say that an average adult human needs 2,000 kcal energy per day. Using science and technology tools, we can develop novel agricultural systems to convert solar energy into food far more efficiently than now. If one percent of solar energy is converted into food, we can get 45 kcal from one square meter. If so, 100 square meters of land could more than abundantly feed one person, without stopping us from making good use of the other 99 percent of solar energy. At that rate, we can feed a family of five persons on a land parcel of one ropani (508 square meters). It is an achievable target when we know most crop plants on average have photosynthetic efficiency of 1-2 percent, C3 plants up to 3.5 percent, and C4 plants up to 4.5 percent (see photosynthetic efficiency, Wikipedia). For example, corn, sorghum, napier, bamboo, azolla, duckweed, and spirulina have efficiency above four percent. Only imagine if we had a system marginally aware about this efficiency issue! 

One ropani agriculture: There are four ropani per person cultivated land in Nepal. If 16 hours a day of hard work can cultivate four ropani, in theory, four hours would be sufficient for one ropani land, making the above mentioned “4444 system of living” a no brainer. If our production efficiency was only four times more than now, we would get the current output in one fourth the land. But as mentioned above, a right system can make us food surplus at merely one ropani per capita. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), that efficiency demands a new system of agriculture and new living. That is achieved only through a system of thinking, which we currently lack.

System thinking in education and research: The main reason for why people are migrating from villages to urban and urban to abroad is the availability of better educational and job opportunities. When teachers are toiling in the farms or “passing time” on the internet in all non-teaching hours, when students are not finding educational curriculum that inspires them, and when parents are ignorant about the quality of education that their children need, we have ourselves a deadly combination for inviting the failure of an education system. But rural Nepal is getting just that. If each of our municipalities and its schools were collaborating to develop a novel system of living, say for example “4444 system of living”, imagine how much innovation could come out of Nepal and how inspired our population would be. Imagine if universities, colleges, and research centers were mandated to collaborate with those schools and municipalities, and were conditionally funded based on the level of their collaboration in developing such systems! Imagine if engineers, health workers, scientists, and people in a vast array of disciplines were working with students and rural people to develop such systems of living! We would be achieving a resounding level of growth in research, development, economy, and our intellectual prowess in 10 years of time.

Agricultural communities: Despite an unprecedented trend in urban migrations, Nepal’s majority population is still rural, i.e., largely agricultural. In those communities we are distributing “development handouts” on numerous, tiny, and non-integrated whimsical projects in dispersed areas through our federal, provincial and municipal channels without tangible outputs. Imagine that out of all the money Nepal is burning on rural Nepal through three levels of government, just 10 percent was used for the development of a “system of making a living in four hours on a ropani.” If the flow of education and research funds were tied to collaboration with agricultural communities in developing such systems, we would have developed so many successful and sustainable communities, schools, and economies. Spending money on a system approach would bring innovation-oriented and liberation-oriented development in Nepal.

Lagging innovation

Nepal lags in innovation due to insufficient systems thinking. Recognizing the interconnectedness of elements in a complex system reveals numerous opportunities for innovation and inventions. A culture of innovation driven by a mix of national goal and market demands, competition and accessible funding are lacking in Nepal. To cultivate innovation, we must overhaul development policies, focusing on creating “systems of living” that inspire system innovation. Grassroots people, institutional actors, and the government all play their roles in the innovation ecosystem.

Innovation ecosystem

Once a culture of innovation is established, you would find many drivers of innovation in action. In developed economies, for example, market demand alone can be the driver of innovation. One technological development can open the door to yet another, leading to further innovation. Companies trying to stay ahead of the competition also constantly innovate. Novel ideas have easier access to funding sources, such as venture capital, government grants, and other financial resources that support research and development. 

However, in Nepal, such systems are non-existent. In other words, like the ecosystem of the natural world, the growth in innovation and work of the mind also requires an “intellectual ecosystem” where people are seeking new ideas and ways. Therefore, we need something very compelling to develop the culture of innovation in Nepal. Firstly, we are sending talents to developed countries and never wanting them back. That is a problem. We ought to want those talents back. Secondly, lack of expertise is another problem. When regular people get a chance to start working with expert innovators, over time the ordinary people emerge as extraordinary innovators. We must, therefore, create opportunities to work with experts. Thirdly, if some experts were to come to Nepal, either they work on isolated projects instead of systems, or they do not find material or policy support. Fourthly, we are not enticed to build novel systems by governments and institutions through open challenges backed up by budgets.

Systems really think the way?

Yes. When a whole and functioning system of living is in the making, the complexity of the world is looked at in terms of wholes and their relationships. In other words, an entire system is considered, which is made up of many interacting parts. Then one system interacts with another system, being part of yet another system. Thus, in a systems approach, we can identify the root causes and not just the visible symptoms of our problems. We solve problems more effectively, address more interactions, and make more innovations and inventions in the process.

Summary

Nepal’s current way of development and planning falls short of fostering intellectual development and human liberation. To correct this shortcoming, and in recognition of the fact that the majority population of Nepal still lives in rural villages, we propose making systems of living where we physically work for four hours a day on one ropani of land to make an honorable living and spend the remaining twelve hours a day productively on the work of the mind such as study and innovation as our national initiative. That would make Nepal present an attractive alternative to the current world order, and excel in the space of systems thinking, making intellectual development, human liberation, and the development of science, technology, art, literature, and philosophy plausible pursuits. That would stimulate the minds of its people and make Nepal a land of knowledge. We would find meaning and fulfillment in what we do.