Nepal has been on my mind lately. Not because of a sudden urge to go hike – sorry, "trek" – its stunning landscape. No, not really. My feelings about nature are not unlike how I feel about health insurance: good to know it's out there, but I'd rather not have to use it.
My wife, however, is different. She actually enjoys being in the middle of it all. So much so, in fact, that she’s abandoned me to camp out in a small village more than 100 kilometres from Kathmandu. (It’s to the right and up a bit from the capital on a map.)
Mind you, Karen’s not there on some perverse homage to nature. (We couldn’t stay married if she were so inclined.) Rather, she’s in the middle of nowhere doing something useful, teaching English and helping the school sort out its exam papers. So during evenings, when it’s just me and the dog at dinner, I’ve been thinking about what she’s doing, and about the country she’s in.
Nepal is a poor country.
Well of course it is. But “poor” is such an abstract notion to those of us who don’t confront it head on, on a daily basis. Last week Karen canvassed for ideas on how to amuse the children there during the Diwali holidays. Some games, she mused, that wouldn’t involve special equipment.
Well then, I suggested, how about an egg-and-spoon race? What could be simpler?
“Oh, no,” she replied. “Eggs are rare and pricey here. We have eggs once in two weeks. It’d be heartbreaking for the kids to see them wasted.”
Hearing that was a moment of thudding pathos. Nepal can be that poor, particularly in villages far from the metropolitan centre of Kathmandu.
So what, I wondered, can be done? The standard answer for fighting poverty in the last 60 years has been to use the poor themselves. Low wages have proven to be a huge advantage in globalised manufacturing for countries like Thailand and Sri Lanka.
But Nepal does not have enough electricity to run a fleet of factories. Homes that are on the grid face blackouts for eight or more hours each day. And a large part of the country isn’t even hooked to power lines at all.
Still, let's assume that that can be fixed. But then Nepal must contend with the curse of its mountain frontiers. Poor, landlocked countries surrounded by other poor countries have a big problem. Before their goods can get to nearby ports, these often can be subject to levies and fees imposed by their neighbours. (For why should adjacent countries help the people next door compete with their own factories?) And landlocked origination countries also have no control over the corruption that takes a cut here and a cut there along foreign roads to loading docks.
Of course, this is less of a problem with high-value items like gold, diamonds or opium, since corruption and rent-seeking often are part of the industry model. But without gold, diamonds and let’s forget opium, what then? If Nepal can’t monetise its cheap labour, what else is there to do?
Well, the opposite. Price itself higher.
As the dog and I wait for Karen’s return in six more weeks, I often think about my trip with her to Kathmandu last year.
One afternoon, the doorman at our hotel was arranging a taxi for us. There were heated words between him and a cab driver. “He wants too much,” I still recall the doorman telling us. “Eight hundred. Too much. Only seven-fifty.”
It took me longer than it should to realise this was a difference of 50 cents for a grown man to take us on the half-hour drive up a nearby hill, wait for us as we gawked at the sunset, and then drive another half-hour back.
I vowed then never again to bargain. I can afford the stupid-tourist rate. And that’s the point.
Nepal’s tourists – who spend up to a $1,000 on plane tickets to get there – can surely afford the stupid-tourist rate. Instead, because the country has mispriced its most valuable asset – access to some of the most stunning vistas in the world – tourists are being subsidised by local poverty.
On that trip last year, we stayed at a very comfortable hotel for $90 a night, and later paid $35 for an evening in a beautifully restored traditional house in Patan. It cost $60 for a car and driver to take us up the rim of the Kathmandu valley, from where we caught sight of the Himalayas. The driver waited overnight – in the car, we later learnt – to drive us back.
Nepal needs to more accurately price its natural and cultural assets – and believe me, it’s worth more than $35 to experience an evening stroll home through a dimly lit durbar square that’s mostly unchanged from medieval times.
Prices for hotels and other tourist infrastructure must rise – and, importantly, in tandem with the quality of service and amenities. This would then create demand for higher wages from better-qualified staff, and for higher prices from suppliers.
Instead, the tourism industry frets too much about keeping costs low for its guests, and in the process suppresses the natural scope of the tourism sector and the wage economy.
Because Nepal can’t sell itself cheap as a manufacturing base, it sells itself cheap instead to labour-recruiting countries, first to Malaysia, then to the Gulf. But Nepal’s natural advantage really should have it selling itself dear. Indeed, set the starting price right, and everything else follows.
And what this might lead to is that kids can eat eggs more than once a fortnight.
Tion Kwa is assistant editor of The National
KTion@thenational.ae
