Every nation has a development culture of its own, and a nation's traditional culture has a tremendous impact on its own development attitudes and attempts. An objective retrospection of Nepal's past developmental trends and planning history establishes this. It can be seen how there have been more belief in rhetorics that action. Most of the ivory-towered and foreign-trained planners, cosily seated on their high revolving chairs, have preferred to travel on maps and act on blueprints or paper plans alone. As a result, Nepal has remained where it started from, as a weather-cock rotating ceaselessly on a fixed place. Nepal has always copycated whatever western model was in fashion at a given time, and when it proved to be a square peg in a round hole in the national contect, Nepal skipped and hopped for another one.
The author argues that Nepal is neither idea-poor nor resource-poor. The real poverty is in developmental attitude, willingness, commitment and action. Lack of right attitude is Nepal's main setback. Nepal's vision of development still seems a blur, particularly in aspects of how and for whom. Nepal has become more and more reliant on foreign aid and loans than being self-reliant; more backward looking than forward looking of futuristic. Ivan Illich is right when he says "Underdevelopment is also a state of mind".
