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District development planning to fulfill the basic needs of rural areas: GIS based assessment A case study of Kaski District, Nepal  Rajesh Bahadur THAPA Research Associate Remote Sensing and GIS Field of Study Asian Institute of Technology, P.O. Box 4, Klong Luang Pathumthani 12120,Thailand Tel: +66-2-524-6406 Fax: +66-2-524-5597 Email:rajesh@ait.ac.th Specialization: Geography, Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System. Kedar BASNET, PhD Associate Professor in Geography Department of Geography PN Campus, Tribhuvan University Pokhara, Nepal Tel: +977-61-528902 Email:gislab@fewamail.com.np Specialization: Geography, Urban and Regional Planning Introduction Development planning is a course of action to achieve the national objectives of development i.e. systematic, rational and congruent, which depends on time, space and resources. It is designed to accelerate socio-economic growth through increasing productivity and alleviating poverty. Due to inefficient planning, many of the developing countries have been widening the poverty in a massive scale (Thapa, 2002; Mishra, 1983). Nepal has about 50 years of experience of development practices starting from first periodic plan in 1956. Despite the significant political changes that have taken place during this period, several local development efforts to reduce regional imbalance in socio-economic growth and poverty alleviation have been made until now. Furthermore, in recent years, the Tenth Five Year Plan (2002-2007) clearly focuses on a long-term development perspective to create cultured, modern and skillful society through poverty alleviation and gives top priorities to resources utilization, industrialization, tourism development, trade diversification and physical infrastructure development (NPC, 2004). The development planning at the district level, which can serve as a convergent point of top-down guidelines and bottom-up ideas, can be a useful point for resource utilization and allocation in the local development process. It significantly helps to achieve the objectives of the local development through the high level of people participation, use of indigenous technology and resources, and appreciation of local knowledge (Shrestha, 1990; Winta and Dias, 1991; Paudyal, 1994). Local level development planning at district level could be justified as an important step to build a broad and solid social support to transcend the mostly centralized and technocratic character of the conventional development planning approach. It is essential to disperse and disseminate development-planning capabilities at district level, providing access to spatial information to all the individuals and institutions. Study Area and Objective Kaski district is selected for the present study. The district is located at the central Nepal in the southern slope of Annapurna Himalayan Range. The district has complex and distinctly visible physiographic regions including High Mountain in the north, Annapurna Himalayas, with the altitude of 7969 meters, low land valley floor, the Pokhara valley less than 500 meters altitude and complex hill and hillocks in between. In the globe, the district lies within 28°06'-28°36'N latitude and 83°40'-84°12'E longitude (figure 2). There are 43 Village Development Committees (VDCs) and two municipalities in the district. The total land area of the district is 2017 km2 whereas the cultivated land, forestland, settlements and snow/rocky/other cover 24%, 45%, 11% and 20% of the total land, respectively. An average size of the VDCs is about 44.03 sq.km. Ten VDCs are larger than an average size. The population of Kaski district was 380,527 in the year 2001 census (CBS, 2001). The growth rate of population was 2.64% in 2001 that is decreasing from 2.79% in 1991. The population density of the district was 189 persons per square kilometer. Total household number in the district was 85,075. Total 1,367 settlements were counted in the district (DDC-Kaski, 2004). The population concentration is in the valley floor. Pokhara and Lekhnath municipalities are located in the Pokhara valley. Pokhara municipality is the market centers and administrative headquarters in the Western Development Region of Nepal. In fifty years of developmental practices, the pace of development in Nepal remained very slow. Although, the restoration of democracy in 1990, the District Development Planning (DDP) has been considered the focal point of development. Despite this stress, the DDP has failed to develop development infrastructures and income generation at the local level. Considering policies and strategies, the ninth plan has precisely specified its objectives to alleviate poverty, and accordingly set policies and strategies. But in rural areas are still lacking development infrastructures. In Kaski district, some efforts were made to fulfill the basic needs of the people, however, they were less effective to mitigate the needs. The main objective of this research is to assess the distribution of development infrastructures and measure the efficiency of the district development plan for fulfilling the basic needs of rural areas.  Figure 2: Study Area, Kaski District, Nepal Database and Methodology The computer assisted GIS includes a set of tools to solve complex planning and management problems by acquiring, manipulating, analyzing, modeling and displaying spatial data from the real world for a particular set of purposes (Demmers, 1997; Burrough and McDonnel, 1998; Nualchawee 1996; Goodchild, 2003; Thapa et al., 2004). As such, ArcInfo and ArcView GIS software and SPSS statistical software were used for database automation, analysis and presentation of the results. In this study, Village Development Committee (VDC) has been considered as the spatial entity of the rural development because there was lacking of attribute database at micro level of spatial units smaller than VDC level. Pokhara and Lekhnath municipalities were excluded due to classified as urban area. Thumki and Pumdhibhumdi VDCs out of 43 VDCs in the district were also excluded due to lack of spatial data. The analysis is based on topographic map of 1999, the District Development Committee (DDC) settlement survey of 1998 (figure 3) and a field trip of 2004. Eight parameters assuming basic development infrastructure namely road, education, health, drinking water, communication, irrigation, electricity and rural-industry were taken as major indicators for assessing the spatial distribution of said parameters and measuring the efficiency of district development planning to fulfill the basic needs of rural area. All those indicators are the development of infrastructures to be planned and allocated the resources by the DDC in coordination with regional and national planning commission. The eighth five-year plan of Nepal has clearly marked on those basic development infrastructures as keys to accelerate rural socio-economic growth and reduce the poverty. Based on the topographic information, three types of road network were identified as highway, urban and rural and digitized in Arc Info format. The roads were buffered by taking the assumed distances as 1 km from highway, 0.5 km from rural road, 0.25 km from urban road for More Accessible Zone. The Accessible Zone was computed by 2 km from highway, 1.5 km from rural road and 1 km from the urban road and also computed the Less Accessible Zone assuming the 3 km from highway, 2 km from rural road and 1.5 km from urban road. The rest of the land assumed as Inaccessible zone. The buffered layers were overlaid with settlement data layer and identified the settlements in four different groups of road proximity  Figure 3: Settlement and road layers The settlement is basically designed up to the point entity of the spatial location where the attribute data are directly linked. Facilitated population by the selected indicators at settlement level of each VDCs was computed separately and prepared the layers accordingly. Further, all the data layers were overlaid together to compute the final results. The problem area was classified relatively as very low development, low development, medium development, and high development areas. In the study, the following equation was used to normalize the data:  Results and Discussion Proportion of Population with Development Indicators Proportion of population benefited by the selected development infrastructure facilities represents the efficiency of district development planning to provide facilities in rural areas. In Kaski district, eleven VDCs are linked by transportation network, which fall on low to highly facilitated areas. Twelve VDCs fall on very low accessible areas. There is the lack of transportation facility in eighteen VDCs. The educational facilities are available to 50% to 75% population in fourteen VDCs (table-4.1). Likewise twenty VDCs account for 25% to 50% population benefited whereas five VDCs' are poorly facilitated by the facility. In the case of electricity facility, seven VDCs fall on highly developed areas whereas three VDCs fall on moderately developed, and six VDCs on lowly developed areas. Twenty-five VDCs in the district are still lacking electricity facility. The facility is confined only in the southern and mostly accessible VDCs of the district. The communication facility seems to be very poor. Only one VDC has low development and twenty-two VDCs have very low development. Eighteen VDCs have no facility of communication means such as post office and telephone. Irrigation facility is well provided in five VDCs however in twenty-two VDCs, the facility of irrigation is very poor. Fourteen VDCs have no irrigation facility. It indicates the disparity in the distribution of development infrastructure in rural areas of the district. According to facilitated population, the drinking water projects are extended in most of the villages. Only a few populations are still lacking drinking water facility in the district. Facility of rural industries is found well developed in only one VDC, medium development in nine VDCs, low development in fifteen VDCs and very low development in fourteen VDCs. Two VDCs have no establishment of rural industries. According to settlement survey of DDC, private sectors are found more aggressive than the government sectors to establish and organize the infrastructures for rural industries. Access to health services is very poor in rural areas of Kaski district. Twenty-eight VDCs of the district have health service center but very few populations are benefited from them. This is mainly because of lacking medical specialist, medical equipment and medicine. Thirteen VDCs have no health service centers for the people. There are enormous private clinics/hospitals and some government owned hospitals in Pokhara city. People are having health facility from the city even in minor health problems.
Development Status of the VDCs The development status of the VDCs was measured as a composite result of eight parameters. Based on the linearly combined score of the total parameters, the status of the development is categorized as high, medium, low and very low development. The VDCs of the district display different patterns of development (figure 4.2). In Kaski, only two VDCs Lamachaur and Hemja fall on high development area (table 4.2). In Lamachaur VDC, people have been facilitated with the development infrastructures of electricity, drinking water, irrigation and transportation. The communication, rural industries and education are moderately developed. The health center established at Gimire has facilitated to very few population. Likewise Hemja VDC has highly developed some basic infrastructures such as electricity, drinking water and irrigation. The establishment of transportation infrastructure seems medium development, whereas educational infrastructure seems low development. Establishment of communication, rural industries and health services were the least developed infrastructure. But in comparison with other VDCs of the district, these two VDCs are in better position. Only Bharatpokhari VDC falls on medium development category. All the selected infrastructures of development are established in this VDC. Three of them electricity, drinking water and education are of medium development category. Low development of rural industries, communication, irrigation, transportation and health services have lowered the status of Bharatpokhari VDC. Nineteen VDCs namely Arbavijaya, Bhachok, Dangsing, Dhikurpokhari, Kahun, Kalika, Kaskikot, Kristinachhnechaur, Majhathana, Bhalam, Dhital, Chapakot, Mauja, Rupakot, Saimrang, Salayan, Sardikhola, Sildajure and Thumakodanda fall on low development area. Despite provision of drinking water, rural industries and educational infrastructures, ten VDCs have lack of electricity, eight VDCs have the lack of irrigation facility, seven VDCs have the lack of road accessibility, and six VDCs have lack of health services. Remaining nineteen VDCs are found on very low development area where the Sarangkot VDC has very low development as compared to all VDCs in the district. There is the lack of electricity, drinking water, communication, and irrigation facility. Due to physiographic complexity, extension of irrigation facility is very difficult. For drinking water, communication and electricity, there is the prospect of development. Other infrastructures are also poorly developed. Nine VDCs of this category have no access to the electricity and communication facilities. Similarly, irrigation in eight VDCs, rural industries in two VDCs, transportation in eleven VDCs and health facility in six VDCs are far away to access for people.  Figure-4.2: Status of Development The result shows that there is uneven distribution of development infrastructure in the district. Only a few VDCs that are located near by the district headquarters are developed to certain extent. Most of the remotely located VDCs are still lacking basic infrastructures.
Conclusion The GIS based assessment shows that there are many VDCs under the poor development line according to facility provided by the selected development infrastructures. It represents the lower efficiency of district development planning to mitigate the needs of rural people. The distribution patterns of the development infrastructure are uneven among VDCs. For example, the educational infrastructure serve 50% to 75% people of fourteen VDCs, 25% to 50% population of twenty two VDCs and below 25% of five VDCs respectively. There are biases in establishing development infrastructure such as electricity, transportation and communication in the district. In this context, the DDP is being failed to reduce the disparity in distributing development infrastructure and prioritizing the development programs equally to all VDCs. The major causes of failure to fulfill the needs of people might be physiographic complexity in rural VDCs, political instability in the country, financial constraint, political biases in decision making, lack of detail spatial database on resources, etc. The planners and decision makers of the Kaski district may follow such scenario to identify the exact spatial location of problem areas while allocating the development resources in rural areas. It is believed that it will help to the district planners for reducing the imbalances in resources allocation and providing equal opportunities of basic facilities to all rural people as much as possible. References | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||