Planning and the Politics of Markets: Some Lessons from Financial Regulation in Nepal

This paper calls for an explicit return to questions about the normative foundations of planning theory and practice. It argues that a simultaneous reading of Karl Polanyi with Friedrich von Hayek can contribute to developing an ethical basis for tempering market rationality with social rationality in the current global economic conjuncture. Empirically, the paper investigates recent initiatives in Nepal to provide social protections (à la Polanyi) through financial market rules. In the face of threats to the progressive legacy in planning practice posed by the prevailing neoliberal orthodoxy, Nepal's targeted lending policies and microcredit programmes offer some optimism about the potential to embed welfare provisions within market regulation, especially when compared to developments in other countries. At the same time, however, the perspectives of rural women explored here through critical ethnography raise key questions about the capacity of these regulations to generate social opportunity and highlight a role for locally situated social criticism in progressive planning practice.