As the sewage system indicates, it is almost universally agreed upon by the local people, Nepali officials, international governments, oppositional groups, non-governmental aid organizations, and academic critics that development has failed. Instead of the dream of abundance promised by theorists and politicians in the 1950s, the discourses and strategy of development produced the opposite: massive underdevelopment and impoverishment. After five decades of development and millions of dollars of development aid, Nepal is worse off then before. To understand the reasons for the failure, it is necessary to problematize development as a normalizing concept and to articulate its genealogy in the dialogue between contemporary Nepalese history and the postcolonial polity that marks the American ascendance to power after World War II.