ABSTRACT
Missionaries, under Nepalese law, are allowed to work in the country but they are not permitted to proselytise and convert people to other faiths. This helps explain why the Norwegian constituent of the United Mission to Nepal has become such a key player in the country’s hydropower development. Many missionaries, of course, turn their hands to medicine or education but Odd Hoftun, who arrived in Nepal on 8 January 1958, was an electrical engineer, and by 1965 he had single-handedly set up the Butwal Power Company and brought it to the point where its first venture – the 50kW Tinau plant1 – was fully operationalised on 17 December 1970 (see Svalheim 2015, NEA 2015 and Chapter 7). The United Mission to Nepal, unlike most of the other actors in the hydropower sector, is a non-governmental organisation (an NGO)2 and the way in which I came to work for the Butwal Power Company reveals much about the sort of approach – to technology, to the people it aims to serve and to its employees – that Odd Hoftun, its driving force, made sure it took.
