(DFID), in Nepal, Dominic O'Neill. DFID is Nepal's largest bilateral donor, recently increasing its annual spending by US$60 million to some $150 million in 2013.

The national debate surrounding an ethnic identity-based federalism - where power is devolved from the national government to local units determined largely along ethnic lines - has been at the core of Nepal's transition to post-war stability, with some politicians, analysts and journalists painting Nepal's international donors as instigators of ethnic tension.

Almost seven years since the country ended a decade-long civil war with a peace deal, efforts to birth a post-war constitution and new government are still stalled amid political infighting, which has only exacerbated the country's ills.

Nepal is one of world's poorest countries with 25 percent of its 30-million people living below thepoverty line, according to the World Bank. Pockets of chronic under-nutrition, especially in the country's Far West mountainous region, exceed emergency levels, and access to safe sanitation remains perilously inaccessible for 20 million people.

"Changes are drastically needed in this country, but didn't happen at the pace they were supposed to. Aid agencies got too involved in the peace process, political transition and democratization issues rather than development," political analyst and professor Krishna Khanal told IRIN.

Aid agencies should have been focusing, instead, on building up national institutions rather than duplicating efforts and competing among themselves, Khanal added.

Checks and balances

After years of failed constitution-making, a new interim prime minister was agreed upon on 18 February; Nepal's opposition parties have refused to consider holding elections for a new constituent assembly (the