Let’s Unite to Build New Nepal
Now a new dawn is in the offing in Nepal. Let’s unite for the betterment of our country and the common people. For this to happen, all the political forces in Nepal need to come up with a lasting power sharing agreement like in Malaysia.
By Lok Nath Bhusal
Now it seems that that there will be two political parties in Nepal, namely Congress and CPN-Maoist. UML (even as it is the third largest party), RPP and other smaller parties would have little meaningful existence and they will slowly polarise into the mainstream parties. Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai might be right when he claims “we have replaced the UML” in a recent interview. It is quite common that people migrate to different parties to grab new opportunities and minimise potential risks. However, they are also likely to do so because of their new knowledge, insights and experiences. Indeed, everyone is free to do so and worthy of respect. Ideally, it is fairly good for a country to have two strong parties, not only in terms of checking and balancing the ruling power, but also to provide mainstream and alternative ideological discourses that suit the international theoretical debate. As people get more educated and enhance their capabilities, they become more rational in terms of their political ideology and its underlying economic prescriptions.
Theoretically, being with the Congress party would be an indication of being in upper class or align with liberal policies. By contrast, Maoists tend to appear as the party of the poor and those who believe in social democracy, if not pure Marxist socialism. Also, it seems that liberalism is not good for developing countries like Nepal. Precisely, free trade and open economy have escalated poverty and inequality around the world. However, these are ideological debates, and the context may differ. For many, at least from economic perspective, there are ample evidences to support this claim and are convinced with these evidences. In the west the neo-liberal capitalism has been challenged at different quarters. Donors including the World Bank and the IMF have been criticised for their damaging liberalisation policies.
Ahead of the historic CA polls, political parties came up with their conventional vote-begging election manifestos. In a row, the Maoists released their document. The most attractive part of that release differed across people with varying ideological orientations. To me, as a professional economist and development practitioner, it was their forty years’ economic plan with precise figures that attracted me the most. Perhaps, such economic visioning attracted people to vote the Maoists ensuring legitimacy to lead the government. Now the Maoists have got a chance to lead the government and legitimacy to come up with their new initiatives to realise what they have promised during last decade or so.
Although Marxist political economist in his later life, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, the chief architect of the document, knew the power of numbers as an engineer by formal training in his earlier academic pursuits. I am sure other Nepalese like me would be proud of having a country as envisioned by the Maoists that is prosperous, federally decentralised, inclusive and sovereign in reality. What’s more, a more than threefold increase in their Gross National Income (GNI) per capita in about ten years time from now was their deliberately articulated development vision. For the non-economic readers they may have confusion to understanding what exactly the GNI per capita is. Simply it is the total annual national income divided by the total population of that year. For the year 2007, Nepal’s per capita income is estimated to be US$300 (300*64 = Rs.19,200) annually. In other words, on average, every Nepali earned Rs.19,200 last year. If you divide this by 365 days of the year, you come to know that every Nepalese on average earned about Rs. 53 per day last year. This is average, that means some might have earned zero income while others might have earned Rs.53,000 per day. So, numbers are powerful though sometime misleading because these average figures do not tell whether the economic pie was distributed equally.
Now, according to the Maoists’ plan we are going to earn approximately Rs.1,92,000 (US$3000) per year in 2018 at the current prices and exchange rate. Definitely, we would have a comfortable life, and many of us and many of our children would be enjoying three meals a day, better homes and holidays. In sum, the quality of life would go up. Moreover, in 2028 our income again will go up by more than three folds – from 3000 to 10,000 US dollars. Please manage to live until than because you would be able to by a car and manage to have a foreign trip at least once a year by this time – just twenty years to go from now. Under this scenario, people who are born in poverty will almost certainly not die in poverty and their children would be wealthy and have better living standards. Beside income poverty, with the promise to eradicate illiteracy in five years and availability of basic health care is likely to tackle other forms of human poverty as well. Therefore, poverty would be recorded in the pages of history – our children will start their lesson as this: once upon a time, there was an old, Dalit, disabled woman in the district of Dolpa and so forth.
Wonderful plan – thanks Dr. Bhattarai, likely to be one of the prominent figures in the upcoming government. You have categorically articulated the common interests of our beloved Nepali brothers and sisters. Indeed, it has been argued that, for Nepal, if the growth rate is boosted up to six percent, the time would be 85 years to earn $35,000 per capita that an average Swiss earns today. The story gets even better if we manage to achieve a per capita GNI growth rate of 10 percent, the time required to achieve the wealth of the Swiss would be mere 52 years. Therefore, to earn merely 3000 dollar per person annually, we neither need to have 10 percent growth rate nor have to wait a generation. Concretely, if we can manage to achieve an unhindered 8/9 percent annual growth rate for next 20 years, average income per capita would even exceed what the Maoists’ have calculated. Hence, technically, Maoists’ claims are legitimate – it is possible to achieve this growth rate. Many countries have done it in the past; Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea have all achieved it. In addition, China and India too have achieved nearly as much in the recent past. I am not quite sure how the economists in Nepal calculated 27 percent growth rate required to raise the income level up to 3000 dollars. It seems their calculations are biased on the ground of their either ideological or methodological choice.
Now, the hundred million’s question is that whether Dr. Bhattarai and his party which is almost sure to lead the coming government would endeavor to achieve this. What the Maoists can realistically do under the global hegemonic liberal capitalism? Also, what if their goal of developing "national industrial capitalism” remains ideal in the face of powerfully-floated Western hegemonic liberalisation agenda? What are the theoretical and practical differences and commonalities between “national industrial capitalism” model and their recent commitment to promoting “public private partnerships” model? And most importantly, what brings fusion into the two? These are the crucial questions that Maoists have to answer so that economists, businesses and professionals would cooperate with them.
Therefore, till now people are convinced with the economic policies that the Maoists have come up with. However, we have to wait and see how they govern the country in the coming days. It is sure, however, they are not going to be able to make any radical changes in the country and will become almost like UML within two years. At most, they will have good social policies to support the people devastated by the liberalisation policies haphazardly adopted in the past. Under this scenario, businesses won’t have to be worried, but they may have to be more socially responsible. Indeed, business as a social activity should share its profits with those who can not make a descent living through redistribution. It is highly likely that such policies would both increase their popularity and bring poverty and inequality down. A society with more equitable distribution is argued to reduce the costs of doing business and enhance social cohesion, instead of unaimed opulence of the few – the most desirables for rapid socio-economic progress.
Now a new dawn is in the offing in Nepal. Let’s unite for the betterment of our country and the common people. For this to happen, all the political forces in Nepal need to come up with a lasting power sharing agreement like in Malaysia. Nepal badly needs solidarity politics at least for the next 15 years if the country has to make significant strides in its economic indicators. Let’s put away our narrowly defined vested party interests, past bitterness and rivalries. Instead, let’s cooperate, collaborate, work hard for the common good of this country, and thus make this nation a prosperous, peaceful and progressive. In fact, this is the verdict of the people, and responsibility of all the political forces. Let’s unite.
(Bhusal, currently living in The Hague, the Netherlands, is an economist. He can be contacted at loknathbhusal@yahoo.com)
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