Go for WTO

Despite the fact that Nepal needs to put a lot of effort to reap full benefits from membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO), it cannot afford to stay out of it. It will certainly be difficult for a poor and resource-constrained country like Nepal to comply with the terms and conditions of the multilateral trading regime, but the benefits accruing will certainly outweigh the disadvantages by many folds.

From the certain quarters of the society the process of negotiations for the accession to the WTO has been termed as the surrendering of the national sovereignty. Such a hypocrisy and irresponsible comment should be ignored if the country doesn’t want to fall prey to what is stated to be the "conspiracy of anti-development theorists". The WTO is not an institution to rule the world, it is rather a congregation of 135 countries who are working for rule-based free trade among all the member countries. In WTO no decision can be passed even if only a single member votes against it. If a single country had all the final say in WTO -- as has been alleged — the recent conference in Seattle would not have been a failure. Accession to the WTO is like doing trade agreements with all the member countries at once. It entitles the WTO members to get the Most Favoured Nation Treatment and National Treatment on all the goods and services exported to all or any WTO member countries. For non-member countries, the cost, labour and time needed to accomplish this kind of trade regime with other countries will probably be beyond their means.

Nepal does not have many things at present to export and because of this the benefits from the WTO membership may not be all that apparent. If we do not improve and diversify our exportable products, the WTO membership will have little impact. But its negative impact will be telling. For if Nepal does not become a member, the WTO member countries will have the liberty of imposing any kinds of tariff and non-tariff barriers on the very few exportable products from our country.

It is true that after getting into WTO system we would also need to provide all the facilities to all the countries. Our tariffs will also be fixed to certain level and we cannot change them as we like. But, the rules are not as tough for least developed countries like Nepal. Instead there are provisions within WTO to enhance LDCs’ capability in various fields of international trade, negotiations and dispute settlements. Moreover, both the past and present Director Generals of WTO have been urging all the members to eliminate barriers to LDC products, and many countries including the USA have agreed to do so unilaterally.

It is, however, true that LDCs cannot comply immediately with the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and labour and environment standards. But, the problems of WTO can be fought much better from within as a member and not by avoiding it.

Hence, the call of our Commerce Minister to provide easy and fast track access to Nepal should be supported. Upon achieving the membership Nepal can also play an important role in making WTO friendlier towards developing countries, like our neighbours India and Bangladesh have been doing.

Five years ago

(From The Kathmandu Post of 17 December, 1994)

New world order neglects workers

KATHMANDU - As the concept of free market and privatisation of enterprises sweeps through the world, 38 trade union and labour organisations from fifteen countries held an International Trade Union Conference in Kathmandu from December 10 to 13 calling for strengthening pro-worker trade unionism and opposing privatisation.

"Millions of workers are dying slow death through inadequate working conditions, unemployment and lack of job security while capitalists reap mega profit from a new world order not designed for the workers and peasants of the world," says the Kathmandu Declaration which was released after the conclusion of the conference.

The declaration says that labour laws and workers’ rights are swept away and trade unions are being forced into fighting for working conditions that they have already achieved.

Street theatre and street children in Nepal

By Ronald NashStreet theatre is imaginative way of promoting human rights and is used all over the world. It gets through to people in their own communities and easily adapts to local language and environment. It often reaches groups such as women and children, least likely to benefit from other sorts of human rights education. Street theatre resonates with ordinary people. It builds on local talent, people who can move round the country between village and town communities. It calls for little technical support and is cheap. Above all street theatre should be fun.

Planning a programme of street theatre calls for some initial guiding framework for the key messages. But within that we need to find flexibility, so that each drama can adapt to local social issues in a way which is appropriate and socially acceptable. An example was in the refugee camps at Jhapa, where street theatre was used to raise awareness on women’s right.

Skilled actors aim for fullest audience participation. Actors encourage the audience to take part, to expand and continue the drama in a way which reflects most directly the experiences and problems of local communities. This provides leverage for the work, taking it beyond the original concept. It brings added value for money.

Sometimes street theatre can help us to laugh at ourselves, while at the same time carrying forward more serious theme. Stereotypes and caricatures can be used to bring out a latent point, as if through self learning. This technique can also be used to help tackle sensitive issues or socially engrained habits and patterns of behaviour. For example, street theatre by women in the Terai, along Nepal’s southern belt with bordering with India, has been found by some groups to be a non threatening way to approach issues of domestic violence. This has opened the way for discussions within the communities to talk about these problems, often among the most sensitive and difficult areas in human rights.

And the work is two-way. The organisers and actors themselves continually learn from their audiences. How do abstract principles apply the experience of local communities? How should individuals and communities prioritise problems and issues?

And beyond that what " street" are we talking about? It could be a patch of grass outside a village school, or a space by a temple or office in which village meetings are held. It is encouraging to see a growing number of street theatre organisations working in rural areas with children’s clubs, women’s groups and other community based organisations.

In Sindhupalchowk, one of the districts with lowest school attendance in Nepal, there was a project supported by the Ministry of Labour and German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) to use street drama to help motivate parents to send their children to school. In the first instance women’s groups were mobilised, teachers and community groups involved, and the street drama company later travelled to villages to talk to local people about their problems.

These discussions led to a drama carrying the underlying theme that parents are responsible for their children’s future and that an educated child is a family asset not a liability. The festival was visited by nearly two thousand people in Gati and Marning VDCs, a tremendous response considering that most visitors had to trek for several hours. At the beginning of the new school year in September there was a very gratifying 70 percent increase in enrolment in the two school districts.

Another example is the recent productions by Jagaran, an organisation of current and former street children who have been preforming in Kathmandu and other Nepalese towns for several years with the support of the Arohan theatre group. Jagaran’s actors have been travelling through rural areas to perform a play showing children the sort of practical difficulties faced if they try to travel to the city looking for work and a new life, a trend so common in South Asia. Those actors bring a forceful message, based on their own personal experience of exploitation, low paid jobs, loneliness and disappointment.

Jagaran’s experience and work has been salutary. Some of the boys now working for the group were themselves once scavengers of garbage on rubbish tips. Today they are working in non formal education and book keeping. This has increased their self esteem. As the Jagaran actors travel between the rural districts they give a direct account of their own experiences in low paying and something degrading jobs. Through their parodies and real life narratives they can explain the stigma which exists against street children, a stigma which can, for example, prevent them getting health care or a school place, obtaining a bank account or securing a regular job. This warning to children was picked up and multiplied by extensive media coverage.

We have been trying to make our own contribution from the UK side. A recent British Council training programme carried out with local groups found that there was a tendency for performances sometimes to seem to lecture their audiences. In fact performers need to visit a community and learn its problems at direct hand before preparing the particular play. NGOs and other donors who commission street theatre probably need to take greater pains to factor this into their programmes. Early next year we hope to arrange a round table with NGOs and other donors to debate this particular aspect further.

(The author is the British Ambassador)

Bravo! Manisha Didi

By Sameer Khatiwada

Manisha didi, please do not get offended simply because I have used the word didi. Didi is the word I use with utter respect. I am a young college guy whose idol is none other than you, "influential and charismatic Manisha Koirala". You are the person whom I revere most. I could not resist writing this letter seeing your daring act in the recently concluded by-elections.

Manisha didi, it is obvious that you are heartthrob of millions. The people who watch your movies speak of you as a great actress. Your gorgeous looks astounds everyone. I not only see you as a great actress but as a woman of character and destiny. You make us (Nepalese) feel proud because a woman like you in my view is not only an ordinary Nepali woman, instead a woman who deserves to remain in high esteems of Nepali citizens.

Congratulations, for your huge success in the election. Your speeches in the election campaigns were thought provoking. The words which you had used were so influential that everyone might have felt like casting a vote in your favour. Your other side of multi talented personality is really commendable. Your skill in eloquence is something our corrupt ‘male’ politicians envy of . Some politicians even said that it is unfair to use an actress in the elections. Well, it is clear that these people were unable to identify the ebullience of a daughter who was escorting her father and fulfilling her responsibility.

Didi, people speak many bad things about actresses and in most cases they are looked down upon. I feel sorry for you, because these are the things which have remained inseparable since decades, in our orthodox society. If I am not wrong, people are jealous about your success and fame. If it was the other way round, they would have praised your work and felt proud of being a Nepali. Everyone should give in their best in their work, and you are doing the same. Your Nepalese brothers and sisters lack eyes of respect to recognize your endeavours. Didi, I hope you will give a damn to the people who think in this way. After all, the younger generation respects you a lot and ours is the generation which is going to be with you when your political career blooms.

Politics is the art of saying bad things in a good way. In our country it can even be justified as a refuge of scoundrels. Didi, your eloquent appeal and a strong desire to do something exhibits a great prospect of your political career. Except some, other politicians cum leaders of our country can do nothing better than to deliver speeches. In my view, you possess all the traits that are required in a good politician.

Nepali citizens have seen the leadership of great Koirala brothers. I hope you will follow the footsteps of these leaders. Your family background is sure to boost you up when you are practicing politics. Your fame and everlasting resources shows the glittering path of your successful political career.

Didi, I sincerely hope that my inner-feelings of respect towards you proves to be inspirational.

Once again congratulations because without you, the huge success to Nepali Congress in Rautahat, constituency number four, was not quite possible.

Bravo! Manisha didi, I hope you will keep it up.

The politics of knowledge

Was this a Nepali century too ?

By Pratyoush Onta

Amidst the files kept in the National Archives of India in New Delhi, there is a thin file indexed as Government of India, Foreign Department Secret E, August 1899, Nos 95-96 with the title Report on the "Moral and Material Progress of Nepal" for the year 1898-99. It contains the report filed by the then assistant British Resident in Nepal, Capt. W.E.A. Armstrong, on 17 June 1899 to the secretary of the Foreign Department, GOI, and some comments on it by department officials. The report itself is short but makes for an interesting read.

"His Excellency’s popularity with the people of the country does not appear to be have diminished," writes Armstrong in reference to Rana premier Bir Shamsher. Furthermore he writes, "especially is this popularity marked amongst the labouring classes, who are (pampered) with continuous work in connection with the numerous palaces being built for the Maharaja’s brothers and sons." Further down in the report, Armstrong adds, "there is no marked improvement in the condition of the people." After discussing a few subjects of interest to his government, he concludes by writing, "I regret my report should be so meagre...But, apart from the fact that there have been no events (of importance), it is difficult to trace year by year any progress either moral or material in this most conservative of States."

On 1 June 1999, the following was written in this paper by senior journalist Ram Pradhan: "Almost a decade has passed since Nepal reverted to a multiparty parliamentary democracy. While there is centralization in administration, political parties remain pretty disorganized and civil society is by and large shy and feeble. (T)he fact is that shortcomings and weaknesses are aplenty both in the area of politics and governance. Democratisation process is very slow and the goods, as promised, have not been delivered to the people, especially the poor."

Between the June 1899 commentary regarding "no marked improvement in the condition of the people" and the June 1999 commentary regarding shortcomings of our democracy and the non-deliverance of "goods" to the poor, a full hundred years have elapsed. Juxtaposed in this way, wouldn’t these two commentaries allow us to simply say that the intervening century -- the long 20th century -- was a complete waste from the point of view of Nepal and Nepalis at large? If one is predisposed to assessing any span of history by using poverty as the only criterion, then the fact that there are more Nepalis today who are absolutely poor than 100 years ago would leave us with very little to celebrate the 20th century as also a Nepali century.

This conclusion seems all the more plausible because the battle against poverty, far from being over, seems like a losing proposition in Nepal at the end of this century. Given the widespread perception of malaise among our people, it would in fact be quite easy to conclude that Nepal today is worse off than Nepal of 100 years ago. However an approach that is only based on a headcount of poor people living within the territorial boundaries of Nepal leaves a lot to be desired as a method of analysis.

Within this method, no substantive comparison could be made between how Nepal was governed under premier Bir Shamsher Rana and how it is governed under premier Krishna Prasad Bhattarai. Nor could we compare the constellation of power structures vis-a-vis the Nepali poor in Nepal of 1899 with that of 1999. Someone could suggest that the values inherent in Bir Shamsher’s palace-building projects are not much different from those involved in our parliamentarians’ riding tax-free Pajeros. However this kind of facile comparison will fail to see the different legitimacies based on which the two premiers ruled Nepal. To begin with, Bir Shamsher was not an elected prime minister. He became the premier, it must be recalled, by murdering his own uncle in what was a game of intra-family power politics. Between 1885 and 1901 (when he died), he was the law of the land. Then, there were no journalists or commentators here to raise questions about his palaces, nor organizations that make up the so-called civil society that could raise fingers about his excesses.

It is worth remembering here that after Bir Shamsher, his brothers and nephews ruled Nepal until 1951. They capitulated to a political movement which sought to establish democracy in Nepal. After its moderate success during the decade of the 1950s, this movement was severely crushed in 1960 and remained underground for much of the subsequent three decades. The Jana Andolan of 1990, one could say, then marked a watershed for this movement.

These facts of history and their collective implications for efforts to reduce, among other things, the incidence of poverty in Nepal seem grossly undervalued in the kind of facile comparison being critiqued here. Many of us who grew up in post-Rana Nepal have been used to a life with a fair amount of human dignity for whose establishment in this land, many well-known and not so well-known people devoted their entire lives. Such facile comparisons would be an insult to their memory, to say the least. Instead we should generate other modes of comparison that will enable us to see that we too, as a people, have recorded small victories in search for full human dignity during this long 20th century.

To conclude then, the 20th century was the time in which a collective effort to generate conditions in which all Nepalis can live a dignified life was first launched. In that sense, it was a Nepali century too. It is only the case that we failed to achieve as much as we might have under a different course of history. We could try to make the 21st century a better one for all Nepalis. No one else will do the job for us!