Disband Transport Corporation

It is disheartening to note that the government’s decision to terminate Nepal Transport Corporation (NTC) which is incurring heavy loss every year has failed to make any headway even after nine months. The reason for this appears to be mainly the failure on the part of the government to pay the salary of outgoing staff. Added to it is the lack of lasting will to implement the decision. Neither has the government made any arrangement that would have reduced the redundant employees. As a result, the corporation continues to pump state funds which could have been used for development works.

Ten years ago, NTC was a self-reliant state owned entity that managed to provide not only employment to hundreds of people but also consolidated financial standings considerably. However, after the restoration of democracy, it had had to sell its 15 acres of land for over 100 million rupees to pay salary and perks to its staff. This apart, the corporation borrowed more than 110 million rupees from Rastriya Banijya Bank, Department of Roads and Sajha Yatayat. All this can be attributed to gross mismanagement of the entity. In fact, the underlying rot of all state owned enterprises has been corruption, ineffective corporate laws and, above all, the frequent political interference in their day to day affairs.

Report states the government had only last year formed a committee to find ways to relieve redundant and hired wage workers as part of a gradual process to close down two of the four units of NTC -- namely, Ropeway and Birgunj Truck and Container Service. Had the decision once made been carried out by the concerned authorities, the two units referred to above might have been disbanded by now. However, as all know, these two units are still alive draining the state coffers, as it were, on a sick bed. And the entire corporation is in a state of financial mess today.

Successive governments have made state-owned corporations a recruitment ground for party activists. This is so because there is no corporate laws that prevent the misuse of authority. Otherwise,
the committee responsible for implementation would have found ways out to reduce workers and the process of winding down the state-owned corporation would have materialised for good. But this did not happen. What has happened is that the concerned authorities continue to mismanage corporations at the cost of state funds. Unfortunately, the recommendation made by the committee to channelise 100 million rupees to consolidate the NTC to pay debts did not materialise. Thegovernment can no longer delay in terminating NTC now. It has to disband it -- the earlier the better.

Isurgency theories and Maobadi movement

By Mahendra Lawoti

Edward Muller and Mitchell Seligson’s (1987) empirical findings from a cross-national study of 60 countries confirm income inequality as an important cause for political violence. They say that inequality brews political violence in a broader context of governmental act of coercion, lack of full political rights, intensity of separatism, and level of economic development.

David Apter’s (1987) analysis that excluded and marginalized groups in the Third World tend to react with violence also supports the inequality thesis. He argues that violent groups establish a parallel political discourse, outside the framework of the state, to interpret their goals and justify their actions.

The relevance of the insurgency theories for Nepal is the insights they may provide for preventing political violence. Among other things, Muller and Seligson state that "the worst strategy for preventing a mass political violence would be that of attempting to suppress opposition by acts of coercion while at the same time maintaining a structure that permits some organization and expression of discontent but does not give dissident groups genuine opportunities to participate effectively in political decision making." Were this strategy to be pursued in countries with high level of income inequality and/or a high potential for separatism, the likelihood of a high level political violence would become very strong."

The thesis that lack of effective participation in political decision making processes in open but unequal societies may produce insurgency is supported by Nepal’s case study. Nepal became open since 1990 but peoples’ participation in the decision-making process is minimal due to power centralization. The fact that the Maobadi insurgency did not begin during the closed Panchayat regime but only in the post ninety open environments where openness allowed the insurgents to mobilize the disenchanted people vouches for one aspect of the empirical theory.

Study of Nepali society reveals that Nepal has many of the elements that facilitate insurgency. Income inequality is extremely high. Genuine political participation is lacking. For the majority of citizens political participation has been limited to casting vote in the elections, whose impact have been diluted by increasing electoral malpractice. Even the judiciary and the legislative branches complain about their undue dependence on the executive (cabinet). On the other hand, whatever little political power delegated to the district and village development committees is more or less monopolized by the DDC and VDC chairpersons. Their limited power is curtailed by the parallel district power centres, the CDO and DSPs, who act at the beckoning of the centre. The proper way to curtail power of the chairpersons should be through empowerment of assembly members, ensuring transparency and accountability, and diffusion of power to the civil society, and not through unnecessary central intervention.

The separatist thesis till now does not apply to Nepal but how it will impact in the future will depend on how the growing awareness among the ethnic and cultural groups is dealt with by the state and society. The separatist tendencies will grow if these marginalized groups do not feel that their aspirations, for justice and equality in cultural matters and equitable share of state and societal resources, will be addressed. It is fortunate that cultural movements are still in the process of identity formation and organizational development in Nepal. If the existing disparities between cultural and ethnic groups are not tackled soon, it can be said from comparative experience that coincidence of resource marginalization to culturally discriminated group can be fatal.

This analysis of Nepal shows that if significant changes in societal and state institutions are not carried out, insurgency may continue for a while. The question becomes which causal factor/s can be tackled? Ethnic and cultural variables cannot be changed through the state policy. It is not desirable to reduce openness of the society in a democracy either. The insurgency cannot be suppressed through brutal force since it is a political problem. Some have argued for deploying the army to suppress the movement.

The army may, in fact, exacerbate the problem because it is not trained, and are not experienced, to deal with situations where interaction with common citizens is essential. In Punjab it was the well-equipped police who controlled the insurgents after a political settlement was reached.

The only other possibilities for the state are to reduce inequality in income and power distribution. Land reform is a possibility for reducing income inequality in highly agrarian societies; however, history tells us that genuine land reform has very less chance in Nepal, as elsewhere. Hence devolution is the only policy option remaining to a democratic regime. Devolution of power will increase political participation by engaging people in local politics if they believe that there is sufficient political space for them to make difference locally.

Delegation of legislative, taxing and policing power to lower level of governments, possibly to provincial level, may generate such beliefs. If genuine political participation takes place, then the support base of insurgency movement will dwindle.

The government and the urban elite have acknowledged the seriousness of the Maoist movement only recently. However, the attempts for resolving the issue by the government and political leaders’ look more dictated by manoeuvring in the power game. GP Koirala, in his innumerable utterances, never asked the Maoists what their problems were. People do not put their lives at risk and become insurgents without perceiving some serious problems.

On the other hand, formation of the Deuba committee by Bhattarai seemed more a strategy to deflect criticism. If the committee had included members from mainstream political parties and human rights organizations, the chances for dialogue and resolving the issue would have increased.

Even if Prachanda and Baburam join the "mainstream political process," as long as the structural problems exist, there is no guarantee that all their followers will comply. Already, some quarters of the media have stressed that the movement is out of control of the leaders.

If only cosmetic changes take place in the societal and state structures, then the same causes that gave birth to the Maoist insurgency will give birth to other insurgency movements. Hence the permanent solution of the Maoist problem is to remove conditions that is producing them: extreme inequality in income and political power.

Dressing and undressing

By Smriti Jaiswal

Lemme ask you a question. A hugely interesting one, you can consider it a fair riddle if you like. Suppose your mother asked you to eat two chappatis but you don’t want to have chappatis, let alone
two, because you don’t like them.

Anyway, you have those two because your mom’s real martinet no getting through her, then the moment she turns her back, you rush to the basin, stick your fingers down the throat and vomit the whole stuff out. The question is did you or did you not have those chappatis?

Now another question. Suppose your college demands that you be dressed in a certain outfit if you are to enter the college premises. So you take all the pains in the world and put on that sick looking, rough feeling sari at the ungodly hour of five and march off to college. The watchman looks you up and down then lets you enter. The first thing you do after that is to rush to the toilet, rip off the sari, stuff it into your bag and attend the classes in a real chic skirt. The question is did you or did you not follow the rules of the college? Tricky question. But in the end it does not really matter. In the end it becomes a huge comedy and a mockery show.

This is what happens in most of the colleges that prescribe a dress code but brother about it only as long as the student is crossing the gate, and once within it cease to take notice of the whole scene. What sort of a haphazard rule is this? Either you have a dress code or you don’t; you cannot possibly have such a two-in-one system running on. But it runs on anyway.

There is another contradiction too. There are colleges who begin as early as six so that these students who are also job holders may be able to get to their offices on time. Mighty kind of them but at the same time those who enforce upon the students a specific style of dressing up put the job holding students in a downright fix. Most of the jobs demand dress codes too so that a job holding student has no way out but to adopt the go-to-toilet-and-rip off-your-sari system. So you see, the college is both helping and hindering the student at the same time. The dress code at college level is only a humbug and means nothing at all. It’s all rather quite stupid. A thing like that should either be meaningful and be carried out strictly or be banished or done away with. It is of no use having the students stamped and labelled and troubled for no reason at all and does no good to the reputation of the students.

I know some of the sari colleges have pretty wild names and wild tales attached to them because of this go-in-sari-come-out-in-other-dress business. It’s impossible to go about explaining to everybody and it gets rather depressing at times.

And anyway it teaches another lesson, ie, you cannot treat women of Bachelor’s or Master’s level as though they are mere children (for heaven’s sake some of them have children of their own as bit as that). You can take a horse to the pond but cannot make it drink.

Transportation : Need for options beyond roads

By Alok Rajouria

Recently, the Rural Infrastructure Project (RIP), a rural road rehabilitation project largely funded by a 5-million dollar World Bank loan was launched at a five star resort in Kathmandu. While the World Bank tried to justify the investment by saying that there is strong demand for new roads and that the existing network is generally in disrepair, the government highlighted the decentralised methodology adopted in the implementation of the project. Discussions on various aspects of the project followed the inauguration ceremony, but nobody asked: why just roads?

The transport sector in Nepal revolves around construction and maintenance of roads. Government plans and policies have placed the transport sector under ‘infrastructure development’ in which a system of public provision and maintenance of roads and private sector supply of the transport services is assumed. Increasingly, issues of mobility, affordability, safety, environment, gender and equity are seriously challenging the traditional thought that construction of roads benefits everyone and stimulates the process of development.

Roads are known to play a catalytic role in the development process, given that a set of socio-economic prerequisites are fulfilled; otherwise, roads become white elephants, a liability to the national economy and a burden to tax-payers. Furthermore, road construction is known to damage the environment and can become a source of social conflict.

Ever since planned development began in 1956, the transport policies and programmes have been road-centric. Although road construction in the mountains is expensive, time consuming and difficult, a considerable amount of progress has been made. Between the first and the end of the eighth 5-year plans, total length of road construction had grown from 624 km to 11,237 km. However, 14 districts of the country continue to be isolated as they are yet to be connected to the national road network. Almost five decades of planned development and systematic road building has, unfortunately, failed to relieve the transport burden of Nepalese people living in rural and remote areas of the country.

Transport still remains an immense source of drudgery to rural people of Nepal. Accessing primary health and educational services as well as fulfilling basic needs for survival can mean days of walk for many Nepalese living in remote areas. The need for transport in rural areas range from marketing agricultural produce to fetching essential resources such as water and firewood. Even in areas where roads and transport services exist, people end up walking long distances simply because they cannot afford to use the services available.

In many rural parts of Nepal, men, women and children are often seen carrying headloads along million-dollar black-topped highways.

Unable to afford the bus fare, they find themselves excluded from the noble assumption that roads serve all. Unfortunately, the market-generated transport services serve only those who can pay the market price.

Affordability of transport services is an issue that policy makers must consider while formulating transport programs and policies. Alternate means of transport must be developed and promoted in the light of affordability to optimise the use of existing road infrastructure. Accessibility to credit and promotion of affordable transport options must be an integral part of transport planning.

Similarly, transport policies are found to be gender-neutral; they are insensitive to gender issues. The transport needs of women, especially in rural areas, can be very different from those of men. While the travel needs of men are generally tied to earning their livelihoods, those of women are linked more with fulfilling household chores and welfare of children, besides the agricultural functions. The private sector transport services do not cater to the travel needs of women and children because their travel patterns are mostly non-commercial like fetching water and firewood or carrying agricultural produce. Therefore it is essential to pay attention to gender analysis in policy planning in the area of rural transport. Furthermore, the national data on transport must be gender dis-aggregated, if the policies and programme are to effectively address gender issues in transport.

Construction of roads has been one of the major sources of damage inflicted upon the natural environment of Nepal. While digging and detonation directly disrupt the local geological setting and give rise to soil erosion and landslip, excessive deforestation has been intimately linked to road construction. Before the dust of road construction settles, the vehicles begin to pollute the air.

It is therefore imperative that the government policies give adequate attention to environmentally benign transport options to roads. Ropeways, for example, are known to be environmentally least damaging and suitable to the topography of Nepal. Unfortunately, the interest of the government in promoting ropeways seems to be waning as the 8th five-year plan had more coverage on ropeways than the on-going 9th five-year plan. In urban areas, promotion of non-motorised means of transport, such as bicycles, could represent one of the ways of reversing the deterioration of air quality.

Lack of bridges and appropriate river crossing systems is another source of hardship and potential threat to communities living in remote and rural areas. Every monsoon, rivers and streams cut off communities from nearby town and villages and people are known to drown or be swept away by flash floods while attempting to go across. Some progress has been made in resolving this predicament by the use of suspension bridges, which are expensive in local terms, while less expensive and safe river crossing technologies such as wire bridges exist but they are not properly reflected in the government policies.

The value of mobility goes beyond development. It is essential and crucial for survival. In Nepal, a country with fragile and inaccessible mountains, lack of mobility and accessibility breeds among the people a sense of isolation, diminishing their self-confidence and increasing a feeling of estrangement. Increased mobility can be one of the effective means of helping the poor people find their way out of misery. It is time that the government diversified the transport sector by recognising and promoting appropriate options beyond roads.