Don’t be dependent

Since decades, governments have  apparently taken foreign assistance so much for granted they have refused to recognise that such assistance are actually a means for putting the country on the track to economic prosperity and that they are not the end in themselves. It is only natural that with such an attitude the burden of foreign assistance should grow, and over the years it has grown into a dependency syndrome in which the country finds itself hopelessly mired. Other reasons that have further contributed to this state of affairs are: improper investment of foreign assistance and lack of explicit policies and programmes while investing. More importantly, what has cast a cloud over the prospects of the country’s development is the failure to mobilise internal resources.

World Bank (WB) has contributed more than US 1.31 billion dollars to assist over 70 projects since 1969. Other multilateral donor agencies and countries have also not been far behind with their help.  Despite such massive foreign assistance, the relative position of the country in terms of development remains unchanged. The reason:  the fiscal deficit has been widening due to ineffective policies and programmes to mobilise internal resources. This has mainly resulted in failure to meet the expected target. This apart, the present efforts of the government to mobilise revenue have made things worse. For example, the customs department which contributes about 50 percent to government revenue has not been able to meet its target because a chunk of the revenue leaks out through   smuggling and customs manipulation. Leakage is also a problem with development work in other sectors.

As expenditure increases dependence on foreign assistance will also increase because of failure to mobilise internal resources, lack of clear thinking, transparency and ability to execute development projects. The gravity of this situation can be understood from the fact that the ratio of debt service to external assistance has rapidly increased over the past one decade. Now, the problem as it stands is that the increasing burden of debt servicing is greatly reducing the room for manoeuvring in the development front as well as in the choice of development projects. This apart,  investment in the form of loan assistance to unproductive sectors has become excessive due to persistent borrowing from multilateral agencies, that too, at relatively higher rates of interest. Another factor that has compelled the country to depend on foreign assistance is the failure of public enterprises to generate a fair amount of surplus.

It is unfortunately true that successive governments have never thought seriously about various development models and approaches. Neither has any political leader seen to it that foreign loan assistance is utilised properly. Instead, they have diverted loan assistance and abused their authority for personal benefit. The government cannot allow this to continue. It has to develop policies and programmes to mobilise internal resources, reduce the burden of external assistance and invest in the productive sector only. But most of all, it has to see to it that the money is utilised properly.

Mulling over part-time democracy

-By C D Bhatta

If anyone believes in democracy at all, it  is hard to see why in most democratic countries the proceedings of democracy should still be divided between a handful of people who take all the detailed political decision and the vast mass who walk down the road once every few years, push a button or mark a cross in a square, and then walk home again. Democracy, after all, assumes the basic equality of all grown-up human beings. Yet the overwhelming majority of these beings are still expected to be content with an occasional vote for a party, followed by a wait for several years to see whether the winning party actually does what it has promised, and whether it does the right bits. After that there is another stab in the dark to find out whether this time more voters can get a little more of what they actually want.

The dividing line is bad for those on both sides of it. It is bad for the minority who hold most of the real power, because they can conceal what they are doing with their power, and can therefore be corrupted by it. It is bad for the majority, because it confines them to the generalities of politics and discourages them from voting with a proper, detailed sense of responsibility. Sometimes the dividing line itself becomes a challenge for the existence and survival of democracy. The living example that we have seen in Nepal is the fall of the Panchayat regime and now the rise of the Maoist movement.

Democracy in the 20th century has been a half finished thing. In the 21st, it can grow to its full height, says Brian Beedham. The next big change in human affairs will probably not be a matter of economics, or electronics, or military science; it will be a change in the supposedly humdrum world of politics. The new millennium could see , at last, the full flowering of the idea of democracy. The democratic system of politics, which first took a widespread root in the 19th century, and then in the 20th century beat off its attacks of both fascism and communism, may in the 21st century realise that it has so far been living, four understandable reasons, in a state of arrested development. But these reasons no longer apply; and so democracy can set about completing its growth.

The places that now consider themselves to be democracies are with a handful of exceptions run by the process generally knows as ‘representative’ democracy. That qualifying adjective should make us sit up and think. The starting point of modern democracy is the belief that every sane adult is entitled to an equal say in the conduct of public affairs. Some people are richer than others, some are more intelligent, and nobody’s interests are quite the same; but all are entitled to an equal voice in deciding how they should be governed. There is therefore something odd in the fact that in most democracies this voice is heard only once every few years, in elections in which voters choose a president or send their representatives to an elected parliament. It is the presidents and parliamentarians who do all the deciding (bad or good), while the rest of the democracy is expected to stand more or less quietly on one side, either nodding its head in irrelevant approval or growling in frustrated disagreement which most of the scholars call as a part-time democracy.

Political pundits say democracy that will likely take place in the new millennium is the ‘direct democracy’ that has come out of the frustration from the part-time democracy. In this straightforward version, the elected representatives are not left to their own devices in the periods between election. The rest of the people can at any time call them to order, by cancelling some decisions of the representatives with which most people do not agree, by insisting that the representatives do something they had no wish to do, or perhaps had never even thought about.

There are channels through which power previously dammed up by the politicians can be made to flow into the hands of the ordinary and more honest people. The politicians, naturally present various arguments against doing anything of that sort. On the other hand, the defenders of the old fashioned democracy have to face the fact that the world has changed radically since the time when it might have seemed plausible to think the voters’ wishes needed to be filtered through the finer intelligence of those ‘representatives’. The changes that have taken place since then have removed many of the differences between ordinary people and their representatives. They have also helped the people to discover that the representatives are not especially competent. Clearly, what worked out reasonably well in the 19th century will not work in the 21st century. Our children may find direct democracy more efficient, as well as more democratic than the representative sort, say some Western democratic thinkers.

Direct democracy, in fact is a far bigger change than any other alteration. Direct democracy keeps it un-delegated. First, then, a picture of how direct democracy actually works, a matter about which most people have only a hazy idea. It is still, admittedly, a pretty scattered phenomenon. Slightly over half of the states in the United States use it, some with fairly spectacular results, though it so far has no place in American politics at the federal level. Australia has held almost 50 nationwide referendums, and its component states almost as many again (one in every six of which was about bar-closing times). Italy has recently become a serious component of direct democracy, and its referendums in 1991 and 1993 played a large part in breaking up the corrupt old Italian party system.

A majority of the people of Least Developed Countries who are marred by corruption would definitely be looking for an alternative system of governance as did it in Italy. It is unlikely that the 21st century will put up with this humdrum world of democracy for long because of the vast frustration towards it basically in the developing world. Of course, the fuller form of democracy, the one in which the voters directly take the decision they want to take, will put down its roots in places where the soil is ready. The turning point came with the Reformation which declared that every individual is directly responsible to God for his own life, and does not need a priestly class to tell him how to conduct his life. So it’s the time for soul searching for contemporary leaders as nobody knows what type of democracy will be there in the third millennium, which again entirely depends on the people.

IA, PIA and TIA

-By Malcom X

It is interesting to note how these  three acronyms, IA, PIA and TIA came in a row in a recently concluded hijacking drama. Maybe we should call CIA to investigate on this IA coincidences. Once is called chance(i)dance, twice is called coincidence. I do not know what you called for thrice incidence. Whatever you call it, IA, PIA and TIA is the talk of the town. Let us also talk.

TIA, tiny international airport, is now being dubbed as terrorists international airport, courtesy Zero News. It is badly squeezed between IA and PIA row. The animosity between two big SAARC brothers is producing a dark cloud over this shanti chhetra. That is why TIA is having, day in and day out, on-the-spot investigation by the ministers and top shots. Sounds TIA is the kernel of Nepal’s security.

The blunt of IA and PIA rivalry seems to  have been taken by a Nepali passenger Mr Gajendra Man Tamrakar with a RAW deal. Some people are calling it a Zee Horror Show. A friend of mine called me and said, “Look our security is so tight at the airport that we have security check-ups before duty-free shops. Can you see such up-side-downs anywhere else?” Actually, the recent tightening of security belt around the airport provides one more khane bato. “You are a stupid lato”, commented another friend. Bhattarai had to resort to “security lapses” to save government collapses.

“It is a gross injustice on a smaller nation. You see the actual hijacking took place not inside Nepali space. Furthermore, it is an Indian plane and hijackers are non-Nepalese. How could we be responsible for that?”, a wise guy commented. People can even hijack with toy-pistols. So without ever confirming the nature of hat hatiyar how can we say that there is security lapses at our airport?  Remarked another boffin. “You see the lone passenger, who was  killed by the hijackers, was killed by knife stabbing. This proves that there was no such big weapons with the hijackers and proves our security arrangement” commented an official. Hijacking can take place anywhere in the world. If it can happen even in developed countries, why cannot it happen here? This is a non-issue. Furthermore, this is the first time in the fifty-years of aviation history of Nepal. During this time how many hijackings took place in India?” asked a politician.

“Any way we have established a high powered commission to investigate this matter. Please, wait till the report is officially printed out.” However, going by the detail, minute investigative accounts by Dr KKGG, former honourable member of National Planning Commission, in one of the vernacular weekly, there is one definite mistake made by the government. It should have appointed Dr KKGG to head the investigation team instead of the former chief of the police.

As we went on talking, hoards of tourists were flocking into Nepal that too by air. Some said this Visit Nepal Year spillover. Actually, the  tourists were seen around TIA to have their picture taken with TIA tower and, if possible, IA and PIA airplanes in background. The hijacking has come as a real blessing in disguise for the country that is called “never ending peace and love - I mean Nepal.”

An editorial post-mortem

When the coverage of the recent plane  hijack episode by the Indian media, particularly ZEE News, has come for blistering criticism, it may be useful to mull over some key aspects of the incident in conjunction with a post-mortem of editorials in the Times of India (TOI) whose views many here treat as gospel.

Mysterious: TOI’s leading edit on December 27, 1999, entitled “Hostage to Terror” referred, inter alia, to “the callous slaying of Rupin Katyal” -- which indeed it most certainly was.

However, it did not speculate about the reason(s) why of all the passengers and crew aboard flight IC 814 from Kathmandu to Delhi on Christmas Eve it was Katyal alone who was killed. Was that because when he reportedly looked at the hijackers, which he wasn’t supposed to do, or he saw someone whom he recognised?

While that mystery may never be solved, this scribe finds it absorbing that while Katyal’s murder was initially described as due to a stab in his neck, later news reports had it that his throat was mercilessly slit. Which version is correct? And why the discrepancy, in the first place?

How does one explain that as per some newspaper reports Katyal’s wife was not supposed to know about her husband’s slaying, while others referred to her husband being killed in her presence?

If she didn’t know until the whole horrendous nightmare was over, why was it necessary to keep her sedated during the eight-day ordeal, as some Indian news reports have indicated?

TOI took a nasty swipe at the US government on the hijacking by charging that it was “the direct result” of the “international permissiveness” of the US and its allies in not taking “the Pakistan government to task for sheltering” the Harkat-ul-Ansar even “though the US government eventually agreed to classify the Pakistan-based outfit as a terrorist organisation.”

Although in the past TOI’s editorial columns have amply reflected India’s open distaste for Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, the TOI editorial under review argued thus: “The fact that they wanted to fly to Afghanistan does not necessarily mean the Taliban were in on the plan or indeed that they support the hijacking.”

Much later, of course, when the hostages were safely back and the hijackers went off into the sunset, all that was to change.

Coming now to TOI’s leading article the very next day, what is most engrossing is TOI’s complaint over the “inordinate delay in the despatch of a negotiating team to Kandahar.”

Why the delay?: Indeed, if New Delhi’s primary concern was to get back the hostages as soon and as safely as possible, how does one explain the many days of foot-dragging? Was it sheer incompetence or are there other credible explanations?

Two days later, TOI explained that “it now appears that India was waiting to have some indication of the attitude of the Taliban authorities before opening talks with the hijackers.”

That, we are told, happened when “the clear and unambiguous opposition of the Taliban to this terrorist act” was received by New Delhi -- although the Taliban had not permitted the hijacked aircraft to land in Kabul on December 24 itself and had also promptly condemned the terrorist act!

The hard fact, of course, remains that if India had agreed to the hijackers’ terms early on the suffering of the hostages would not only have been much less but that she would also have secured a much better deal for herself: she would have needed only to have swapped Maulana Masood Azhar, instead of Azhar plus two other pro-Kashmiri militants, for the hostages.

Doesn’t that make the “inordinate delay” worth investigating? Could it be that a nuclear India might initially have been toying with the idea of an Entebbe-type of commando action? India does, after all, have a history of armed intervention in the region.

Or, could it just conceivably be that it was precisely because of that possibility that the Taliban brought in anti-aircraft guns and other heavy weaponry into Kandahar airport after which, significantly, India finally struck its deal with the hijackers?

After the hijacking ended on New Year’s Eve, TOI’s next day’s issue carried a long editorial entitled “Setback for India” in which it made this startling mea culpa: “the Indian republic has been outmanoeuvred by terrorists and by a neighbour which supports them and unleashes them on this country.”

Then, while calling on all political parties and the media “not to politicise the issue and project the government’s decision in partisan colours”, TOI predicted that “Pakistan is likely to advertise the hijacking as revenge for Kargil and as proof that the BJP-led coalition government is a paper tiger.”

Thus far, there is little indication of that bit of crystal ball gazing being correct, as indicated by repeated denials of any involvement by Pakistan from Islamabad officialdom.

Incidentally, as of this writing, no government, including the US and Britain, has endorsed India’s claim that the hijacking was planned and executed by Pakistan.

On January 3, TOI continued to stress the awesome threat to India from terrorism and Pakistan while in its January 4 editorial, it alleged that Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh “right from day one” had indicated that Pakistan was involved -- an assertion that sits uncomfortably with Singh’s two logged telephone calls to his opposite number in Islamabad thanking him for Pakistan’s cooperation over the hijack incident!

Ludicrous: Finally, TOI described Pakistan’s charge of Indian “stage management” of the incident as “ludicrous” and then referred to “reports that a Pakistani diplomat might have accompanied one of the hijackers’ accomplices to Kathmandu airport.”

Not surprisingly, there is no word about the specific Pakistani charge that a first secretary of the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu was a passenger on the IC 814 flight. On that, all Indian media have been as tight as the proverbial oyster. One wonders why.By M R Josse