"Too good" to be true

In this age of quick bucks and intense competition, it is difficult to see how anyone could ever resist the offer for hydro-power generation as were reported in this newspaper as well as in some others the other day. The so called prized offer has to do with the development of the 300 Megawatt Upper Karnali Hydroelectric project. This time around, the developer is said to be a non-profit organisation which is apparently willing to chip in 70 percent of the costs and the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) will have to come up with the remaining 30 percent. Moreover, the enticing icing on the cake is the provision that the per unit cost of electricity will not exceed 3 US cents (about 2.2 rupees) at any time. What more could our leaders want?

According to reports, a person like Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, who is so concerned about the welfare of the Nepalese people, has hurriedly convened a meeting of the "fast track" committee just one day before he went on an official visit to India. He is said to have instructed the concerned authorities to sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the non-profit organisation that claims it specializes in helping developing countries develop properly.

The offer has come at a time when there are other better known companies that want to develop the 10,000 plus megawatt Karnali Chisapani and the 400 plus megawatt Arun III projects. Their terms are obviously at great variance from what the new offer on Upper Karnali has shown. The recent example of RNAC acquiring an unnecessary extra jetliner on lease is another example of how things ought not to be done. When the procedures are not followed properly, anything that is done, even when they are done in the interest of the people and the country, provide people with sufficient reason to suspect conspiracy (read corruption) in such deals. This happens, particularly, when the concerned authorities such as corporations are unable to furnish even the parliamentary committee looking into the deals with the necessary details. It is precisely for this reason that the Nepalese have to be wary of such offers. Such offers should not be taken at face value. If the new offer as reported in the press was tenable, why is it that NEA could not build such projects on its own and avail

its consumers with energy at substantially low cost? There is simply no doubting that this latest offer is simply too good to be true. This is all the more reason why the government should take time to study the offer and to see what strings could be attached to it. Hastily jumping into a deal, over which the country may have to repent later, will be worse than having no deal at all. The government would do well to recognise this before giving its answer.

Sorry state : Citizenship and development

By Saubhagya Shah

The concept of planned development is premised on two basic assumptions. First, the existing condition of needs and inputs such as labour force, market prices, population trends, interest rates can be known. Second, various needs and input variables can be manipulated within the nation state container to achieve desired results. Simply put, the first condition of development is to know, the second imperative is to act. The second imperative is dependent on the original ability to know the existing reality. But with a free and unaccounted flow of people, cash, disease and commodities through the porous Indo-Nepal border, none of the inputs, variables, and factors can be assessed to a reasonable degree. In such an unknowable condition, the ability to manipulate the variables for desired social and economic goals simply does not exist. To revisit the nation as tauli metaphor, so far all inputs such as foreign aid, tourism income, internal resources, planning administration and everything has simply flowed out and south from the leaking vessel. When the open border acts like an open, perpetually bleeding artery, the situation becomes simply non-responsive to any kind of development planning or intervention. Yet we continue to make plan after plan ignoring this handicap.

It is not surprising that four decades of "development" has taken us nowhere. No country in the modern period, which did not adequately secure its frontier, has developed, whether we look at the East Asian Tigers or the older European nations. This historic lesson is especially urgent for Nepal, as the seepage between the two neighbours is very unequal. Even in this so-called "globalized" condition where national boundaries are supposed to have withered away, it is insightful to remember how much effort and expense the United States expends to check the Mexican border and keep out the Latinos. If the world's biggest economy with the most generous endowments of natural resources and land cannot sustain uncontrolled immigration, how can Nepal hope to survive an open border regime with a country that will soon have the world's largest population with extreme migratory tendency?

In this background, the Brettonwood Brothers and other international lenders and collectors are mulling over a mega anti-poverty programme for Nepal. But without first doing something about the big hole on its side, this project will also meet the same fate as the previous ones that litter Nepal's bleak developmentscape. If one just takes a cursory look at the demographic profile of the street paupers  in Kathmandu alone, the exotic species have completely routed the indigenous beggars from the streets (just as many local crafts, skills and trades were driven out earlier). How will development know how and whom to target?

An important study on labour and irrigation by Prof Chaitanya Mishra and colleagues shows that substantial sums invested for irrigation in the Terai have benefitted Indian immigrants the most before development can do something good for the country. It will  simply repeat the Sisyphean exercise. It is not that development  just fails without triggering off other consequences. The negative consequences of bad development can be enormous and distort economic, political and social spheres. By working as a powerful magnet, new sums of development monies will simply be provided. And there will be yet another boost to uncontrolled immigration into the country if  the debilitating border condition is not taken into account.

One of the pathologies of the open border has been the deposition of a very large Indian population in Nepal who have come here over the decades to benefit from the cash infusion from foreign aid remittance economy of   Gurkhas, tourism and the relatively easy accessibility of jobs, business land and forests. Rather than initiating the arduous task for regulating and controlling   these massive population shifts, the government recently pushed through a controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill in parliament that will in essence retroactively   turn at least four million such immigrants into citizens. It is an easy way out and a slippery one as well. This unfortunate amendment does not only legalize  the ones who are already here, but makes it easy for the new waves to acquire Nepali citizenship.

It is indeed a sorry state where distribution of citizenship card substitutes for  visa issuance and border regulation. Once  it goes into effect, this dastardly  Act will forever alter the economic, social cultural and political essence of this country. With the change in regime in 1990, parliamentary constituencies were redrawn to shift the gravitas of polity from the mid-hills towards the Terai. Now, with new citizenship provisions, the national locus may well shift further south beyond the border. When one is in a charitable mood, the  government's surreptitious move (it was presented in the parliament as a "Finance Bill" and not as a citizenship bill)  may be dismissed as defeatist and escapist move of a weak mind, but in sombre reflection, it is difficult to see it as anything but betrayal. All the more so as it occurred during Mr Koirala's tenure, who, on occasions has intimated that he understands the gravity of the frontier question well.

Apart from these long term threats, here are the other immediate, and more sinister malaise of the open border. Nepal is forced to become an unwilling playground for India's intractable political and regional problems. Refugees and rebels from Punjab insurgency, secessionist movement in Kashmir, Tamil rebels and other sundry criminal elements can enter Nepal through the open border. This phenomenon seriously distorts Nepali political, economic administrative and civil processes, especially when India uses a problem of its own making to blame Nepal of harbouring anti-India elements. As it is, by forcing the border open, India is doing Nepal no favour.

According to disturbing news reports in Kantipur, scores of Kashmiri traders and refugees in Kathmandu are being picked off the street by Nepal Police and handed over to the Indian embassy to disappear. If these Kashmiris are criminals and terrorists then they should not have been allowed through the border in the first place. If they have to be detained or even extradited, that should be done through due process of law of this land. But just to snatch people from homes, shops and streets and have them disappear without trial or trace smacks too much of the Gestapo raj of the 1930s -- a complete moral and political disgrace for this country in the age.

One earnestly hopes that the recent disappearances are an aberration in our democratic law enforcement and not the execution of some hand over clause in the unfolding "Hand in Hand" doctrine recently unveiled from Delhi Durbar by Mr Koirala . Such arbitrary acts of violence are not only reserved for the Kashmiris. Last week, an armed Indian security contingent made a wanton incursion into Nepali territory and took away a Nepali citizen, a VDC chairman in   Parsa district. From a Nepali vantage  point, how are these armed intrusions and occupations by a friendly neighbour any different than the alleged invasion by ISI and Kashmiri terrorists?

These ominous developments not only test the state's commitment towards Nepal's sovereignty, protection of its citizens and respect for human rights, but further erode the credibility of a tin pot regime that desperately clings on to its oversize hand me down legitimating Westminster pajamas. When the state so willingly and shamelessly surrenders its jurisdiction over its citizens and domiciles, it   gets harder to justify the wresting of sovereignty from the Crown only to   hand it over to Delhi in these ever so instalments. The deafening silence accompanying these blatantly illegal unconstitutional cross-border raids and disappearances also exposes the embarrassingly narrow limits of Nepali Human Rights sensibilities and practice.

Gross misuse of bicycle

By Tilak Pokharel

As usual, I paid attention to three pictures recently published in Kantipur and The Kathmandu Post dailies which were related to bicycle.

The first picture was published in Kantipur dated September 23, in which Thai Premier Chuan Likpai was riding a bicycle on  his   way to  office to commemorate carless day. The second picture was published in The Kathmandu Post dated October 17, in which General Secretary of CPN (UML) Madhav Kumar Nepal was riding a bicycle on his way to Prime Minister's office to hand over a memorandum, denouncing the recent petro-price hike. And, the third picture was published in The Kathmandu Post dated October 20, in which a policeman was punishing two cyclists by imposing ups-'n'-down.

These pictures, in my judgement, have not only insulted value and dignity of a bicycle but also have mocked its importance. The first two pictures prove that the two political leaders have made bicycles ladders for their political benefit, I should say. Neither the Thai PM nor UML leader use a bicycle at other times when they are enjoying their privileges. Maybe, a cyclist should leave road for their Mercedes or Pajero at other times.

The third picture is the product of the tradition of not issuing a cycle-driving licence. If the tradition were so, the policemen could  have seized  the licence and  bargained  for 'tea-expense' (more harshly a bribe). As a cyclist, I understand that it would  have been  an intolerable humiliation for the cyclists, if they were to be  punished in a public place.

These are merely some of the exemplified illustrations of insults inflicted on bicycles. But, there are many other such cases which might not have come to the public's notice. The harassments made by traffic police and big vehicles are regrettable. Even more pathetic is that the cyclists are more prone to road accidents and thousands of them die each day throughout the world.

The people from so-called sophisticated families in major cities of Nepal never use a bicycle, thinking that it is a matter to be used by some lower-class people. But, they do not think that the ancestor of modern motorbikes and cars is  the bicycle.

Contrary to such reality in an underdeveloped country like ours, the people in developed countries use bicycles - the eco-friendly vehicle - by keeping their motorbikes or cars aside. They enjoy cycling and even go for dates on bicycles. But in Kathmandu, girls from rich to lower class families do not ride a bicycle, but try to find a boyfriend possessing his own motorbike or a car. This trend has even narrowed our mentality, towards bicycles.

"Proxemics", history and culture

By Viraj P Thacker

Proxemics is the interrelated theories of observations of human use of space as a special elaboration of culture. It also suggests a cultural dimension based on the experience of perception. Throughout human history, civilizations have created ideas about space and culture and often imposed them on others deemed to be weaker. In many ways, the one historical and geographical location of the world that seems to both personify and defy the very meaning of "proxemics" is the Indian Subcontinent.  From earliest civilizations like Mohenjodaro and Harppa, the invasion of the Vedic Indo-Aryans, the Golden Age of the Guptas, the  thousand year Mohan median rule to the  British "Raj" and finally modern India. India with its ancient history has seen definitions and redefinition of culture and space. As if all this was not enough, the highly multi-ethnic fabric of India represents every race and religion known to man. Differences among the traditions and origins of  the North and South make a study in  itself. With twenty two culturally diverse states, each with various racial, religious and philosophical orientations and over 675 languages and dialects, the definition of a prototype of Indian culture becomes impossible, and this glorious yet chaotic "melting pot" stands almost in defiance of what common sense would call "overload".

To try and correlate every aspect of Indian history would be an impossibility and it  would  not be feasible to define the idea of "proxemics" arising from the above mentioned things. It  may   be sufficient to mention that the course of Indian history has explored and established many combinations of space and culture rather than stick to common perceptions. I will attempt to discuss the unique interactions of the British "Raj" and the concepts of space and culture that were created during this era. By engaging in a description of  historical  fact specific to time and circumstance, I hope to make my point.

The location I have chosen for our purposes is the town of Darjeeling in northeast India. Located in the lap of the great Himalayas, 700 odd miles from Calcutta, Darjeeling was the summer capital of British India, and a welcome retreat from the oppressive heat of the plains of Bengal. Unlike the plains of Bengal, the inhabitants of  this mountainous region were the warlike Gurkhas of Nepal. The East Indian Company in the early years were overcome by the Gurkhas and made peace by incorporating these fearless warriors of Nepal into the British Army. Darjeeling was presented to the company by the King of Nepal as a returned favour and although now a part of British India, it had a population whose traditions were affiliated to the kingdom of Nepal.

Besides being a favourite for its renowned teas, Darjeeling became the playground and classroom of the "Raj" and a seat of European culture. Situated at an altitude of 7000 feet, with a healthy mist and rain, Darjeeling was reminiscent of a Scottish highland town. This Victorian toy town was (and still is) home to India's oldest and most exclusive British public schools. St Paul's School, founded in 1823 by the  British elite has been called the "Eton of the East" and "Eton in the Himalayas", where Sunday suits, boating jackets and blazers are compulsories as are Shakespeare, and "exeats". In a much   changed India, St Paul's on the hill continues to epitomize the best of Victorian England, and perhaps continues the long lost  tradition  at Eton. While the rest of India  (with the exception of a few pockets) has progressively erased the last hints of the British Empire, St Paul's and a few others continue to stubbornly exist as the last bastions of a bygone tradition.

What is true of Darjeeling (Queen of the hills) is probably applicable to twenty odd similar escorts called hill stations throughout the "Raj" and the old colonial cities of India. The Indian upper class enjoyed the benefits of this kind of exclusivity,  while the rest of   India remained rural and poor. In the earlier  years, the East India company under Robert Clive, gained by incorporating the Indian upper classes into the colonial system and this  was  related to the forms of discrimination already in place in    Indian society.  This life style of Maharajas and princes impacted the definition of Anglo-Indian culture as much as the imposition of Gothic architecture on the Indian landscape, and in many ways the clash of ancient and progressive redefined British culture in the empire.

In modern India, the definitions of space and culture are largely a function of the same factors as during the "Raj", namely  economics, social class and affluence. Thus, while places like Darjeeling try to preserve  older tradition, cities like Bombay and Calcutta are redefined in terms of the  environment built by slums and poverty. In  many ways, the process of redefinition of space and culture has largely been a  need to accommodate growing populations and in the process, the concepts of space and  urban environment have regressed since the days of colonial rule. Attempts to create new cities have not yielded desired results and any sense of nostalgia attached to the great old cities requires a journey into the colonial past. At the same time, the majority of rural India remains unchanged. So while a minuscule percentage of Indian society continues to defend their premises, the overwhelming majority tries to "make do" with what's left, but in a population that continues to grow at an alarming rate, encroachment becomes a necessity. In terms of culture, the affluent few remain as distanced from the poor majority as the space they occupy.

What is the definition of culture under these circumstances? The  concept of proxemics is reduced  to a mere terminology and its definition severely challenged in the Indian experience. There may be hope in the form of a growing middle class, but unfortunately a middle class in India suggests need for accumulation rather than redistribution. In the long run, this growing segment of society may prove to be another hindrance to real progress. In my final analysis, to realize the ideas of space and culture in an inclusive manner, Indian society will have to restructure and reform in an unprecedented manner. This is highly unlikely. Even if this was achieved somehow, an overwhelming population would ensure that the idea of space and culture remained a complete dichotomy at best.