Regulate the border

The Indian ambassador's statement that there is close link between Maoist insurgents and Indian terrorist organizations cannot be taken lightly especially because terrorist activity has been increasing in the country. This link would not have been possible had there been a mechanism to monitor the open Nepal-India border. For without regulation of the border, the threat of terrorist activities further escalating in both Nepal and India has become even more real.

The underlying fact is that the open border system between Nepal and India has done more harm to Nepal than good. Lately, spurious Indian finance companies that sprung up in border areas have deceived hundreds of Nepali depositors resulting in loss of millions of rupees. These so called finance companies attracted Nepali depositors with what appeared to be good interest rates and better transactional facilities and later duped them. Similarly, thousands of innocent girls are being lured to Indian brothels every year and the open border has proved a boon for traffickers. This apart, illegal trade and anti-social activities have also increased across the Nepal-India open border. In the backdrop of this reality, it is not surprising that Maoists should develop close relationship with different Indian insurgent groups.

Nepal has raised the problem of the open border with New Delhi and suggested a number of measures to monitor it so that unwarranted incidents and terrorist infiltration across the border are minimized. India has however not taken this matter seriously. Instead it has accused Nepal of supporting the Pakistani intelligent agency ISI. If India fears the ISI because of the open border, then Nepal is equally threatened by Indian terrorist groups which have armed and trained Maoist insurgents. People's War Group of Andhra Pradesh, Naxalites from Bihar and the United Liberation Front of Assam are apparently involved in arming and training Maoists. Considering the fact that the open border has facilitated Maoist activities as well as posed many other threats, Nepal must now take the plunge

and close the border so that both countries can regulate the border to prevent illegal trade and criminal activities.

If the government wants to contain Maoist activities, it must monitor the open border. If this happens, the Maoist threat will be reduced as it will be possible to cut off their source of arms. Similarly, criminal activities along the border will be reduced. This will be good for Nepal and India since the latter will not have to worry about ISI infiltration through Nepal. Nepal should therefore deploy police force to keep strict vigilance along the border even if India refuses to cooperate.

In defence of keeping child domestics

By Padma P Devkota

For some unknown reason I have failed to progress as far as some of my countrymen along certain lines of humanitarian thought. For instance, I prefer to continue my practice of employing very young child domestics in my household rather than to counteract this barbaric social practice with theoretical or ideological rhetoric. I say barbaric because I am aware that in supposedly more civilized nations the practice of employing child domestics is morally, ethically, socially and legally banned. By not taking a political stance on this particular issue, I save myself from the hypocritical brew of conflicting aspiration and conduct. I prefer to continue doing whatever is socially acceptable without the qualms of conscience felt by social workers or by politicians. I am not in a position to say either that all children should go to school or that none of them should be employed. This is for social workers and politicians to decide. I do not have the skill to formulate slogans against child labour. I cannot mobilize children in the street for their own welfare. In fact, I actually think it is wrong to take school children out of their classroom into the political street. In this respect, I am such a simple, average Nepali that I can only do what others do socially and culturally without the benefit of sophisticated analysis upon my own actions.

I therefore proceed to do the only thing I am capable of doing: speak in favour of the custom of employing child domestics. Yet, before I do so, I want to voice my preferences clearly. I think that political parties have done wrong in the past by rallying school children out in the streets where they are made to shout political slogans. I think that the government has done wrong to pass a law to the effect that all school children should receive free education and not enforce it. I think that all schools that do not provide free educational material to children who are supposed to receive them are ultimately to blame. I think that all NGOs that profess commitment to children's welfare but misuse financial aid for that purpose need to be socially reprimanded. And, like every parent that ever begot a child, I believe that every child born needs to be given the best opportunity to develop into the best human species. I believe like every other simple parent that my child should receive the best that this nation can give. However, I do not have any statistics to show how schools, political parties, government or NGOs function in this respect.

Like me, it is doubtful that the Nepalese government has any accurate statistics on the number of children working on daily wages. The reason is as clear as fog. Why bother to count at all when we can do nothing about it after that? Many people pity the khates, for example, and some even provide free meals and primary education for these nationless children. Like an average Nepali, I don't worry about them because I have elected my government to do the worrying. I even scold them when they enter my compound to pick plastic milk bags and other items, which they sell elsewhere to procure their daily meal. They are not my children. I am afraid that if they enter my compound they will also steal whatever they can. Why wouldn't they? I've known better-fed people steal. Domestics steal. I've overlooked such petty thefts in my own house because I preferred to lose minor things rather than the domestic himself.

Domestics have become a top priority to many of us who have grown up depending on them. So, when one domestic leaves, another one is urgently needed. We in the household prefer that it be a school-going child rather than a college-going lad. We certainly do not want an adult or an old person. We also prefer that it be a boy rather than a girl because the female has too many problems attached to her. She will unknowingly invite temptations, phone calls, and local eyes of boys who simply want to have some fun. We cannot trust our own sons or even ourselves to be left alone in the house with a female domestic for fear that she will raise the devil in us. The male child is best as a domestic because he can be easily taught to do the things we want him to do.

Since we don't go around kidnapping other people's children to make them work for us, we feel that we are above blame. Many children who work as waiters and dishwashers in local tea-shops or as domestics in private houses do not get half as much to eat in their own houses even if they have a house at all. Their parents can barely feed themselves. Because I am an average Nepali, I do not feel responsible for their poverty. I myself struggle hard to earn my two meals. It is a cruel world we live in and the bitterest truth of all is that each of us is a devil at heart. Anyway, I also elect the nation's government for the task of raising our economic standard. And, if the government does not do its job right, I do not feel that it is my civil duty to put pressures on the government. That's the average person I am at present although we may hope for the better in future.

It is after all the parents themselves who come begging at our doors to have their child lodged and fed at our place. Some simply want their child to be fed; others also want him to be educated. We do what we promise. We send the child to a cheap government school. He works for us in return. His parents could not have afforded his education. And the food he eats is more nourishing than he has ever had before. Leaving aside the sentimental utopia of the happy family, he has a better life with us than with his own parents.

It is true that some of us are more cruel than others. But who can control that? My family does not mistreat a child domestic. So, there is no reason why a child should not do the dishes, sweep and dust the house, wash window panes, wipe the floor, cut grass, till the land, fetch and carry, do a little shopping, run errands, peal potatoes, carry water, serve tea, dispose of garbage, take a break from a serial he loves to watch in order to open the door for a visitor and a hundred other little things so that we may not be interrupted in our movie, our idle talk or our sweet inertia on the cushioned sofa.

We have not abused him sexually, we have not slapped him or beaten him with a stick, we have not used four-lettered words to hurt his self-respect, we have not taken him away from more important things that he might be doing; we have only asked him to do those things that he can do and actually does with a cheerful willingness and a wonderfully innocent sense of pride in having pleased his masters. What wrong can we have done?

We cannot give him the same privilege as we give our own children. Toys were not a part of the bargain. Nor was friendship and warm company. If he feels sad and depressed, if he feels like crying, he has his own corner in the house. We might at the most ask him why he is feeling depressed, but do not really care to delve into his psychological problems to help him cope with it. We are not parenting him. Should he become ill, we provide medicine, but we do not have the time to nurse him the way we would nurse our child.

Normally, he is the last one to eat and the last one to go to bed because he is the one who has to finish kitchen work before retiring for the day. Unfortunately, he has to get up very early because he has to go and buy milk before it is too late. If milk had only one price in the market, early or late, the child domestic would have been able to sleep for a few minutes more. We cannot help that. We do not send our son who is older than he is to fetch dairy milk because the domestic helper is there to do these things.

Like good foster parents, we are actually nice to him. We get old clothes for him from our cousins and relatives-clothes that more or less fit him. We send him off to school and even get a couple of dresses to fit him at a cheap tailor's shop so that he looks like a human child in school. We find as many used textbooks as we can but buy him a few first hand copies to write in. We even advise him that he should read for an hour or so before going to bed. We evidently cannot check to see if he actually studies.

That's his business. If he does not pass his exam, he will repeat the class.

This does not displease us too much because it also means that he will stay and serve us for another extra year. We want to get our things done. If he will not do them, we'll find someone else who will. And, if we do not employ him in our house, somebody else will certainly be happy to employ him. And that somebody else may not have as much common sense as we do.

This is how a considerable sector of Nepali youths grows up into the nation's manpower-a resource that has been neglected although it is the best resource that the country has. Proper education for all leads to the best utilization of a nation's manpower. Yet, without someone like us providing education, food and lodging to this population, you can imagine how many children would suffer from illiteracy. Simply by not politicizing this issue, it is possible to continue educating a large number of children in this way. But politicians and social workers are bound to speak out boldly on this issue sooner or later in their vote-seeking speech. After that, the child domestic will be deprived of the only opportunity to study that he now has.

From empowerment to problem

By Pooja Shrestha

Today I encountered the most unbelievable thing - a woman driver. It was fascinating to see in India women drivers-both in cabs and trains, but in Nepal, it was shocking. I was travelling in a Tuk Tuk when I suddenly noticed the woman driver. I was amazed, stunned and at the same time rejoiced inwardly. I looked again at her and pinched myself to make sure that it wasn't a dream..ahhh, it pained..it was real for god's sake.

Nepal too has achieved empowerment of women. The dedicated and sincere work of people has not gone to waste. The educators of women's upliftment have definitely made some impact .

I looked at her carefully- She was a young woman but looked a little old through probably her hard work. She seemed so innocent and soft, contrary to our conception of a driver's nature. She spoke in a well-mannered way and treated all the passengers nicely.

But at the same time it was an irony to see the child working as the conductor. He must have been around the 11 years old. He held on to the tempo and dangled outside watching the passengers go by and he wanted everyone to enter his majestic white tuk tuk as he shouted the name of the place- Ratna Park.

So, we can therefore see the two sides of the same coin- one leading towards empowerment while the other towards degradation of society with the evils like child labour.

I am overwhelmed to see women moving ahead towards equality with men not only in the social fields but also in the physical areas like in this case, being a tempo driver. But at the same time I wondered when child labour would come to an end. Until and unless we think of an alternative, a solution will never arise.

Watching the Op-Ed Pages

By Pratyoush Onta

As a columnist for this paper, I often wonder who reads what appears in the op-ed pages of our newspapers. In the three and half years since this column started, only a few of my essays have drawn responses from readers. The rest have gone without comment, leaving me to wonder if I had said anything worth saying at all! However I do not mean to suggest that every piece of op-ed writing should evoke letters from readers. Gratifying it is to see ideas first expressed here being expanded open by others in other forums, even without a reference to the original piece. This is, I guess, permissible journalistic practice, although it would draw charges of plagiarism in my other field, academia.

As far as I know, no studies have been done to find out, in a somewhat comprehensive manner, reader opinions about what has been appearing in the op-ed pages of our newspapers. To do this kind of study in a thorough manner is certainly not an easy task in our case. This is so because of at least two reasons. First of all, we have many "Ka" class (according to the classification done by the Press Council) newspapers which are, in essence, views-papers. Where their news pages end and their op-ed pages begin is not an easy task to carry out, even if you have been a victim of a first-page 'news' whose contents have been cooked up in a fanciful collaboration between staff members of that paper and their patrons elsewhere. Secondly, we do not yet have analysts who are competently trained in the disciplinary paraphernalia of media studies. In their absence, even designing such a study becomes an ad hoc attempt in the darkness.

I do not pretend to know much about how to analyze reader responses to op-ed pieces. However based on a preliminary look at the set of op-ed pieces published in a single newspaper or a set of newspapers over a certain period, we can say a few things about who writes in these columns, what are the demographic and physical locations of the authors, and what are the subjects covered. To give myself some concrete materials to work with, I looked at what was published in the op-ed sections of Kantipur, the most influential daily in the country at the moment. The period selected covered the first three months of the year 2057 BS (Baisakh to Asar), amounting to some 94 days.

Who writes these pieces? What are their demographic characteristics? Where are they physically located? What are the subjects covered? An overwhelming percentage of op-ed writers in Kantipur are men from the Bahun and Chhetri communities who are physically located in Kathmandu (although it is likely that many grew up in other parts of Nepal). One comes across very few articles from members of Nepal's janajati or dalit communities, or residents of the Terai. Most of the writers are elderly (in our context), above 45 or older. During the period studied, one comes across very few articles by women. The few that are there (apart from the ones by Gyanu Pandey who writes a fortnightly column) have been mostly extracted from various feature services including the interesting radio programme Hakka-Hakki.

A great majority of the op-ed pieces in Kantipur are commentaries that deal with Nepali politics. Many of them have been written by politicians, some by ex- or wanna-be-politicos. Some of the non-politicians are known to be associated with certain political camps. In reading through these writings, one gets a sense that the arguments contained within them are too familiar, almost predictable ones. This happens, I would suspect, because the feature editors looking after the relevant pages are not providing adequate feedback to the writers. I do not mean to suggest that these editors should be telling what the op-ed writers should write but they should certainly tell them that an attractive style alone cannot carry the burden of repeated thoughts a la Narayan Dhakal in recent months) or the addition of a prefix such as Prof or Dr cannot ride over the superficiality of the analysis provided.

These preliminary conclusions drawn from a study of the op-ed pages of Kantipur of the first three months of 2057 BS, I would suspect, are also more or less relevant to other broadsheet dailies and weeklies. Writing a letter to the editor of Himalaya Times (30 August 2000), Navaraj Bhattarai of Phidim in eastern Nepal complains that our 'national' newspapers do not entertain articles from people located outside the Kathmandu Valley. He also makes the additional point that the name and the face of writers seem to influence the selection of articles published in the op-ed pages, leading to the repeated appearances of writings by the same set of writers.

Along with Bhattarai, it would be timely to suggest that editors of our newspapers pay some deeper attention to what they are publishing in the op-ed pages. Feature editors need to become a lot more alive if their pages are to cater to the needs and desires of a wide variety of readers and writers. They need to ask themselves at least the following questions: Do the set of current op-ed writers reflect the demographic characteristics of our society in terms of community, sex, age and physical location? Do the subjects covered adequately represent the set of issues of importance to our society or does politics get more than the space it deserves? Do the write-ups provide adequate treatment of the subjects or are they published to please the writers and power-brokers? If current inadequacies are to be eliminated, what sort of activities and collaborations with other institutions might be necessary?

Is anybody listening?