A better way needed

The main opposition CPN (UML) and smaller leftist parties show no sign of relenting in their all out campaign to get rid of Girija Prasad Koirala as prime minister. They have just tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent him from attending office, in the process throwing up ugly scenes in the streets of the capital. They also organized a mass rally on Wednesday, and they have just announced a raft of measures to press their campaign home. These are to intensify once the ongoing SLC examinations are out of the way. The leftists are not the only ones who have plenty of reason to be unhappy with the Koirala government. He came stomping into office about a year ago, talking big about good governance, law and order (read tackling the Maoists) and curbing corruption. It was against this three fold criteria that he had adjudged his predecessor KP Bhattarai unfit to continue in that lofty office and unceremoniously pulled the rug from under his feet. Since the start of Koirala’s fourth innings as chief executive, there has been no improvement on any of these counts. Quite the contrary, corruption has been bounding right along. The Lauda aircraft lease deal may be only the tip of the iceberg. Good governance is turning out to be merely a slogan on which government ministers can peg their speeches. The law and order situation has simply spun out of control altogether. The Maoists have never been more on top of things.

Koirala has little to show for his year in office and much to answer for. But instead of answering for his poor stewardship, he went on air the other day to complain how he has been thwarted by the opposition, and somewhat lamely set out what his government is going to do in the days to come. Having said all that, we hasten to emphasize that the leftists are not going about it the right way in trying to hound Koirala out of office through street level agitation. We in this column have repeatedly called for his ouster in the best interests of the country, but not in the manner the leftists are adopting. The main opposition party has just done the unthinkable by preventing the l9th session of parliament from functioning at all. Stalling parliament and the armed police ordinance along with it might have won them goodwill among the Maoists. But it did not exactly help the cause of parliamentary democracy in this country. Having made parliament dysfunctional, for the time being anyway, are they going to render similar service to democracy as a whole? Try as they might to make Lauda stick, they cannot do so convincingly until the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority comes out with its own considered verdict. Their line of argument is also a little curious in that they are gunning for Koirala personally. That may be because they want someone of his tactical acumen out of the way before the local elections. But that is not reason enough to make everyone from parliament down to the streets pay a price for it. There has to be a better way.

Women in Nepal : Improving their lot

By Bachhu Balami

Women in Nepal constitute half the country’s total population but the condition of the majority of them is not satisfactory. Despite equal rights and opportunities guaranteed by the constitution, women in real life, have not been able to enjoy the same. Condition in the rural areas are even worse. Women are discriminated against and have lagged far behind in many areas, barring a few exceptions, mainly because of our long-held attitudes and social and cultural structure. However, there have been changes in the attitude of society regarding women in recent times. It has been realized that without equal development of women, the long-term and sustainable development of the country is not possible.

In Nepal, women are in the front line of household and community efforts to escape poverty and cope with its impact. Nepali women remain illiterate, under-represented, and unaware of their rights and Nepal’s economy continues to suffer the consequences of foregone production, diminished family welfare and rapid population growth. The critical contribution of women to Nepal’s economy mandates their empowerment as a crucial element of political, economic and social development. Currently about two thirds of Nepali women cannot read or write.

No country can eradicate poverty if it cannot address the needs of women. For overall development and to uplift the satus of women, it is important to initiate income generating and economic activities through the provision of various services like education, employment, and entitlement to property. Why the focus on women? Micro finance focus on women is important. The micro finance experience worldwide has shown that poor borrowers, especially women, make productive use of credit for self-employed micro-enterprises/small farms and are prompt in repayments, with average repayment rates above 90 percent, much better than recoveries under normal lending. The problem is women are the last to be covered by any kind of organized financial service. Studies conducted on women reveal that most low-income women live and work in high-risk environments and therefore seek to minimize risk and increase security by expanding their activities.

A bill was tabled in the Eighteenth Session of Parliament to effect the 11th amendment to the Muluki Ain (Civil Code) that guarantees women equal rights to parental property before marriage. Lawmakers expressed mixed comments on the bill that had remained in the pigeonhole for a long time and was tabled only after women MPs of both the ruling and opposition parties threatened to capture the speaker's rostrum. Some are of the view that the bill, as per the constitution that guarantees equal rights to women, should have found passage before long and urged the government to pass it as soon as possible. The provision under which women are entitled to parental property only before marriage should be replaced by another that ensures them permanent property rights at par with their brothers. The bill aims at ending the existing discrimination against women. No one should be deprived on the basis of class, caste or gender.

In the early 1990s, a direct correlation existed between the level of education and status. Educated women had access to relatively high -status positions in the government and the private service sectors, and they had much higher status than uneducated women. This general rule was more applicable at the societal level than at the household level. Within the family, an educated woman did not necessary hold a higher status than her uneducated counterpart. Also within the family, a woman’s status, especially a daughter-in-law’s, was more closely tied to her husband’s authority and to her parental family’s wealth and status than anything else.

Nepal is the tenth poorest country in the world. The project targeted 16,000 rural women living below the poverty line and facing strong social barriers such as gender bias, caste and ethnic divisions. Women also lacked access to the means by which they could improve their living standard. In the project design, the importance of rural women’s contribution to production and family income was recognized.

The project was therefore designed in order to increase the income of poor rural women, thereby enhancing their status in society and improving the welfare of their families. Training and community development initiatives were undertaken in parallel with credit for income-generating activities. Training for adult literacy, social empowerment and mobilizing was provided to rural women. Activities were also undertaken that would save women work, such as schemes for drinking water, community forestry, etc. Social services and infrastructure were developed through this project, as well as infrastructure to support communications and dissemination (eg, community halls). The project sought to involve the communities in the development process.

Nepal is a signatory to various national and international declarations for women’s development such as the First World Women’s Conference held in Nairobi in 1975; Long Term Work Plan 1985; Beijing Declaration 1995. The Beijing Conference in 1995 had identified 12 critical areas of concern for women. Nepal, however, has condensed it to seven.

It is against the above backdrop that the Nepalese government has expressed its clear-cut commitment at both national as well as international forums and brought about legal provisions, policies and programmes for the rights, interests and development of women. The constitution has made it mandatory for all political parties to allocate at least three percent of seats for women while selecting candidates for the general elections. This is, of course, a very positive and important beginning towards ensuring women’s representation and participation at the decision making level. Some other positive initiatives have been taken at the governmental as well as non-governmental level for the rights and welfare of women. A separate ministry was created to deal with the issues of women and work for women’s development as part of translating Nepal’s commitment made at the international level into action.

Call for PM

By Shashi Dhungel

It was one of the best things in my life. Waking up and realizing that I still have some more hours to sleep, as I love to sleep till late morning, but I was disturbed by the hullabaloo in the street. First I thought it to be a New Year celebration, but it turned out to be something else.

It was the main opposition party CPN (UML) once again disturbing the capital. They were on the streets crying for the resignation of the PM. Disturbing parliament didn’t work and now they are on the streets disturbing the community, though they know that the next one to be put on the seat of the PM will do the same thing. I urge upon the CPN (UML) in this context that if it’s the support of the citizens they want to show, then it’s worthless because they were far behind the NC in the last election, and if it is that they are aware the country has not been developing since long. Why do they want to block the road to the office where every decision for the sake of country is taken? If they really don’t want to let the PM inside his office, why do they have to block the gate of Singhadurbar and not block the gate of his residence? My dear friends of the CPN (UML), if the resignation of Koirala is for bringing safety to the citizens and prosperity to the country, then I too will support you with what you are doing, but not in the way you are doing.

If democracy to Nepalese means protests, rallies, Nepal Bandh, Chakka Jam and other demonstrations, then I don’t need this democracy where I am compelled to reach my examination centre at Pulchowk on foot from Bhaktapur. The ordeal can easily be imagined!

I wonder about the meaning of the word morality. What is morality? The Oxford dictionary equates it with good behaviour in association with principles and standards. If it is the moral duty of the PM to give his resignation, then what about our opposition party that destroys social property and disturbs the whole community. I felt sorry for all the SLC examinees, and above all, for all Nepalis.

To my knowledge, it’s not only me who is against the moves of the CPN (UML) supported by other nine leftist parties. I think there are millions of citizens and many foreign diplomats too who feel in this way. They are also protesting against the UML's violent campaign.

Dear friends of the CPN (UML), don’t think I am biased towards the NC or the PM. Nor am I against the UML. I am just against its unpleasant deeds.

And at last, I wish to request our PM to resign. It appears to be the only solution to save the country from crisis.

But why are you so reluctant to resign from the premiership? Please, do it for the sake of our country and her people, who had never imagined that the blood stained democracy ushered in by our martyrs, will put the country in trouble. Don’t let Nepal turn out to be a battlefield. So, please resign from your post.

Remembering Panchayat, again

By Pratyoush Onta

After the Royal coup of 1960, a small group of well-educated and faithful workers were hired by King Mahendra to construct the ideological apparatus of the Panchayat System. As I argued in my last column, one of the first tasks of these Panchayat philosophers was to construct the ideological justification for the dissolution of B P Koirala’s government and the entire multi-party system. In that connection, I discussed how Dr Mohammad Mohsin, currently the chairman of the Upper House, executed that task by describing the 1950s as "the decade of disillusionment." Describing the leaders of the political parties of that decade as "too ambitious and impatient ....hare-brained politicians and demagogues" who "failed to have an objective grasp of the national situation", Mohsin passionately argued that the Royal coup could not have waited longer!

The second task of the early philosophers (early because I want to distinguish the likes of Mohsin and Pashupati SJB Rana who were recruited in this enterprise in the 1960s itself from others such as Dirgha Raj Prasai, Tek Bahadur Khatri, Ananta Poudyal, Kanchan Pudasaini and Dr Tara Nath Sharma who were recruited later) was to show how the Panchayat system was both democratic and ‘native’ to Nepal. In the execution of this task, various terms were used interchangeably at different times to describe Panchayati democracy. Sometimes it was described as ‘true’ democracy; other times, an ‘organic’ democracy. Mohsin and Rana also talked about their favourite system as a ‘planned’ democracy. But how did they go about building the ideological features of the Panchayat system as both democratic and native?

In an essay entitled "A Royal Gift, A Native Plant" included in the collection Some Aspects of Panchayat System in Nepal (1966), Mohsin made a case against the universal suitability of a particular mould of parliamentary democracy. He argued that while democracy "as an ideal does not raise any controversy," analysts must separate between the form and the spirit of democracy. The latter is a "complex of ideals", a "value system" which can be "readily adhered to as an end." In contrast, Mohsin added, "the same latitude cannot be accorded to the Anglo-Saxon stereotype of institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions." Creating the analytic space where Panchayat’s institutional form could be justified in terms of the ‘objective’ conditions of Nepali society, Mohsin added, "The form is just a tool devised to facilitate the process of attaining the set of objectives and so liable to function in different socio-cultural situations differently." The Panchayati form of democracy was suitable to a country like ours, "spread over a difficult and broken terrain, lacking modern transport and communication media and with a low level of literacy." Such conditions, Mohsin added, demanded a political system like Panchayat which was "simple to understand, viable to maintain and elastically integrated."

Mohsin’s argument was especially targeted against non-Nepali commentators who had criticized King Mahendra’s dismissal of parliamentary democracy in 1960. Befitting his role as the early philosopher par excellence of the Panchayat system, Mohsin argued that while Panchayat shared the democratic goals of other "highly sophisticated political institution like that of Anglo-Saxon," its institutional form was "a positive answer to Nepal’s long quest for a suitable form of self-expression." Panchayat’s democratic credentials were further justified by a reference to its four-tier pyramid-like institutional structure which was "elastic enough to allow every village to play a specific and meaningful role in the process of national development and strong enough to curb any local or regional tendency to assert itself at the cost of nation or country as a whole."

Now that Panchayat’s democratic credentials were established, how was it ideologically constructed as a ‘native’ system? This task was left to Pashupati SJB Rana. In an essay entitled "Roots", Rana quoted anthropological studies by foreign scholars such as C Von Furer Haimendorf (on the Sherpas) and John T Hitchcock to show that village communities had been taking care of themselves and their needs with minimum interference from authorities of central government. Local officials, whose responsibilities rotate among the families of the village, carry out their duties responsibly. This kind of de facto autonomy from the Centre came with its own rules of moral economy whereby the "spirit of mutual self-help" assured that in any given village, no family was allowed to fall below a point of ‘minimal economic sufficiency and self-respect’." Based on the evidence provided by these "unbiased researchers", Rana thus argued that a "fairly complex, but surprisingly democratic organisation of village life and government" has existed in Nepal. He added, "This pattern of village democracy is at a maximum the further away the village from the valley or the seats of the Bada Hakim, (the district governor), but prevalent in all rural Nepal in a minimum degree."

Once it had been shown that village organization and self-government already existed in Nepal, it was left to Rana to propose that what Panchayat democracy was trying to do was "to capitalise on this already available system and make it the basis of its evolution of modern democracy." Rana’s argument that Panchayat democracy had ‘roots’ in Nepali society was further developed in a monograph he wrote with Mohsin entitled The Panchayat: A Planned Democracy which was first published in 2023 BS by the Research Division of the Ministry of Home Panchayat. Later, in the hands of other Panchayat workers, it attained the status of the "suitable to the soil" theory of Panchayat democracy.

These textual ammunitions of the Panchayati ideological apparatus were backed up by institutions which were put into place to develop more sophisticated versions of Panchayati democracy and societal practices. Together they tried to ensure that all legitimate Nepalis were Panchas. The legacy of these ideological productions, corresponding institutions and individuals need to be thoroughly analyzed if we want to begin to understand why post-1990 Nepali political developments have not produced the kinds of results expected of them.