A Promise in Chaos

By Babu Ram Neupane

Man is oriented towards expression when he is well-equipped with epochal awareness. Amidst budding English writers in Nepal, here comes a voice never heard, but now to be realized.

The insight gets illuminative treatment in the material setting wrought to expose an inhuman, base, ugly and sordid section of society. Gopal Tegi’s novel, The Death of a Nurse, dedicated to the hospital patients of the third world actually does deserve the applause regarding its appeal for their never-ending fortitude and courage. The writer has done a good job of digging out a problem lurking so dreadfully in the service rending organizations.

The fiction revolves around a character called Deepa, a professional staff nurse, who is witness to a series of obstinacy, arrogance and neglect of duty on the part of responsible doctors at her own workplace. She undergoes a severe experience of being an unheeded patient there. She has her loving husband, the narrator himself, who cannot but watch his sweetheart fret in her deathbed. He has grudges against the cruel circumstances with no aid to him except for some colleagues of his wife. The end of the novel is eponymous to the death of the generous, humane, dedicated and stoic nurse, Deepa.

The novel is but a glaring example of the exploitation of staff nurses, the dirty environment of hospitals, the terror of the seniors, morbid sentimentalism and so on. The soul-moving calamity of the moral life has an emotional effect as a matter of fact. The novel verges on the edge of technical terminology almost incomprehensible to lay readers. The natural symbols serve the purpose of bringing out the happenings in the minds of characters. The final catastrophe is the one that has alarmingly appalled the readers. The attack against the doctors, "a doctor with a license to do any thing", is convincing. A kind word or compassion supposed to be an essential part of treatment, besides medicines, is hopelessly lacking in the so-called doctor. The destiny has willed otherwise and the last breath of Deepa happens in a hospital other than her own. She thinks nursing to be a service in the name of God to help the sick and needy. But ironically she herself is segregated in this regard.

The characters in the novel are somewhat vague and their personality is hardly revealed throughout the novel. The writer has indulged in medicinal term so much that sometimes the readers are compelled to take the novel as a dissertation on diseases helpful to the practitioners in the related field. The point of view is striking with a diagnostic touch. The plot is meticulously followed with no diversions making the novel a hectic reading. The advocacy of vegetarianism is a projection with positive mission.

The emergence of the writer with an outlook so compelling is unprecedented as the scenario is dominated by some mafia dons and their network, weaving a trap in which stagnant and boastful voices reverberate, creating a frustrating feeling when it comes to the avenues of expressive promise. Though the writer has failed to capture the graveness of the content in the body of the novel, the price is fair.

(Neupane teaches English literature at Patan Multiple Campus)

Will the government hear this ?

By Ramesh Parajuli

Chaos prevails in the public transportation sector these days. In November 2000, the government decided to evict all 20-year-old commercial vehicles and two stroke-engined vehicles from the Kathmandu Valley from mid-November 2001. Transport entrepreneurs have been protesting this decision from the very day the notice got published. A resolution to this problem was postponed recently when the new concerned minister asked for a month’s time to assess the decision and its consequences. In the meantime, some organizations have asked the government to stick to its decision. This support of NGOs is, however, given with some reservations. Their reservation is that the government should not, in any case, provide financial incentives to bring in new vehicles as was done in the case when diesel Vikram tempos were expelled from the Valley. Hence it is timely to analyze the government’s decisions to make Kathmandu’s air less polluting.

Moronic decision it was, of the government, to waive custom duty and Value Added Test (VAT) to import 10-14 seater microbuses for the owners of the polluting diesel Vikrams. It was like rewarding the diesel tempos for helping pollute Kathmandu for at least a decade! Around 600 diesel and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) powered microbuses are now plying on the streets as official substitutes to the Vikrams. These microbuses do pollute, as they are not emission-less vehicles. They run on imported fossil fuels just like the Vikrams. By allowing them in as replacement, the government lost revenues amounting to 50 crores in the form of waived duties. Equal amount of foreign exchange was spent to import these vehicles.

The government announced Euro I equivalent emission standard for every new petrol/diesel vehicle that is imported to Nepal. But it didn’t bother to make emission standard for the vehicles powered by gas. The Ministry of Population and Environment (MoPE) did announce the standard for new (to be imported) gas-powered vehicles but not for existing ones. The government did set up a technical committee to prepare emission norms for existing gas-operated vehicles, but nine months after the committee submitted its report, these emission standards have not been announced.

Our government has been providing 99 percent customs and VAT waiver to electric and LPG powered vehicles under the assumption that they do not pollute. But, even after MoPE has acknowledged that the LPG operated vehicles are as polluting as gasoline ones, it has not bothered to write to the Finance Ministry to cancel that waiver. According to one estimate, the government has already lost around 45 crores of revenue by exempting custom duty and VAT of these vehicles. Moreover, the vehicles that use LPG are taking advantage of the government subsidy worth about 30-lakh rupees per month provided to this fuel for cooking purposes. All this while the LPG operated vehicles have been banned by the Delhi government in India, and the public here has to wait for weeks to get a cylinder of cooking gas while the vehicles are operating in full swing!

The Ninth Five-Year Plan states that "the production, development and operation of zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) will be promoted." However, the government, by its action, is showing apathy towards these cleanest alternatives. Not to talk of expanding or establishing trolley bus service in the ring road or Raxaul - Kathmandu train service, the government is busy taking regressive steps like prohibiting the operation of new electric vehicles (EVs) inside Kathmandu’s ring road. The Department of Transport and Management (DoTM) first announced this ban in May 2000. The decision was revoked later by the Prime Minister himself. But the DoTM once again banned the registration of EVs in September 2000. This ban is still in effect. How dare an agency of the government challenge its policy guidelines or is this business as usual?

Nepal is now home to 600 plus three-wheeler EVs. The sector so far has attracted 45 crores of Nepali money. It’s not a small industry anymore. Since the ban of diesel tempos came into effect, around 600 so-called microbuses (half of them are LPG powered) and 600 LPG operated tuk-tuks have entered the market. Had the government considered EVs as the alternative to the evicted diesel tempos and not allowed the import of these vehicles, the number of EVs in Kathmandu today would have probably been around 1500. The government has lost 50-crore by allowing the import of duty-waived but polluting microbuses, an extra 30-crore to import polluting LPG tuk-tuks and 3.6-crore per annum subsidy for LPG (subsidy for diesel has not been calculated). Had the government taken the EV route as alternative, the size of EV industry would have trebled to around 150 crores. Since the EVs use local and underutilized electricity as fuel, huge amount of scant foreign exchange required to import fossil fuel would have been saved. Not only that, the Nepal Electricity Authority would have benefited at least 6-crore rupees from charging stations. There would have been opportunities for more employment, as new subsidiary industries would have been required. Impact on public health and tourism would have been enormous. In addition to being the EV capital of the world, we would have been able to breathe cleaner air!

We have lost that opportunity because our government has no vision regarding how to make Kathmandu’s air clean. Nor does it hear the arguments of those who do. Still not all is lost. The EVs could be the alternative to two stroke tempos, which the government is trying to remove from the Valley. Research into new models of EVs, especially four and six wheelers, must proceed at great speed so that ZEVs can replace all of the current polluting commercial (and possibly private) vehicles in the years to come. And there is market for all types of EVs beyond Kathmandu too, in fact beyond Nepal’s borders.

(Parajuli is a member of the Alternate Fuel Vehicle advocacy team of Martin Chautari)

Creativity is All

By Shizu Upadhya

Fans of Dor Bahadur Bista will know that Fatalism and Development opens with a quotation by Alexis de Tocqueville: a pleasing instance, I’ve often thought, of two minds meeting across time and space. Tocqueville’s writings captured the events of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century America and France, when a single revolutionary movement swept through and forever transformed Atlantic civilization. In his ability to stand apart from and understand his own and another’s society, Tocqueville emerged as one prophetic historian and social analyst of his time. Of his own context Bista has been as penetrating, which may be one reason why he’s been drawn to Tocqueville’s work.

In Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light, Susan Dunn, professor of French literature at Williams College, Massachusetts, explains her interest in the eighteenth century revolutions. Free people deliberating on forms of government, exercising popular sovereignty and declaring as inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, she says, were unprecedented occurrences which continue to shape human society today. Tocqueville’s insights, it would then seem, hold lessons for contemporary democracies the world over.

He first travelled to America in the 1830s, many years after independence was acquired in 1776. There, Tocqueville encountered an unusually diverse and inclusive political community of active, self-confident citizens. He found a federal government carefully structured so that people and interest groups collide rather than concur. Above all, he had come to a nation sufficiently united in its commitment to the Constitution to permit organized opposition to take place.

He contrasted this state of affairs with the events of his home country, France, following the abolition of monarchical absolutism in 1792. During the Reign of Terror that followed, some 50,0000 people had met with their deaths at the hands of the guillotine. A unicameral legislature ruled on behalf of the Third Estate, and dissent and opposition were prohibited. Repression eventually led to a new form of autocracy under Emperor Napoleon by the turn of the century. How could two revolutions inspired by equally luminous principles, questioned Tocqueville, evolve so differently? The key to both presents, he concluded, lay in their respective pasts.

Years before the American revolution, the men who would become the new nation’s Founding Fathers were already well versed in representative government and the long English tradition of rights; the war for independence was fought just to re-claim these freedoms when they were taken away. In contrast, the people of France sought to break with centuries of institutionalized injustice manifested in a hereditary social order, religious intolerance and great poverty. In their name, a handful of radical intellectuals with no practical experience in politics came to demand for the destruction of the country’s political and social fabric, and creation of a new order of equality. In Dunn’s words, the distinction is between America’s quest for gradual, continuous "light", while France sought all-out "lightning".

It wasn’t so much to do with the speed of things, she explains, more the forming in men’s minds of intelligent ideas about human nature and political organization that brought liberty to America (ignoring for the while the racial paradox that had yet to be dealt with), and new forms of servitude to France. Tocqueville, too, realized that the impetus for real and lasting change comes, ultimately, from human creativity. Thus, while revolutionary leaders of France were blind to the idea of an inclusive polity, the Americans bequeathed a legacy of workable institutions that tolerate factions, protect minorities and provide channels and rules for political conflict.

Considering the exclusionary political culture and the "abysmal intellectual mediocrity" of eighteenth century France, Tocqueville decided that the conditions at the time were unripe to produce leaders capable of instilling democracy. More than two hundred years on, reflecting on contemporary Nepal, there appear to be a number of parallels between the conditions here and those in pre-revolutionary France. In a similar line of reasoning, therefore, it could be argued that owning to their closed mindsets and dearth of practical experience, those who exert power right now are simply not capable of producing the creativity that is necessary for progress and renewal. Bista might agree.

Towards the end of her book, Dunn turns to the twentieth century. She is critical of American and French action in Vietnam and Algeria, where it clamped down on those very rights to independence and self-determination it had originally fought for. On another note, she spells out a number of reasons why governance models in both countries should move closer to the English system of parliamentary democracy. However, adds Dunn with regret, since the consensus for prosperity is now so deeply rooted among citizens on both sides of the Atlantic, she discerns little interest in engaging in the kinds of ideological debates that are required for institutional change.

The decision to buy and read this book was an impulsive one, triggered I think by my increased interest in the germination of change. Because the author teaches literature, not history, the book reads more like a dramatic novel than a factual account. It’s still not light reading, but engrossing at least.

(For once, S. Upadhya did not review a book on poverty)

Recent Arrivals

The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Living in a Borderland (Bangkok, White Lotus Press, 2000) by Willem van Schendel, Wolfgang Mey & Aditya Kumar Dewan records the encounter between photographic technology and the land and people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. More than 400 photographs taken over a century before the 1970s—many of them being published for the first time—make up the bulk of the book. The photographs and the accompanying text also seek to decentre the dominant nationalist narratives of the history of Bangladesh and forge an alternative telling of social history—one in which attention is paid to gender and class dynamics.

People to People Contact in South Asia (Delhi, Manohar, 2000, IRs 270) by Navnita Chadha Behera, Victor Gunawardena, Shahid Kardar, and Raisul Awal Mahmood is a book put together from a project executed by the Colombo-based Regional Centre for Strategic Studies. Working under the assumption that the difficult visa-regimes are the main culprit blocking the flowering of people to people contact in South Asia, the four contributors highlight different aspects of this problem and offer ideas to resolve them.

Nepalese Casted Vessels, Decanters and Bowls (Varanasi, Pilgrims, 2000) by Matthew S Friedman is an account of the origins of metal wares and the methods of their casting. The author also discusses the occasions and objectives when these bowls and vessels are used in Nepali society. The book comes with an elegant cover and is a useful account of Nepali metal craftsmanship.

Tyaun Tyaun Jutho Khaun (Kathmandu, Royal Nepal Academy, 2000) by Madhav Lal Karmacharya is a collection of 57 poems for children. The poems deal with various issues and are written in simple and entertaining language.

Contemporary Nepali Poems (Kathmandu, Royal Nepal Academy, 2000) is an anthology edited by Toya
Gurung and translated by Padma Devkota. It contains 97 poems by 26 poets. The English renderings of the poems appear to be subtle and good.

India’s Communication Revolution: From Bullock Carts to Cyber Marts (Delhi, Sage, 2001) is written by Arvind Singhal and Everett M Rogers. The publisher’s blurb states that the book "describes how the new technologies and their various applications in radio, television, cable, telecommunications, computers, and the Internet are rapidly leading India toward becoming an information society."

Samjhanaka Jhilkaharu (Kathmandu, Royal Nepal Academy, 2000) by Dr. Safalya Amatya is a collection of reminiscences. The essays include memoirs, travelogues and personality-profiles.

Towards a Non-Modern Radicalism

By Anil Bhattarai

At a time when claims of the "End of History" and "The End of Ideology" is reigning supreme all over the world, Kishan Patnaik’s Bikalpahin Nahin Hai Duniya (The World is not Without Alternatives) comes as a sharp reminder to all of us that the future is not perhaps as "finished" as the apologists of present pattern of iniquitous relationships among people that exist at multiple levels in our society try to make us believe.

This book is a collection of forty four writings in Hindi - forty two articles published in Samayik Varta (a socialist magazine that he edits) during the last two decades (1978-1999); a transcription of parliament debate that took place in March 1966 on famine and starvation in Kalahandi, Orissa, when the author was member of Lok Sabha (the lower house of Indian parliament); and a draft of the Indian Trusteeship Bill 1967 prepared by the late Ram Manohar Lohiya, one of the most prominent socialist leaders of that time. These last two documents appear as appendixes in the book.

The range of issues that the author deals with can be broadly classified into three groups: the critique of the present, imagination of future and methodological issues of getting to the imagined future. The present appears for him as crises-ridden modernity. The crises are manifest in numerous ways: the degradation of nature, the degradation of human dignity, the every-widening gap between the rich and the poor, the inability of technology to deal with the crises, and degradation of relations between humans and between humans and non-human nature. At the root of these crises lies modern civilization - symbolized by the dominance of modern machinery and production processes, consumerism, and commodification of increasing spheres of our social existence. "In modern civilization, machine, values linked with each other," he says, "but the decisive among them is the machine which determines both the values and institutions." Modern technology, he further says, has created a ‘happy class’ all over the world, but definitely not a happy society.

Implicit in the critique of the present is some kind of an outline of a non-modern future. But that future is not presented as a complete and detailed blue print, but as an ensemble of values. He draws a lot from Gandhi. But unlike present day Gandhians, he does not take Gandhi uncritically. "Perhaps, the new technology will be different from Gandhi’s charkha (the spinning wheel), but its direction will be humane". His critique is equally strident against the apologists of traditions - represented by the right wing religious fundamentalists who see return to the ‘golden Ram Rajya of the past’ as a panacea against the modern malaise. He is not against machine per se, but puts people at the centre. The question for him, therefore, is not whether machine is good or bad, but whether it increases human worth or not.

For him, the established political thoughts are unable to face the challenge. For some, communism presented itself as alternative to capitalism. But it could only deal with the question of distribution of wealth in society. The source of wealth, happiness, prosperity comes from the abundance of commodities, made possible by the development of science and technology, euphemistically called the ‘development of the forces of production’. But for the author, at the core of present crises lies the very production process and the very definition of wealth. What is different about Gandhi was his total questioning of modernity as the organizing principle of human society.

But Gandhi is relevant today more than ever also to fight the right wing religious assertions, especially of the Hindu right. In his five-part "Secular Manifesto", Patnaik says that secularists have unequivocally failed in responding to the challenge. What is required is nothing short of radicalization of Hinduism as Gandhi tried to do with some partial success, but not the rejection of religion in the name of rationality and science. "The seculars can create a club or an ashram for themselves, which may not be a bad thing to do," he says, "but it can not create a social movement against the rising tide of communalism". Radicalizing Hinduism means a fundamental restructuring of the caste hierarchy in society. The growing dalit assertions in society are a positive pointer towards that. It is by accepting dalits as leader that we can imagine a new social order. Echoing Vivekananda, Patnaik writes, "Shudras will rule the future India."

His critique of modernism does not mean that he is against the ‘West’ per se. "The best part of western civilization is that it has developed human dignity at the level values of social equality" he says. While the values he espouses are universal, he is not against the nation-state either. For him nationalism as value should come from the adoption of universal human equality. In some of the articles, he deals with issues such as national security and international relations. The concept of security, however, is fundamentally different from the dominant concept - it is not based on military might, but on creating friendly neighbours so that the military becomes redundant.

The ideas in the articles are really thought provoking. At a time when there is ideological churning occurring in different quarters of progressive politics, this book can provide some food for serious thought. More so because it will be accessible to more people (because it is in Hindi) than would be the case if it were written in English.

(Anil Bhattarai is interested in serious engagement with others in building future visions of our societies)