Security concern in South Asia

By Dr TR Vaidya

The latest publication of the Institute of foreign Affairs (IFA) on Security in South Asia, the second volume in the IFA’s policy study series, is a collection of seven essays by South Asian scholars. The focus of each paper is South Asian Security which is examined and analysed from multiple perspectives. It is common knowledge that over one fifth of the world’s population lives in South Asia which consists of seven nations ranging from India, the world's second most populous country, to the Maldives, a small island country in the Indian Ocean with a population of less than three hundred thousand.

The Security concerns of small states like the Maldives are bond to be different from those of big states like India and Pakistan. Maldives, as Ibrahim Hussain Zaki points out, is more concerned with national economic development, respect for sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs than with military adventure or engagements. Likewise, the security perception of Bhutan, another small state in the region, is influenced by its situation between two geo-political giants, India and China. This is equally true for Nepal which is geo-strategically located between the two Asian giants with their diverse political and social systems. Bhutan, unlike Nepal, has no diplomatic relations with China and as such its strategic thinking, according to Karma Ura, has led to a measured acceptance of overall Indian security arrangements while protecting and strengthening its sovereignty. Bhutan takes pride in its special relationship with India and, in fact, there is little to choose between its close ties with India and its expanding links with the international community. This very tenet, in Karma Ura’s opinion, has provided stability and progress to his country.

India’s centrality in the region is a reality that has to be reckoned with, as PR Chari observes: "By a quirk of geography India has land or maritime boundaries with all the South Asian countries, but no two of its neighbours have common borders with each other.’ Chari admits that India’s size, population, GDP, natural resources and other attributes of power do cause understandable anxieties among its neighbours. He regrets that while a regional outlook informs the Indian establishment, there is no overreaching vision of a comprehensive and cooperative approach to the security of the region.

Regional cooperation in South Asia, despite the launching of SAARC 15 years ago, has suffered a setback owing to prolonged hostility between India and Pakistan. In Gen. Masood’s view, the causes of instability in the region can be traced back to the time of partition. The dispute over Kashmir remains unresolved and has become the prime cause of enduring hostility between the two countries. The Pakistani writer blames India outright for intransigence in not honouring its commitments. He categorically states that a few gestures of peace are not enough and it's necessary for both India and Pakistan to take substantive steps to inject meaning into the peace process. Besides, the General from Pakistan recommends that India evolve a viable mechanism to determine the wishes of the people in Kashmir. Let us hope that the leaders of India and Pakistan who are meeting in the second week of July will succeed in evolving such a mechanism.

Nuclearisation of South Asia in the context of the lingering dispute over Kashmir is viewed with concern by most of the writers in the book. Prof Cooray of Sri Lanka sums up the overall mood and reaction when he writes: "The testing of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan in May and June 1998 followed by test launching of missiles with nuclear weapon carrying capacity is perhaps the most significant development in the area of security in South Asia." This act, the writer adds, has been deplored, implicitly or explicitly, by all five non-nuclear small states in the region as threatening the security of the region. Nuclearisation in South Asia has no doubt increased the fears of the small states in the region and has added a new threat to South Asian security at all levels. Cooray supports the statement of Hiranya Lal Shrestha, a Nepali Politician, that Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka must exert collective effort to make it clear to India and Pakistan that they want to see this part of the world denuclearised no matter what the two South Asian nuclear states think in their national interest.

Scholars from Nepal and Bangladesh Dhruba Kumar and Prof. Imtiaz Ahmed take up the issue of majoritarianism for critical examination and reach the conclusion that the majoritarian syndrome in South Asian politics has contributed to the growth of growth of militant minorities in the region. Democracy, as Dhruba Kumar categorically states, has conceptually become majority rule over the minority through the electoral process and has ultimately led to dissociation of the people from the state. The myth of a mono-ethnic state demanding the compliance of other ethnic groups and labelling their grievances as cancerous to the national health is exposed and challenged by South Asian writers in this book. Dhruba Kumar goes so far as to deplore the failure of state building to cope with challenges such as internal conflicts and violence caused by insurgents, secessionism, ethnic and sectarian conflicts and terrorism.

With the end of the Cold War the world has found it difficult to resist the onslaught of globalisation. The conventional security paradigm based on the doctrine of military strength and supremacy is being questioned by scholars and strategic thinkers both in the west and the east South Asian writers call for a holistic view of national and for that matter regional security since the region deeply steeped as it is in poverty with a dismally low per capita income low literacy rate, high unemployment and rising growth rate of population has been experiencing social and political instability over the years. The Institute of Foreign Affairs deserves a world of praise for its latest publication which, as Mohan Lohani writes in his preface, is expected to further stimulate the mind of the reading public on a topic of relevance to the region.

Years of teacher training, no satisfactory results

By Narendra Phuyal

Educationists the world over identified teacher training a long time ago as an indispensable for imparting quality education. Different countries have adapted different modalities in teacher training. Several countries have been providing pre-service training to teachers to suit their own context. In-service training for teachers is one modality provided to teachers after their recruitment. And Nepal is currently adopting an in-service training system at secondary as well as basic and primary level.

Millions of rupees – most of the amount received as loans or grants from donor countries and agencies – have been spent on training teachers over the years. But the problem with Nepal’s education system is that most of the would-be teachers or trainee teachers do not get trained, and even if they do they cannot give a satisfactory output in the classroom. That may be the reason why our public schools continue to lag behind compared to the private schools that have mushroomed across the country. This despite the fact that teachers recruited in private schools are untrained in most cases whereas those in the public schools are so-called trained.

The curriculum for teacher training is another important component. The content of the curriculum for teacher training at each level need to be compared frequently with school level curriculum and textbooks. Such practices, however, are lacking in the context of the Nepalese education system. Similarly, various projects under the Ministry of Education are providing long-term, short- term and recurrent training to teachers through the Secondary Education Development Unit (SEDU) and the National Centre for Educational Development (NCED) for secondary and primary levels respectively.

Currently, 25 SEDU and nine Primary Teachers Training Centers (PTTC) are providing training services to aspiring teachers nationwide. Most of the teachers consider the training curriculums for both the levels appreciable, but the environment is not suitable for implementation in classroom practices. Likewise, the Basic and Primary Education Project (BPEP) is providing recurrent training to primary teachers. The NCED is also providing training from the central level in conjunction with the PTTC of the country through the BPEP. More than Rs 1 billion has been spent on the PTTC. Most of the teachers say there is no teaching and learning environment in the schools. Most schools do not have furniture like cupboard and racks while others did not even have office rooms and some only have crowded classrooms.

Various research reports have shown that training programs have not been reflected in classroom practice. On the other hand, ironically, various private schools are claiming that they are providing quality education, whereas studies have shown that the teachers in a vast majority of such schools are inadequate in number and are untrained. How can one expect such schools to impart quality education age cost such a background? But even the so-called educationists are sending their children to such mushrooming schools.

Equally important, other questions too may be raised arise such as: Why then is the performance of public schools worse than that of private schools? What is the use of the training machinery? Why do the so-called educationists not in believe public schools? Are public schools only meant for ethnic minorities and disadvantaged groups? Why all the fuss with seminars and workshops at five star hotels? And so on?

Recently, Ministry of Finance and the Asian Development Bank signed a loan agreement worth Rs 1.8 billion for primary level teachers training. The objective of the loan was to provide training to all primary level teachers within five years. Prior to this, a project was designed with the objective of developing training policy and a national primary education curriculum, preparing a team of master trainers, improving training material and enriching basic education for ethnic minorities and disadvantaged groups in 12 districts. The nation could benefit a lot from that assistance, if corrective measures are taken to improve the dismal state of loan effectiveness.

Present educational data show that only 46 percent of teachers have had any training opportunity while the newest project plans to make all the teachers (100 percent) trained in five years. Is it possible to reach the target within five years? Questions loom. On the other hand, 46 percent of trained teachers are not able to reflect in the classroom the skills received during training. Most of the so-called educationists must be aware of this situation.

If the authorities are not going to create a suitable environment for the utilization of training in classroom practice, what is the point in taking loans at the rate of eight percent interest per annum for teacher training? Whether the newest loan amount will be properly utilized remains a question. Eight percent interest rate is no joke for a country like ours.

Ties that break and bind

By Niti Rana

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina). Undoubtedly the events that occurred within the palace walls that fateful June night have struck a deep blow against our whole country right through to our very hearts and souls. We are all still trying to come to terms with the terrible tragedy. But does it also allow us to perceive the members of the royal family in a different light? If we remove all the royal trimmings from what happened that weekend, what do we find? Just a regular family gathered together to enjoy a pleasant Friday evening. Our beloved royal family was after all a family – a family like any other. Like us, they must have had their own ups and downs, must have shared many happy moments together as well as overcome some difficult ones. Like us, they must have had faith in the strength of family ties…..Yes, the ties that bind a family can indeed be extremely strong – rooted in genetic, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual links. However, the same strong ties that bind can also be made up of very fragile threads. We feel safe within the strong fortress-like walls of family ties, but if the cracks appear from within….?

For a moment, let's ponder upon the eternal bond between parents and children the world over. Ask any parent what his most prized possession is and he will probably choose to say his child or children. How much we parents do for our children – what sacrifices we make, what hardships we undergo to give the best to our children – the same way our parents did for us. For those of us who are still reeling under the shock of what one child did to his parents – there are a thousand "why’s" and "if only’s" that continue
to plague us.

In the western world, there are frequent reports of parents killing children, children killing parents or siblings - it is not such an unheard of occurrence – but for us in this part of the world – we still can’t get over the idea. Recently the BBC carried a report of a young Texan woman who murdered her five little children – the youngest only six months old. She was apparently suffering from post-natal depression. Was this another example of blind fury or could this have been the devastating result of an unhinged mind? Can the mind in fact play such havoc and make us monsters capable of behaving in such a cold-blooded manner? – The mind we know can be a very powerful instrument – capable of creating inventions the world has never imagined. Apparently, it can also go awry and make a man commit crimes of such horrific proportions that the
world is left gasping.

Even after so many days, we find ourselves troubled by horrible images, we recall the unspeakable crime, we are filled with dismay, disbelief, fear and loathing. But what are we to do? Like Mr. Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s "Heart of Darkness" who was trapped in a similar dilemma, should we also cry out in anguish- "The horror! The horror!" , or should we try to pull ourselves out of the quagmire of sorrow and pain and force ourselves to move on? In the wake of this terrible nightmare – which some of us have still not recovered from – let us ask ourselves if there is anything to be learned? In this seemingly all-encompassing dark cloud, can we hunt for even the tiniest silver lining?

In these days of so-called "modern" living – there is unquestionably a wider generation gap between parents and children. Those comfortable age-old traditions are breaking down, family and social norms have no real value any more – alcohol, drugs, guns have taken their place. In such a scenario – what can parents do to cope? Can we try to make sure our precious children do not follow a path from where there might be no return? Can we try to understand our children better – try to listen to them more, have some real meaningful communication with them?

A first small step in the right direction would perhaps be to start viewing our children more objectively and not become overly involved in their lives. Maybe, we should stand a little aloof and allow our children to reach their own decisions and make their own mistakes. Therein may lie our own and their salvation. Too much obsession and involvement in our children’s affairs may do more harm than good. At the same time, we should be prepared to help and support them when necessity dictates.

Often parents tend to cover up their children’s faults and drawbacks – some of these may be trivial but some may develop into gigantic proportions with deadly consequences. A loved child may be a kleptomaniac, may have a tendency to lie, may be a bully when young – or as he grows and matures, could turn into a pervert, a drug addict, a rapist or even a murderer. But what do parents do? In their fear and frustration at not being able to deal with harsh reality, they go into denial and pretend that everything is OK. If warned or advised, they retreat further into their shells and even display anger and animosity towards honest and constructive criticism. This is just like adding fuel to the fire and could eventually lead to disaster and destruction. Maybe it is time to face some bitter truths and learn a tough lesson from this heart-rending tragedy that has left us bruised and bewildered. Maybe we should be brave enough to admit our weaknesses and those of our children and take positive, albeit difficult steps, to rectify defects before it is too late.

What is done cannot be undone – that is the fact of life. All we can do is: pick up the pieces and learn from past mistakes. Let us be alert to warning signals that threaten to break up relations or cause problems. Let us remember that "to be forewarned is to be forearmed".

Right to property within constitutional jurisprudence

By Rudra Prasad Sharama

If you are asked to give up your estate or residence for the public interest, what do you do ? Future, if you doubt the public interest and begin to distinguish between that and government interest, it will be exasperating. Similarly, if a project is established in the vicinity of your residence adversely affecting your hygiene or business , how will you react ?

Dr Annanda Mohan Bhattarai who has specialized in environmental and business law deals at length with these all legal and environmental issues in his book Displacement and Rehabilitation in Nepal /Law, policy and practice. Right to property is considered a ‘bundle of rights’, the executive while exercising its power of eminent domain may encroach such rights of individuals. Our constitution guarantees right to property and there are international norms for the acquisition or encumbrance of property wherewith the Project Affected People ( PAPs) have no less right than other people to live with dignity, But this is often juxtaposed with executive wisdom, judicial agility and exercise of sovereign power. Such rights happens to fall upon executive mercy. Let's look at some examples from the Dr Bhattarai's book .

When National Park was established around the Rara Lake , it caused displacement of 331 families over two villages viz., Rara and Chhpru. These people were airlifted to Nepaljung and resettled in Motipur in Bardia District. A land for land package was developed for the purpose. However, the resettles folks soon left the land given to them complaining of poor soil quality for cultivation and lack of irrigation; and moved to Chisapani and Gobhar, north of Kohalpur on their own accord.

Under the Kulakhani project, 937 families were displaced and other 1,200 seriously affected. Though a feeble effort at land settlement was made mainly under the pressure of World Bank ,it
was latter discarded and the Project Affected People ( PAPs) were provided cash compensation as determined by
local authorities.

Even after pressure from the community displaced by the Marsyangdi Hydro Project, no effort was made to provide land in lieu of compensation irrespective of the provisions of Land Acquisition Act,1997 that gives the government discretion to provide land as compensation.

Likewise, may people were displaced while establishing the Royal Chitwan National Park and the Royal Bardia National Park and also during construction of roads, irrigation schemes, hydropower projects, airports and so on and so forth.

These examples show that people have to be involuntarily displaced or opt for nominal cash compensation under executive fiat. But displacement is not just expropriation or simple transfer of property in exchange for compensation. It is a process of unravelling the existing patterns of social organization, and is a social crisis and sometimes a political one as well.

One's mother tongue learnt in the cradle, the culture, and surroundings one is accustomed to from early childhood always lie at the bottom of the heart and anything important or advanced earning or learning comes only next to it. Can mere cash compensate for displacement from such surrounding which are always dear and remain on top of one’s consciousness?

The author has made an attempt to look at the highly debatable issue of displacement in the broader framework of development and as conceived by the constitution of Nepal and various existing as well as emerging international and regional norms on human rights and environment.

The author resonates with the definition of development advanced by the UN Declaration on Rights to Development which takes development as a comprehensive social, economic and political process requiring active and meaningful participation in decision making and profit sharing. The bottomline in state activity concerning the right to development is that development activities should do justice not only to the beneficiaries but also to those who bear the brunt of the displacement it causes.

Regarding public interest versus government interest, the government sometimes makes requisitions for a private company also. The author points out that this is not justice, nor does the constitution allow the state to transfer of property from the poor to the rich. Consider this scenario. We are already in a mood to welcome the Multi National Companies( MNCs). If the government arbitrarily requisitions land for such MNCs, is it public interest or government at interest work ? Shall the government requisition land for every revenue paying industry? If the happens, it will prove what Karl Marx once said, " Law is the tool in the hand of goods." This would be a serious threat to our
judicial system.

Therefore, it is high time to enact law defining what public is interest and providing for Resettlement and Rehabilation (RR). If the government wants to requisition land according to the Land Acquisition Act, it must also enact laws regarding resettlement and rehabilitation. Mere ad hocism over such a serious issue is really dangerous for the sake of people and even for the sake of state viability, especially in the context of our opting for the Multi National Companies MCNs).

The author at the very outset argues that the constitution guarantees no less right to Project Affected Peoples (PAPs).

The author analyses the issue in terms of the jurisprudential premise of rights. He argues that under the constitution of Nepal, the PAPs do possess the right not to be displaced arbitrarily. This seems logical especially in the light of the recognition of the rights in the burgeoning constitutional and human rights literature; and also in the light of the immense human , social and environmental cost that displacement brings. Involuntary displacement causes restriction to the enjoyment of the rights conferred by the law and constitution. Such an imposition of restriction should follow duly by both the executive and substantial requirements, and not by executive fiat. Such a law should be a valid law, not just nomenclature.

The book, which the Chief Justice Keshab Prasad Upadhayay has commented as a seminal contribution and recommended to the academicians, activists, students and other interested people of South Asia is in fact an exploratory finding to reveal as to how ’right to property is bundle of right’. It is exploratory in the sense that it is not only based on second hand literature but the also on author’s own findings from field works of Sukla Phanta Reserve and from the place where land allotted for airport in Pokhara.

The bureaucrats and policy makers generally fail to understand the proper concept of displacement. They don’t understand that development is not a need based concept. Rather it is a right based concept. So, the author questions the exercise of the power of the eminent domain for the benefit for a limited section of people at the cost of other people.

The author Bhattarai in his book Displacement and Rahabilation in Nepal Law, Policy and Practice points out World Bank Guidelines and Chinese Guidelines for RR . According to the review of the World Bank, the Chinese appear to be more successful in RR of the displaced.

To all this, the author Bhattarai seems to sum up that the power of eminent domain is not a license for the government to transfer the property from poor to rich. It is by no means an exaggeration to say that the book would be a great contribution to the peoples of South Asia, especially for the poor, if the governments of the region heed his advice in time to make legislation for the resettlement and rehabilitation of the displaced and PAPs.