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Kathmandu Friday July 27, 2001 Shrawan 12, 2058.
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Task ahead
Sher Bahadur Deuba has started his second innings as Prime
Minister on an astrologically auspicious day, with a clean slate and with what he
describes as a balanced cabinet. Given the ground reality of Nepali Congress politics, he
has had to accommodate tainted faces from the past. It might have been ideal if he could
have started with an altogether fresh team. But the horse trading that governance
inevitably involves requires more seasoned hands who have a feel for what will work and
what will not in day to day decision making. Whatever the look of the new cabinet it is to
be hoped that Deuba will be able deliver. The challenges before his government are
manifold. A quick check list includes a looming confrontation with India over the
Russiyal-Khurda Lautan barrage that is threatening to inundate Lumbini, talks with
visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca over Nepalese garment exports to
America, trade talks with India next week, the slump in tourism and the still unresolved
stand-off between hotel management and labour, the problem of cheaper Indian foodgrain
flooding Nepalese markets, the citizenship issue, the problem of education. There are also
perennial problems such as the growing national debt, the 1950 treaty with India,
pollution, poverty, population and other problems typical of a poor country. On top of all
this is some business left over from the last time Deuba was Prime Minister, such as the
DPR for the Pancheshwar project and the Maoists problem. The People’s War, it will be
recalled, was launched while Deuba was away in India in February 1996 finalizing the
Pancheshwar project.
It is success or failure in dealing with the Maoist problem
that will be the acid test of the Deuba ministry. He will have won a place in history even
if he manages to do nothing else except bring about a breakthrough on that front. He seems
to have put the right foot forward with his overture to the rebels in his very first
public statement after being appointed Prime Minister again. The Maoists have responded
with a ceasefire, but the road ahead will not be easy, given the wide ideological gap
between them. It is hard to see how progress is possible beyond goodwill gestures, a
willingness to talk and the making of peripheral concessions. While that remains the grim
reality, Deuba can bring the Maoists to the negotiating table and try and persuade them
that the majority of Nepalese do not subscribe to their line of thinking. At the same time
he would do well to improve things on the implementation front, whether it be in the
delivery of goods and services or the workings of the law which now favours those with
source-force. The idea is to put across to the people that the system actually works. That’s
the only way to win the hearts and minds battle with the Maoists.
Though Deuba has come in on an auspicious day and with
a clean slate, the mood has already changed a little with the announcement of a new
hike in electricity tariff. The slate will not remain clear for long. Six months down the
road Deuba may be judged by the same three criteria on which Girija Prasad Koirala deemed
it fit to oust KP Bhattarai and the anti-Girija faction subsequently sought Girija’s
own ouster.
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