Draconian rules

Enforcement of new measures to deal with a diversity of views in the country was to have been expected from a democratic government that has failed to give any sensible direction to the country. Those who govern us seem to feel that they have been hindered in their work of national development by all and sundry except the ruling party, and particularly those faithful to Girija Prasad Koirala and his coterie. So all views and activities which do not go down well with the political leadership running this country at this moment have to checked. It was only a matter of time before the government came up with a brilliant idea on how to deal more effectively – and legally - with situations that embarrass it. The Public Security Regulations 2001, which the government claims have been framed under the Public Security Act 1990, fits the bill. The opposition, however, claims that the rules and regulations thus framed by the government far exceed the scope of the Act in question. The new set of rules and regulations will, therefore, no doubt be challenged in court.

No one can dispute that the government needs rules and regulations from time to time to deal with different situations. The Koirala government, which came to power by ousting a government of its own party led by K P Bhattarai, had as its main agenda the goal of ridding the country of the Maoist insurgency. Over a year later, the Maoist insurgency has only gained further ground and now controls vast tracts of the countryside. And even as the Maoists extend their influence and assert their presence, all that the Koirala government wants to do is to mobilise the army, raise a paramilitary force and spend millions on arms procurement for them (and no commissions of course). All through these 14 months past, Prime Minister Koirala has not been able to see the woods for the trees. The Draconian rules that the government has now enforced are nothing but a measure of the arrogance born of its parliamentary majority. A truly democratic government always feels the pulse of the people and responds accordingly. It listens to the opposition parties and as far as possible tries to accommodate their views in its policies. It must not be forgotten that ultimately the ruling and opposition parties both have, hopefully, the same interests in mind, that is, the development of the nation and the people. The people as well as the opposition parties want law and order restored in the country, as does the government. Where then is the conflict? Why is there so much opposition to the Public Security Rules? The government does need some laws, rules and regulations to carry out its duties effectively. But such laws should not be nakedly ill intentioned, and in an environment
in which government employees, entrusted with enforcing the rules, are made into yes men and yes women to their political masters, these rules can only prove to be counter productive in more ways than one. Since the government is unlikely to rethink the rules, it will serve the nation and democracy the best, if they are used rarely if at all.

Problems of schools in governance

By Dr Kedar N Shrestha

Inefficiency of the school management system and politicization of education have been the basic causes of the chaos in the private school system and fast deterioration in the quality of instruction in the public school system. The level of the efficiency of school management has sunk to such a low that the government management mechanism does not even follow the fundamentals of the school governance system prescribed by the Education Act and Education Regulations. Some examples are cited for illustration.

The Education Regulations provide for a powerful School Management Committee (SMC) for each private school. The SMC has representation from the DEO, parents, teachers and educationists. The DEO has no excuse for not having operational SMCs for private schools. There is no room for political influence in the creation of private school SMCs. But the DEOs, for reasons unknown, have not appointed operational SMCs which are authorized to fix the school fees. The arbitrary fee-fixation in the private schools by founders would have been checked to a great extent and the fee-anarchy could have been avoided within the available rules and regulations. The inefficiency of the DEO has created this chaos and confusion in the private school system.

The Education Regulations have specified conditions for establishing schools. These conditions include the recommendation of the VDC/municipal ward, a rent certificate from the house owner, the need for a school in the locality and the recommendation of the DEO/supervisor. Had the DEOs followed regulations, private schools would not have been established like grocery stores in the lanes and by-lanes

The Education Regulations do not have any provision to provide sanction to an individual to start a school. But DEOs started this illegal system, resulting in the growth of a feeling among the founders that they are proprietors. They started raising the question of recognizing schools as their private property. The government could not dismiss such an illegal notion by pointing out a clause in the Education Act which says that all schools are public property.

Similar examples can be cited to explain the causes of deterioration in the quality of instruction at public schools. In fact, one can observe a state of perfect paradox. Inefficiency of management combined with politicization of education have pushed the pubic school system to a state of total collapse. On the one hand, the government has gradually raised its allocation for education to saturation point during the past decades (nearly 13 percent of the government budget). The country is seeing an exodus of pupils leaving the free public schools to join expensive private schools, on the other.

The school management system of the government has grown tremendously in size during the 1990’s. A large number of school supervisors and Resource Persons (RPs) have been added to the DEOs. One finds crowds of supervisors and RP’s cramped in at the DEOs. At the same time, one observes that school observation by supervisors has become a rarity. School supervisors hardly visit the schools these days. The DEOs have no information on the academic affairs of schools.

And they commit academic crime by providing teachers of Nepali (for example) when schools demand teachers for mathematics. The government machinery has been unable to correct a situation where some schools have more teachers than they need while others are facing an acute shortage.

Public schools have become visible victims of the politicization of school education. The politicians of Nepal have regarded education as a soft area where they can easily score political gains. Some examples: (i) making all temporary teachers permanent as a bonus for the restoration of democracy, (ii) repetition of the same largesse for temporary teachers by a jubilant prime minister after his first ever election victory (a move later squashed by the Supreme Court), (iii) allowing nearly ten times more applicants than vacancies to pass in tests for teacher-positions, there by creating a decade-long confusion, (iv) dividing the chairmanship of the SMCs between the two largest parties, (v) transferring of DEOs by every new Minister of Education.

The list of such acts of politicization is endless. It is the public school system which faces the brunt of these irrational and erratic acts of the political masters.

The negative impact of the politicization of education is visible in all the important aspects of the public school system. One reads starling news stories of teachers who cannot even write an application. There are primary school teachers who know less than their pupils. Billions of rupees are spent on primary schools where teachers take turns to be present on school premises. Teacher time spent on the job is universally low and student achievement levels are at an unacceptable level.

The government seems to be aware of this situation and it frequently announces measures for improvement. But, these measures are like the prescriptions of an apprentice doctor without the support of his mentor physician. The much hyped prescription is the Education Bill in parliament. If passed, it will create more problems than it is expected to solve. For the first time in Nepal, the new Bill will legalize the commercialization of education, something which has proved good nowhere. Those few founders of private schools who are advocating commercialization will be hit by the consequences when they face the proposed SMCs and trade-unionism among teachers. Again, for the first time, the bill will make the Ministry of Education an agent of the Ministry of Finance for raising resources from students to support the Finance Ministry. The Bill, for the first time, is going to dissociate founders from public schools, founders who still fondly associate themselves with their public schools.

Conclusions and recommendations: The present crisis in the governance of private and public schools can be solved if simple and correct measures are taken by the government to improve the efficiency of the management system. All the problems can be solved if the concerned offices strictly follow the existing rules and regulations related to private and public schools. In the area of private school management, a provision for establishing private schools under a non-profit "Trust" can be enough to regulate the fee structure. Public schools will improve in quality if the headmasters are provided with adequate authority to evaluate the teachers and the SMCs with authority to evaluate the headmasters and teachers. The DEOs should provide the right type of teachers, and supervisors should make frequent visits to schools. Promotion of teachers should be a regular feature and teachers who perform should reach their final level within ten years on the basis of evaluation by the headmaster, the SMCs and supervisors.

Lastly, education should be fully protected from the evil eye of politicians who use the education system along with the teachers and students to serve their own selfish motives. Teachers protected by politicians and students instigated by political parties are leading the country to educational disaster.

Ridiculing Brahmanism

By Nitya Nanda Timsina

How does one portray the write-ups or reports on "Katte-Bahuns" that kept appearing in the last few days in myriad newspapers? Anti-Brahminism, highly immoral, disgusting!

This morning, as I turned over the pages of The Kathmandu Post, what followed was a headline story "Katte Bahuns to be chased out..." I was stopped dead in my tracks. Suddenly, my mother found herself wanting to read on. This was bad stuff! Even she admitted. I read out the damn thing for my mum.

It might have been the outcome of a disastrous kind of knowledge that stretches backward through the ages. It was awful, vexatious, anachronistic and a historical mistake to equate Bahuns with Katto khane for not all Brahmans live by the splendour of money.

As the world watched in horror, the Brahmans of this Himalayan kingdom have been depicted as though they were slave to superfluous wealth. In some way, Nepal hasn’t change much since the era of Jung Bahadur Rana and feudalism -the worst of the past.

For no explicable reason, I started wondering this morning what a fuss in the news that comes across as shockingly anti-Brahman. There seems to be a special aura surrounding the headlines that makes our pulse beat faster on reading the news about how Bahuns are trampled on without regard or regret.

"If only I had a gun with me, I would fire at him instantly," our tiny four-year-old said to my mum. Then my younger brother argued: "Taranath Ranabhat did the same to the journalists yesterday." "Aye, But he was joking!" I said. "How could a spokesperson of the entire nation joke like a kid in a situation like this?" he turned fire-eater and looked uncompromising. I tried defence but lost the scorecard. But, my Mother prevailed over us all.

"You see my sons", she went on, "we have to shun debate and anger at this point of time." And we never fought her.

But I felt my curiosity begin to stir when on television I saw these Brahmans again riding the enormous elephant and appearing like their dead prototype kings. But it looked like executioner approaching their victim when the police officers came with the enormous elephant and lifted these gullible fools onto the beast arousing fits of giggles around the world.

But the scene that the newspaper depicts goes ten step further. "They look like the devil," said my niece whose first tooth appeared recently.

A few years later, perhaps, the correct response to many of our concerns that shock and alarm us rests in the words of Thomas Fuller, a seventeenth-century English divine: "Thou must content thyself to see the world imperfect as it is..."

The present generation of children need to be taught that the world is really a beautiful place, filled with beautiful people, in spite of what they read in newspapers and see on television. And most importantly, we must learn to change ourselves with the changing times.

If all our lives are truly plans of god, someone had better call a meeting soon to remind both the journalists and the state-actors to peep into history and how Brahmans were taught the Hindu Code of conduct to shun superfluous wealth and observe humility.

Robustness, an asset of Nepalese society

By Nishchal Nath Pandey

The report of the high level committee probing the tragic happenings inside the Narayanhity Royal Palace is out and it must be said that the committee has done a commendable job. The dreadful and shocking incident inside the royal palace on black Friday (June 1, 2001) had kept the general public in total distress and suspense.

This incident, which took away our beloved King and Queen along with other members of the royal family is a calamity unparalleled in Nepal’s history. Not even fiction writers have ever imagined a scene as unbelievable as this. The aftermath showed trepidation and alarm in society over the heartrending incident while even the international community bestowed their utmost commiseration and sympathy towards members of the royal family and the Nepalese people at large.

The ocean of people that accompanied the funeral of Their late Majesties the King and Queen to the cremation site at Pashupatinath and the queues of mourners that lined up in Durbar Marg overlooking the palace to pay their last respects at the portrait of the late royal couple show the deep esteem and adoration that the royal family enjoys in Nepal. Innumerable wreaths/bouquets placed as tributes outside the main gate of the palace and the thousands that have voluntarily shaved their heads are testimony to the fact that the institution of monarchy as a whole is held in high esteem by the rich and the poor alike in Nepalese society and attest its unifying hold over the Nepalese people.

People have felt as if their own father and mother have passed away leaving them behind as orphans. Clearly, deep grief and sorrow seemed to befall the people that see the institution of monarchy as a symbol of unity and stability and such attachment is clearly based on culture and tradition spanning hundreds of years. Undoubtedly, this was a most grave and testing time for all Nepalese. During these troubled days, some miscreants frightened the public by spreading rumours, stories based on unfounded information and total hogwash like the capital city’s drinking water having been poisoned.

His Majesty’s Government issued a strong and timely clarification cum warming. As a matter of fact, the preventive measures taken by the government not to allow the situation to fall into the hands of hooligans have been widely appreciated. But on the whole, this episode also proved that Nepali society has the capability of standing up against immense grief and strain, revealing our sturdiness and fortitude. One can maintain that if we can survive an incident as terrible as this we can survive just about anything. Which other country in modern history has had to cope with tragedy as horrendous as this and has still managed to go back to work after the mourning period was over? If there was anything definite in the aftermath of this tragic event, it was the drive of our society, the inner strength of our people and the vigour of our constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy.

In fact, the newly crowned King remarked during his very first royal proclamation that the wishes of his august brother, "His late Majesty King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev of guiding the Nepali people towards a prosperous future through constitutional monarchy and multi-party democratic exercises will always remain a source of inspiration for all of us". He has pertinently stressed the word ‘always’- a firm and uncompromising commitment to pluralism and democratic system of governance. In the same proclamation he has outlined the achievements of His late brother in strengthening ties with the country’s two neighbours and securing an independent identity of Nepal in the international arena. Rightfully, this proclamation has been welcomed by US President George Bush among others and also by major political parties inside the country.

The ruling Nepali Congress expressed its gratitude to King Gyanendra for his statement expressing his commitment to multi-party democracy and Constitutional Monarchy. Former Foreign Minister and Spokesman of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) Kamal Thapa expressed his full confidence that the new King would be committed to democracy in the country. The main opposition party in parliament CPN (UML) too was hopeful that the new King would be committed to and work under the system of Constitutional Monarchy. Almost all foreign newspapers and electronic media not always keen to describe the truth honestly have also welcomed the King’s public statement naming it a ‘strong commitment to democracy’.

With this much positive on the part of the newly enthroned monarch, known as an intellectual who is familiar with the country’s problems, one can look forward to stability and peace returning to our beloved country. And after the deadly carnage, an atmosphere of harmony and serenity to prevail in the land of the Buddha which has had to suffer the loss of not only most of the Royal Family, but 17 hundred other souls in the last six years.