Turn westard

Every year there are outbreaks of measles and other contagious diseases in Kalikot and other
places which claim hundreds of human lives. These are a recurrent phenomenon that starts in early spring and ends in autumn. Food scarcity another threat looming large over this unfortunate region has also become a matter of grave concern. Yet, the government has neither taken measures to contain the disease that kills so many people nor has it been able to prevent it in time. As a result, hundreds of innocent people, especially children and women, succumb to this preventable - and curable - disease every time it attacks. This apart, absence of adequate medical facilities and medical personnel at local primary health centres also has made things worse. Had the government provided enough medical facilities or manned Kalikot and its surrounding districts with adequate medical or paramedical personnel as measures to prevent such an onslaught, the situation would have certainly been better than what it is today.

At least 26 children have died of in an outbreak of measles in three village development committees of Kalikot district last week. The report further claims that over 50 children have been already affected by this preventable disease. Of the total deaths, 16 died in Chhapre VDC, eight succumbed to the disease in Pankha and two died of the same disease in Chilkhaya VDC. Unfortunately, the officials at the local primary health centres have neither taken any initiative to contain the measles outbreak, nor are the affected children likely to be spared by this disease. It should be recalled here that the last year alone, more than 300 people had died of similar disease and food shortage. This happened due to "criminal negligence" on the part of the government. There was hardly anything worthwhile done to contain the epidemic. As a result, the disease spread to adjoining districts and claimed hundreds of precious human lives. This year too the same thing seems to be happening.

It is true but sad that, compared to others, the Karnali region is the least developed region in the country. People live under poor and unhealthy living conditions without basic amenities and have no access to even basic education and health facilities. Humla, Jumla, Rolpa and Dolpa are other remote districts which suffer from preventable diseases and food shortage, and above all from gross neglect from central authorities. The nett result of such government neglect has been that the people of the region seem to be virtually isolated from the national mainstream and nothing has been done in the past decade of democracy to rectify the wrong. No wonder Maoist insurgents find a fertile ground in these areas to propagate their political ideology to receptive brains that do not see their own government doing anything for them. The government in the capital must give up its narcissistic attitude and realise that governing a country means more than catering to sycophants and camp followers but caring for the common people, more importantly those who live in the neglected remote areas of the kingdom. The government must act now to make up for the lost time and begin development process in west Nepal not merely to contain the rise of Maoism but because the people there deserve no less.

Non-conventional approach

By Lok Raj Baral

Recently Nepal and India have set a new agenda to examine Nepal-India relations from a futuristic perspective. It provides an opportunity to free us from traditional notion of the politics of balance and inherited mindset and strategies, or from some, knowingly or unknowingly, called Nepal’s "equidistant policy" between India and China. My own view on such outdated postulates is unconventional because Nepal’s overarching interests remain unfulfilled without renouncing the classical approach to its neighbourly policy. A new alternative policy that promotes more positive ingredients -- cooperative and interdependent relationship based on transparency, coordinated attitude to stem myriad of emergent crises that arise from such sources as terrorism, poverty, environment, migration, open border, just to mention a few non-conventional sources of insecurity/security, is paramount. Nepal can, without trying to adhere to the notion of balance, develop bilateral relations on the premise of mutual understanding and cooperative elements of relationship.

Yet, all our activities should be geared to safeguarding our own vital interests without being prejudicial to the sensitivity of other neighbours. The recipe of negative nationalism, it seems, cannot perennially serve Nepal’s security interest, as it tends to produce more divergences and conflicts than understanding and cooperation in bilateral relations. If some advocates of classical strategy try to inject it in triangular relations -- Nepal, China and India -- by way of counterbalancing each other as they did in the 1960s are likely to be misplaced. On the contrary, such traditional strategies may boomerang with greater intensity than ever before as it manifested during the Rhithik Roshan incident in December 2000. How such wild issues having no veracity can be detrimental to both national cohesiveness and external understanding, has been well demonstrated by it. And for the first time in Nepal’s history, stories of political backlash against the Nepalis living in the Terai and the hills reverberated across the country.

How the elements of cooperative and coordinated relations between the two the neighbours can be pursued and with what strategies needs to be discussed in the given context of regional and
global politics. Regionally, South Asia continues to be divisive and conflict-torn notwithstanding the cooperative ventures made by the region’s countries while giving shape to a regional instrument-South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The manner in which SAARC’s evolution pattern is manifested since its birth in 1985 along with its vicissitudes, demonstrates a unique situation that cannot be emulated by others. An unprecedented enthusiasm shown for emulating the ASEAN and other models of regionalism has died down as member states’ motivations and strategies are not coterminous with the spirit of cooperative framework of relations. Nor are the principal actors prepared to take SAARC as a common forum of peace and progress because of their own discordant and competitive relations. Other member states are constrained to stick to bilateral agenda because of their compulsions of all forms and intensity despite having to think that their interest is best served by regional cooperation. The latter thinking seems to be more presumptive in nature and believes that by roping in the two rival powers--India and Pakistan--into the regional forum, any form of hegemonic tendency would be diluted. SAARC has proved to be week to promote cooperative relations among and between the countries of the region because of the wrong assumptions on which it was founded. Pious intents do not necessarily make it a homegrown plant if its roots fail to strike in the context of South Asian ground reality. This has happened to SAARC, despite platitudinous remarks made by the leaders of the region. For a weak country like Nepal, national interest can be served only by promoting cooperative and coordinated relations with our immediate neighbours, and not on the basis of the hackneyed strategy of balance as Nepal has pursued throughout its history. Such a psyche seems still working in the back of elite minds that become overzealous when the King and other government leaders pay official visit to India and China thus making a regular event something unusual.

Nepal’s relation with India needs to be addressed from a fresh mindset and on the basis of the emerging South Asian reality in which India is likely to end its status of a status quo power. Since the world community does not deny its scope of being an insurgent power in the near future, its relationship with its neighbours is expected to be qualitatively different from the past. Trying to present India’s future relations with Nepal, an Indian scholar, S D Muni, recently stated that there can be three possible scenarios for India’s Nepal policy in the future: benign neglect, conflictual relation, and interdependent, cooperative relation. While the first, benign neglect, is unrealistic due to both deep and extensive relations existing between the two neighbours, the second cannot bear the brunt of endemic conflict and hence unacceptable. The third scenario, thus, remains the only option for both. The joint statement issued during the visit of the Nepali Prime Minister in August has mentioned such a futuristic picture of Indo-Nepal relations stating that the "agenda of partnership in the 21st century must focus on expanding mutually beneficial and future-oriented cooperation". For promoting such cooperative dynamism in relations, the joint statement has underlined the need of reviewing the existing patterns of relations in order to make them relevant and mature in the decades ahead.

It can be proposed that all aspects of bilateral relations can be examined afresh and with open and free mind for identifying their new contours. It is more pertinent in the context of Nepal’s vulnerability which is increasing everyday due to internal crises of governance, spurt of violence, systemic crises due to political parties inability to abide by the minimum norms and values, lack of credibility in relations with the neighbours, concerted effort made for tarnishing the image of the established system and so on. So our internal crises are more daunting and awful than the external threats.

Can we now manage such crises only by pointing out our fingers at others? Thus, given the unprecedented crisis situation faced by Nepal and also because of the unpredictable trends
of today’s international and regional politics, cooperative and interdependent relationship between the two neighbours seems to be the only imperative.

Honour and modesty at risks

By N N Timsina

My grand father had learned ABC when he was a bearded man. However, this did not happen to me. I could read and write before I had begun attending a local school. This was a great achievement, indeed! But all is not well with our younger generations.

Some years ago, the infringement of school regulations, concealment of facts to teachers, smoking and so on, were considered a crime. Today, things have changed since smoking is considered a necessary trait among the students.

There are evidences to prove how younger generation students trample their elders, regrettably disregarding when it comes to concealment of truth related to smoking.

My younger brother, a student of pre-university, remains silence whenever I ask him whether he smokes. Tired though I was in my effort to catch him red-handed, coincidentally, I saw him buying a cigarette from a street vendor last week. Before I could catch him with my voice, he lit the cigarette heedlessly. No sooner had I spotted him, than he saw me. But it was too late for him to give me defiant response.

He was confronted with only two options- either take to heels or surrender himself before me. In a moment of embarrassment, he handed over the cigarette to me. The onlookers must have been curiously awaiting the outcome of the high voltage drama, when he handed over the illuminated stick to me and said, "I’ve lit it for you, lest you should send me to next errand of fetching a match stick."

Twice clever than me, he fooled the onlookers as though I had sent him to light the cigarette. Gone are those days of uprightness when children used to fear parents; youngers used to abide by the advice of elders; and students used to fear norms of schools.

A day later, I was strolling thoughtlessly along the sidewalk at Kupondole, when I spotted a gang of students smoking profusely. I have heard students smoking in the toilet, but not seen them smoking wantonly.

There was a time when their levels of health, education and morality judged nations and people, but now after the dawn of new era where civil and political liberties have taken over everything, there is a shift in thinking and conduct. Freedom of speech has crossed the astronomical height. Clearly, not every one here is a voracious smoker, but the hunger and appetite for smoke is reflected in every street. Even as thousands of vehicles belching smoke have smoked our lives making us passive smokers, the professional smoking has given another grave risks for the cardiovascular disease.

Adolescence in our society has largely overlooked the vulnerabilities of smoking. Adolescence should be the time of greatest hope and energy to build their future, but when will this realization come? The present day education is disturbing. The system of education is up in the smoke. Smoking among the school students has gone up day after day with fewer restrictions to stop them and less awareness, no matter what grave risks smoking has.

Will the next generation of men and women change themselves in the 21st century? This has become a million dollar question today.

Not by allocations alone

By Kuldip Nayar

At his first press conference Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri said that he had told the administration to give him allocations in terms of jobs, not rupees. But he failed to get the data.

Much water has flown down the Yamuna since then. Things are worse than before. The budget, understandably, has to be in rupees. But there is not even a passing reference to the employment it would generate. The government behaves as if there are mundane things to mention.

A country where there are crores of people looking for some opening, any other yardstick to measure progress is a mere illusion. Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, who is less and less convincing with every budget, would make a history if he were to issue a booklet, along with his budget speech, translating his proposals into jobs. The volume on the State of Economy, issued a day before the budget, has little meaning without any reference to the number of jobs.

There were once promises to make development into an instrument of social welfare. Forget that. The impoverished agriculturists have swollen the ranks of unemployed and underemployed. And in urban areas, even the highly educated are queuing up for white-collar jobs, which are scarce.

I do not want to use cliches like the haves or the have-nots. But there is no doubting of India’s failure to make a significant impact on the incidence of poverty. Let us admit we have made little headway. Six years ago, the official figures put 40 per cent of population (nearly 34 crore) as living below the poverty line. Officials tell me that no other country in the world has spent so much money on anti-poverty programmes as India has. The misuse of funds is obvious. But is this the way to defeat want?

Whatever the development, it seems to have increased rather than reduced the persistent and deepening dualism between the limited modern industrial sector and the vast rural hinterland. The industrial sector is shrinking because of foreign competition and indiscriminate entry of cheap outside goods. And within the countryside, a minority of prosperous commercial farmers is swamped by growing numbers of marginal cultivators and landless labourers.

The lesson we should have learnt is that western theories, models and concepts have distorted our thinking and our economic programmes. Our cultures and attitudes are different and our institutions do not harmonise with theirs. They believe that our religious attitudes and social structures have to be destroyed before development can take place. Probably true to a large extent but this envisages a dictatorial polity which the pluralistic society like ours cannot risk. We may be a soft state as the intellectuals and the economists in the West describe us. But we cannot impose obligations in an open society.

The West may consider us irrational in our beliefs but these are the ones which influence our style of living and working. We have to have our own way and method to develop, not go by the blueprint from the World Bank or the IMF. This has been our deficiency all along. We cannot forget the ethical and spiritual aspects of life which are ultimate by basic to culture and civilisation and which have given some meaning of life.

Today, the catchword is ‘reform’. Yesterday, it was ‘capitalism’. What does it mean when it gets spelled out? A country which faces the problem of finding employment for lakhs of people cannot even go automatic beyond a point. Nor can it allow foreign equity without any control in every field. If this thinking is against globalisation, let it be so. Our primary purpose is to find bread for every inhabitant, not to fit into some western theory.

Our experience shows that most outsiders have one purpose - to make a quick buck by hook or by crook. Hence under-invoicing and over-invoicing has become common. They have no qualms of conscience for not having fulfilled their export commitments. They openly manipulate stock markets ( 15 billion dollars was supposed to have been thrown in by them). If this is an erroneous impression, let them correct it through clean and credible deals. Let them not take India for a ride. Even the consumer goods they export to us near the expiry date. By doing so, the West is tarnishing its own image.

Certain engagements in the last three weeks took me to eight states -- Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab and West Bengal. These were hurried visits. But they gave me an opportunity to talk to people from different walks of life. I have never found in the last 50 years so much despondency, anxiety and uneasiness as I did this time because of the flooding of foreign goods. They felt that the country is being sold to foreigners. I had imagined the questions posed to me would be on Kashmir or on Indo-Pakistan relations. But people are too absorbed in discussing rising prices and the inability to cope with the situation.

Even otherwise, the impression is that we are not doing well, although the government claims a growth rate of six per cent or a bit more. In his inaugural address, the President has talked about a growth rate of nine per cent for the next decade. How? Where is the money to be pumped in? Indirect tax collection growth rate was negative: 6.7 per cent in December 2000. Customs collections were down 22.5 per cent while excise collections rose to five per cent. Direct tax collection growth rate had come down to 5.8 per cent in December 2000.

It is no use pushing problems under the carpet. Yashwant Sinha may have drawn a rosy picture. He has to do it because of political considerations. But his government is no different from the earlier ones when it comes to having opportunistic political compromises with powerful propertied class. In fact, both the BJP and the Congress have destroyed the pride in something of our own.

I feel the theories calling for revolutionary action are non-theories under Indian conditions once they are tested against political constraints. The Marxists know it from their experience because they have failed to recognise a national movement on the basis of class. Caste combinations have done better. But adversary groups, confronting and colluding with each other in the absence of any accepted rules -- as the commotion after the Mandal Commission reservations for the backward has shown -- can trigger a cycle of violence and repression. This situation will make the reconstruction of a more effective political order still more difficult.

We come back to the axiom of rapid development. Without utilising the modern methods which have brought great material advance to some countries in the west, we remain poor -- and, what is more, tend to become poorer, because of the pressure of an increasing population. I do not see a way out of our vicious circle of poverty except by utilising the new techniques and sources of power at our disposal. But in doing so we should not forget the fact that our objective is individual improvement and the lessening of inequalities.

The tragedy is that a few days ago, when we celebrated yet another Republic Day, there was the usual parade and, deep in the country, people saw on television networks with pride and horror the opulence and the power in Delhi. What did it show? The nation is one but it has two countries: the developed and the backward, militarily powerful and welfarewise poor. How do we close the gap? It boils down to the observation Shastri had made: Jobs instead of allocations.