Governance by the poor and for the poor...

By KRISHNA GYAWALI

Governance has become a catchword especially since the last decade of the last century. The people either on the corridors of power or on the streets have been made gradually accustomed to using this word in place of ‘government’. The donors and their local ‘counterparts’-consultants and experts- have mainly contributed to popularizing the word with its conceptual distance from the government.

‘Governance’ itself is neutral unless it is capped with adjectives. Shasan could be both good and bad resulting respectively in Sushasan and Kushasan. With the most common adjective ‘good’, governance has been put into global development agenda. It has now become a household name in countries that lack and need it most. Good governance, or Sushasan in Nepali tongue, has thus outpaced all other development slogans or paradigms promoted by donors and followed by their dependants. Concepts such as economic growth, basic needs fulfilment, poverty alleviation, sustainable development, human development, gender mainstreaming and the like have given way to good governance as their central theme of concern.

To cite Nepal’s case, successive slogans such as ‘politics for development’, ‘unleash the stream of development’ and ‘fulfilment of basic needs’ during the Panchayat regime and ‘poverty alleviation’ as the Mulmantra or the motto of development during the last eleven years of multiparty governance have successfully captured the imagination of the Nepali populace which has tended to believe in each of these slogans and their realization. However, the lack of vision, ability and honesty in subsequent political and administrative leadership to implement those slogans has eroded the credibility of such slogans, leading to the gradual disillusionment of the people. Consequently, the people were made to believe that all these slogans were raised for mere public consumption. A deep sense of betrayal has thus developed in people’s mind that has led to a dangerous skepticism towards the role of politics, state and even civil society.

Good governance as yet another donor-driven policy instrument has over the years been struggling through this injured psyche of the Nepali people. While it has yet to define itself, find its direction, and earn people’s faith in its honest and effective implementation, one donor agency has just at a right time ventured into meeting these arduous challenges. Enabling State Programme (ESP), a British aid agency supported project launched since January last year has come forward with its mission of ‘pro-poor governance in Nepal’. Assisted by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) in agreement with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) of His Majesty’s alone Government of Nepal (HMG/N), the programme revolves around the central assumption that a state cannot perform, deliver, and even exist, let alone evolve strong, unless it clearly has a pro-poor focus in its policies and actions. Enabling a state to govern better (or to deliver goods and services efficiently, effectively, accountably, transparently, and honestly) should be the major goal of any good governance initiative. The way of enabling could be improving governance which is crucial for reducing poverty in countries like Nepal. Therefore, there exists a strong correlation between reducing poverty and improving governance as both enjoy a cause-and-effect relationship.

The book under review is an outcome of an ESP commissioned assessment of the state of pro-poor governance in Nepal. It was carried out by eight specialist consultants and a lead consultant -all Nepalis- covering seven governance themes, namely, the political system, private sector development, pro-poor policies, provision of basic services, access to justice and personal security, national security and conflict prevention, and honest and accountable government. The study has thus tried to be comprehensive, leaving apparently no area untouched in its coverage.

Experts ranging from Dhruba Shrestha and Krishna Hacchethu known for the ‘apolitical’ acumen of their political analysis to a genre of emerging as well as established professionals with rare ‘neutral competence’ including Sapana Pradhan Malla, Surendra Bhandari, Hiramani Ghimire, Keshav Paudel, Sri Ram Paudyal and Bama Dev Sigdel have undertaken the assessment of the seven subject areas. As the Programme Manager of ESP, Michael Lowe, admits in his Foreword, the views expressed in each chapter may not appear consistent, owing to the diverse academic as well as professional background their presenters hold. However, they point to a commonality in their contentions, suggesting that only pro-poor governance can be good governance. They also provide benchmarks for each of the seven areas, and examine whether and to what extent Nepal has succeeded in
meeting them.

How can governance be made pro-poor? What could be the yardsticks to measure the degree of pro-poor character of governance? As an answer to these questions, DFID has identified seven key capabilities that it argues are needed to enable the state and its partners, mainly civil society organizations, to ameliorate the plight of the poor. These capabilities are reflected in the seven
themes noted earlier.

The book emphasizes the fact that the state has to earn and enhance these capabilities to establish pro-poor governance. It further asserts that poverty cannot be reduced without creating a political system that provides opportunities for the poor and disadvantaged to influence government policy and practice. This means an optimally representative electoral system, free and fair elections, effective local self-governance, independent mass media, strong civil society, and open, plural and liberal political system in practice. Similarly, private sector participation in the development process, pro-poor policy framework and resource allocation, equitable and universal provision of basic services, access to justice and personal security, and corruption-free, accountable and transparent governance system are equally essential to ensure good governance in the country. Thus, the book rightly sees poverty alleviation in perspective rather than in isolation and, equally appropriately, links it to a good governance paradigm.

However, despite having analyzed in permissible detail the issues currently confronting governance with pro-poor focus, the book interestingly lacks conclusion both in individual chapters and at the whole end. ESP, the sponsor of the study, confesses it has no say on whatever the individual writers have argued in their write-ups. That is understandable, given a widespread popular criticism of donors’ high-handedness in the national development agenda. But why the ‘Nepali’ contributors chose not to conclude their sayings is amusing and even perplexing. Also, the book’s analysis of the causes, consequences and solutions of the Maoist "insurgency" in the country is meagre and inconclusive, to say the least. An analytical study of this nature should have included, perhaps, a separate chapter of introduction or conclusion that would have led readers into a substantive, coherent and constructive sum-up. That would have made the book more meaningful and beneficial for the development planners and policymakers who should be reading it before anybody else.

Impressive layout, relevant tables and annexes, well-cited references, and the enlistment of interviewees of professional repute supplement the rich contents of the book. Taken together, the book makes compulsory reading for all those interested in watching the country’s governance run by the poor and for the poor.

Social attitudes versus patience

By BHASKAR GAUTAM

Antyahin Antya says a lot more than Shobha Bhattarai, the writer of the novel, may be able to account for. The novel moves in a single direction with much reality, and little fiction. The plot is based on the writer’s real story, with many descriptions but not much characterization, dialogue or characters’ outlook towards issues raised in the book.

The novel begins some days before Shobha’s marriage, and follows three years of her marital life. Amar Sharma, her husband, is the novel’s other main character. Their story is simple, but with some twists: Shobha’s family forces her, against her will, to marry Amar, who stays in Canada and is a computer engineer. Their reasons are simply that Amar stays abroad and is from an economically sound family. Despite her resistance, things beyond her own control proceed in unusual fashion, and Shobha is married away from her hometown, in Bangkok. But to her surprise, after a month of her marriage, she comes to discover that Amar is transsexual. At this point—during a prolonged stay in Bangkok, because the Canadian visa is delayed—she has to choose either to return to Kathmandu, or to go to Canada to make a life with Amar. To her own surprise, she leaves for Canada to experience the difficulties of life there, and to suffer gloomy moments and a constant, lonely struggle. Luckily she is blessed with extraordinary patience, and gradual omnipotence.

The novel strongly exposes the conservative attitudes of our society. Of course, there are no details or analyses about social factors in the book; their presentation is rather dishevelled. Because going abroad results in a higher social status in Nepali society, people like Shobha’s parents can blindly try to capitalize on an opportunity to send their daughter abroad. People who ignore such opportunities, as Shobha initially attempts to do, are nothing but clowns to them. This attraction to foreign lands is rooted in a hunger for financial wealth, that prime measure of social status in our society, as around the world. It is embarrassing, but true, that parents force their daughters to marry men without even looking at him, without knowing how he is in person because he stays abroad. Shobha’s parents realize their mistake too late, when they find out that their son-in-law is transsexual and has nothing in Canada—neither a job nor anything else.

The novel also depicts, very well, a characteristic common to many Nepali women, showing how, even though they have wishes and desires, they do not revolt against anything. Shobha’s struggle in Canada and her life with Amar demonstrate this characteristic of Nepali women. Sacrifice is what women learn in our society. Many a time they do not revolt in against their suffering and humiliation; they do not carry out their desires and wishes. And thus the patience that I am referring to. While reading this novel, one question often passed through my mind: what the hell is stopping her from leaving or divorcing her husband? But reaching the end of the novel, I realized what a magic of omnipotence her patience had achieved. This patience finally supports her through the jeopardy of her three year marital life abroad. Lines by T.S. Eliot explain why she didn’t divorce or give up on everything:

I said to my soul: be still and wait without hope
For hope would be hope of the wrong thing,
Wait without love
For love would be the love of the wrong thing;
There is yet faith
But the faith, and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

To wait for years and settle everything in such beauty—it is enough to say that there are always ways, and obviously everything is there in waiting. But one must be disciplined and determined to what one wants, as Shobha is in her life.

The novel also explores the fact that there are people who do not hesitate to ruin other’s life with the power of money. There is also one other aspect to be noticed in the story: after one and a half years of marriage, when Shobha is back in Kathmandu, she finds to her disappointment that life is relatively difficult here. The unsupportive attitude of her family, some unusual gossip, her fear about how to be secretive, people who keep an unnecessary interest in her family affairs, and the suggestion of the astrologer make her realize that returning to Canada is better in all respects than living here with her friends and family. In spite of her longing to reach Kathmandu for a better life, the social atmosphere here destroy her faith. Only her confidence and patience help her return to Canada. This difficult path that Shobha always chooses in life is precisely the quality of her patience, and the path to her liberation.

The author loves to say that this novel is based on experience. No doubt the writing speaks on her behalf that she is an amateur writer. Her preface itself, and the quality of her writing is poor. The fact that she has dealt with and has settled life’s mess perfectly doesn’t mean that this book should be widely celebrated in the field of Nepali literature. However, if she had displayed some of her patience in the field of writing, improving on the quality of language, rearranging the plot and improving the characterization, the book in the form of a memoir—or maybe in the form of a novel for her—would have been more effective than it is now.

Besides these limitations, however, the introduction of a transsexual character is new for Nepali literature. The book has raised important social issues that merit genuine discussion.

Nepal's development dilemmas revisited

By SHYAMAL KRISHNA SHRESTHA

Twenty years after it was first published, the seminal work by three British academics/researchers associated with the University of East Anglia viz. Piers Blaikie (a human geographer), John Cameron (an economist) and David Seddon (a sociologist/social anthropologist) could not be more relevant. Having come to one of the least developed countries during the 1970s to assess the socioeconomic impact of a road construction project in west central Nepal, the authors explain the wider context of the impoverished national economy. While the prime finding of the study relates to that specific context, their analysis of factors facilitating and hindering the country’s development as a whole is highly appreciative. Nowhere is their analysis truer as in the conclusion where the writers do not rule out the possibility of a revolution from the hinterland (the periphery) if dependency and underdevelopment continue. They thus contend: "we see no reason to believe that the peasantry of Nepal will discover a collective political expression of its needs which reaches beyond mere populist rhetoric in time to save millions of people from impoverishment, malnutrition, fruitless migration, and early death" (p. 275). Do the events of the last six years represent an expression and possible reaction to the nation’s economic and political underdevelopment?

The book (originally published in 1980) deals mainly with the problematic of why Nepal remained a failed state despite almost two and a half decades of development planning. Underdevelopment is explained in a historical perspective: from a political-economic viewpoint, the country represented a classic case of a feudal-ridden society at the crossroads of progress and regress. In the theory of dependency, it was a satellite (periphery) where development, rapid capital accumulation and the path to capitalism were hampered by, among others, the activities of the metropolis (centre) at various levels ( national and international. The state failed to achieve its goals due to the presence of pre-capitalist elements. First, vestiges of feudalism were entrenched: the caste system compromised on essential freedoms. There was thus little change from the status quo. Second, the absence of effective political participation due to the then prevalent partyless Panchayat system stifled democratic norms and stunted debate. It may be reminded that the import-substitution industrialization model failed due to traditional modes of production, the presence of a large impoverished primarily subsistence-agricultural population, acute economic dualism, unbalanced regional development and stagnant industrial growth where a skilled labour force and a productivity-enhancing entrepreneurial class was yet to emerge. Moreover, the policy regime’s high trade barriers (absent at present) also precluded competition for infant industries and fostered the growth of directly unproductive activities resulting in gross misallocation of scarce resources. In sum, the crisis was (and is) symptomatic of most Third World states.

The new edition, published twenty years later, attempts to find out whether the crisis has abated or not. Although containing only an additional chapter, Nepal in Crisis: The Next Generation, the authors review Nepal’s development performance over the last two decades as well as the pros and cons of public policy during the period. The restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990 and a decade of its tradition mark a vital watershed in the nation’s history. The central question is therefore: has the decade-old democracy been sensitive to the nation’s backwardness? It is voiced that the political hibernation that the country’s former banned parties were subject to (during 1960-90) could explain why they were ill prepared to govern. Coming to and holding on to power thus formed the exclusive agenda. The democratic governments also found themselves in a dilemma as far as steering the course of the national economy was concerned. The international context during the 1990s was overwhelmingly in favour of less state intervention, economic liberalization, adjustment to a market economy and lastly, democracy. To raise living standards, reduce poverty and integrate the national economy with the global one, they concurred with the international donor agencies and their insistence on various policy reform packages. As a result, a rebirth of the developmental state was pursued according to the policy prescriptions of the Bretton Woods institutions. However, although economic growth rates have risen somewhat in the liberal economic regime, equitable development has not resulted. The crisis has perpetuated in the absence of widespread reforms in sectors like land, social sector, bureaucracy and continued reliance on foreign aid, among others. This widespread discontent has provided a fertile breeding ground for the genesis and spread of extremist ideologies, epitomized by the underground Maoist movement. In the effort to control the insurgency (now terrorist movement) by the government, new threats to development like human rights abuses have occurred.

Nepal’s slow progress in alleviating deprivation and poverty lends credence to the urgency with which the development challenges will have to be tackled. Current events lend credence to the fact that violence as a tool of social and economic transformation is fraught with jeopardy: for nation-hood, democracy and human rights. Grassroots democracy, good governance, decentralization and proper allocation of resources remain the only routes for emerging from the morass of poverty, deprivation, underdevelopment and other manifestations of crises. In the development literature, there are only a few books that bring out the essence of what ramifications a poor nation faces. Nepal in Crisis: Growth and Stagnation at the Periphery is indispensable for policy makers, academics, development practitioners, political leaders and all those willing to understand the severity of development challenges and contribute towards meeting them.

"What is Human?"

Jovan Ilic

Blade Runner was, and still is, a seminal piece of quite astonishing filmmaking. In the echelons of Hollywood, it is very rare for a film of such philosophical enquiry to be made, let alone to reach such a wide audience. Twenty years after its initial release, it still remains central and crucial to understanding our modern world of multiculturalism, increasing technological sophistication, and genetic engineering.

Scott Bukataman¹s incisive and well-presented book follows the lead of the film and asks the following questions: How is it that we know what we know? How is it that we know what it is to be a human? What constitutes the essential human being? And how do we distinguish and define the essential human being from that which only masquerades as human? Indeed, is there anything essential
about the human being especially in the context of modern technology?

These questions present two oppositions: Human/Android and Human/Inhuman. The first division raises the philosophical question: How do you know you're human? The second leads to a moral problem: What does it mean to be human? The narrative action of Blade Runner centres on the progressive feeling of moral corruption that the main protagonist Deckard has in killing androids. Deckard experienced no great anxieties over the killing of the earlier primitive androids. The sophisticated "Nexus" however, have disturbed him through their physical similarities to humans. The issue raised here is: If you fight evil, will a "decent" human being as symbolised by a police officer, end up becoming evil?

Deckard is tested early on, as is the "Voight-Kampff" empathy test when the creators of the Nexus androids (The Tyrell Corporation) ask him to test a subject who turns out to be Rachel, a new improved Nexus model. The Voight-Kampff test measures empathy, emotional responses and "love of life," which it regards as being the key human traits. Deckard is astonished at how difficult the test was, and equally astonished to find out that Rachel doesn’t know what she is. She does, in fact, think that she is human.

The implication is that the distinction between humans and androids through whatever form of verification is increasingly becoming less and less significant. Technology may advance to the stage where the distinction can only continue to be of use, as long as the technology of the verification technique advances in unison with the technological developments of artificial intelligence. "More human than human" is the motto of the Tyrell Corporation.

Blade Runner is filled with tests: there are tests to determine who’s human; who’s fit to reproduce; who’s fit to emigrate. The obsession with boundaries, definitions and standards, indicates that these definitions are in crisis.

What Bukatman does, and does well, is to situate these philosophical issues concerning the status and identity of human beings, firmly within the location of the city. Although Blade Runner explores the tensions central to a Postmodern era of bewildering technological change, Bukatman argues that it derives from the fundamentally twentieth-century Modernist experience of the city - the experience of a space both imprisoning and liberating. "The visual effects testify to the sublimity of technology, an experience of its beauty infused with the anxiety that acknowledges its power. They reveal an ambivalence towards technology. They are neither celebratory nor condemning, but instead articulate a tension between uneasiness and identification."

The spaces of Blade Runner are visually and acoustically intrusive; neon signs, advertising and searchlights incessantly penetrate private spaces. You are continually bombarded and bewildered by information and forms of surveillance, such that the separation of private and public spaces is diminished. Seeing is everything in Blade Runner, it marks people by their visibility or their inability to escape being seen, and by their ability or inability to see.

But in private, a person does and says all sorts of things that he would never do in public, even things such as making a friend laugh are quite different in private than they are in public. That we act differently in private from the way that we do in public is as Kundera has so eloquently invoked, everyone’s most conspicuous experience, it is the very ground of the life of the individual. But in addition to the forms of physical surveillance and visibility that Blade Runner portrays, it goes one step further and attacks the boundaries of public and private space even more emphatically by programming the android Rachel with false memories. If memories can be implanted, then what private space do we have left?

Similarly, urban space in Blade Runner has become less physical. Buildings and roads are seen to influence less and less by comparison with those invisibly penetrating networks of satellites and terminals. Geography is losing its relevance (in a fashion) in the face of the topographies of electronic culture. The public and private become blurred again, and threaten to collapse. The emergence of cyberspace and the so-called "global village" simultaneously expand public space, albeit electronically, whilst reducing private space.

Bukatman, however briefly, covers all the important aspects of Blade Runner. For what it lacks in any form of sustained argument it nevertheless more than makes up for by its constantly rewarding high level of insight. In so doing, it highlights Blade Runner’s enduring appeal and its fundamental relevance to the questions of our times.