Dialogue and intervention

Iwas searching for one word to sum up the spirit and energy of the 50 or so papers presented at the second international folklore congress organised in Kathmandu by the Nepali Folklore Society. I thought I found it on the last day—’dialogue’, which is the most bandied about word in the world, yet remains the most powerful single word in any language.

Dialogue is known all over South Asia as sambaad. It entails the involvement of two parties, who come together face to face to talk. ‘Discourse’ is another nomenclature of dialogue, which has been expanding its horizon in cultural studies. When I encountered this word discourse in the linguistic classroom in Edinburgh University, I was struck by the simplicity of the subject. I did not see any meaning in a word that speaks about the conversation between two parties, their competition to take over the subject, to speak first and put one’s own argument before the other speaks. But this word assumed more meaning to me as the days went by and I continued to traverse the terrains opened by this domain of study. To me discourse became dialogue in course of time and dissolved into silence—a meaningful ‘nothing’ in the Zen art and poetry. My final somersaults with the word ‘dialogue’ took place in Japan. Since then, to me, dialogue holds the power of the tumult of silence, and of the possibilities that open up every time I hold this word as power.

To hold a word or logo in Greek, as the final power is, according to a French philosopher Jacques Derrida, a misnomer. Words are not final; neither are the repeated values they represent. So, to say that I found a word—’dialogue’ may mean that I have found nothing.

But the Folklore Congress gave me strength to assert my conviction. A dialogue, a discourse with one of my favourite scholars in the field of performance arts and culture, Kapila Vatsyayan from India who presented several discourses at the Congress, added new dimension to my conviction. She said that some western scholars like Huntington, who she had invited over to Delhi for dialogue about the ideas he has broached in his book The Clash of Civilisations, miss out some important points and make erratic divisions of the world into Judeo-Christian and Muslim and the others. Civilisations have evolved through dialogue not through clashes and interventions. If there were only clashes, there would be no evolution of cross-cultural avatars of civilisation as we see today. The clash oriented approaches only see one zone and one form of power and miss the spirit of dialogue.

One reason why the word dialogue or sambad must have struck me is its use in the failing national discourses in Nepal. To me the greatest crisis of Nepali politics is this insensitivity to sambaad, to the very power of sitting together and talking. We in Nepal talk sitting around the fireplace. We talk in the public places, but we all speak at the same time. We do not listen. I have listened to people talking excitedly about particular topics, very intense subjects, but have found that everybody speaks, and no one listens. One who is talking becomes red with anger because he/she knows that the other one is not listening to him/her. Both feel wounded, both say malaai chittadukhyo—’ I’m hurt’.

Nepali people’s pain comes from not listening to each other. It is a self-inflicted pain. You don’t listen to the other person, so the other person doesn’t listen to you. But one very curious point is that you don’t dismiss dialogue as a game, a fun, and the language in the dialogue as gibberish of some sort. You can not afford not to listen to others if you are sensitive to your own desire for others to listen to you. In Nepali politics today this wounded psyche is at the core of the problem. Everyone is hurt; everyone is wounded because nobody listens to the other and gets angry for not being heard.

I feel that particular mood of people whenever I read the news about the failed dialogues. People come to talk, but leave the room sometimes very badly wounded. Dialogue is not a wound inflicting game. Dialogue is not a clash; it is not intervention of a cynical order. It is a search for a common word, common colour and common space, if not it is a search for our own spaces where we can feel happy, and respect those of the others.

People try to bring clashes into some form of a dialogue. Very bitter forms of debates find some common space to parade one’s ideas. History creates referents. If a nation is fighting for freedom from colonial rule, that colonial power is the referent; if a war is going on over a territory, giving up the territory or working out a compromise is the referent. In such cases, dialogue can be difficult. But even in such difficulties, people have found solutions.

In Nepal when two groups of political groups or power centres hold a dialogue, they do not have many stakes. Nepali living or existential reality is stronger than any referents. We do not have enough money to live with respect; we do not have enough land to produce grain; we do not have enough resources that we could have access to, and we do not have any structures that make the economy strong. If I, a persona I have imagined, go to bed hungry most of my life, nobody has the right to impose any ideas or burdens on me. I can be as free as the trees, as the sky or as the river. I have my own natural course and rhythm of life. I have not caused anybody any mental or physical pain. So, when you meet to have a dialogue about me, you do not have to take me as your referent. To do so, is only to exploit me. But even in such a situation why you can not hold a dialogue is because all of you talk together and become wounded with each other’s indifference.

The papers at the folklore congress showed that dialogue is at the root of all forms of folklore traditions. Written has a dyadic or mutual relationship with the orality; folk tales have a relationship with the modern forms of narration; fables have relations with the fabulation processes in literary writings. Songs and tales of sorrow have dialogic structures. Everything stands in dialogic relationship with the other. All the folklore forms that I heard in the papers had dialogue as the base of their structures.

Tulasi Diwasa at the closing of the Congress stressed on that need for opening and understanding dialogue; Rhoderick Chalmers of Britain showed the dialogue between the orality and printed culture of Nepali literature as the basis of its principal dynamics; Arun Gupto showed the dialogue between the flow of a river—a continuum of myth and history as the power of folklore; Shiva Rijal traced the contours of dialogue within the Nepali theatre traditions; Bairagi Kanhila evoked the power of dialogue within the Limbu ritual texts; Sangita Rayamajhi showed the dialogue of women with one’s own pain in Teej songs, the varieties of which came up in Madhav Pokhrel’s presentation; Gajbkumari Timilisina showed the other dialogic form in women’s songs; Govinda Bhattarai showed the slippery nature of dialogue between translation and original cultural texts. Similarly, Sonja Servomaa of Finland presented a tense dialogue between sound and word in poetry; Prem Khatri’s paper captured the power of the dialogue between death in life and life in death in the rituals of the Danuwars; Tejratna Kansakar’s paper evoked the spirit of creativity and pain in the dialogue between a woman and man who goes to Lhasa in Newar ballad Seelu; Rajkurmar Gandharva presented a dialogue between words and his fiddle—saarangi. Satyamohan Joshi showed the dialogic nature of ritual theatre. Dialogue was the spirit of all the great poems presented by native and foreign poets each day.

But if such is the creative power of dialogue in our folk culture, why does not that power come up in political dialogues? There is something wrong somewhere that the folklorists, not the politicians and political pundits, need to point out anon.

Women on top

I guess I don’t have to repeat the cliché that "Women give birth to every child in this planet". Opps! I just did it, but never mind, it is always worth repeating because sometimes clichés do appear to strike the right chord. That is why we stuck to them time and again; otherwise there wouldn’t have been any cliché.

How does this sound? A woman golfer playing in USPGA tour—that’s quite a digression from conventional wisdom. So when Annika Sorenstam, the ever affable Swede, hit her first short in the Colonial Tournament hosted in Fort Worth, Texas, history was indeed made. This was the first time since 1945 that any lady golfer had appeared in an official USPGA tour. And notwithstanding the initial criticism from the likes of Vijay Singh and Nick Price, Sorenstam’s play in the first day, managed to draw widespread adulations and tributes from all corners of the world. Though she failed to make the cut in second day’s play, her determination to even try and compete, will surely earn her a name in the annals of golf, and sports too, forever.

From the green field of golf to the tragedy of broken marriage. It was a tragedy in the making, but due to the guts of Nisha Sharma, bride-to-be, a new chapter was written in the ever sad saga of excessive dowry demands in India. Like in the case of Annika Sorenstam, Nisha Sharma too will have her name carved in gold and silver because this software student from New Delhi did the unthinkable, at least in our feudal Hindu society. When she heard of the exorbitant dowry demands made by the bridegroom side just before the marriage ceremony, she had enough of the insults and constant manipulations, and immediately called the police. And the rest, as they say, is history. Nisha Sharma is nowadays everywhere in the headlines of the newspaper, on the cover page of the magazines and news channels. Hats off to her guts.

And now to the lovely terrains of the Himalayas. Ming Kipa Sherpa, fifteen years and nine months old, rewrote history when she climbed the highest summit and became the youngest ever climber. And all this happened without her having the slightest idea about it, which makes this climb even more extraordinary. A youthful soul, embodiment of excitement and hope, finds it place in the highest peak of the world, and rightly so. Everyone has the will and determination, many try, but only a few succeed. These three women have shown that success need not be the ultimate goal. What really matters is the right attitude to supplement one’s will and determination.

New dimension : China and Pakistan policy

China and Pakistan have remained time-tested friends of Nepal ever since the establishment of diplomatic relations. We watch carefully every development emerging in Chinese and Pakistani foreign policy. Moreover, in the aftermath of cold war, China has assumed special significance in global politics. People are seriously observing Chinese foreign policy vis-à-vis the American global design to impose new ‘World Order’ on other nations. China’s growing self-confidence as an economic power has not certainly gone well to the western world. However, China has not been assertive in global politics, especially in resisting the US efforts to pressurize it. In the first Gulf war, China helped the US by remaining absent in the crucial meeting of the Security Council that authorised the use of force against Iraq. Nevertheless, later the then US President George Bush decided to deliver F16 fighter aircraft to Taiwan to influence the presidential election of 1992, clearly underestimating the Chinese power of resilience. Since then there have been several instances of China’s passive policy towards the US, including its inability to halt the American attack on Iraq and then loyally toeing the US line in withdrawing the 13-year-old sanctions against Iraq after Saddam’s disappearance.

All these examples speak a lot about China’s indifferent role in fighting for universal values at the global level. China’s inactive role in global affair, however, should not be taken something as its permanent character. Still, China adheres to its earlier policy of Panchasheela and opposes in principle the western effort of imposing imperialism on weaker nations in Asia and Africa. Chinese ambassador to Nepal Wu Congyong’s speech at a talk programme jointly organized by the Nepal Council of World Affairs and China Study Centre on May 8th reveals China’s concern to maintain a healthy international system, free of superpower hegemony and interference in the internal matter of independent countries. The ambassador clearly underlined the need of giving up cold war politics based on hostility and suspicion to each other. The ambassador focussed on the need of respecting the diversity of other countries. Regarding the UN system, the ambassador expressed China’s full support to revive its earlier spirit to prevent it from becoming the permanent captive of the US hegemony.

In his speech, the ambassador made it a point to show China’s common cause with South Asian countries, victims of colonial rule in the past. The ambassador once again asserted that China no more could support colonialist attempt to undermine the sovereignty of other nations in any pretext. China wants peace in stability in this region so that the western powers could be deprived of any loophole for intervention. The ambassador said, "China, as Nepal’s traditional good neighbour, has kept a close eye on the development of Nepal’s domestic situation". He further said, "China, being the good neighbour, good partner and good friend of Nepal, will persistently provide moral and material support and help to Nepal within its capacity". The above sentiments of Chinese ambassador are quite meaningful in the present context when Nepal is facing the danger of foreign interference in the name of combating terrorism.

China will certainly not intervene in any way in Nepal’s internal matter, but it will not take kindly any attempt of military exercise in Nepal either by the Super power or any regional power. It is with this concern in the mind that China seems to be watching Nepal’s domestic situation carefully. China knows that in the aftermath of 9/11 terrorist event in New York, American forces have almost reached its next door. Unlike in the cold war era, America forces are stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq and some of the central Asian countries. China knows if Nepal too becomes the next station of foreign forces, its security and national unity would get a serious jolt. Similarly, China wants friendly relations between Nepal and its southern neighbour, but it will not tolerate any attempt to intervene in Nepal’s domestic situation in any military form. Moreover, China has to become extra cautious with India in the context of growing affinity between the US and India. China might also be influenced by the possible move of India to send Indian troops to Iraq as an attempt to placate the imperialist powers. China also cannot overlook the fact that a strong section of intelligentsia of India still considers China as the potential hostile power. China wants the internal conflict of Nepal to be resolved through peaceful means of dialogue, and thus wants others to refrain from meddling into the domestic situation. Moreover, China does not consider the Maoist insurgency as a movement for genuine social change initiated by the real Maoist-Leninist. China calls them simply as anti government forces.

Close on the heels of the Chinese ambassador’s speech, the Pakistani ambassador to Nepal Mr Zamir Akram briefed the Nepali mediapersons and intellectuals on the current global international affairs on May 26 at a programme held in Kathmandu. The ambassador said that Pakistan did not believe in interfering in the internal affairs of any country. However, he made it a point that if Nepal’s integrity were undermined, Pakistan would not remain quiet. Responding to another pointed question on what help Pakistan could provide to Nepal if its integrity was indeed jeopardised, the ambassador remarked, "Much depends on the sort of assistances Nepal is willing and prepared to accept". Like China, Pakistan too does not want the domestic situation of Nepal as a disguise for outside inference. It is good that they have categorically expressed their support to Nepal’s integrity and independence. Both countries want Nepal to resolve the Maoist insurgency peacefully. The significant dimension of China and Pakistan policy is their growing attention to the events taking place in Nepal and their commitment to safeguarding Nepal’s independent status. Equally, important dimension is their desire to see the peace talks successful despite their lack of sympathy for the Maoist insurgency.

The government can take a positive signal from these friendly countries’ comments. The government can take solace realising that Nepal’s good wishing neighbours will support it at the time of need. China and Pakistan’s readiness to support Nepal at any time only reinforces the view that no other country can intervene militarily in Nepal easily as some fear now. However, Nepal’s independence and sovereignty can best be preserved not by the support from outside but with our own vigilance and resilience. China and Pakistan too have succeeded to safeguard their national identity by projecting their nationalistic views forcefully. North Korea is also resisting the pressure of the only superpower based on people’s readiness to sacrifice for the sake of the country. China and Pakistan do not support the insurgency, but they want them to come to agreement and save the country from the further failure and outside interference. China and Pakistan have shown the genuine concern to our vulnerable position. We want other nations too to respect our national sovereignty.

Britain must not letn Iran become next Iraq

— ROBIN COOK

Chutzpah is the word applied to people who radiate belief in themselves without any visible reason to justify it. In the chutzpah stakes, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is way off the top of the scale.

Before the war, he told us that Saddam Hussein had ‘large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and an active programme to develop nuclear weapons.’ After the war he explained away the failure to find any of these stockpiles or programmes on the possibility that Saddam’s regime ‘decided they would destroy them prior to a conflict.’ You have to admire his effrontery.

But not his logic. The least plausible explanation is that Saddam destroyed his means of defence on the eve of an invasion. The more plausible explanation is that he did not have any large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

We need to rescue the meaning of words from becoming a further casualty of the Iraqi war. A weapon of mass destruction in normal speech is a device capable of being delivered over a long distance and exterminating a strategic target such as a capital city. Saddam had neither a long-range missile system nor a warhead capable of mass destruction.

Laboratory stocks of biological toxins or chemical shells for use on the battlefield do not add up to weapons of mass destruction. But we have not yet found even any of these.

When the cabinet of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government discussed the dossier on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, I argued that I found the document curiously derivative. It set out what we knew about Saddam’s chemical and biological arsenal at the time of the Gulf War. It rehearsed our inability to discover what had happened to those weapons. It then leaped to the conclusion that Saddam must still possess all those weapons. There was no hard intelligence of a current weapons programme that would represent a new and compelling threat to our interests.

Nor did the dossier at any stage admit the basic scientific fact that biological and chemical agents have a finite shelf life. Nerve agents of good quality have a shelf life of about five years and anthrax in liquid solution of about three years. Saddam’s stocks were not of good quality. The Pentagon itself concluded that Iraqi chemical munitions were of such poor standard that they were produced on a ‘make-and-use’ regimen under which they were usable for only a few weeks. Even if Saddam had destroyed none of his arsenal from 1991 it would long ago have become useless.

It is inconceivable that no one in the Pentagon told Rumsfeld these home truths, or at the very least tried to tell him. So why did he build a case for war on a false claim of Saddam’s capability?

Enter stage right - far right - his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, a man of such ferociously reactionary opinion that he has at least the advantage to his department of making Rumsfeld appear reasonable. He has now disclosed: ‘For bureaucratic reasons we settled on weapons of mass destruction because it was the one issue everyone could agree on.’

Wolfowitz is famously a regime-change champion. He was one of the flock of Republican hawks who wanted a war to take over Iraq long before Sept. 11. Decoded, what his remarks mean is that the Pentagon went along with allegations of weapons of mass destruction as the price of getting Secretary of State Colin Powell and the British government on board for war. But the Pentagon probably did not believe in the case then and certainly cannot prove it now.

Wolfowitz also let the cat out of the bag over the ‘huge prize’ for the Pentagon from the invasion of Iraq. It has furnished an alternative to Saudi Arabia as a base for US influence in the region.

As Rumsfeld might express it, we have been suckered. Britain was conned into a war to disarm a phantom threat in which not even our major ally really believed. The truth is that the United States chose to attack Iraq not because it posed a threat but because they knew it was weak and expected its military to collapse.

It is a truth that leaves the British government in an uncomfortable position. This week Blair was pleading for everyone to show patience and to wait for weapons to be found. There is a historic problem with this plea. The war only took place because the coalition powers lost patience with Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector for biological and chemical weapons, and refused his plea for a few more months to complete his disarmament tasks.

There is also a growing problem of trans-Atlantic politics with the British Prime Minister’s plea for more time. The Bush administration wanted the war to achieve regime change, and now it has that and does not see why it needs to keep up the pretence that the war was fought to deliver disarmament. The more time passes, the greater the gulf will widen between the obliging candour on the US side that there never was a weapons threat and the desperate obfuscation on the British side that we might still find one.

There is always a bigger problem in denying reality than in admitting the truth. The time has come for the British government to concede that we did not go to war because Saddam was a threat to our national interests. We went to war for reasons of US foreign policy and Republican domestic politics.

One advantage of such clarity is that it would help prevent us from being suckered a second time. Which brings us to Rumsfeld’s latest saber rattling against Iran. It is consistent with the one-dimensional character of the Rumsfeld worldview that he talks of Iran as if it were a single unified entity. In fact, Iran is deeply divided by a power struggle.

On the one side are President Mohammed Khatami and the majority of the Parliament, who are reformers, reflecting the political reality that most Iranians consistently vote to join the modern world. On the other hand are the conservative forces of the old Islamic revolutionaries led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who still retains control over the security apparatus.

When Labour took office in Britain in 1997 I initiated a policy of constructive engagement with the reformist government, which has been skilfully continued by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. It bore fruit in its renunciation of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, and it has been helpful in providing credibility as people who could build a positive relationship with the outside world.

The blanket hostility to Iran of the Bush administration has undermined the reformers and provided a shot in the arm to the ayatollahs.

British policy on Iran makes sense in securing the advance of the reformers, which is in the interests of ourselves and of the Iranian people. This time we must make clear to the White House that we are not going to subordinate Britain’s interests to a US policy of confrontation. Iran must not become the next Iraq.

(The author, a former British foreign secretary, was a member of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet before resigning over the decision to go to war with Iraq.)

International Herald Tribune
Journey from ‘clean image’ to ‘regression’

When half a dozen parlia mentary parties includ ing the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML are asked who Lokendra Bahadur Chand is, ‘shadow of pratigaman (regression)’ is the outright answer. The king on October 4 last year sacked the government of Sher Bahadur Deuba labelling him of being an inept Prime Minister for his failures, particularly in holding elections to the House of Representatives (HoR). During the king’s televised address to the nation on that dark night, the monarch had indirectly blamed the entire parliamentary parties who headed the country for past 12 years of being incompetent in running the state affairs. Since Deuba was the representative of the parliamentary parties at that particular moment, he was targeted from all quarters, including the Royal Palace. But it was a big blow and insult to the entire parliamentary forces and contempt to the 1990’s people’s movement that put a full stop to the party-less Panchayati system. The king vowed that he would soon institute a government with swochha chhabis (those having good track record) in the cabinet. Chand’s journey then started with a defined set of tasks assigned by the king on October 11.

For Chand, top among other tasks to remain swochchha chhabi were to restore peace and tranquillity and to conduct elections to HoR and local bodies as soon as possible. But, violence and terror continued to reign the country for almost four months until the government and the Maoists declared cease-fire on January 29. Though the continuity of the cease-fire is a positive note, the government should be blamed for not initiating anything for holding elections, as it was assigned to. The king had told the people that this (Chand) government would hold the elections. So the government’s failure should be taken as utter dismay to the people.

Amidst mounting pressure from the political parties along with their sister organisations, particularly the student unions, and in the face of their mass movement, Prime Minister Chand finally resigned on May 31. It is believed that he stepped down after the palace asked him to do so. One of the reasons behind the weaknesses of the Chand government was uncontrolled swochchha chhabis (ministers), who used to vomit words in such a way that they were the king’s confidantes. Badri Prasad Mandal as the Deputy Prime Minister and Kuber Sharma as the minister even said in the public that GP Koirala should be arrested and jailed. But their status can in no way be compared with that of Koirala. Such remarks further raised doubts on the action initiated by the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority against Koirala and a host of other leaders.

As claimed by the political parties, Chand virtually could not do anything concrete except being shadow of the king, whom the political parties have now connoted as the symbol of ‘regression’. Immediately after the cease-fire announcement by the government, Chand as the Prime Minister had told the scribes that he didn’t know anything about the then developments, which were presumably guided by the ‘palace’. It sowed doubts that he was run by somebody in the background and the prime minister’s claims that the executive powers were with the government were false.

Since Chand was handpicked as Prime Minister by the king, he was more loyal to the monarch and he had nothing to do with the parties. But he widened the distance with the agitating parties by giving an address in the name of the people, which heavily chastised the latter. The king, in an audience, said that the Prime Minister’s address was not directed by him. The monarch also said he heard the address of the prime minister only from radio. In fact, it was not needed for the king to justify the Prime Minister’s acts. It only made the government weaker and the king stronger.

After testing the strength of the parties who turned out to be all sound and fury signifying nothing, the king has once again handpicked another royalist (?) Surya Bahadaur Thapa as Prime Minister. But there cannot be seen any clear-cut justification behind the appointment of Thapa in place of Chand and the roads too are not smooth for the newly appointed ‘executive chief’ of the country.

Though the parties noted that Chand’s resignation was a positive step, Thapa’s appointment indicates that they will not halt their protests. The king has also not shown any interest towards heeding to the unjustified demands of the parties. So it is almost obvious that Thapa will be another ‘shadow of regression’ on the first day of his office. On the other hand, the Maoists have also issued warnings that the ongoing talks could fail. Let’s see how and when Thapa’s journey will be over.

Environmental degradation, and its implications

World Environment Day was es tablished by the United Nations’ General Assembly in 1972 to raise environmental awareness and to encourage actions to protect the environment. Environment degradation poses a major threat to human security, stated United Nations’ Human Development Report, 1995. The internationally celebrated day is an opportunity to strengthen people’s commitment and actions for the conservation of the world’s environment. However, despite best efforts and intentions, the environment continues to deteriorate.

The environmental degradation is the result of the rising standard of living of massive number of human beings. While coping with an ever-increasing population, we are damaging the lithosphere, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere. One of the major causes for that is improving agricultural productivity. Every step of improving agricultural productivity has its environmental costs. In spite of the rising pace of world industrialisation and urbanisation, it is ploughing and pastorals which are most responsible for most serious environmental problems as they are still causing changes in the landscape. Farming also can damage environment if not managed cautiously. For example, improper irrigation causes of soil erosion. In the United States, it is estimated that during the past 200 years, at least one third of the topsoil has been lost, tarnishing as much as 100 million acres of the cultivated land.

Exploitation of biological resources in the least developed countries by the rich countries has been a history. Recognition of the need for equitable sharing of benefits and the right of the resource holders has been significantly improved since the Earth Summit in 1992. Yet the developing countries must operate in a world in which the resources gap between developing and industrial countries is widening. The industrial world controls the key rule making international bodies.

Food deficiency increases need for more cultivation. The earth has limited capacity to regenerate itself. Increasing evidence regarding the extent of ozone depletion and encroaching global warming presents alarming implications for the global climate. Concerns occur from an increase in the incidence of skin cancer, desertification and rising oceans. The majority of Third World countries have predominantly agricultural economies and so many are located in warm semiarid regions. Any increase in temperatures is likely to have harsh implications on LDC incomes and food self-sufficiency.

It is through changes in patterns of land use such as deforestation that the developing countries currently make their largest contribution to global concentrations of greenhouse gases. It is estimated that deforestation alone accounts for roughly 25 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions. Deforestation leads to the destruction of a vital source of atmospheric oxygen. The majority of tropical rain forests have been destroyed - about 60 percent is cleared for cultivation by small farmers. In the same way, deforestation in Latin America and Asia is causing more floods. Acid precipitation and nuclear fallout have spread across the borders of Europe. Similar phenomena are emerging on the global scale.

Twenty percent of the world’s poorest population is the group that will experience the consequences of environmental ills most intensely. Severe environmental degradation, due to population pressures on marginal land, has led to falling farm productivity and per capita food production. Since the cultivation of marginal land is largely the domain of lower-income groups, the loss made those who can least afford them suffer most. Similarly the inaccessibility of sanitation and clean water affects the poor and is believed to be responsible for 80 percent of diseases.

Rapid population growth and expanding economic activity in the Third World are likely to cause widespread environmental damage unless steps are taken to lessen their negative consequences. The burning of fossil fuels increases carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is the cause of gradual global warming. Global warming would cause reduction in water. Additionally global warming could cause massive wildfires in North American forests, in the process destroying wildlife habitats and injecting huge amounts of carbon dioxide.

Climate changes would lead to reduction in bio-diversity. Large-scale forest dieback would cause mass disappearance of species that couldn’t migrate to new areas. Fish would die as temperatures soared in streams and lakes, and as lowered water levels concentrated pesticides. Any shift in regional climate would threaten parks, wildlife reserves, wilderness areas, wetlands, and coral reefs, wiping out many current efforts to sump the loss bio-diversity.

Global warming also creates threats to human health. More people would die from heat related causes. A warmer world would interrupt supplies of food and fresh water, dislocating millions of people and shifting disease patterns in unpredictable ways. The spreads of tropical climates from the equator would bring malaria, encephalitis, yellow fever, and other insect-borne diseases to formerly temperate zones. Increased humidity levels would also cause increases in fungal skin diseases, yeast diseases, and prickly heat and heat rash.

These are some severe implications, which are caused by today’s degrading environments. So now every nation as well as multinationals has realised that economic development and environmental issues cannot be dealt with separately. Ecology and economy are becoming ever more interwoven locally, regionally, nationally and globally. Numerous forms of developments are responsible for eroding the environment. So, every effort for developments should be environment friendly.

Save Bagmati, time is running out
The saga of an endangered civilisation

Just like the political heat, the summer heat is constantly rising in Kathmandu valley these days. The mercury is soaring, but then there are occasional breaks, too. And last night’s rains have brought some respite, albeit a psychological one, to the 1.6 million denizens of the valley, where virtually everything is in mess in these times of ‘People’s Movement II’ against ‘Regression’.

But little do they know that intermittent drizzles and thundershowers don’t ensure uninterrupted supply of drinking water – something that becomes twice, if not thrice, as scarce during the dry season. Kathmanduites will need to wait for the monsoon season, the 100-plus days of non-stop rainfall, which, weathermen say will be slightly delayed this year, so as to become completely relieved.

When the monsoon clouds strike, there will be no dearth of rainfall and water in the bowl-shaped valley and around the country. We have almost nine months without any rainfall and the monsoon season with surplus rainfall - so much so that we go on to lose hundreds of thousands of tonnes of topsoil as well as the precious lives of our fellow Nepali brothers and sisters. Last night and early today’s pre-monsoon drizzles were an indication of just that. That the monsoon season is fast approaching, just one or two weeks away.

In Kathmandu valley, which has flourished on the banks of the ‘Bagmati Ganga’, there are many who celebrate the arrival of monsoon. And there are few who don’t make merry but begin to worry about their future. For the flooded river has played havoc on more than one occasion in the past. Just last year, it wreaked havoc across the 650-sq km valley, inundating several low-lying settlements in Balkhu and Sankhamul area and flooding several others. Clearly, people living in the low-lying areas and near the riverbanks have begun to fret.

In contrast, a large section of the population fed up with the filth and trash that have piled up on the riverbanks and -beds have become happy, too. For hopes are high that like in the past years, the floods will make a comeback and sweep away all the mess and make the river environment clean again. But there is another section of the population, albeit a smaller one, whose members are preparing to call it a day make merry. Guess who they could be …

They are our neighbours next door: the builders and construction material suppliers or agents, who have their eyes fixed on the ‘Bagmati Ganga’, specifically the riverbeds that until now are made up of white sand. In the builders’ circle, sand extracted from the free-flowing rivers like the Bagmati is considered as ‘white gold’. A truckful of it can fetch around Rs 10,000, or more.

Here it would be worthwhile to recollect the tale of the twin bridges; that is the tale of our own twin bridges at Thapathali. But hold on, it is a developing story. So what exists today might not remain tomorrow and what does not might just show up in future out of a blue. Here we go:

Until 1991, only one bridge existed at Thapathali. But one fine day, when the river was flooded with monsoon waters, the bridge suddenly sank and authorities raised alarm bells. But it was too late. Actually, the foundation pillars of the bridge had sank, thanks to the erosion – which is quite natural - and the widespread sand mining. The government quickly ordered a ban on sand mining in the immediate downstream as well as the upstream area.

The Japanese government came to its rescue and did not just repair the foundations of the old bridge that had sank but also built a new one. Today, vehicles freely run over the bridges, but nobody knows until when.

Twelve years on, the bridge-users, the government, the members of the civil society and the media alike have all but forgotten the disaster. Illegal sand mining continues all over the valley. Just pause and take a look: below the famous twin bridges of Thapathali spanning the two sisterly cities of Kathmandu and Lalitpur, young men and women can be seem shovelling whatever little sand that’s left over on the riverbed.

That’s happening in the morning, throughout the afternoon, in the evening and even in the darkness of the night. And that’s happening not just below the twin bridges at Thapathali, but everywhere around the valley, in virtually every river.

So sand mining is another major threat endangering the existence of Bagmati civilisation. It’s another hard nut to crack for officials at the U.N. Park Development Committee – the committee was formed way back in 1995 to develop a park along the 3.5-km Sankhamul-Teku stretch of the river - the police and, more importantly, the conscious citizens dwelling on the banks of the Bagmati, the Manahara, the Bishnumati and other Bagmati tributaries.

Needless to say, the problem has its roots in widespread corruption in the officialdom, in leniency, in complacency – and, of course, in the burgeoning poverty that’s been fuelled by conflict and instability in the country.

In recent years, there has been a massive influx of migrants to the valley from around the country. Obviously, the poorest of the poor tend to occupy open spaces and the riverbanks. And sand mining is an easy and lucrative business thriving on the principle of demand and supply; so long as the demand is there, the supply line will remain.

In the valley, where well over 10,000 new houses are coming up every year (KMC estimates), sand does sell. So in the sprawling concrete jungle called Kathmandu, sand is becoming dearer day-by-day, and hence it’s popularly called ‘white gold’.

For their part, the ‘ever-vigilant’ police, backed by the district development committees (DDCs), have banned trucks from rolling onto the riverbanks or beds. Even so, the trade is thriving, the stringent laws, regulations and decrees are confined only in papers. The papers are gathering dust. And the fly-by-night construction material suppliers, or agents, are mobilizing poor labourers and riverside settlers to collect straight-out-of-the-river sand in sacks, baskets or locally woven dokos.

For their part, the poor play hide and seek with the cops and manage to collect some sacks of fresh sand from the river. A bagful of sand fetches Rs 8 to 10. And 10 or 12 sack-full of that a day is enough to make ends meet and rear a family.

Along the Bagmati stretch, the business is thriving just about everywhere: from Sundarijal to Gokarna, from Tilganga to Sankhamul, and Teku-Pachali to Sundharighat. As well as it is thriving in the upstream areas of the Bishnumati and the Dhobikhola and the Manahara. It is an open secret that the theft of such a precious natural resource that has much to do with the ecology of the river systems and the geological health of Kathmandu valley persists in spite of everything.

This is not all. Today, over a dozen concrete bridges spanning different the five cities of the valley are on the verge of collapse, according to renowned Bagmati activist, Hutaram Baidya. Just recently, the 84-year-old also authored a book on the importance of and challenges facing the Bagmati civilisation. Should heavy downpours occur, he warns, more bridges could sank and break the cities’ lifelines. So time is running out to save the Bagmati. Act now, or else …