Parliamentarians’ Meet High Hopes

By Prem N. Kakkar
THE special session of the House of Representatives that was convened recently is a historic one in the sense that it has come in a different form compared to the past practice which was mainly centred at passing a no-confidence motion against the government. This time the special session has been summoned by His Majesty the King at the submission for the same by the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist). This is an exercise in the right direction as it reflects the democratic practice that has been a part and parcel of the political system in the almost one decade.

Function
The people are the supreme force which propels the government to function and no government can be indifferent to the aspirations of the people in general. But there are situations and circumstances that force some changes in the price structure, though undesirable, by the government. No country in the modern times can remain isolated from the mainstream of the global movement whether in terms of development or the impacts.

Nepal, by its own standards is not a country that can sustain itself on its own. This leads to a situation of dependence on donor countries either in the form of aid or grants or loans. This does not mean that the country is poor in resources or that the people themselves are incapable of doing anything to raise their living standard. But the main springboard is the government itself which designs the policies and programmes which aim at relieving the burden of the common people.

The price hikes in recent times effected in diesel, kerosene oil, electricity and chemical fertiliser have definitely not pleased the consumers but the reality has to be faced by all. And in this scenario the CPN (UML) called for the special session of the Lower House to discuss the issues so that a consensus could be arrived at so that the extra burden on the people could be relieved.

The government on its part is not unaware of the difficulties faced by the people who voted to form a majority Nepali Congress government. The recent by-elections too prove that if there is any party that can bring relief to the people it is the Nepali Congress party which has been committed to the welfare of the common people.

To say that consensus among all the political parties represented in the parliament does have the desired effect as far as the welfare of the people is concerned. This is not unknown to those in the government. But anomalies that were evident in the post-1994 election scenario did much to spoil and disturb the socio-economic condition of the people in general.

Nepal, despite its wealth of natural resources, has not been able to develop the way it had to because of the paucity of funds as well as the lack of skilled personnel. This fact has been realised by the government as well as the planners. The flow of aids and grants has not diminished yet its actual utilisation has not been satisfactory. The case is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the Village Development Committees (VDCs) have not been able to utilise all the amount made available to them for local development activities. This speaks of the lack of capacity of the local bodies to work to the fullest extent in aiding the national development endeavours.

All these reflected on the national scene in that the development activities showed a marked decline. Hence, expectations rested on the majority Nepali Congress government with Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai leading it.

Mr. Bhattarai with his long experience and dealing with government affairs does have the capacity to deal with the national problems and alleviate the miseries of the people. On the other hand, the main opposition party is always on the look out for any shortcomings of the government. This particular situation has, in fact, precipitated the special session.

The opposition party has every reason to criticise any move of the government at hiking prices of essential commodities but they also have to realise the reasons that lead to the raising of prices. Valid reasons have to be accepted though it may lead to sufferings of the people. Raising prices of the essential commodities may be one way of reducing the deficits but that is not the whole story. The government on its part has to be alert to the need for improvising strategies for reducing the burden on the people. Saying that only fifteen per cent of the people, who have access to electricity supply, are affected by the electricity price hike is not the full explanation. Every citizen has to benefit whether it is the minority or the majority.

The special session, with the main agenda on the recent price hikes, is definitely an opportune moment for the political parties represented in the parliament to be able to arrive at ways and means by which the common man is not troubled to a great extent. It is also a time for the ruling and the opposition to come to a meeting point whereby the people whom they represent feel that they are benefitted.

Outcome
The fruitful outcome of the special session of the Lower House will materialise when all those represented in the parliament feel it their duty to serve the people who have given their mandate through the ballots.

Small-scale Solutions

By Ritu Bhatia
THAT India will become a better place to live in and its people will have their basic needs met: this is Ashok Khosla’s vision for the millennium. It would indeed be considered idealistic by many. Today about 35 million people in India live in abysmal conditions. Many have no drinking water or toilets in their homes, let alone electricity or other modern amenities. Safety matches and transistor radios are virtually their only link to modern technology.

Belief
Khosla believes that India is on the brink of a millennial disaster. "Modern technology and megaprojects are destroying the nation’s forests and soils, poisoning the rivers and waters and squeezing the life of our villages and cities." One of the ways in which the situation of people’s lives could be improved, he feels, is through the intelligent application of technology.

"Technology with a human face, working to build a society where people are masters, not slaves."

As the founder and president of Development Alternatives (DA), an NGO, Khosla is striving with his team to try and realise his vision and establish the kind of participative democracy he believes in: Where every person feels they are in charge of their own life.

DA was founded in 1982, upon Khosla’s return to India after 23 years spent away. By this time he had acquired a degree in nuclear physics at Harward and set up India’s environmental policy unit, the first of its kind to be founded by the government of a developing country. He had also headed the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi. When he returned in his home country, his mission was clear. "I had received the best education possible, lived a privileged life, and the time had come to give back to the country, to the people.

These "sustainable livelihoods", as Khosla refers to them, enable individuals or families to meet their basic needs in a manner that is dignified and does not undermine the natural resources base. "The central goal today for any developing country must be to create large numbers of sustainable livelihoods. For example, to close the unemployment gap by the year 2010 India will need to create between 12 and 15 million off-farm jobs each year."

Such micro-enterprises can usually directly create several jobs in a village or small town, each at a cost of less than $500 — one hundredth of the cost of creating jobs in large urban industries. They also permit very high returns on investment, with payback periods of less than a year.

Today’ a quarter of million people have benefited from the interventions of DA. One of its most successful projects has been to improve the living conditions of the rural population of Bundelkhand, a region in the heart of India with one of the highest concentrations of fallow and uninhabited land.

Over 50 per cent of the population of Tikamgarh District, where the project site lies, were unemployed. In the Jhansi district, small farmers grew crops on only 25 per cent of cultivable land.

One of the main objectives of DA’s project in this region was to set up a resource-cum-training centre. "Being an arid area with large wastelands, the people here couldn’t support themselves solely on agriculture. One of our main objectives here has been to train the local villagers to run off-farm enterprises," says Geeta Vaidyanathan, senior architect at TARAGram, DA’s technology complex at Orchha near Jhansi.

TARAGram today is much like an artisan’s village, where people are involved in a variety of creative, income-generating enterprises. Many are landless women from nearby villages, who survived earlier on jobs. Now they work for a reasonable wage at the paper production unit which uses cotton rags and other bio-degradable waste to produce hand-made paper.

There are check-dams that help recharge ground water in the drought-hit zones of this district. Houses are built from low cost materials, using technologies developed by DA. "Promoting the use of appropriate technologies that recycle and reuses resources reduces the impact on the environment, and provides people with a steady source of income and employment," stresses Vaidyanathan. Technology limited to laboratory research is not DA’s goal. The real test of any technology, they believe, lies in its widespread acceptability among consumers. Khosla is of the view that technological innovations must be linked to the marketplace. Workers trained by DA staff are encouraged to eventually start up their own independent enterprises and help propagate the technology on a much wider scale. DA’s role extends itself to writing a proposal for the project explaining its technological details and financial requirements, and also negotiating a loan for the entrepreneur from the local government agencies.

Development Alternatives is one of the biggest private producers of hand-made papers: about 5 tonnes of paper are produced every month at its plant in Delhi, and 15 tonnes from its Jhansi plant. Upmarket Indian Companies such as Shriram Industries and the Steel Authority of India and organisations such as USAID use DA’s handmade paper for their stationary. Some hotels in the city print their menus and coasters on this paper and Purolator and Gabriel use it for their automobile filters.

The ‘Flying Shuttle’ Loom designed by DA’s engineers, is now widely recognised as the most advanced handloom weaving machine available; it is easy to operate as a traditional loom and produces as much as a powerloom. Setting up this operation creates two jobs, both within the home. Over 3,000 Flying Shuttle Looms have been sold widely in India and to several other countries.

DESI Power, another of DA’s offspring, establishes village level power stations in collaboration with village governments. It uses only renewable energy sources and supplies commercial energy to small industrial units and homes.

Another area where DA has been enormously successful has been the creation of low cost building materials. "Focussing on building materials has enabled us to generate immense employment for those in the housing sector. Most our products use simple building techniques which can be mastered by rural entrepreneurs with a small capital," explains Khosla.

DA reaches out to a much larger population through its welfare programmes. These include a ‘water for life’ project where check dams are built to harvest rain water, drinking water and sanitation schemes in a cluster of villages. Another such initiative launched by DA has been its Delhi Environment Action Network (DEAN) programme, launched as a nationwide Community Led Environment Action Network (CLEAN) programme.

The DEAN programme is designed to involve children in their local environment and motivate them and others to improve the quality of their neighbourhood. Some 600 students from 12 schools spread over different parts of Delhi have been trained to monitor and assess the quality of the environment using field-testing kits developed by DA. The children presented their findings to representatives of government agencies, pollution control authorities, municipal authorities, industry associations, resident welfare associations and NGOs, with the intent of precipitating collective action.

Admission
Ultimately, Ashok Khosla admits that the dream he has of a participative democracy, which was also Mahatma Gandhi’s dream, has lots of implications. "We need to abandon the centralised colonial system of government and replace it with village and district governments with exclusive jurisdiction over local matters. What follows — decentralised production systems, national government accountable to local government, self-sustaining local economies and secularism — is the only true path to empowering of the people."

People & Planet