PM Koirala’s India Visit Some Reflections

By Shanker Man Singh

THERE have been exchange of visits also at the Prime Ministerial level between Nepal and India after the restoration of democracy in Nepal. The present official visit of Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala is widely expected to pave the way to futher strengthen the mutual goodwill and trust between the two countries. The present Prime Minister, when he was the PM immediately after the first general elections, had paid an official visit to India in 1992 and there had been a wide range of discussions between the leaders of Nepal and India.

Neighbour

India happens to be not only a geographically proximate neighbour of Nepal but also a close friend. Thre are ancient cultural and religious ties between the two countries. Both countries share similarities of approach in many outstanding international problems. SAARC had added some more areas for the two countries to work together for achieving the goal of collective self-reliance within the region. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has helped to initiated further steps for technical cooperation. South Asian Free Trade Agreement is likely to foster free movement of goods in the region.

As regards PM Koirala’s visit to India, foreign experts said that this will be an important trip to India by a Nepali PM in recent years as the proposed visit by the PM in August comes nearly four years since the then Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba had stepped on the Indian soil. Within that short time, some strains in the otherwise warm and close relations between the two neighbouring countries have surfaced. Past four years of gap has also led to a break in preparation works over many of bilateral issues.

The unfortunate hijacking espisode has put Nepal in an awkward position. It appears to have provided the Indian media a ready reason in portraying Nepal as a safe heaven for terrorists, particularly those allegedly sponsored by the ISI of Pakistan. This, in turn, has given rise the impression that India is utilising the hijacking for promoting its security umbrella theory, obviously at the cost of Nepal’s sovereign independence. Nepal and India have time and again expressed determination to work closely and fight scourge of terrorism and their commitment not to allow their territory to be used for activities directed against or prejudicial to security of the other.

Some foriegn policy experts have opined that PM Koirala should, in the wake of the adverse Indian press coverage try to change India’s attitude towards Nepal while others are of the opinion that the visit was premature.

In the trade front, Nepal exported goods worth over 18 billion rupees to India last year whereas it imported goods worth over 32 billion rupees from India. In this context, the imposition of SAD (Special Additional Duty) has seriously affected our export business to India. India should withdraw the SAD levied on all imports entering India during the Prime Minister’s visit to India. Under the SAD provision, all imports entering the Indian territory are slapped with a four-percent additional duty. Nepal should and must request India to reconsider this provision in case of Nepali exports.

Nepal and India have been co-operating in wide ranging fields including harnessing of water resources, trade and transit arrangements, health, infrastructure, education and training. This partnership has taken the relations to a higher plane and changes in governments of both the countries have not made any difference to the depth of friendship which both cherish. New areas of cooperation should be added constantly for maintaining the dynamism of friendship and mutual trust subsisting between the two friends for centuries.

In the changed global context, it is absolutely necessary for both governments of Nepal and India to spare no efforts in initiating progressive moves in the development of harmonious, meaningful and productive base of relationship. For this, a new and dynamic, frame of relationship is the need of the day.

Due to geographical reasons and traditional linkages, the trade and economic relations between Nepal and India are very close and unique. The bilateral trade relations are centures old, trade having been carried out traditionally on barter basis. Till the 50s and 60s, trade with India constituted over 90% of Nepal’s overall trade. With Nepal’s opening up to rest of the world, and gradual diversification of its trade, India’s share in Npeal’s trade has declined. Yet, the share of India in Nepal total trade is remarkable.

The Transit Treaty, renewed on January 5, 1999, has also been made automatically renewable every seven year. The Phulbari route through the so called ‘chicken neck’ area in India was opened to Nepalese traffic-in-transit on September 1, 1997 for a trial peirod of six months. India further agreed to open this route for all seven days a week. An important concession given to Nepal on this route is a waiver of the duty insurance. A number of consignments have been exported and imported through this route.

As such, development of Nepal-India relations in the past ten years have been the signing of separate treaties on Trade and Transit. But concerning the special additional duty of 4 per cent on Nepalese goods exported to India, some Nepalese businessmen argue, is against the spirit of the Trade Agreement.

Similarly, there has been an across-the-board consensus among politicians that the Indo-Nepal 1950 Treaty on Peace and Friendship needed to be reviewed. The context in which the treaty was signed in 1950 has changed now and that there is a need to review the treaty and sign another, which can address to the need of the hour.

The issue of Bhutanese refugees, once again has featured prominently. Some opine that India should help Nepal solve the problem of Bhutanese refugees because they passed through India to take refuge in Nepal.

Premier Koirala’s India visit should cover isues relating to the Kalapani dispute, border delineation, the Bhutanese refugees crisis, the 1950 Indo-Nepal treaty, and the immediate problem of the afflux bund of the Laxamanpur barrage inundating part of Nepal Terai. Recognising the risk an open border between the two close friends can pose to each other, Joint Working Groups have been constituted for boundary mapping and border monitoring and management. The groups meet regularly and make recommendations to respective governments for taking steps against misuse of open border and demarcation of common boundary.

Close economic linkages between the two countries have manifest themselves through Indian investment and joint ventures in Nepal. As of July 31, 1999, there are over 170 approved Indian joint ventures and investmnt projects in Nepal. Economic relations between India and Nepal have been in existence from time immemorial though economic cooperation in the modern sense may be said to have commenced with the advent of independent India in 1947. Some other important Indian aided projects are Raxaul/Birgun.

Broad Gauge Rail Link, supply of diesel locomotives and coaches to Janakpur Railways, construction of 22 bridges on Kohalpur-Mahakali sector of East-West Highway, B.P. Koirala Institute for Health Sciences, Dharan, Bir Hospital Expansion Project, gifting of solid waste management equipment to Lalitpur Municipality, among others.

Warm Ties

Thus, the visit of Prime Minister Koirala will not only assist in maintaining the cordial friendship existing between Nepal and India for centuries but also in nudging the warm ties and close cooperation subsisting between Nepal and India towards a mutually beneficial direction by dispelling the fears and doubts that had crept in the warm and friendly relations since the last four years or so.

Expediting Industrial Development

By Khilendra Basnyat

Nepal’s industrial sector is small, comprising modern as well as cottage and small scale industries. In general, large-scale manufacturing has been undertaken by public enterprises in or near Kathmandu Valley. Outside Kathmandu valley, industrial production occurs almost exclusively in cottage and small scale industries, supporting the rural subsistence economy.

Lack

Despite repeated andeavours, Nepal’s industrial sector is not on a firm footing. Political instability and lack of effective policy measures have hindered the industrial sector. Our industrial sector is at its nascent stage, contributing less than ten per cent of gross domestic product and absorbing only one per cent of the labour surplus. Although the goal of the industrial sector is to absorb a surplus of manpower from other economic sectors, measures taken so far for employment creation are far from satisfactory.

Most cottage and small-scale industries in our country include the manufacture of carpet, noodles, baked goods, home spun clothes, handicrafts, silver ornaments, other matalled goods and hosiery. In reality, cottage and small-scale industries play a significant role in conserving traditional skills and crftmanship among diffused rural communities and thus helps in improving national productivity through the proper utilisation of local resources. Apart from this, such industries play a crucial role in generating employment for the large number of people engaged in the agricultural sector.

No doubt, the capacity of the country to import industrial products is contingent on not only its export earnings, but also the inflow of foreign capital, changes in terms of trade, and the ability to replace other imports such as foodstuff and raw materials with domestic production.

The country specialises in the production of only a small number of goods. Its specialisation is a result partly of the limited productive capacities and also of the possibility that it will have a small range of potential products for which the opportunity cost ratios are more widely dispersed than those of most other least developed countries.

In fact, cottage and small-scale industries play an important role in our economy. They contribute sixty-five per cent to total export and fifty-five per cent to total value additon.

In order to create industrial consciousness through the propagation of cottage industries, the Nepali Textile and Cottage Enterprise Extension Office was set up in 1993 B.S. Due to this institutional initiative, the present day Cottage and Small Industry Development Enterprises Development Academy are engaged in this sector through their several branches across the country.

The Industrial Policy 2049 and the Industrial Enterprises Act 2049 have also placed emphasis on cottage and agro-based industries development based on local means and resources. The number of such industries operated all over the country has witnessed a declining trend due to deviation from the definition and lack of coordination among concerned agencies. Since the technology being applied in such industries to date is of subsistence nature, it fails to maintain quality and costs at the desired level. As a result, such industries are unable to compete with the products of foreign origin.

Today, experts feel that it is too late to bring in suitable and low cost technology and to familiarise the entrepreneurs with it. Shortfalls have also been realised on the part of the affiliated bodies in the variety of training programmes.

Although the subject matters of the training are also being expanded and modified in accordance with the changed context, competent trainers should be available in order to make the training result-oriented. Marketing training should be conducted for the staff of handicraft sales centre and retail outlets in different districts to make them competitive. Moreover, producers should be able to link with such retail outlets so that they need not rely on intermediaries for selling their products, and buyers need not wander in search of such products.

In order to encourage trainees to utilise their skills, they should be provided loans at minimum interest through banks and other financial institutions in an easy manner.

Experts are of the opinion that there is a need for mobilising the Cottage and Small Industry Department and Cottage Industry Committee as administrative units for training and the Industrial Enterprises Development Academy as a technology and business information centre.

In fact, industries help Nepal’s overall development. However, frequent changes of legislation in the past have had an adverse impact on Nepal’s industrial development.

The industrial perspective plan which is still in the pipeline would include the concepts of liberalisation and transparency in the areas of investment and export. This would also make easy the complications prevalent in Nepal’s industrial scenario.

The Ninth Plan aims at promoting cottage and small industries that can generate self-employment, make licencing and registration procedures flexible as well as simple, conduct management training and introduce a package programme to support the employment generalising programmes in the non-agricultural sector to increase income and the purchasing capacity of the people. Such enterepreneurship is absolutely essential in Nepal because they take towards self-reliance with the help of limited capital and locally available resources.

Prompt

In the past, the government was studying the prospects of attracting foreign investors in the country through the Fast Track System. Foreign investors have time and again claimed that things do not move as intended when proposals are submitted. As a matter of fact, a track that moves such proposals quickly is what is essential. Therefore, the concerned authorities of the government should be prompt in formulating the plan, amending the Act and putting in place a fast track for foreign investment.

Disco Diwane

By Bijay Aryal

UNLIKE most other capitals of the world, Kathmandu goes to bed early. Nine o’ clock and the shutters are pulled down on the shops. But in the past few years there has come a perceptible change. Among others, it was the gazal restaurants which added some colour to night life in the capital for those who wanted to relax to the tune of gazal music over restaurant food. Then came the dance restaurants with a lot of twisting and turning of bodies by lissome lasses. The gazal fad of the Kathmanduites has gone out of fashion. The discotheques in the capital are a recent phenomenon that has caught the imagination of merry-makers especially the youth. Cabin restaurants too are said to be doing a good business.

Some of the dance restaurants are reported to have taken to the practice of baring dancers to an obscene extent and even doing prostitution business. The cops have raided dance rerstaurants from time to time and they have made arrests of the dancers who were charged with having presented obscene dances. restaurant owners say that as long as they receive their share and get their other demands met, the cops look away. But when they do not get all their demands satisfied, they make arbitrary arrest and detain dancers and restaurant owners.

What is obscenity? And who defines it? And should the cops’ whim be taken as a definition of obscenity or absence of obscenity? Is their word law or should their action accord with law? What if their action runs counter to law? Should not they be acted against? But, unfortunately, whether they have acted according to law or not, nowhere is this heard. And there is nothing by way of compensation. When the law is unclear or ambiguous, arbitrary decisions rule and the innocent are often punished for crime of theirs.

The other day a daily newspaper printed a news item that said now the discos and dance restaurants would be banned. The police are moving to close them down as a proposal to that effect had been put forward. It quoted a police officer as saying that the police had already started action against some dance restaurants and discos according to an order from the home administration. And he was quoted quoted as saying that within a month all the dance restaurants and discotheques would be close down completely. Even before the valid decision had been made, judging by the news report, should not act against restaurants-owners, -goers -workers should be regarded as arbitrary? There are well over 100 discos and dance restaurants in the capital. They are said to have given jobs to about 2,500 people. What rationale is there for doing away with them? Is it to shut out Western influence? Certainly not. Perhaps it is because, in the eye of the officials, sex and prostitutions are promoted there. To some extent they may be true. But to what extent should it be controlled? But it will be like throwing the baby with the bathwater.

Nobody should take law into their own hands at their whim. A blanket ban may be the easiest way of governing without any bother. But it is far from the best.

Bonded Labour

The bonded labourers known as Kamaiyas were declared emancipated. But what next? Bonded labour has remained banned in Nepal for long. The present Constitution clearly forbids it. There is a law too that provides for a remedy against bonded labour. But, strangely enough, the Kamaiya system has continued. Under ordinary law justice could have been done to the Kamaiyas. The government has declared them free.

It is welcome but it is a mere reiteration of the present Constitution and the law, no breaking of new ground.

The problem of resettling the Kamaiyas has presented itself. Perhaps for the initial period the remedy may not prove to be the best for many of them because this has been done without any preparation on the government’s part. Resettling them and giving them jobs may be a thorny problem for some time to come.

Over 300 works of Schiele on show

By Arun Ranjit

The biggest ever exhibition of Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele (1890-1918) is packing in the crowds in his hometown – despite the absence of two pictures blocked in New York amid an ownership wrangle.

According to Karl Heinl, an organizer of the collection of more than 300 canvases on display since last month in Tulln-where the artist was born, "It is the biggest ever Schiele show."

The exhibition, according to the report, at Danube of northwest of Vienna, draws together work from every phase of the artist’s brief but spectacular career, before his death at the age of 28.

Egon Schiele was one of the great expressionist artists of early 2oth century. His most powerful work was in his male and female nudes in pencil, gouache, watercolour etc. The figures express in their postures emotions from despair to passion and the female nudes are often unashamedly erotic.

Schiele was primariy a draughtsman and the angularities of his line and its nervous precision pervade all his work. His first real success came in the last year of his life, but full recognition was not accorded his work until the 1950s.

In the Egon Schiele Museum, the permanent riverside gallery devoted to Tulln’s most famous son, are gathered oils and watercolours, mostly from his early days including his work at the Vienna Fine Arts Academy where he went in 1906, one year before it refused Adolf Hitler a place described Emmanuel Serot in his reports.

It also houses works from his "military period," when as a conscript in Prague he produced a series of military portraits and moving studies of Russian prisoners.

The crowds are flocking above all however to the Minoritenkloster Gallery just along the Danube, which houses the 153 canvases of the government-owned Leopold Foundation, just back from much-hailed stops in New York and Barcelona.

Some 100,000 visitors are expected to see the show – including Schiele’s most prized work "The Hermits," valued at 40 million dollars, and his most famous, the 1912 (Cardinal and Nun.

But two paintings are striking by their absence from the show. "Dead City III," and "Portrait of Wally" have been held in New York since being seized at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in January after two Jewish families claimed they had been stolen from them by the Nazis.

"Portrait of Wally" was painted in 1912 and shows Schiele’s then mistress and muse Wally Neuzil. Its absence is all the more notable since it was intended to be displayed alongside "Self-Portrait with Chinese Lanterns," which remains, partner-less, in Tulln.

Both it and "Dead City III" are unlikely to rejoin the collection before it closes, organisers here admit. District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is demanding that the pictures remain in New York – where they were on show from October-December – until the ownership dispute is resolved, despite a court order against their retention.

The ownership dispute is heated. Rita Reif, a New York Times journalist claims that "Dead City" was stolen by the Nazis from her ancestor Fritz Crunbaum, an Austrian Jew deported to Dachau in 1941.

"Portrait of Wally" is meanwhile claimed by the family of Lea Bondi Jaray, a Jewish art dealer forced to abandon her Vienna gallery when she fed Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938.

Heinl condemned the New York seizures, noting that another Schiele painting bought from the family of Fritz Grunbaum, "Red Blouse," had never been the subject of any claims.

Austrian authorities are demanding the pictures be returned immediately. They say any legal action should not be linked to the hereabouts of the canvases.

But the legal wrangle is due to continue until at least August, when MoMA is due to formally respond to the New York district attorney’s contention that a judge’s move to quash the US seizure was "absurd" and unjust.