Sprit Of Partnership & Development Among Politicians & Urban Elites

AFTER The SAARC Convention in early January, the urban elites particularly politicians, and civil society and human right personnel have been directly or indirectly raising voices and criticisms over the two month old fight against terrorism, the later has noticeably affected all spheres of life and development. Smashing terrorism has not been an easy task in many countries and Nepal is no an exception. It needs money and combating resources, time, and patience to fight terrorism, which is mostly unconventional in nature. The question is can we eliminate terrorism from a country where the pace of development is very slow and many of the rural population and urban poor do not have access to economic opportunities, and they face serious problems of even feeding their families? We largely lack development programmes even to meet the basic needs of poor masses in terrorism infested areas. Weapons alone cannot solve the problem permanently; meaningful dialogues and mandatory implementation of intensive socio-economic development initiatives are the need of the present day.

Few weeks ago, I read about the double standard of some human rights personnel in The Rising Nepal, criticising the crisis management practices adopted by the government and at the time rendering soft words at the terrorist action. The human right elites in urban areas enjoy all the modern amenities including better education facilities for their children but they have seldom raised voices for the poor and the ethnically or economically marginalised rural people to improve their quality of life on the basis of equality and through improvement in their resources they have access to and improving the farm production system they rely most. Politics alone do not feed poor people, rather it brings conflicts in rural areas as we have already seen it in the post couple of years.

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has been very bold on unfair criticism (TRN 23 January) and has asked the human rights and civil society elite groups to show the sprit of partnership to root out terrorism from this country. Mr Deuba must be congratulated for his efforts and moreover, his thoughtful and bold actions in recent days indicate willingness and commitment to bring peace and security back to this country. If there has been independent gallop system in the country, he would have scored the highest ranking among all the Prime Ministers During the past 12 years!!

Nepal needs peace and security; needs to fight against terrorism, corruption, rent seeking behaviour of governing institutions, kinship networks and crony capitalism to create a healthy environment for equitable economic growth and development. The country is facing severe economic crisis with dwindling financial resources available to fight terrorism and to invest on socio-economic development. This is the right time and may be getting late for all the elected and non-elected politicians, as well as the human right and civil society elites to come together showing the spirit of partnership in fighting terrorism, corruption, bad governance and mismanagement of scarce resources including loan money from multilateral organisations. We hope they stop blaming each other and that they look for adaptive strategy keeping in mind the marginalised and disadvantaged ethnic community, and impoverished people for whom they have done very little in the past 12 years. We pray for their positive attitudes and for their rightful decision.

Dr. Shree Govind Shah
Environmentalist and Policy Analyst
Dokhadol, Sanepa