Higher Education
Commitments To Changed Circumstances

By Dr. Radhaber D. Khati

THE SYSTEM of education is worked-out mainly in accordance with the perspective of the broad national needs for physical and intellectual development of its people. It was not quite long ago, rather until 1959, that common Nepalese people were virtually restricted from getting higher education. More than half a century from the emergence of democracy, now, that our higher education system has become able to cater to about hundred and twenty-five thousand students in various institutions of higher learning managed mainly by a publicly run Tribhuvan University. These students are attending at 61 campuses established and run under this university as constituent campuses. Even though, the figures might look encouraging, there is little to be excited about it, especially, in keeping with the large scale of university attending age population still not getting this opportunity. If the available higher educational opportunities are not going to be inspiring, the quality aspect of it will never be encouraging.

Meet Standards

Various propositions are put forward with an intention to improve the quality of higher education, which has been generally, accepted but not up to the expected level. The recommendations, by the National Education Commission, have suggested that the system of our higher education should strive in meeting the standards of the higher educational institutions, at least, in the countries of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). It needs still to be seen how much has been achieved in this sector. Therefore, it goes without saying that our system of higher education is hit by two pronged problems, one is quantity, characterised by great enrollment pressure on the disproportionately limited institutional establishments; and another is our system which is hardly able to meet and sustain the quality of educational delivery, at least at par with the standards of the similar institutions of the SAARC countries.

Education system in countries of least developed situation is broadly guided by the manpower needs of the nation. One of the basic commitments of the system of higher education is to produce various levels of able and skilled manpower needed for the development of the country. Besides, there are other missions of higher education which are both knowledge and culture based. They are supposed to both enhance national culture and promote social norms and values. We have felt the need as to how far we have been able to realize these goals, even if they seem to be somewhat traditional at this stage, when education systems, everywhere, are facing the challenge of preparing individuals for rapidly changing society. Since, we need to be still more sincere and regular in evaluating our educational performance against the expected goals, it is high time, now, that we do something very effective with an aim to provide the feedback necessary to our educational planners and the decision makers. Together with this we must also be aware of the emerging social demands from education.
The inclusion of the modern gadgets into our education system and the vision with our educational leaders to predict the rising demands for suitable manpower in the often shifting job markets inside the country and outside, go a long way to affect our educational policies and programmes. Our education system needs to be so efficient that our products should not find any problems in grabbing opportunities in the modern job markets. The reality is that the majority of the products of our system are either forced to line up to enter the narrowing job opportunities, for example, of school teachers or accept the lower level vacancies posted by the government or semi-government organisations, or even take a tough option of being unemployed. Therefore, it is imperative to, put our sincere efforts to develop a system of education, particularly higher education, that really opens up the gate of opportunities.

We do not want our educational products to cripple and not able to tackle the challenges of the day. Our products are expected to put their caliber and skill not only for the sake of their nation building, but also for the service of the larger world extended outside us. They are further expected to meet the challenges that would come in another thirty or forty years of time or even more than that, for which they are hardly equipped now. It is here that our educational leaders and the planners need to have a foresight and strategies worked out accordingly. Therefore, the system has to be made so competent that we could suitably impart our students with the knowledge, that would be needed for them to meet national demands, as well as with the ability to encounter the challenges that are there in front of them nationally as well as internationally.

Until recently, we have been working hard to educate our students with an aim to enable them to successfully accomplish the jobs given to them in relation to their educational background and expertise. That way we are assuming that we are moving forward in fulfilling the responsibilities by meeting our educational goals, or for that matter, goals of higher education. Thus, we have been struggling very hard to somehow maintain a balance between manpower need and the supply if it, within the country itself. But, now, there is a growing surplus in the supply side indicating that our products and the demands of the market do not match; which, in another way, would mean that the unemployment ratio among the products is increasing.

It seems that no nation of the developing category is educating and training its students strictly for the domestic manpower requirement, which is what the mission of our higher education has been. They are doing so particularly with a close eye on the emerging trends of international job markets. Having experienced an acute shortage of technical manpower, many huge employers of the developed world are sending messages and their men to the developing countries to seek the needed manpower for the vacancies that they have now or those to be created in the near future. At this stage, neither we can let our educational delivery system be closed from the outside world, nor can we afford to confine our educational products, as experts, strictly within our own national boundaries. Our higher education system had never encountered such a grave challenge in the past as it is facing now.

Today, doors are suddenly open for the outside world. The developed world is looking towards the developing nations of Asia for the supply of the able and highly trained manpower for their manpower needs. Greater economic booms in those countries have placed huge manpower demands on them, which, in turn, have posed challenges to the Asian countries, the home of more than half the world population and the great repository of the world manpower.

Therefore, this is right time for us to see our educational missions and goals get revised to appropriately accommodate the present realities facing the nation and the world around us. At this age of globalisation and interdependence, we cannot afford to be isolated from what happens in the World. So, let us work to the direction to let our educational products be the experts in successfully tackling the responsibilities that are posed before them nationally, regionally and also internationally, for now and also for the future.

Collaboration

With the speedy change of time and the ever shifting priorities of education, we need to be more cautiously effortful, now, than ever, to bring about modifications and changes in various aspects of our educational endeavors. The call of the hour is to keep pace with time. To this end, we might want to share experience and expertise with the international educational institutions which have claimed much fame on these matters. Let us extend our hands of friendship and collaboration to reach to those across the borders and the continents for externalising education and take greater benefits from it.

Forest Management For Poverty Alleviation

By Bimal Khatiwada

FOREST provides fundamental life support, in the form of both consumptive and non-consumptive or public goods services. Ecological process maintains soil productivity, nutrient cycling, the cleansing of air and water, and climatic rules. These all components are essential for living organisms including human population to subsistence in the earth. Forest also regulates floods by absorbing rain and recharging aquifers.

Grassland and forest also provide various kinds of resources directly to millions of the poor people living in the rural areas of Nepal. These sectors provide timber, fuel-wood, medicine, food etc.

Deforestation

Despite the heavy dependency of rural poor on forests, more than one fifth of the world's tropical and sub-tropical forests have been cleared since 1960 and Nepal is not exception. Population dynamics that contributes to encroachment, and poaching and which causes animal species to be under immense threat which shares 3.8 per cent of the world's endangered species. Similarly, due to the destruction of forest; resources are also found to be under immeasurable scarce which augment the poor peoples' basic needs.

The government has tried to control dwindling forest sources by formulating and amending different legislations. Forest Protection Act-1967, National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act-1973, National Forestry Plan-1976, Forest Sector Master Plan (FSMP)-1989-2010, Nepal Environmental Policy and Action Plan- 1993, Buffer Zone regulation-1996, Plant Protection Act- 1997 are in the limelight. FSMP was formulated during the seventh five-year plan for the proper conservation and its development. It includes-primary and supportive forest development programmes considering integrated programme approach. Later, the ninth five-year plan incorporated forest sector policy-2000 covering long, medium, and short-range objectives aiming to boost-up human welfare as well as macro-economic growth. In the coming tenth five-year plan, forest sector has also been given stress to enhance socio-economic status of the people considering the different parameters of Sustainable Development.

The sixth plan introduced the principle of peoples' participation in the management, conservation and use of forest resources. Similarly, the Decentralisation Act of 1987 introduced the "user group" concept for the local control of resources through the participatory operational and management technique in order to get more benefit from the local affairs. The Forest Act-1993 recognised the user group as an Independent and an autonomous Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) with minor sanctions to prioritise and decide in local affairs.

These legislations are formulated with the objective of augmenting peoples' needs and ultimately boost-up the nation's Gross Domestic Production (GDP) through the proper conservation of forests. Indeed, forest sector provides huge amount of industrial raw materials. Rich segments of the society are enjoying the amenities on the one hand and on the other hand poor people are hunting their basic needs from the same common property. Such discrimination never succeeded to narrowing the gap between the poor and the rich, whence arises a need of proper contemplation of property right issues in the future plan.

The balance theory of economics always articulated on the balance growth which encompasses overall or multi sectoral development of the nation. For example, forest-based industries are rising in the nation but the employees cannot afford such products is considered an imbalance growth of the nation and exactly such phenomenon is continue living in Nepal.

Social stratification in terms of property, power, prestige, and caste is indeed induced by the human beings in our society. Poorly developed toll system also appears to contribute to such stratification because progressive and regressive toll systems are not applied properly in Nepal. The statement can be supported by an illustration that the rich are enjoying the community forest resources at par with the poor. Due to such discriminative guidance and operational practices, poor people have not yet got any special packages integrating community forestry programme. Eventually in the search of best option, the poor have been compelled to turn towards illegal encroachment and poaching. Another factual example may further clarify this statement that the losses of forest in steep section of knoll in the various areas of streams are primarily driven by the need of poor for agricultural land, which is natively known as Khoriya, and due to this, the country recently saw a heavy disaster. The catastrophic hit was high in the areas with hard-core poor population.

The Nexus

It is obvious that conservation of forests is by the people and for the people. Poor peoples' contribution to the accomplishment of ecological balances is always equal as that of rich people. Well-off class can afford for other alternative energy sources, which is beyond the reach of the poor who have been restoring to the forest based energy options. Thus the nexus between poverty and natural resources deterioration is still operating in Nepal. There are 52,245 hectares of community forests that have been handed over to the local users group benefiting 98,685 households (economic survey-2001/02) with the financial and technical support of international organisations like GTZ, DANIDA, USAID, DFID, SDC etc. How much have poor people got direct benefit from such colossal amount of funding? A few user groups are involved in the social welfare activities like, school's buildings construction, diversion dam in the river for land protection, and local road maintenance etc. Are these activities in favour of the poor? Definitely not, as they even cannot afford for their wards' enrollment at schools, neither do they possess any piece of land. That's why, there is an urgent need to develop a master plan dovetailing such issues. Nevertheless the fact remains that without poverty alleviation, forest sector in Nepal will continue to degrade, and without its better management, poverty alleviation will be undermined.

Ugly World Of Mafia

By Suman Dahal

THE term mafia refers to the banned groups or activities, which are anti-social, inhuman, and are against the national interests. Such elements don't want to see development and prosperity of any country. They cause atrocity and mayhem for their petty interests of becoming rich overnight by conducting illegal activities, including smuggling and trafficking of contrabands goods and girls. Due to such activities, today's world is being infested by violence. No one wants to serve, help or share other's sorrow.

The South Asian countries like Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka are facing the growing problems created by mafia gangs. Nepal, renowned for peace in the world, has also been suffering from bloodshed for the past seven years. All of the abovementioned activities are operated by one or the other mafia groups that want to see a weak and broken nation.

Whether this underworld organisation exists in Nepal is still an open question. But speculation are widespread, local papers often carry bits and pieces of news about their threat from time to time but mafia men don't give interviews. All they do to is kidnap and kill people, highjack airplanes, and traffick in innocent girls into prostitition.

Since 1996, Nepal has been suffering from Maoist terrorism. Whether the Maoist group is related to the underworld organisation is a significant question because the Maoists have been killing, torturing, kidnapping people and grabbing peoples' money as well as so many ornaments. These are the characteristics a mafia organisation.

Mafia organisations have been trafficking girls from Nepal to India and and South Asian Countries. Around eight thousand girls are annually trafficked to various Indian cities where they are forced into prostitution. In a latest survey, ILO has reported that most of the children and women trafficked into foreign countires are from Tamang community. The forced prostitution of Nepalese girls began during the time of Rana rulers who used to take their sex slaves and concubines to various cities of India like Bombay and Calcutta. After exploiting them sexually the Ranas used to throw them in Indian brothels. These women who returned to Nepal lure and force girls into the trade. Such people are mostly from Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Sindhupalchowk, Nuwakot, Chitwan etc. Most of the girls are kicked out the brothels when they contract HIV/AIDS.

Terrorism prevails everywhere. Recently in Kathmandu, a man was shot dead and robbed in the broad daylight. This event could also be an act of mafia. Though the culprit was arrested later, the police did not find the gang that operated such a heinous crime.

Some politicians say that the underworld organisations acting in Nepal are also affecting our neighbours like India, Pakistan and others. Some newspapers even reported that the Al-Qaida too has expanded its network in Nepal. In addition, the Nepali politicians too are reported to have links with underworld gangs. And the murder of Mirja Dil Sadbeg is a case in point.

Such gangs are reported to be conducting illegal transportation of foreign currencies as well as drugs in Nepal. There have been reports that this year alone twelve foreigners were arrested on charges of carrying contraband substances, including drugs like brown sugar and hashish. Perhaps because of open border with India, such groups are thriving in Nepal by using some greedy Nepali people who seem to be tempted by the prospects of earning easy money.