Unemployment & Poverty
Threat To Peace, Security

By Bhuwaneshor Sharma

UNEMPLOYMENT poses a serious threat to peace and security of any nation. Employment is one of the measuring rods of a robust economy. History proves that unemployment invites violence and is risk for peace and security.

Symbol

Unemployment is a symbol of poverty and backwardness. Poverty fuelled by large masses of unemployed people generates a serious economic, social and cultural crisis. Nepal is no exception in this regard. The present crisis is largely the result of poverty and lack of proper employment strategies and opportunities.

A recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) report on World Unemployment paints even more gloomy picture of unemployment in the future. There were no indications of improvements last year. Two years of economic recession has pushed the number of unemployed to new heights worldwide leaving little prospect for improvement in the global situation.

The ILO has estimated that the number of unemployed people worldwide grew by twenty million since the year 2000 to reach a total of 180 million by the end of year 2002.

The report indicates deteriorating employment situation and least chances for recovery are on the cards. Continuation of this trend will dramatically increase the number of unemployed and working poor with its major share in Asia. The bleak situation would have grave consequences for the social and political stability. Prospect of weak and delayed recovery is more disturbing causing serious challenges for political stability, especially in developing countries.

Global economic recession and decreasing employment opportunities will victimise the developing nations like Nepal. The ILO finds that domestic violence and armed conflict have contributed to heightened unemployment and poverty in Nepal. No one denies that unemployment and poverty fomented violence and armed conflict in Nepal. They contribute to each other and intensify insecurity, even causing failure of a political system.

Economic slowdown and unemployment will be a great challenge to meet national and global targets on poverty alleviation. The present rate of unemployment indicates that the UN goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015 won't be possible. At least one billion jobs needed to achieve the UN target and possibility to generate such a big employment market is almost impossible within a decade.
Of 800 million hungry population in the world, Asia Pacific region houses 500 million. Of 500 million in Asia Pacific, 300 million live in the South Asia alone. The figure shows that South Asia has been emerging as a hotspot of poverty, hunger, famine and unemployment. The picture is bleaker with least hope of recovery when coming closer to our region.

South Asia is home to nearly 40 per cent of people earning less than one dollar a day. This shows a worsening employment figure in the region.

There are several reasons behind growing unemployment even in the industrialised nations. The aftermath of the September 11 brought further shocks and amplified the economic down-turn worldwide. Despite, 500 million unemployed men in the Third World, overall unemployment has increased by 6.9 per cent in 2002 against 6.5 per cent in 2001. Unemployment in these countries began to grow soon after the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) suffered a setback in spring 2001 sparking an economic slowdown. And, Asia suffered severely from the bursting of ICT bubble, which cut the export to the industrialised countries.

In addition, weakening confidence among investors brutally exposed the financial fragility of countries in several regions putting many people out of work. Furthermore, international terrorism and growing insecurity within countries gave a hard blow to the employment markets. Hard hit among them remained labour-intensive export oriented sectors such as garment industries, which largely employ women.

International terrorism discouraged tourists' movement. This further caused the decline of tourism industry worldwide. Nepal suffered much from it. As a result, the employment market declined putting many people out of work. Tourism, Nepal's second largest industry, has posed a serious danger to the recovery of wounded national economy.

Armed conflict and domestic violence, as mentioned above, have sent negative messages to international community. The situation has discouraged visitors and investors in Nepal. This has squeezed the possibility of creating employment opportunities in South Asia. Of course, security concerns, poor weather conditions, slowdown in exports and declining tourism revenues worsened the employment situation worldwide especially in the developing regions.

Threats and risks of unemployment are very big. They will challenge peace and security situation in the days to come. Unemployment and poverty will further support the situation because millions of people will go hungry everyday. Hungry people know no morale. Their first priority will be to quench their hunger. Greater unemployment and poverty will put severe pressure on government's budgetary targets given the fragile financial positions of many countries. Terrorism and violence will never be wiped out without food for hungry, jobs for jobless, protection for deprived and justice for victimised.
Lastly, coming to our own nation, the population under poverty has reached from 3.5 million to 5 million in the last decade. The later figure represents 23 per cent of the total population. This is enough to understand unemployment situation of the country. Unbalanced opportunities, rapid population growth and lack of modernisation in agriculture are a few reasons behind this.
Nearly 60 per cent of the world's labour force would be in Asia by 2010, with China alone making one quarter of the global labour force. Thus, the greater part of the jobs that needs to be created by 2010 must come in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the ILO report suggests. "Only through pro-jobs and pro-poor policies can we address this growing employment crisis and place decent work at the heart of economic and social policies," the report says.

Focus

Policy makers should focus on measures to secure and spread the recovery and ensure faster growth for work opportunities. The ILO suggests employment intensive investment. It has stressed promotion of private sector for creating more jobs. Furthermore, policy makers need to focus on reducing the vulnerability of developing countries.

Religious Masquerade !

By P. Gopakumar

'ALL religions are ancient monuments to superstitions, ignorance and ferocity' said the French materialist philosopher Baron d' Holbach. Religion has been described as the root of human misery and conflict - that more people have been killed in the name of god than in any other cause.

Notion

Some people have this notion that there will be peace if the whole world were to convert to a particular religion. That cannot be anything more ridiculous than this. Forget about the world, nation or society, but two brothers belonging to the same family fight with each other and at times even kill their own sibling. Catholics and protestants kill each other, Shias and Sunnis both Muslims - kill each other; even Sunni Muslims kill each other. India was partitioned to form Muslim majority areas as East and West Pakistan; but sharing a common religion did not prevent the West Pakistan dominated army from killing fellow Muslims in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) To see people fighting over religion is disheartening. Every culture, every religion, every person has a right to and the divine enlightenment in its own way. Where is the need of proving that only one path is right? Be it a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or Buddhist or any other, the soul searches for supreme soul and till then the cycle of birth continues. Everyone is free to approach in it or her own way.

If the entire world adopts one religion whether Hinduism, Islam, Christianity or any other religion will the fight over the supremacy of religion end? Perhaps not. If the God wanted the whole world to be a particular religion then he could have sent prophets of those religions in thousands simultaneously all over the world - thousands of Jesus Christs, prophet Mohammads and Buddhas the same to all corners of the world so that we could have one religion without any confusion at all.

It took time for theological divergences to develop into loyalties and rivalries, more communal than religions in character. God may be one and formless, but not to his worshippers. They soon learn to cherish their distinctiveness. Now theology has become not so much a quest for truth as the maintenance of a belief system. Men may wrangle for religion; fight for it; die for it; anything but live.
The important religious distinction is not between those who worship and those who do not worship, but between those who love and those who do not love. When asked, "was not religion is the finest thing humanity possessed?" The reply would be best as well worst. The reason for the latter is people mostly pick enough religion to hate but not enough to love.

Now how do we get rid of this intolerance? Religions are neither social nor inherited. It is an intensely personal thing. There is neither monopoly nor copyright on God or divine wisdom. Every thirsting aspirant can enjoy the Lord's glory. He can surely abide in Him.

The real Crusade, Jihad or any other so-called holy wars if any, is on the battlefield of our own minds between our low tendencies or negative attitudes and higher reality or positive outlook, between our imperfections and our quest for perfection. The war, the strife, then should be in our minds, where violence and intolerance springs and as nurtured, not outside it. The fight should not be against externals. The quest should be to protect us. Not straighten out other people's perceived flaws if each of us concerned ourselves only with the self, we would go a long way in overcoming religious intolerance.

The lord Jesus says, 'The kingdom of God is within you.' Ours would be a different world indeed, if those of us who are scholars and ideologues, whether religious secular, has the same passion for self-knowledge that we display for our theories and dogmas.

The new era came to be known as the era of enlightenment. Science also gave birth to mechanisation, new instrumentation, medicines, the steam and petrol engines and modern transport vehicles ranging from the automobile to the aeroplane, to the space shuttle. Science, it seems, has given us more to make us happier in the last 100 years than religion in the last 2000 years. Then why do we need religion? Why do we need ritual? Why do we need prayers and services?

Religion has never been the root of man's miseries. Like any other instrument or organisation, religions can be misused. But with religion, there exists an agonising and eternal irony. It is the only path to transform the materialists who abuse it. A spiritual outlook is a must.

Corporal Punishment In Private Schools

By Rishi Ram Paudyal

DO you know how primary education is imparted in most private (boarding) schools? Probably, you don't, if you aren't a parent sending your kid to a private school or a teacher teaching there. In a nutshell, it's through giving inhuman punishment and emphasising on rote learning.

Before we discuss about corporal punishment and rote learning, it may be quite relevant to know about the recruitment of teachers. What is the procedure for the recruitment of primary level teachers in most private schools? If the principal or vice principal has any family members or relatives who can simply read and write, no graduates with honors will get the first chance of appointment on teachers. Second preference goes to the teachers who agree to work for less salary. And the last priority goes to the teachers with good qualification, experience and training. So most teachers teaching in primary levels are either inexperienced or lowly qualified or without training or those who don't love children.
Although corporal punishment is not allowed by law in the schools in the west, it is widely given in most private schools in Nepal. Corporal punishment takes place more in the primary levels than in the higher levels.

Why is the corporal punishment the best method of teaching for most teachers, then? Because it's the easiest way to control the class and make pupils obey the teacher without any questions and do whatever he/she tells them to do.

In the classroom the teacher is all powerful. Some teachers carry sticks to the class to show that they are powerful and hit the students to prove it.

Not many teachers encourage students to ask questions. Some teachers even feel threatened when they are asked questions. Most teachers expect their pupils to sit up like a statue and just listen to their teachers. There is a very little interaction and little creativity but a lot of fear for students.
The fear starts when pupils enter the gate of their school. There are so many rules to follow and so many teachers to please. The fear increases when the teacher enters the classroom. The students have to pay more attention to how they sit down rather than paying attention to what the teacher is trying to say. Nobody dares to ask questions when they don't understand or when they want to know further about the subject matter taught. They know that they will be either humiliated by the teacher's remark 'I know you are trying to be smart' or be physically punished for disrespecting the teacher by asking questions in the classroom.

What will be the impact of this on students? Friendly children become less talkative after going to school, look unhappy, don't show interest in doing homework or reading, and they wish they could avoid going to school at all. And here is a true example.

"Daddy, conversation miss (the teacher who teaches conversation) hit me in the fingers with a stick," said my loving son Robin with his eyes full of tears showing me his fingers. "What crime did you commit, my boy?" I asked comforting him. "Nothing," he said rolling down tears over his cheeks. "She simply didn't like my handwriting." Our dear son is in only upper kindergarten and certainly he can't make the handwriting like hers. Does a bad handwriting deserve a heavy stick on those little fingers? If not, it's time we did something about it. A terrified student can never do good in studies.