NATIONAL 6 -(Spotlight Weekly)]

Rare Rebellion

A month after government fixed minimum wages, Kamaiyas of Kailali district came out in the open demanding their rights

By A CORRESPONDENT

What started as muffled protest by some one dozen Kamaiyas working under the local landlord Shiva Raj Panta of Kailali district demanding fair return for their work has snowballed into a major Kamaiya movement of the recent times.

It all started after the government decided to fix minimum wages for laborers a month ago. The decision acted as a catalyst forcing some one dozen Kamaiya workers in the Geta VDC to demand that they be paid at par with the minimum wages.

It was on May 1st when the rest of their counterparts around the globe were celebrating the Labor Day that a handful of Kamaiyas in this far western district of Nepal marched into the local VDC office demanding they be paid at par with government's minimum wage or else they be allowed to choose their own job.

Although the VDC tried to settle the issue to everyone's satisfaction, Panta failed to attend the Committee's call thus opening the floodgate of protests that followed.

About nineteen Kamaiyas then headed for the District Administration Office on May 11 hoping for positive response. But they were shocked to find the attitude of utter disregard by the Chief District Officer Tana Gautam, who refused even to register their complaint. The following day, the Kamaiyas again went to the office and were similarly rebuffed.

Meanwhile, the local NGOs including BASE, INSEC, Mukti Samaj and others were already taking up the cause of the Kamaiyas. They were now prepared to take this issue to its logical end. On Sunday (May 14th), around 7500 people including Kamaiyas, their families, local laborers, NGO activists, political workers and common people demonstrated in the Dhangadi town before staging a sit-in in front of CDO office. Till Sunday evening, the complaint letter which now included a full-fledged demands for the physical and financial liberation of Kamaiyas, was not registered.

"Now we will not be content by mere registration of the letter. We will continue to stage sit-in until the authorities take their decision," said Deep Lal Chaudhary, a field worker of BASE told SPOTLIGHT over telephone on Sunday evening.

Among the various demands made by Kamaiyas include scrapping of loan against them (which they claim was enforced on them due to illegally low wages paid to them in the first place), payment of reasonable wage, stopping the practice of keeping bonded laborers and so on.

Kamaiya are the bonded laborers who have no land or property of their own and who work for local landlords the whole year round. "Kamaiya are paid pittance by the landlords and thus have to take loan to survive. These loans, in turn, keep them bonded," said Ram Das Chaudhary, a social activist working for the rights of Kamaiya in Dang district.

In case of Panta's Kamaiyas, he used to pay seven quintals of rice each as annual pay. "Roughly calculated this is equivalent to paying about Rs 14-16 a day," says Chaudhary. The amount is way below the minimum wage fixed by the government according to which adult workers working on a daily wage basis is entitled to receive Rs 74 a day while children will receive Rs 60 a day. Likewise, the minimum wage for unskilled labor has been fixed at Rs 1450 per month, Rs 1500 for semi-skilled, Rs 1610 for skilled, Rs 1800 for highly skilled and Rs 1144 for child workers.

According to a survey conducted in 1995 by Backward Society Education (BASE) -- an NGO, there are about 35,874 Kamaiya scattered in the five districts -- Banke, Bardiya, Kailali, Kanchanpur and Dang.

A decade after the restoration of democracy and the promulgation of Constitution the Kingdom of Nepal 1990 which clearly points out keeping bonded laborers as illegal, the fate of Kamaiyas is still unchanged. "The successive governments have failed to tackle this issue properly as many people in the policy-making level are themselves keeping such laborers," said Chaudhary.

Chaudhary also adds that the Debt Relief program announced by government a few years ago was a flawed policy. "It is morally wrong for the state to pay the landlords to liberate Kamaiyas because this practice is already declared illegal by the Constitution. Besides, by doing so the Kamaiyas will change to slaves of the state from that of landlords as they will again have to pay their debts to the state." The program, because of similar protests, could not take off.

Timothy Whyte, a Danish national and the advisor of BASE, has a different solution. "Basically, this is the problem of land. Unless Kamaiyas and similar other disadvantaged people obtain their lands, the problem will persist."

According to Whyte, it could be foolish for the government not to pay heed to the demands made by Kamaiyas at this time. "If they don't get what they want from this system, they might rebel against it. In a way they could be susceptible to Maoist insurgents."

As the different governments have failed to materialize the promised land reforms, the disadvantaged groups like Kamaiyas and landless squatters are increasingly feeling frustrated. The recent movement by the Kamaiyas in Kailali is only the tip of the iceberg of frustration that is building up within.