OPINION (Spotlight Weekly)

Lamentable 'Rights' Situation in Nepal: Some News Alerts

By Bipin Adhikari

While the situation of desperate poverty continues in Nepal , a news item in Kantipur Daily of May 13, 2000 on the deteriorating situation of Thamis of Ramecchap as an additional dispirited example has caught the attention of many human rights workers. The news pointed out that the poverty among a majority of Thamis of Khadadevi VDC near Manthali have gone down to such an extent that they even have started postponing the post-death rituals of their relatives for some months due to destitution.

If someone in the family dies in the month of January/February, they would postpone the death rituals of the deceased till they harvest corn after a few months. Only after gathering in the harvest they will have some money to perform rituals for the death that occurred three or four months back. The increasing rate of poverty has compelled them to dispense with even such an obligatory cultural practice that the death rituals must start on the date of death - immediately after the dead body is cremated.

Generally, Nepalese of all cultural or sub-cultural categories consider the house or the family of the deceased impure until these rituals are performed and suddhi-shanti (consecration for restoring familial purity and peace) is done as per their tradition. However, as an effect of extreme poverty the Thamis of Khadadevi VDC would be found wearing mourning (white) dresses till the next three or four months - with almost a sense of guilt, profanity, and deprivation.

Thamis are not alone in the list of those who have parted with their essential cultural dictates due to extreme poverty. In the eastern terai of Nepal, a number of people of Dum, Chamar, Tatma and similar other communities have started to make funeral pyre of parched cow-dung. The reason is very simple. A majority of them are very poor people. They cannot buy fuel-woods for this purpose. The local forests have all been denuded. Whatever forest is there, they now belong to the government. They cannot buy it even on a subsidized rate offered by the government, and the government does not have a provision for charity.

A normal funeral pyre of a departed adult requires at least 250 kg of fuel-wood, and this involves an amount of money by which the whole under-subsistence family of the deceased can survive for a couple of weeks more. Their culture never allowed them to manage with dung cakes. But they must do so because they cannot keep the dead-body for long, and being Hindus, they do not want to be buried like Muslims or Christians. Dry cow dung cannot make combustible heap. Its effect is so moderate that sometimes it takes many hours to burn the dead-body into ashes. As such the tradition of funeral procession returning only after floating the ashes of the deceased in a river is also already in danger.

The issue raised here is the issue of growing national poverty. This poverty is an effect of failure of all governments to adopt recognized human values in their decision-making. The example of Tharus of western Nepal further illustrates this fact. During the month of May and June 2000 some Tharu kamaiyas (bonded laborers) staged a sit in at the district administration office raising the issue of violation of minimum wage rules, compensation for their hitherto unpaid labor, and debt relief programs against the local landlords. The district administration rejected the case citing lack of legal competence to look into it as the reason, and the plea that the victims must file the complaint with the recognized authority themselves, and that the intervention of local NGOs cannot substitute this requirement.

The Kamaiyas started roaming around from one government office to another including the local village assemblies. The protesters definitely lacked basic preparation and legal know-how to get their grievances heard. The way the issue was being raised, and its cause being politicized, also showed that the campaign might end up creating larger communal issues affecting the social fabrics of western Nepal.

This is the first time that the communities of bonded laborers, who in the context of western Nepal come up from the Tharu society, are trying to enforce the constitutional guarantee against bonded labor, serfdom or servitude. It is the issue which the government had difficulty in raising pro bono publico. They have thus facilitated the government to come forward and solve it in the larger interest of the thousands of agricultural laborers in Nepal.

Despite that it never came to the mind of the government, or its local units to confer all necessary support to the leaders of the movement, or the recently formed committee led by Rajdeb Chaudhary, to channellise their demand, boost up their representative character, understand them in proper perspective, and help address the overall issues involving their emancipation. Indeed, the bonded laborers have provided a precious opportunity to the government to herald its social commitment by sorting out this problem with those landlords who are practicing such inhuman trade techniques.

Whatever was the beginning of the bonded labor system, like many other traditional institutions, it also suffered a lot during the Rana regime, and years that followed. Its eventual decline as an institution owes to a number of facts. The rising national poverty, population growth, internal migration, extra pressure on the land and forest resources, a greater incidence of agricultural debt, withering social sanctions, increasing liquor consumption, governmental lawlessness, and a culture of impunity may be counted as a few of them. The principal among them is the failure of the government in the past to redefine the institution in the light of principle of human rights and create laws and processes to govern all relationships involved, including state accountability for social justice.

By a single stroke of the Government, the bonded labor system has allegedly been demolished. That is definitely a brave shot. The country already fired such a shot in relation to trafficking in women. But the problem of trafficking persists; rather it has increased in its various dimensions. The end goal of anti-social elements of forcing women and girl children into sexuality and economically oppressive and exploitative situations for the profit of recruiters, traffickers, crime syndicates, as well as other illegal activities, including forced domestic labor, continues even today after about forty years. It should be adequate to prove that the law needs to be supplemented by a number of social engineering works to reach its social goals.

Unless the Government is committed to abide by its political responsibility, the emancipation of bonded laborers in the style of Chandra Shamsher, who similarly outlawed Sati system in 1982 BS is not that easy. The system of bonded labor in its present form must be understood in the overall declining economic context of Nepal which creates not only slavery and slave-like situation, girls trafficking, debt bondage, aggravated daijo system in the Terai region, commercial sexual exploitation of children, the practice of untouchability, and governmental lawlessness and declining social sanctions.

Apparently, the move of the Government seems to be a populist one. They are in immediate need of food, shelter and other basic needs. Besides, there is a Constitution in the country, which is considered to be the supreme law, and the government cannot overlook it. It guarantees the right to property, although exploitation is prohibited. No law was enacted to define bonded laborers in its relation with that right. There is no policy document dealing with a variety of situations of bondage found in Nepal, and if I understand properly, any problematic definition of bonded labor can spoil many agricultural traditions of the country which are not said to be rights-deficit. There is nothing in the existing laws which define debt relationship in the context of bonded labor system. The ILO guidelines may not be enough without statutory arrangements.

Additionally, who will decide for the administration whether a certain person is bonded labor or not. The bond contracts as are referred by the media in fact do not exist in substance and it is very difficult to get the proof of any bond as such in a majority of cases. They all are in unwritten form, and without negotiating with the landlord in the presence of the said bonded laborer, the reality of the situation cannot be assessed. Additionally, a majority of the witnesses must already be dead by this time. The landlords will definitely contest the power of the government to snatch away their contractual rights without due process of law, and it will definitely have to compensate the landlords for any physical or mental intimidation caused by the bonded laborers due to the delay in sorting out the problem.

Moreover, it is unlikely that the problem can be sorted out unless the government is prepared to be liable to pay for genuine situations on behalf of the bonded laborers. For example, the law is clear to provide that interest accrued on the principal cannot be treated as principal for the purpose of interest for another duration. But what about the principal amount? On what basis the court will enforce the declaration made by the government in the absence of a law?.

These three stories, but unfortunately true vignette, illustrate the relationship between human rights and human development. All these issues focus on the poverty at the absolute level - the life at the very margin of existence; the lack of sufficient income in cash or kind to meet the most basic biological needs for food clothing and shelter. They are still trying to survive in a set of squalid and degraded circumstances. Even where they do not cause death, they cause misery of a kind, which cannot be properly explained.

Such a persistent misery creates problems of malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, low life expectancy, and so on. It needs to be constantly reminded that poverty is a human rights violation and that freedom from poverty is an integral and inalienable human right. It is the condition that is created by failure to understand human rights deeply interwoven with developmental activities, questions of justice, transparency of institutions and many other issues.

How could one speak about the realization of lofty constitutional ideals such as justice, peace, fundamental freedoms and respect for human dignity where a majority of people lived in extreme poverty. The alarming rate of frustrations among the people is not good for any society. A majority of people in the country is in social seclusion and without social, economic, and cultural rights. They have no constructive capacity to exercise their civil and political rights in order to decide their tryst with destiny.

They are the people who are hungry, naked and without a shelter conducive to human life. The existing situation gravely affects the most vulnerable and disadvantaged individuals, families and groups. Speaking frankly, the existence of extreme poverty has inhibited the growth of the nation - the national psyche that we will continue to need to fight back our foes. It has also given the impression that these poor majorities cannot affect the political process under a democratic set up.

They pose intriguing questions to our system of power and accountability. One of them is concerned with the disdainful or egotistical political pirates of this country. When should they understand that those people whose conditions were already unbearable have already shown solidarity with the Maoists. The rest will unmistakably follow. Even if the Maoists pull themselves down, for one or the other reasons, some other groups will come up to cash the sentiments of deprived crowds as their new founded vanguards.

Poverty in Nepal as well as many other developing countries is not the gift of god. It is the product of political dishonesty and state sponsored illusions. It is caused by deprivation of basic human rights to all. This realization is necessary in order to promote the rights of the poorest by putting an end to conditions that create a psychology to support extremist organizations.

[Adhikari is a lawyer]