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LEADERSHIP |
Drought Of Ideas A country immensely proud of its outstanding leaders and thinkers of the past is desperately searching for their modern equivalents
By AKSHAY SHARMA A spectre is haunting the country today — the spectre of leaderlessness. "We have no strong leaders — like Jung Bahadur or Bhimsen Thapa — at a time when the country needs them most," says Arun Kumar Joshi of Jawalakhel, The sagacity and strength of leaders and thinkers of the past laid the basis for a modern Nepal. At a time when Nepalis are in dire need of consolidating their gains, there is collective yearning for a "true leader" who could deal the country’s troubles in the true spirit of public service. The gradual opening up of Nepal from isolation to modernity saw a proliferation of new ideas and broader perspectives. "The expansion of the middle class, the spread of education and the gathering of intellect in Nepal were generating an audience eager for books. And a swarm of authors rose up to saturate this demand," says Ravi Ghimire of Chabahil. "In this new atmosphere, thinkers and authors attained a status rarely accorded to them." The older generation held forth with all their eloquence, cheered by a widening audience, stimulated by hundreds of alert competitors, liberated by the decline of dogma, spurred by the vanity of print. Writers launched upon the inky sea a flotilla of letters, pamphlets, diatribes, essays, memoirs, histories, novels, drama, poems, theologies and philosophies. However, now that seems to have been the exception of the Nepalese age of enlightenment. "Leaders and thinkers of such calibre seem to emerge only once in a very long while," says an analyst. The political liberalization of the last decade was expected to unleash a new wave of moral and intellectual creativity that would give much-needed momentum to the polity. Instead, a sense of feebleness has gripped the overall national atmosphere. To be sure, literature and the media have flourished in many ways. They finally broke through all the chains of censorship, swept away all resistance and transformed the mind and faith of the country. Never in literature has there been such subtle wit, such dedicated pleasantry, such coarse buffoonery, such lethal ridicule unleashed by sharply pointed, sometimes poisoned, usually nameless, pens. When we see country after country and government after government brought down by the mighty pen, we can only be awed by the power of the message to transform society. However, the facilitators of the free flow of information have not been able to put the transactions in this great marketplace of ideas to the nation’s service in the desired sense. "We have not again seen thinker-politicians with the calibre of B.P. Koirala and Subarna Shamsher whose quest for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness lit the spark that created the Nepali Congress," said Chiring Sherpa, a youth leader who supports the governing party. Arun puts the blame for the country’s problems at the doorsteps of the government. "The government of Nepal is like the father of the family. All of us understand what the primary responsibility of the father is." He says there can be no justification for the current failure to perform. "If we seek to put the blame on politicians, then there are ways of bringing them back on track — there is the CIAA (Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority), the court, the police. Why don’t those in government work to combat the disease that is plaguing the nation?" The country takes immense pride in an older generation of people whose ideologies and philosophies have shaped the Nepalese identity. Then comes the next logical question: When will leaders of such calibre emerge again? |
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