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LETTERS |
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LETTERS |
Small Is Beautiful Your cover story "One Is Fun"
(SPOTLIGHT, May 3) raised an interesting issue. It is good that people in urban centers at
least have started realizing the importance of a small family. Increasingly they are
shedding their traditional desire for male child. This trend is particularly important
when seen from the perspective of population explosion. As Nepal is a hilly country, it
does not have limitless land for its people. Whatever population it has is concentrated in
cities and few urban centers. So, population growth is an extremely precarious problem for
the country. However, the emerging trend provides hope for a better future. Krishna Gautam Increase Awareness Whereas people in urban areas are opting
for smaller families, those in the villages are yet to be aware about the issues you
raised ("One Is Fun", SPOTLIGHT, May 3). Pervasive superstitions and social
values have instilled a deep-rooted belief that children are gifts of God and, therefore,
their number should not be limited. The preference for the male child is also responsible
for the population explosion. A massive campaign to educate the people and make available
suitable means of family planning is required to control unbridled population growth. Shankar Basnet Make Use Of S&T Dr. Niranjan Upadhyaya's article
(SPOTLIGHT, April 26-May 2) lists Nepal's attempts at poverty eradication but hardly
suggests any remedy. He has also missed some recent efforts to understand and treat this
malaise. A quantum leap in the diagnosis was made by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.
Through his study of the world's greatest famines and the causes of poverty, he concluded
that such dehumanizing conditions are the result of political expedience and manipulations
rather than any resource crunch. His cure is education for all, and such education in the
present context is in science and technology. What did Singapore use to promote itself
from the third to the first world apart from human resource? Utilization of modern science
and technology leads to wealth even in the absence of any natural resource. The
trailblazer was, of course, Japan, whose Meiji leaders decided in the 1800s that they
would be able to compete with the West only by learning and utilizing their competitor's
methods. So they sent hordes of youth to learn the ways of the West and transplant the
educational, industrial and economic institutions. They thought that they had to beat the
Americans at their own game and even sent teams to learn baseball. Japan is the only
country in the Eastern hemisphere that plays baseball. Without natural resources, Japan
was able to establish itself as a world power in a few decades. Singapore, Korea and other
newly developed countries followed this same model. None of our self-proclaimed leaders,
planners, academics or intellectuals has the necessary vision. They are all busy amassing
wealth at the cost of the nation. There is no lowliness to which they will not stoop to
for this purpose. They blast their own dilapidated houses and cowsheds to claim inflated
compensations. Security is necessary only for them and not for the general people; so they
set up the base camps of security forces in their own ranches and get them destroyed in
the process so they can loot from the national coffers. Male MPs will even partake
pregnancy medications. Even our science academy resorted to gold smuggling. It has
appointed a group of failed and calcified scientists as its advisers. These advisers do
nothing but sit daydreaming in their swivel chairs and pocket their salary at the end of
the month. As taxpayers, are we not entitled to know what advice they have given in the
past so many years? One particular advice I know of is that, some years ago they had
drafted a science act which stipulated imprisonment and fines for anyone doing research
without their authorization. This act was abandoned after the university teachers raised
an outcry. With such an attitude, there can be no hope for poverty eradication. Poverty
can only be eradicated by concerted effort at increased productive economic activity,
which can be achieved only with the use of advanced science and technology. Shukra Raj Acharya |
Send your feedback to the
editor: spotligh@mos.com.np |
