Patriotic and democratic forces including the King and Maoists' must come together and share responsibility 

-Dr. Ballabh Mani Dahal, T.U, Kirtipur

He is Professor Ballabh Mani Dahal teaching at the Central Department of Nepali at the T.U, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. His long association with People's Republic of China has made him undoubtedly a China expert. He is one of the executive members of the newly formed China Study Center. China has awarded him a prestigious medal for his assignment at the Nepali department of CRI, Ministry of Film, Television, China during his stay there 1992-1996. Until recently he was also the Vice-Chairman of a government-sponsored body ' High Level National Education Commission' wherein he served for a year or so. Dr. Dahal is one of the top linguistics of the nation having international reputation. He had been a member of the Nepali delegation to the ILO, Geneva conference held in 1989. Besides this, Professor Dahal also attended the United Nations General Assembly in 1980 where he presented Nepal's position on the issues of information systems and the PeaceKeeping force in Lebanon. Dr. Dahal obtained his doctoral degree from Pune University, India in the discipline of Linguistics. He is also fluent in Sanskrit. Professor Dahal has several books and articles to his credit. He was a visiting Professor under DAAD and taught at the Kiel University, Germany in 1985. He has already visited China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Pakistan, U.K, USA, France, Germany and Switzerland.

Professor Dahal also acted like member-secretary of the Panchayat Policy and Evaluation Committee for a year or so.

Last week, I met this distinguished scholar at a seminar and requested for an interview. Below the results-Chief editor.

TGQ 1: Professor Dahal, as an academician, how would you evaluate the current political situation of Nepal? This question is specially made in the context of emerging political instability caused by political factionalism, suppressed civil societies and self-seeking market forces. Your exclusive comments please.

Prof. Dahal: Actually I do not feel that we have political instability caused as such by the majority, minority or even coalition character or whatsoever. Or even due to the internal conflicts. The internal problems such as social, religious and above all, political, they could not solve the nation's burning problems. So these problems are becoming serious. The problem of unemployment, corruption, underdevelopment coupled with the lack of democratic political culture conducive to social justice were the main barriers towards democratic consolidation. Over these years the political class summarily undermined the democratic spirits of check and balance and separation of powers and resorted to old political culture of revenge and self-aggrandizement leaving the constitutional vision of national development remains in the back seat. To elaborate, the institution of governance as a whole failed to deliver even basic public goods such as law and order and fulfillment of basic human needs. What has been the scenario today is those watchdog agencies and the institutions of civil society far from acting like a countervailing power in the interest of public and appear to have become subservient to the dominant interest groups of the society. The word democracy got obscured in the abstraction that de-coupled from the lives and hopes of ordinary people who led their lives in the struggle for freedom and social justice.

Owing to the lack of clear vision of how to build this country the main stream leaders and political parties submerged into a bureaucratic mode of thinking and the very notion of government and opposition lost their meaning in its real sense.

All in all, all these maladies set the course of the nation in a state of confusion and unfortunately each government created new set of problems setting aside the old ones and failed to solve them.

TGQ 2: There have been growing challenges to the state, especially Maoist, ethnic groups and, to some extent, external powers are hitting on the fault lines of the state. The sovereignty of the state and its autonomy is being increasingly put into litmus test. In this context, what measures do you suggest to build this nation?

Prof. Dahal: Firstly the problems, which you Mr. Upadhayaya have indicated, can't be solved by half-hearted and surfacial reforms. The challenge to the state is fundamental, basic and deep-rooted. This calls for equally fundamental and comprehensive reform packages incorporating long-term perspective of the solutions in mind. For this, one way possibly could be seeing solutions from within the framework of constitution itself. Second could be making the governance inclusive. Thirdly, making development broad based and participatory. The problem of Nepal today is too much concentration of power in the leadership and too little accountability to the public. Talking of Maoism, it is the failure of the mainstream political parties to take up the causes of the people for equality, social justice, and the elimination of exploitation. The mainstream parties failed to serve as a catalyst for social transformation even after the restoration of multiparty dispensation. Albeit, their promise of moon and stars during elections. Parties those who claimed themselves as social democrats and communists too were homogenized by the policy of neo-liberal globalization as a result political parties lost their conventionally held ideological programmatic distinctions. These failures have sparked-off social movements such as Maoists', gender, civil society, indigenous people, artistes linguistics, trade unions, media and the likes.

People and their representatives are still struggling for decentralization of power demanding good governance. A drastic all encompassing reform covering all aspects of social interests must be launched at the earliest making people an actor of history and fulfilling the mission of this nation laid out by our forefathers. Rather, I'd suggest all patriotic and democratic forces including the King and the Maoists' come together and share the historical responsibility of the nation.

TGQ 3: As a linguist and educationist what policies and programs should the government take to consolidate the base of nationalism and enabling the state to distribute social justice?

Prof.Dahal: We are on the threshold of next millennium this means we need an education system that makes our people competitive to cope with the challenges that lie ahead. Needless to say, skill enhancement is the first prerequisite to make our people able to understand the complexity of the changes unfolding in the regional and international scene and cater to the needs and aspirations of the nation.

Secondly, we need that education that makes the educated class accountable to public interests and help modernize all sectors of society, such as agriculture, industry, public transport, energy, health and sanitation and the context and the content of education itself. The role of state has to be redefined in such a manner that it helps promote private sector for economic growth while enabling the weaker and marginalized section participate in the distribution of growth by means of their access to development infrastructures including education. A public private synergy in education is therefore must to make education an engine of social transformation.

Look the tragedies, during these 50 years, Nepal could not even secure one percent annual increment in literacy level. This speaks of our mal-development.

My suggestion would be in this regard that the state should give utmost priority to investments in social sectors, define the vision of the nation and prepare citizens to campaign for increasing literacy. Added to that school(s) of self income-generating skill (vocation & technical) should be established in all corners of the country.

The rights of different ethnic groups should be honored and the government must take responsibility in their overall development that is long overdue.

TGQ 4: Do you think the governance being devised today is accountable to the people? I am asking this question because poverty, debt and dependency etc. are growing while positive things have yet to emerge for democracy's consolidation and development.

Prof. Dahal: You are right Mr. Upadhyaya. Unless the leadership possesses enough commitment to the constituency, they are accountable for and sincerely implement those commitments in the interest of the country and people, the nation will continue crib and crawl into the pathetic scenes you have rightly described. Talking of poverty, it is not caused by lack of resources in the country. Rather it is caused by the concentration of the resources in few hands and wrong policy prescriptions that are anti poor basically. There is a brazen dichotomy in the high rhetoric of democracy and HR and sordid performance in these two areas. The moral chasm created by the situation has thus caused institutional decay, breakdown of civic decency and moral degeneration, political alienation and social restiveness.

  The parliament, sorry to say, is now a mere onlooker of the policies made by external decision makers in which Nepalese people do not have any ownership al all. This has squeezed our sovereignty embedded in the people and made parliament ineffective. What is required in the current millennium is therefore the restoration of our say in the matters that affect from tip to toe the lives of the millions of Nepalese people.

TGQ5:  How media can correct this state of confusion in the country?

Prof. Dahal: The Himalayan tragedy is that the Media itself is divided in the country. The situation I see is that an independent media has difficulty in surviving. Media as a watchdog can play a constructive role and speak truth to the power thereby enforcing their accountability and transparency. By educating the public, the media can develop an access of the public to the decisions of the state, the market, civil society and private sector agencies and help them shape meaningful choices in public life. Owing to the overly partisanization of the mainstream media, the real issues confronting the nation have taken a beck seat. This has also weakened the credibility of the press. What is required, therefore, the media should serve as a public space and strengthen its constituency (people) on which it is grounded and justifies itself.  

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