Of course, it is national security that has been compromised and made vulnerable the most

Shrish S. Rana, Political analyst, Kathmandu

Mr. Shrish Rana in fact began his career as a journalist in the early 1980s and continued serving this sector for well over a decade plus.

He is a political analyst of international standing. His articles on contemporary national and international events create ripples in the country that forces the scholars to ponder over his ideas and views.

His friends love to listen to the political comments he provides at various seminars held in Kathmandu.

Mr. Rana has appeared in these columns many a time in the past and thus he perhaps needs no further introduction to the regular readers of this newspaper. He writes for several Nepali newspapers on a regular basis. His competence and fluency in both the English and the Nepali language is excellent.

Last week, we approached this renowned political brain for an exclusive interview to which he agreed. Below the results: chief editor.

TGQ1: Senior economists say Nepali economy is close to a virtual collapse. Is it the political instability combined with the overly stretched insurgency that our economy has taken a nosedive? What other factors could have pushed the country's economy to this chaotic conditions given the fact that the countries gaining independence around the same time when we came out of the clutches of the Rana regime have now become a force to be reckoned with?

S. Rana: You have yourself answered the question. The economy is certainly under severe stress. Political instability combined with the insurgency has certainly allowed the already stressed economy to nosedive. Among other things, the insurgency has targeted the painfully inadequate infrastructural investments of this developing country, it has diverted scarce resources into security investments that could have been used more productively otherwise, it continues to threaten existing investments in public and private sectors and, by doing so, succeeded in scaring the prospects of badly needed but increasingly rare public and private development capital.

By reason of training and preference one avoids delving much on economics. But your question comparing Nepali performance with more successful economies of more recent emergence than modern Nepal tempts one to suggest that the Maoist insurgency emulates previous political movements in Nepal by politically organizing on grounds of poor ground realities without providing the actual answers derived from an accurate assessment of these realities. One suggests that this is the very reason for our poor performance so far. Otherwise the prescriptions applied to the successful emerging economies would have been better applied here too: Capital would have been successfully sought, facilitated and expedited externally and internally for the purchase and investment of technologically competitive production that could absorb excessive agricultural population, provide relief to an over-burdened agricultural sector and effectively reach paying markets to supplement the limitations of an increasingly impoverished and limited home economy. This is how these countries are developing and there is a political consensus there to do so. Where is our national consensus and for what?

Of course, there are apologists in Nepal citing our paucity of resources and land-locked situation as impediments. But this is the post-industrial age where emphasis is on capital and manpower, our two neighbors together compose the fastest growing economies, and thus market, in the world and bulk aviation has, at least in part, reduced the cost of shipping because of faster turnover and reach to help cover up the additional transportation expenses imposed by our land=locked situation. Moreover, capital has proven liquid enough to flow where there is security and profit and it is for the politics of the country to provide the essential attraction and guarantees for it.

In our case, politics has failed on every count. Politicization of education over decades has failed to ensure the production of competitive and capable manpower. When domestic capital is scared (ask our bankers) attracting international capital is a myth. Curiously, our politics of the past decade and a half appears to have made sure that we are a satellite market of our Indian neighbor both in investment and produce and our politics threatens to grant our remaining non-agricultural options for investment to that country. In this sense one cannot but hold our politics suspect and must begin going about tracing the sources and logic of it all. Indeed, your question is best answered perhaps by the national priorities set up by the politics of the more successful economies including our neighbors India and China who for so many years floundered and came near disaster with the flirtation of ideologies now made redundant with the need for economic performance. It was national compulsion that made them politically decide to change course. In our case, it is time to begin locating the reasons why our politics refuses to do so.

TGQ2: Prachanda's preference for the UN mediation has come under serious debate in the country. Different theories, favoring or otherwise, are in vogue. How you Mr. Rana as a political analyst view these two diametrically opposing stances?

Also tell us as to what factors could have compelled the Nepali establishment to reject Prachanda's preference of the UN given the fact that Congress led by Koirala and the UML have already okayed Prachanda's stance. Why is this so?

S.Rana: One scholar making a serious analysis of what passes as civil society here (the vocal civil society, that is) was surprised to discover the extent to which they fronted our political sector. The scholar, moreover, found that our politics had made the traditional representatives of civil society virtually redundant. And this is, admittedly, by and large a traditional society struggling towards modernity. One question we refuse to ask ourselves and must begin to do so in order to come to grips with reality as an essential requisite for the very development we seek is: who does our politics represent? We are, after all, a representative democracy are we not? This should suffice to locate the civic society echoes of Prachanda's demand for third party mediation.

As for the Maoist demand, analysts would do better to delve into the possible political advantages the Maoists seek in this; after all, they are a political movement as well and not just an insurgency.

"The Old Regime" as the Maoists are wont to point out is certainly not going to volunteer the loss of its efficacy just because the Maoists would want to prove this. As for Koirala and Madhav Nepal Okaying it at this stage, it is perhaps time to wonder how they accept this proposal now and not previously when they, instead, allowed the insurgency to escalate to the levels of today.

There is of course, knowing our media, much publicity provided the supposed UN willingness to mediate. Little, however, has been said about the process of UN mediation, which, incidentally, begins from a formal request by the state. This has not emerged at this stage in which case one must go into the politics of pressuring the state to declare itself "the old regime". Think about its actual consequences. 

TGQ3: The debate is on whether October 4, 2002 move of the monarch amounted to an act of Regression or it was not? Which side of the debate you find yourself closer? Has the much-publicized derailed constitution come to its original track with the appointment of Deuba in government? Or some political aberrations still remain intact that needed corrections? How you would interpret all these contradictory rhetorics?

S.Rana: Media coverage since 1990 in Nepal will attest to the fact that the political sector has deemed each and every move by the monarchy not suiting their individual partisan interest regressive. Had the king acquiesced to prime minister Sher Bahdur Deuba's demand that he be allowed to continue in office until he was able to hold the postponed elections, parties who would not have shared Deuba's privilege would have accused Deuba of partnering the King's regression just as they did when the king dissolved parliament at Deuba's behest or when Deuba was reluctant to lift the emergency that he did impose at parliament's cognizance. Parliamentary decorum would have demanded a resignation from Deuba on grounds of his inability to hold constitutionally stipulated elections in the constitutionally prescribed period. Resignations, unfortunately, do not emanate from our politicians for sake of decorum in our democracy and so his unceremonious sacking by the king for sake of the constitution and democracy which, incidentally, the king sought to preserve by asking the political sector for what, in essence, was an all-representative national government to cope with the pressing needs of the time in the absence of parliament and the presence of the admitted challenge to the constitution and democracy posed by the insurgency.

Media coverage moreover has been unable to cover up the fact that both Madhav Nepal of the CPN/UML and Girija Koirala of the Nepali Congress appear to have given their nod to Lokendra Chand's appointment after their first recommendation, themselves. At least Girija Koirala is on record as saying that he had agreed to Surya Bahadur Thapa's appointment as prime minister. Sher Bahadur Deuba has been appointed prime minister after it was made publicly clear that the parliamentary parties agitating against their claimed regression refused to recommend a prime minister.

Those who continue to agitate on grounds of regression claim that the only constitutional recourse for the king in the circumstance of Article 127-- which incidentally was forced on the king by Sher Bahadur Deuba-- is to revive the dissolved parliament. Of course, there are enormous political advantages for the political parties involved were this possible. But the Supreme Court has twice ruled the dissolution valid. But, then, Girija Koirala among others suggest that the king should make a political decision to do so or, as one of the agitators said, the Supreme Court could reverse its decision to such favor keeping the political reality in mind. In constitutional democracies such insinuations would be held sacrilege. But in Nepal apparently king and countrymen must subscribe to partisan dictates on the constitution while in other democracies it is the constitution that subscribes the conduct of partisan politics.

Of course, the issue of Article 35, since the executive was sacked the king had to assume executive powers until the executive was constituted, is already deemed corrected by Deuba and Madhav Nepal whose parties now compose government while Girija Koirala continues to see the government powerless.

The constitution, however, will only come back on track when elections take place, an elected parliament is composed and a government headed by an elected prime minister as per the constitution is formed. That it cannot do so with the non-resolution of the Maoist problem demands that a systemic approach to the resolution be adopted and not a partisan one. That partisan standpoints even in this government, which is since the past twenty months of Article 127 the closest thing to an all-party government-- it is in actual fact a loose coalition government-- deemed possible, makes the King's role under Article 127 difficult and challenging indeed. The aberration all along has been in the behavior of the political sector and democracy is behavioral. 

TGQ4: It is being widely publicized by some quarters here that Nepal currently is under the overwhelming influence of the United States. Others talk that Nepal has already become a playground of certain foreign forces that undermines our national security considerations.

How you Mr. Rana as a security analyst view these presumptions or allegations or whatever it is? Is Nepal a vulnerable State now left to the mercy of the Almighty? Do we possess still some political acumen in arresting these trends? Your comments please.

S.Rana: It is fool-hardy to ignore the fact that Nepal borders China's 'soft underbelly', Tibet, and India's 'Hindi heartland'. Both China and India are of international strategic importance and Nepal happens to be smacking in between. Both China and India have tremendous strategic concerns at the instability in Nepal and they have expressed and demonstrated it. This should in itself explain the strategic concern of not only the world's lone super power, the U.S., but also Western Europe who are major trade and industrial partners of both China and India. Of course, the global terror concern prompts the United States' anti-terror investment in Nepal while there are other strategic concerns that inhibit some other countries from not recognizing the terror component of the instability in Nepal.

It is up to Nepal and Nepali politics as a strategically important country at this particular stage of international history to either take advantage of this international attention or allow it to function to its national detriment. The choice is ours. One thing is for sure; the other countries will pursue their strategic interests regardless.

As for national security, the state of the security of a country that did not see the legislation of the constitutional provision for a National Security Council until a decade after the constitution was promulgated is bound to be precarious surely. This is especially so when viewed in the background that such legislation was hastily rammed through after an insurgency had rendered defunct the politicized use of the national police and virtually compromised national intelligence while the only other security component, the Army, was restricted to the barracks and its ceremonial status on grounds of its proximity to the king. 

In its traditional sense, the concept of a Nepali state under attack being defended amidst its strategic limitations with limited but motivated and skilled security personnel going to and galvanizing the people and making foreign occupation difficult and expensive through this galvanization amidst the advantage of the difficult terrain has now been made redundant. The very people are divided and armed and fighting each other exhausting each other. Of course, it is national security that has been compromised and made vulnerable the most. Sober thinking would prompt the question: "Who gains?" It is perhaps from here that the corrective process should and, hopefully will, begin when sober thoughts will prevail. 

TGQ5: Some scholars say that President Koirala and Prachanda were on the same political wavelength at the moment. Is it possible? If it were so, should this mean that both comrade Prachanda and Koirala had become "flexible" enough? How could a staunch anti-communist as Koirala is could garner such honor and respect from the other camp that is out and out anti-democratic at least in their posture? How would you prefer to define this new emerging equation in between the two ideological rivals?

S.Rana: There are some aspects of the politics of organizations in this country that we would rather not discuss. Firstly, the ideology of organization is better served when modernism is demonstrated to mean the debunking of everything traditional. That this can also impinge on the state is an underlying threat that is real in Nepal but it has nevertheless permeated the success of organizations from the Congress to all left parties including the Maoists since the ideology serves to identify the enemy within while it helps cover up the need for substantive policy options which need only surface when the movement succeeds in its fundamental objective, namely, the state.

Secondly, the question of funding of any political movement is unaccountable since it must be covered by the veneer of public support and it is not only the Maoists who have resorted to terror tactics for funding and organization; the violent use of organizational cadre in the streets as threat to such terror has been too much on display in Nepali democracy and organized politics.

Thirdly, the India factor is real in the Nepali context. When we cannot identify our citizens can we identify our money? Political money is still unaccountable in India, there is little that impedes a tiny share of this sizeable capital from flowing our way. This, of course, need not necessarily be from government although there is nothing but goodwill that can impede this. That we do not talk of this is the same reason why politics must make strange bedfellows at the strangest of times.

One thing is for sure. Nepali organized politics is being deliberately polarized now between constitutional monarchists and republicans. Consider that it is the constitutional monarch that, despite vehement and constitutionally objectionable criticism from the organized political sector could help cajole and patch up the closest thing to a national coalition at this time of national need and one can see where a republic is heading to in the absence of the strength of such an institution amidst the highly parochial nature of our partisan politics. 

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