Nepal: Implications for the Polity and Society

Dev Raj Dahal

 Political life in Nepal is characterised by continually changing constellation of struggles over power, resources and identity. The contemporary social movements in Nepal have produced a rich array of political symbols, slogans, cartoons, poems, articles and images exploring the new interpretation of politics and the code of behaviour seeking a new social contract between the government and citizens and have unleashed major changes in the social structure. These movements are trying to horizontalise the vertical integration of Nepali society and to mobilise new groups, especially from the lower and middle strata, to accept political accommodations whereby every member of the society shares common goods equally, regardless of wealth, position and power. This denotes that new social movements have tended to alter the dynamics of power relationship between the society and the state espousing one of the most fundamental forms of citizen action.

The new social movements in Nepal have produced a critical mass of conscious people outside the hegemonic class representing the state and political parties. This critical mass is trying to construct a genuine multiparty democracy capable of reflecting and representing multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-layered social microcosm of the nation into political power and attaining their empowerment. In no way, however, do they aspire to conquer the state or political parties. Springing from a set of plural interests, they are basically competing for influence on public policies and are also cautious about the possibility of transforming themselves into an appendage of political and economic societies like in the 1990s. None of the movements aspires for the rupturing of the state. Among all the social movements the janajati movement appears more articulate in terms of its demand formulation and radical democratisation. The policy questions are: Has the Nepali government adequate means to address their particular and universal concerns? Is the strategy of forming various temporary committees, commissions and caucus groups sufficient to mollify their grievances and is it able to bring reasonable social change?

In fact, there are deep stirrings at the grassroots, the upsurge of previously marginalized and excluded section of people, generating real hopes for the regeneration of democratic politics which is also capable of stimulating social transformation. Inspired by the highest level of consciousness, the new social movements reflect a horizontal series of groups struggling against penetration, fragmentation, exclusion and atomisation of society. Based on the ideology of democratic pluralism these groups are socialising, mobilising and politicising people's identities, activities and relations and are seeking to cast vertically integrated Hindu-Buddhist caste society into a new form.

All these movements seek the renegotiation of social contract whereby the state is entitled to help citizens realise their basic needs, rights and duties. Democracy, social justice and human rights underline the theme of all these movements. Located within civil society they are trying to enlarge the space of politics beyond the activities of parliament, political parties, interest groups, bureaucracy and elites. The new social movements in Nepal have made the moral majority of dominant political party powerless to act arbitrarily. Some social movements, especially conducted by ethnic and regional groups, defend the proportionality of representation in power while others, for example, bonded labour and Dalits, seek liberation from unwritten transcripts of society that governs their life. Under post-modern conditions, politics is neither confined to the domain of the state, nor is the citizenship confined to the bounded territory called the state. Multiple memberships of citizens define the politics of their liberation, entitlements, life and choice.

The process of globalisation has marked a radical economic shift in relation of production and disrupted the traditional form of polity having enormous consequences for the production of citizenship. Trade union, environmental and consumer groups' movements against negative fallouts of globalisation reflect aspirations of diverse people to control the local economic system. Nepali trade unions are now building coalitions with consumers, environmental and women's groups and integrating agriculture sector workers, bonded labourers, child workers, informal sectors and un-organized people into their organizational framework to enlarge the base of collective action. In the mid-1970s the social movement of agricultural wageworkers in the Tarai was successful in increasing the daily wages in cash and kind. Ecological movements have also linked the meaning of human lives with the lives of other species and seek to enforce the concept of inter-generational accountability.

Women's movements have also been breaking the patriarchal and patrimonial boundaries in law, property relations, tradition and leadership, and integrating more women to enlarge the framework of gender politics. They have become successful in enacting a semblance of property rights and increased the degree of representation in structures of local self-governance. Similarly, Dalits have been integrating non-Dalit underclass and other victims of society for collective action. All these movements are conscious of their identities but they suffer from a lack of relative autonomy from the dominant institutions of society—political parties, interest groups and the state. This has weakened their position in movement building, co-determination and free collective bargaining to renegotiate social contract with those institutions affecting their life, identity, liberty and property. Critics, however, argue that a political competition exists among these social movement groups to put pressure on the government into producing policies favourable to them.

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The dynamics of Demand and Supply in relation to Trafficking for sex

By Bindu Chaudhary, USA

Demand and Supply are the two words economists' use the most. These are the twin driving forces of the market economy. In economic terms, demand is not just about measuring what people want, it refers to the amount of goods or services that people are both willing and able to buy. Supply is the amount of good or services available at any particular price.

The global culture of sexual exploitation not only uses women to market consumer products, they are also used as products to be consumed themselves. Sex trade has often been seen as a developmental problem from the supply side, individually pathologizing women and girls and blaming and shaming them for the circumstances they are in. As a matter of fact however, the nitty-gritty of the global sex industry runs on a supply and demand market- the aspect that is often overlooked, or intentionally ignored. Trafficking of women and children is related to the existence of legal, semi-legal or illegal sex markets, the existence of which itself proves that there are people who are willing and able pay for sex in all its varied and exploitative forms. As with most business, if there were no demand, there would be no supply.

Reasons

No matter how we slice it, but on the whole, the demand of women and children to be used as a consumer commodity depicts, as well as is the result of male attitude and perception of women and the unequal socio-economic status of women in the society. Men’s right to buy women’s bodies is but a form of male dominance, literally or metaphorically. Prostitution is an act of misogyny, that of degradation of a woman worth and dignity. A contract between a woman selling sex and a man buying sex is not an equal contract. As long as the society remains male dominated, women selling sex will be in a more vulnerable position than men buying sex.

Trafficking depends much on the supply and demand between sending and the receiving destinations. When men’s demand for women and children for prostitution exceeds the supply in local areas, they are imported and recruited from elsewhere. Marked differences in the income levels between countries and regions contribute to the demand for women and children for commercial sex from the low income countries to the high income countries, where the demand for cheap and low status labor exists, and where the procurers can make more money. Trafficking begins when perpetrators, including pimps, create demand for women and children to be used for prostitution. The more the demand, the more is the supply/ recruitment.

Such factors as poverty, unemployment, war, political and economic instability, illiteracy, and the like helps create a conducive environment for the traffickers and pimps to trap vulnerable girls and women into sex industry. Feminization of poverty is a factor that contributes to the "supply side" of trafficking, as does weak border controls and the flourishing sex industries to the "demand side". Demand by employers and enterprises for cheap labor, which is often served to women, usually in low status work in the domestic and entertainment spheres make women vulnerable to being exploited as well.

The kinds of development programs that depend heavily on the temporary migrant workers, particularly male workers, are also likely to increase the demand for commercial sex, making that region a trafficking hub. The demand of perpetrators for younger women and girls for fear of HIV infection help fill up the commercial sex industry with much younger children. Similarly, in each locale, women and children of a certain physical attribute is in demand, to cater to which, the innocent lives of such attribute becomes victims. Sex industry uses up women physically and emotionally, thereby demanding more and more fresh fleshes, keeping the traffickers, pimps and perpetrators up on heels all the time.

Money talks. It is ironic that we label the victims, and cover up the perpetrators by respectable names like "clients" and "customers", giving dignity to their acts as if they were engaged in respectable behaviors. One of the reasons could be our inadvertent victim blaming attitude. When much of the focus is on the study of the victims and the supply, the resultant- increased scrutiny of women’s lives, their motivations and circumstances- becomes inevitable, making it seem like they were responsible for their situation.

Countering Trafficking

The success of countering sexual exploitation of women and children lies much in the transition of focus from supply to demand, or from legitimizing and accommodating demand to the confrontation and stopping of it. Attention should be given both to the demand reduction, as well as supply reduction. Demand for trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children should be discouraged by way of raising public awareness, particularly in relation to trafficking and forced child prostitution. Similarly, focus should also be given towards supply reduction by way of advocacy and awareness raising among parents and guardians and strengthening socio-economic-educational status of women in the society.

Sex trafficking prevention cannot solely and significantly reduce the supply of victims, as long as there is demand for women and children for prostitution. As long as there are perpetrators to "buy" sex, and as long as traffickers and pimps profit from selling and exploiting women and children, the innocent lives will continue to be supplied in the market to meet their demands.

It is evident that without perpetrators buying sex, there would be no basis for trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children. This calls for a need to focus on changing the behavior of the current and potential exploiters, and thus address the demand side of the exploiting sex market. As the saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Consequently, apart from the ongoing efforts, there is a need to take a social and political action aimed at questioning the demand side, and formulate a strong and a clear policy to curb and discourage demand, if trafficking has to be effectively stopped.

The Role of the Press in an Emerging Civil Society-I

Dr. Klaus Barth, Germany

Like all phenomena of modern social life, even the "civil society" has already been talked about by such ancient grandmasters as Cicero, who coined the Latin term "civilis societas", meaning a civilized condition of living in a civic community, which must be the semantic origin of our "civil society", as well as Aristotle, St. Augustine, Thomas of Aquino, Thomas Hobbe, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx - you name them, they all used "civil society" as a household word.

A civil society, if I understand the concept correctly, is more developed than a merely "democratic" society. It does not only imply the existence of democratic structures and institutions, the exercise of adult franchise and good governance on the part of those in power by virtue of a democratic mandate. All this is already pretty much, but it is only the beginning of the long road of democratisation that ultimately leads to a civil society. A civil society is, of course, unthinkable without democratic institutions, but it encompasses much more, namely an active participation of the people in all matters of public life, in a more or less organized form, from "Aama group" to human rights organization, from trade union to Press Council. If you will, civil society represents all democratic activities, mostly organized in bottom-up structures, outside the institutional set-up of constitutional bodies such as parliament, parties, government, the judiciary, army, police and official control bodies that rule, once elected or nominated, in a top-to-bottom fashion. Thus, the civil society initially is the partner of the official political set-up, and ideally that institutionalized part of the democratic system will eventually also become part and parcel of an accomplished civil society in the true sense of the term as I understand it - the ultimate goal of the democratisation process.

Obviously, the media are a vital element of civil society. Especially the print media, who address the more educated sector of society, have an important role to play as disseminating agents of democratic ideals, sound democratic practices and critical thoughts with a bearing on national development, while the electronic media will generally be more likely to address the less educated part of the population with programmes of more basic educational and nation building value. Some have likened to role of the press, in this context, to that of a watchdog. I would prefer another image, that of a honey-bee, which buzzes from blossom to blossom, thus inseminating the whole orchard and eventually bringing all the trees to fruition. Of course, the bee can also dispense honey to those who deserve it, but it may as well sting those who deviate from the path leading to a democratic civil society. What should be the role of the press, in more concrete terms, in such a civil society, or better a society on the road to such a society?

- Its first goal should certainly be to provide a linkage to the institutionalized sector of democracy, a communication avenue between the governing and the governed - or rather, the other way round.

- Second, it must enforce the accountability of those in power.

- Third, it should act as an advocate the legitimate interests of those underrepresented in the official democratic set-up, the minorities, oppressed, or marginalized groups, the women, the children, the elderly and those without an organised pressure group.

- Fourth, I think the press can be quite instrumental in reducing the mistrust prevailing in this country between the Government and the private sector, each of whom seems to be believing that the other is only working into their own pockets. The means to this end is the creation of transparency.

- Fifth, the press should provide a forum for NGOs, humanitarian organisations, human rights and environmental activists to put their points across to the public and to take part in the political dialogue.

- Sixth, it should finally provide avenues for a pluralist approach and identifying alternative solutions to problems affecting the society, in matters concerning social change, challenges to social integration, minority questions, gender empowerment, decentralisation etc.

Having been a journalist myself before my diplomatic career, I have always followed with a keen interest the changes and developments in the printed media of this country since my arrival here three years ago. Confronted with the topic of my talk for this afternoon, "The Role of the Press in an Emerging Civil Society", I asked myself: "Has the press in Nepal at all developed along the path of democratisation towards a civil society in this country, in the course of those three years?" The answer is, overall, quite positive. Yes, I do think that there has indeed been some positive development.

How is that? Well, if I remember correctly, three years ago, sports reporters and students on a part-time job did most of the political reporting and interviewing. The results were, at least for those who knew the real facts behind the stories, not only eye brow-raising, but sometimes hair-raising. Also, the reporting often was of the type: "The German Ambassador called on the Minister of Finance this morning. Matters of mutual interest were discussed." This reminds me of the kind of TV pictures the spectators sometimes still are bothered with in this part of the world: A politician seen from behind as he is getting into his car and driven away. I must add here that my experience was and, alas, still is restricted to the English medium press, but I guess that this kind of negligent or irrelevant reporting was likewise typical of the media of Nepali expression.

Correct me, if I am wrong, but I suppose that this type of non-information in the guise of information must have its roots in the pre-democratic press of panchayat times or even before. The reader was fed with the peel of a fruit and told that there was nothing tasty inside anyway; so why bother to tell him the whole story? It was better to leave politics to the insiders anyway, so why should readers be told more than the absolute minimum.

In a pre-democratic society, it is very easy to be a journalist. You just copy the official press releases and portray the politicians sporting their official smiles behind dark sunglasses. This way you save a lot of time on extensive research, intensive analysis and witty presentation. (To be continued)

(The author is the former Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Kingdom of Nepal)

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