(Courtesy: Dr. Hari Bansha Dulal)
It did not take even three years for Nepali politicians, with their “business as usual,” under the table, tit-for-tat mentality, to get back to their infamous ways of mid-1990s. Once again, horse-trading of parliamentarians and backstabbing of fellow party men to grab and remain in power is back in vogue. Rules may have changed but the game remains the same.
The irony of Nepali politics is that the party which won the largest share of votes in the last election does not believe in multi-party democracy and the party – Nepali Congress (NC) – which calls itself the torchbearer of democracy and is the second-largest party in the parliament is the least democratic in its practices. By nominating Sujata Koirala, who is not even a member of the current parliament, to lead Nepali Congress (NC) in the new government, Girija Prasad Koirala (GPK) has put even the worst dictator to shame. As long as GPK is alive, it appears that the scourge of nepotism will never leave NC. Now, we all know what “democracy in peril” talk of GPK during the Maoist rule was all about, don’t we?
If we look around, it becomes pretty clear that dirty politics of yesteryears is here to stay with us as long as the likes of GPK are around. This is probably going to be the last chance to weaken the Maoists, who are hell bent on annihilating the multi-party democratic set-up, but looking at GPK’s actions it becomes clear that he is least interested in securing the liberty and freedom of people and more interested in establishing his controversial daughter with zero political acumen in politics. If democracy is all about the likes of Sujata becoming a minister, then people of Nepal will soon back the Maoists for whatever they stand for. For the poorest of poor, whatever the Maoists will have to offer will still be far better than what the likes of Sujata will offer anyways.
The new prime minister, who actually lost the CA elections to a junior Maoist politician, is here to solve the problem with Sujata as a minister and Kul Bahadur Khadka as the security advisor. Trying to consolidate democracy with the assistance of people like these is like banking on Osama Bin Laden to destroy Al Qaeda. Sujata should have faced disciplinary action and Khadka should have been court-martialed for his treacherous act. Rewarding them is the biggest sham in the country today in the name of democracy. With Sujata as a cabinet minister and Khadka as a possible national security adviser, do the Maoists need a mole in the government?
Madhav Kumar Nepal (MKN), with liabilities like Sujata on board and his flip-flopping past, does not come across as someone who can actually solve the problems that confronts the nation. Hiring the right people to do the job is the most important indicator of whether or not the job at hand will be successfully done. Even though it is NC’s prerogative to choose the members it likes to have in the cabinet, it was MKN’s responsibility to ensure that his cabinet members are competent, non-controversial and relatively clean so that people have faith on their ability to deliver in this troubling time. By caving in to GPK’s irresponsible and morally-repugnant act of nominating his daughter as a leader of the NC in the new cabinet, MKN has actually shown that he is ready to compromise his principles and stoop as low as possible to remain in power. If you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
MKN may try to please everyone from GPK to Pushpa Kamal Dahal (PKD) by nominating Sujata and Khadka to increase the longevity of his tenure but by walking in the middle-of-the road, he has tremendously increased the possibility of getting run over by traffic coming in from the opposite direction.
At this point in time, Nepali people are not asking for much. They would be happy if he could just provide them an opportunity to live in peace. Asking for employment, social safety nets and access to healthcare services, which is by and large the government’s responsibility, would be like expecting a mule to give birth to a calf for us to worship during the upcoming “Laxmi Pooja”. So, no point raising our expectations. If politicians’ words were to be taken seriously, we would already have been like Switzerland long time ago.
On contrary, the politics of social mobilization, which the political parties carried out recklessly has surpassed institutional capacity and has dangerously destabilized the country. Maintaining a certain degree of law and order alone will be a great challenge for MKN as violators of law and order have enough cards at their disposal to play, when busted. Ethnicity, caste and class are the few cards that will remain potent to justify innocence till the government ensures inclusion of the people that have been bypassed by the political elites for decades. Providing cabinet berths to a few people from ethnic and indigenous groups is not the answer. Make everyone equal.
In order to empower people, one does not have to be a rebel. Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery, was not a rebel. Was he? Actually people who have been a rebel have fared far worse when it comes to empowering people. Our very own PKD did everything to extract political support from ethnic minorities but when it came to empowering them, he followed in GPK’s footsteps and nominated a couple of people from selected ethnic groups to show that he was sympathetic towards minorities’ rights.
MKN has a chance of a lifetime. His pragmatic actions, which may not be popular at times – and does not have to be – can whitewash his “flip-flopping” past. But, at the same time, if he is unable to come out of the spell of the likes of GPK and PKD and deliver, he will prove that he is just another goofball always ready to compromise on principles and stoop low to remain in the corridors of power.
(This writing was originally published here. It has been reproduced on NepaliPerspectives with the Author's consent)
Monday, June 08, 2009
Monday, June 01, 2009
Role of Energy in New Nepal
(Courtesy: Kalyan Dev Bhattarai)
To day from politicians to intellectuals all are talking about new Nepal, future Nepal, inclusive Nepal and blab blab. The objectives of the different groups may be different to speak about new Nepal, from deceiving the poor innocent people to fulfill their petty interest to real determination of developing the country in new and progressive way. However, what ever pretext you add in front of Nepal to stress your determination to develop Nepal, it will not be fulfilled until you are able to use your available natural resources like the water, herbs, forest, manpower, natural diversity, traditional culture, and etc to the maximum possible in optimum way.
Our small lovely country is well equipped with many types of resources like human, raw minerals, water, forest, and many others but due to lack of political willpower, rampant corruption and absence of required dedication to develop the country, we are unable to use our available resources even to the minimum level. Here we all must understand clearly that by the rhetoric speech of the present day corrupt politician the country can neither develop nor solve its centuries old problems of poverty, exploitation, illiteracy, caste & religious supremacy, corruption, and lack of awareness. These were the main issues and responsible for the Maoist to raise arms and if we are unable to solve these problems some new power will develop in the country and start another arms struggle. To solve all the mentioned problems country need new leadership of young generation with new vision and determination with self respect earned through the honesty and dedication to wards the country. The same old corrupt bunch of hypocritical present day leadership can bring no change.
The vision of future Nepal can not and will not be materialize by following the same old culture of deceiving people and fulfilling the vested interest of few corrupt and proven failures of the past. Future Nepal must be visualized by youth generation to include their aspiration and fulfill their political, social and economical requirement rather than by the same old bureaucrats and decision makers, who have bitterly failed not only to fulfill their responsibility but also to lead the country in the path of development and also bitterly misused and sabotaged the trust of the people. See how cunningly the present P.M provided millions of rupees to his brother Mr. Sushil Koirala in the mane of medical treatment and also to K,P Bhattraai to build his house. Such type of looting the national property is the main objectives of present day leaders and to hope that the same corrupt politicians will build new Nepal is intellectual bankruptcy.
With this introduction I am limiting myself in this article to the role of energy in future Nepal, provided the country is lead by new young generation. It is a well known fact that Nepal has the vast water resources to develop our country provided the country can come out of the old stupid notion that “Nepal can be rich by selling electricity to India” This totally wrong, and antinational concept is developed and campaigned by water mafia group, who from their illegal earning are able to influence the decision makers and other concerned sector of the society as they have plenty of liquid cash earned through commission and other wrong doings. The simple logic of business is that one who invests will get the fruit of profit. Nepal at present economic scenario can not investment required money for possible mega projects and who invests in such projects they will benefit from such projects. The government can be expected to get the fixed royalty as mentioned in the water law and other benefits mentioned in the agreement if any, which can not be major to make any country rich, as in such scenario no outside investor will come to invest huge money.
If we can come out of this stupid notion of selling the hydropower energy to India and getting rich, the opportunity is there to vastly develop our own country by using our own resources for our own benefit. Hydropower is one of the main available natural resources, if properly used can play very important role to develop Nepal fast and vastly fulfilling the vision of new-Nepal. The vision of new Nepal can not be achieved fully depending upon donor’s co-operation, aid and loan. All such cooperation is required for developing country like Nepal, but only as a secondary source, the primary source should be the proper utilization of our own natural resources, honesty, and strong determination to develop the country. Hydropower is one of the main natural resources of the country available for the development of the country. I see the following uses of hydropower in Nepal to cope with the requirement of new-Nepal.
Present scenario
At present Nepal produces only 397.89 MW (Excluding the three thermal power installation of 55.66 MW in total) out of possible 83000 MW potentialities, out of which 42330 MW is proved economically feasible. This shows how poor is our utilization of available resources.
The 550 KW Pharphing hydropower plant was the first hydropower of country which was installed during 1911. It took more than three decades to add another 640KW Sundarijal plant. Further 2.5 MW plant of Panauti was added in 1965.In 1989 the total installed capacity reached to 250 MW due to cooperation of friendly countries and financial institution like World Bank.
The hydropower development was very slow due to various factors and the period of nineties was wasted arguing on the yes or no for Arun III project. In 1995 World Bank pulled out from Arun III which placed the country in imbalance situation of demand and supply, forcing the country to start load shedding
At present load shedding is regular phenomena and future looks more blink. Even with the present growth rate the projected demand of the country by 2020 will be 1840 MW suggesting big gap in supply.
In this scenario our thrust for the optimum utilization of our available resources of the Hydropower should be to develop Hydropower in the range of 50-60 MW cumulatively in all the 75 districts instead of thinking of Mega projects like Pancheswor, Mahakali etc. This policy of developing of Hydropower in all the 75 districts will provide regional balance on development and provide benefits on social, political, and techno-economic sectors. With this policy we will be able to generate a kind of trust to the people from east to west that they are not neglected and included in the path of development. Further this will provide the required energy to all the 75 districts for the industrial growth as well as for other purpose like domestic etc.
Transportation
Transportation is one of the vital sectors for the development of the country to materialize the dream of the new Nepal. Without linking all the seventy five districts of the country with each other to facilitate the flow of the products of each district easily and cheaply, the vision of new Nepal can not be fulfilled. To day we are in such a pathetic situation where we can not supply our own products like apple of mustang, Junar of Ramachap and food grains of southern belt, to all seventy five districts and force to import the same materials in costly price from outside. I feel shame to accept that even after 56 long years of so called independency many of my country’s districts are not connected by road and poor citizen must walk along the ups and downs of the hills to go from one part of the country to other parts even to fulfill simple requirements of governmental formalities.
The frequent landslides and other problems especially during rainy season which hamper the road transportation is mainly due to, the fact that we are forced to cut the slope during the road construction to maintain its required width.
Net work of Electrical Trains
The best solution to visualize the new Nepal is not to connect the districts by 4-6 lane wide high ways but to connect all the seventy five districts of the country with narrow gauge electrical train. This will utilize the available hydropower of the country and save billions of foreign currency which are used to buy fossil fuels from foreign countries. Further this will fulfill our requirements of transportation network essential for the country’s development. The technology is so well developed that it is not necessary to build wide and standard highway which forces us to cut the hill slope to high degree making the landslide and other natural disaster inevitable, to fulfill our transport network, which can be easily accomplished by network of electric train. In addition to this electrical train along the east-west highway will also save lot of money which can be used for other development process
Trolley buses
Similarly the use of trams and electrical buses in the major cosmopolitan cities like Katmandu, Pokhara, Biratnagar, birgung, Butal, Bhairava and many others will save our hard earned foreign currency which are used at present for buying fossil fuels like petroleum, diesel etc.
Rope Ways
Nepal being mountainous the transportation of any construction or day-to-day usable materials from one place to other is very difficult, costly and time consuming. The rope way which has huge potential in the country and very useful as well as practical also can be well developed by properly utilizing the hydropower of the country and can change the development scenario of the country to fit with the vision of new Nepal.
The only cable car of Manakamna has proved that if properly use, cable car can also play very important role in transportation sector, and also can be successful commercially also. There are many potential sites where cable car can be as successful as Manakamna. In new Nepal I see many cable cars all round the country connecting the important temples and tourist center like Muktinath, Gosaikunda, Pathibhara, Thorang, Pass etc.
Industry
The vision of new Nepal can not be achieved with out industrial revolution in the country. Industrial development of the country is very essential to develop our country fast to fulfill the basic requirement of the new-Nepal and the most important factor for the industrial growth is the easy availability of required energy in reasonable price. Without required energy you can not imagine of industrial growth in the country and without industrial growth you can not fulfill the vision of new Nepal.
Fortunately our country has huge potential of hydropower to fulfill the requirement of energy for fast and vast industrial growth to any scale. To day due to high price and unavailability of electricity many potential industry like cement factory, electrolysis, are not feasible in Nepal even though other requirement like raw materials and labor force are easily available in competitive price. Even the existing rubber factory is in problem simply because it can not depend on the energy supply of the NEA and forced to use high priced diesel generated energy to fulfill its requirement
Not only cement and rubber Industry many other industry like automobile industry, electrolysis of water to separate oxygen and hydrogen where the hydrogen can be used to develop fuel to cars, and oxygen for hospital, pesticide/fertilizer industry, canning industry especially where the available fruits like orange, apple lemon, Junar etc have limited market in its natural form due to various reasons can be easily developed provided the energy is available in cheep price.
To-day Nepal lacks industry not because it has no essential raw materials but because any industry becomes economically unfeasible due to high price of energy and compulsion of under table money in every step of our development. At present the government acts as a hurdle for any type of industrial development or any entrepreneurship and can be said without any hesitation that without bringing change in this attitude the vision of new Nepal is impossible. With the hope that the new government of Maoist will take necessary measurement to curb the rampant corruption through the development of due punishment culture to the corrupt people in the country, the development of hydropower will help for the industrial revolution in the country.
Fisheries
Fisheries development is another sector where the tailrace water of hydropower can be properly used and economic benefit can be obtained.
Agriculture
Agriculture is another sector, the development of which is essential to achieve the vision of new Nepal. Nepal being agricultural country and most of the population of the country being engaged in agriculture and its related activities, to imagine Nepal will develop without development of agriculture and its related sector will be foolishness. In this context the role of hydropower become very important to develop the agriculture sector. Irrigation is one of the important parameters for the development of agriculture sector that cannot be optimally developed without the energy being available at reasonable cost.
The government plan to invest heavily on irrigation scheme especially using the underground water through shallow as well as deep tube well scheme. Today most of the tube well scheme is being unproductive mainly due to the heavy tariff of electricity, especially after the removal of the subsidies in the shallow tube well scheme. At present government is continuing the subsidies in the surface as well as deep tube well scheme, but under great pressure from international donor agencies to remove the subsidies. By optimally using our available water resources for the generation of hydropower, the price of the energy can be brought to affordable rate, which will create such a situation where the subsidies from government will not be required for any type of irrigation scheme.
Cold storage and chilling house
The potentiality of chilling house and cold storage in Nepal is very high due to the transportation problems. To fulfill the aspiration of people, new Nepal need as many chilling house and cold storage as the cold drinks and wine shop are noticed to-day. To day due to high energy tariff few of the existing cold storage and chilling house are also not functioning properly and economically unviable. The unsuccessful stories of chilling house and cold storage are mainly due to high energy tariff and we must make the energy available in cheep and affordable price. This is possible if we start developing hydropower at the range of 70-100MW cumulatively in each districts.
Herbal Plants
Nepal is very rich in herbal plants and all types of medically important plants are available in the country. But unfortunately the Nepalese people are unable to use such available resources of the country which are exploited by few corrupt people. This is because the government lacks the proper planning to tap all these available resources and make the best use of these resources. The vision of new Nepal will not be successful with out using tall such naturally available resources of the country. To use all such herbal and other related plants we must have numbers of pharmaceutical industry in the country and that is possible provided we can supply the uninterrupted energy in affordable price. This is not possible with out developing our vastly available hydropower.
Replacement of Traditional Energy
It is a known fact that to day electricity cover only 3% of our total energy use and rest all are cover by wood, fossil fuel, cow dung and etc. Such use of energy in a country where the potentially for hydropower is huge is very ridiculous. Further the environmental effect by use of all these energy and its ill effect in the health of the population are also well known. In this context the new Nepal must replace all such use of traditional energy like wood, cow dung fossil fuel etc by clean energy so that the environmental ill effect as well as the health hazards are minimized. Such replacement is possible only if we changed our concept that Nepal can be rich by selling energy to India and start using our resources for our own use for the development of the Nepalese people.
Conclusion
In this short article I can not deal all the related matters in details. My stress is just to express that the new Nepal concept can not be achieved simply by formulating plan but require some drastic modification in the development concept. Hydropower is our resources and best use of these available resources for our own development is the only possible and feasible solution. So far country’s policy is prepared based on personal vested interest without giving any importance to the development of the people. Time has come now to change our development concept and start doing something seriously for the development of the country and its people.
To day from politicians to intellectuals all are talking about new Nepal, future Nepal, inclusive Nepal and blab blab. The objectives of the different groups may be different to speak about new Nepal, from deceiving the poor innocent people to fulfill their petty interest to real determination of developing the country in new and progressive way. However, what ever pretext you add in front of Nepal to stress your determination to develop Nepal, it will not be fulfilled until you are able to use your available natural resources like the water, herbs, forest, manpower, natural diversity, traditional culture, and etc to the maximum possible in optimum way.
Our small lovely country is well equipped with many types of resources like human, raw minerals, water, forest, and many others but due to lack of political willpower, rampant corruption and absence of required dedication to develop the country, we are unable to use our available resources even to the minimum level. Here we all must understand clearly that by the rhetoric speech of the present day corrupt politician the country can neither develop nor solve its centuries old problems of poverty, exploitation, illiteracy, caste & religious supremacy, corruption, and lack of awareness. These were the main issues and responsible for the Maoist to raise arms and if we are unable to solve these problems some new power will develop in the country and start another arms struggle. To solve all the mentioned problems country need new leadership of young generation with new vision and determination with self respect earned through the honesty and dedication to wards the country. The same old corrupt bunch of hypocritical present day leadership can bring no change.
The vision of future Nepal can not and will not be materialize by following the same old culture of deceiving people and fulfilling the vested interest of few corrupt and proven failures of the past. Future Nepal must be visualized by youth generation to include their aspiration and fulfill their political, social and economical requirement rather than by the same old bureaucrats and decision makers, who have bitterly failed not only to fulfill their responsibility but also to lead the country in the path of development and also bitterly misused and sabotaged the trust of the people. See how cunningly the present P.M provided millions of rupees to his brother Mr. Sushil Koirala in the mane of medical treatment and also to K,P Bhattraai to build his house. Such type of looting the national property is the main objectives of present day leaders and to hope that the same corrupt politicians will build new Nepal is intellectual bankruptcy.
With this introduction I am limiting myself in this article to the role of energy in future Nepal, provided the country is lead by new young generation. It is a well known fact that Nepal has the vast water resources to develop our country provided the country can come out of the old stupid notion that “Nepal can be rich by selling electricity to India” This totally wrong, and antinational concept is developed and campaigned by water mafia group, who from their illegal earning are able to influence the decision makers and other concerned sector of the society as they have plenty of liquid cash earned through commission and other wrong doings. The simple logic of business is that one who invests will get the fruit of profit. Nepal at present economic scenario can not investment required money for possible mega projects and who invests in such projects they will benefit from such projects. The government can be expected to get the fixed royalty as mentioned in the water law and other benefits mentioned in the agreement if any, which can not be major to make any country rich, as in such scenario no outside investor will come to invest huge money.
If we can come out of this stupid notion of selling the hydropower energy to India and getting rich, the opportunity is there to vastly develop our own country by using our own resources for our own benefit. Hydropower is one of the main available natural resources, if properly used can play very important role to develop Nepal fast and vastly fulfilling the vision of new-Nepal. The vision of new Nepal can not be achieved fully depending upon donor’s co-operation, aid and loan. All such cooperation is required for developing country like Nepal, but only as a secondary source, the primary source should be the proper utilization of our own natural resources, honesty, and strong determination to develop the country. Hydropower is one of the main natural resources of the country available for the development of the country. I see the following uses of hydropower in Nepal to cope with the requirement of new-Nepal.
Present scenario
At present Nepal produces only 397.89 MW (Excluding the three thermal power installation of 55.66 MW in total) out of possible 83000 MW potentialities, out of which 42330 MW is proved economically feasible. This shows how poor is our utilization of available resources.
The 550 KW Pharphing hydropower plant was the first hydropower of country which was installed during 1911. It took more than three decades to add another 640KW Sundarijal plant. Further 2.5 MW plant of Panauti was added in 1965.In 1989 the total installed capacity reached to 250 MW due to cooperation of friendly countries and financial institution like World Bank.
The hydropower development was very slow due to various factors and the period of nineties was wasted arguing on the yes or no for Arun III project. In 1995 World Bank pulled out from Arun III which placed the country in imbalance situation of demand and supply, forcing the country to start load shedding
At present load shedding is regular phenomena and future looks more blink. Even with the present growth rate the projected demand of the country by 2020 will be 1840 MW suggesting big gap in supply.
In this scenario our thrust for the optimum utilization of our available resources of the Hydropower should be to develop Hydropower in the range of 50-60 MW cumulatively in all the 75 districts instead of thinking of Mega projects like Pancheswor, Mahakali etc. This policy of developing of Hydropower in all the 75 districts will provide regional balance on development and provide benefits on social, political, and techno-economic sectors. With this policy we will be able to generate a kind of trust to the people from east to west that they are not neglected and included in the path of development. Further this will provide the required energy to all the 75 districts for the industrial growth as well as for other purpose like domestic etc.
Transportation
Transportation is one of the vital sectors for the development of the country to materialize the dream of the new Nepal. Without linking all the seventy five districts of the country with each other to facilitate the flow of the products of each district easily and cheaply, the vision of new Nepal can not be fulfilled. To day we are in such a pathetic situation where we can not supply our own products like apple of mustang, Junar of Ramachap and food grains of southern belt, to all seventy five districts and force to import the same materials in costly price from outside. I feel shame to accept that even after 56 long years of so called independency many of my country’s districts are not connected by road and poor citizen must walk along the ups and downs of the hills to go from one part of the country to other parts even to fulfill simple requirements of governmental formalities.
The frequent landslides and other problems especially during rainy season which hamper the road transportation is mainly due to, the fact that we are forced to cut the slope during the road construction to maintain its required width.
Net work of Electrical Trains
The best solution to visualize the new Nepal is not to connect the districts by 4-6 lane wide high ways but to connect all the seventy five districts of the country with narrow gauge electrical train. This will utilize the available hydropower of the country and save billions of foreign currency which are used to buy fossil fuels from foreign countries. Further this will fulfill our requirements of transportation network essential for the country’s development. The technology is so well developed that it is not necessary to build wide and standard highway which forces us to cut the hill slope to high degree making the landslide and other natural disaster inevitable, to fulfill our transport network, which can be easily accomplished by network of electric train. In addition to this electrical train along the east-west highway will also save lot of money which can be used for other development process
Trolley buses
Similarly the use of trams and electrical buses in the major cosmopolitan cities like Katmandu, Pokhara, Biratnagar, birgung, Butal, Bhairava and many others will save our hard earned foreign currency which are used at present for buying fossil fuels like petroleum, diesel etc.
Rope Ways
Nepal being mountainous the transportation of any construction or day-to-day usable materials from one place to other is very difficult, costly and time consuming. The rope way which has huge potential in the country and very useful as well as practical also can be well developed by properly utilizing the hydropower of the country and can change the development scenario of the country to fit with the vision of new Nepal.
The only cable car of Manakamna has proved that if properly use, cable car can also play very important role in transportation sector, and also can be successful commercially also. There are many potential sites where cable car can be as successful as Manakamna. In new Nepal I see many cable cars all round the country connecting the important temples and tourist center like Muktinath, Gosaikunda, Pathibhara, Thorang, Pass etc.
Industry
The vision of new Nepal can not be achieved with out industrial revolution in the country. Industrial development of the country is very essential to develop our country fast to fulfill the basic requirement of the new-Nepal and the most important factor for the industrial growth is the easy availability of required energy in reasonable price. Without required energy you can not imagine of industrial growth in the country and without industrial growth you can not fulfill the vision of new Nepal.
Fortunately our country has huge potential of hydropower to fulfill the requirement of energy for fast and vast industrial growth to any scale. To day due to high price and unavailability of electricity many potential industry like cement factory, electrolysis, are not feasible in Nepal even though other requirement like raw materials and labor force are easily available in competitive price. Even the existing rubber factory is in problem simply because it can not depend on the energy supply of the NEA and forced to use high priced diesel generated energy to fulfill its requirement
Not only cement and rubber Industry many other industry like automobile industry, electrolysis of water to separate oxygen and hydrogen where the hydrogen can be used to develop fuel to cars, and oxygen for hospital, pesticide/fertilizer industry, canning industry especially where the available fruits like orange, apple lemon, Junar etc have limited market in its natural form due to various reasons can be easily developed provided the energy is available in cheep price.
To-day Nepal lacks industry not because it has no essential raw materials but because any industry becomes economically unfeasible due to high price of energy and compulsion of under table money in every step of our development. At present the government acts as a hurdle for any type of industrial development or any entrepreneurship and can be said without any hesitation that without bringing change in this attitude the vision of new Nepal is impossible. With the hope that the new government of Maoist will take necessary measurement to curb the rampant corruption through the development of due punishment culture to the corrupt people in the country, the development of hydropower will help for the industrial revolution in the country.
Fisheries
Fisheries development is another sector where the tailrace water of hydropower can be properly used and economic benefit can be obtained.
Agriculture
Agriculture is another sector, the development of which is essential to achieve the vision of new Nepal. Nepal being agricultural country and most of the population of the country being engaged in agriculture and its related activities, to imagine Nepal will develop without development of agriculture and its related sector will be foolishness. In this context the role of hydropower become very important to develop the agriculture sector. Irrigation is one of the important parameters for the development of agriculture sector that cannot be optimally developed without the energy being available at reasonable cost.
The government plan to invest heavily on irrigation scheme especially using the underground water through shallow as well as deep tube well scheme. Today most of the tube well scheme is being unproductive mainly due to the heavy tariff of electricity, especially after the removal of the subsidies in the shallow tube well scheme. At present government is continuing the subsidies in the surface as well as deep tube well scheme, but under great pressure from international donor agencies to remove the subsidies. By optimally using our available water resources for the generation of hydropower, the price of the energy can be brought to affordable rate, which will create such a situation where the subsidies from government will not be required for any type of irrigation scheme.
Cold storage and chilling house
The potentiality of chilling house and cold storage in Nepal is very high due to the transportation problems. To fulfill the aspiration of people, new Nepal need as many chilling house and cold storage as the cold drinks and wine shop are noticed to-day. To day due to high energy tariff few of the existing cold storage and chilling house are also not functioning properly and economically unviable. The unsuccessful stories of chilling house and cold storage are mainly due to high energy tariff and we must make the energy available in cheep and affordable price. This is possible if we start developing hydropower at the range of 70-100MW cumulatively in each districts.
Herbal Plants
Nepal is very rich in herbal plants and all types of medically important plants are available in the country. But unfortunately the Nepalese people are unable to use such available resources of the country which are exploited by few corrupt people. This is because the government lacks the proper planning to tap all these available resources and make the best use of these resources. The vision of new Nepal will not be successful with out using tall such naturally available resources of the country. To use all such herbal and other related plants we must have numbers of pharmaceutical industry in the country and that is possible provided we can supply the uninterrupted energy in affordable price. This is not possible with out developing our vastly available hydropower.
Replacement of Traditional Energy
It is a known fact that to day electricity cover only 3% of our total energy use and rest all are cover by wood, fossil fuel, cow dung and etc. Such use of energy in a country where the potentially for hydropower is huge is very ridiculous. Further the environmental effect by use of all these energy and its ill effect in the health of the population are also well known. In this context the new Nepal must replace all such use of traditional energy like wood, cow dung fossil fuel etc by clean energy so that the environmental ill effect as well as the health hazards are minimized. Such replacement is possible only if we changed our concept that Nepal can be rich by selling energy to India and start using our resources for our own use for the development of the Nepalese people.
Conclusion
In this short article I can not deal all the related matters in details. My stress is just to express that the new Nepal concept can not be achieved simply by formulating plan but require some drastic modification in the development concept. Hydropower is our resources and best use of these available resources for our own development is the only possible and feasible solution. So far country’s policy is prepared based on personal vested interest without giving any importance to the development of the people. Time has come now to change our development concept and start doing something seriously for the development of the country and its people.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
All This is Fleeting: Sri Lanka and the Maoists
(Courtesy: Dr. Thomas A. Marks)
When a victorious general was granted a “Triumph” in ancient Rome – a parade through the streets – the sources claim a man rode behind him in his chariot with the specific job of whispering, “All this is fleeting.”
So it must seem with Prachanda and his Maoists.
Indeed, “Fierce One” seemed so spooked by ongoing events in Sri Lanka that he scored an own-goal by bringing up the subject in the recent Kathmandu rally. There will be no such end for the Maoists, he railed, lest any be tempted to think that his band of not-so-merry men would go the way of the declawed Tigers.
Poor Prachanda – the photos of LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) supremo Prabhakaran's body are widely available on the net. Thus it seems he had been reminded that "all are mortal," which is the other phrase the man in the chariot is supposed to have been directed to say.
Antiquity aside, it is useful to draw some lessons for Nepal from the Sri Lankan case. I have spent considerable time in both and cover them in separate chapters of my recent book. In one sense, they are very different, in another much the same.
Dynamics of Sri Lankan Conflict
Democracies struggle in South Asia, where the holding of elections conceals a great deal that is profoundly undemocratic. In particular, parliamentary mechanisms often lead to lack of safeguards for minority positions and marginalization of entire communities.
In Sri Lanka, such a dynamic took the post-independence form of marginalization of the Tamil minority (17%) by the very large Sinhalese majority (80%). Though both communities in reality had further divisions, especially the Tamils (notably, between Sri Lanka and Indian Tamils), it was the need to define the identity of Sri Lanka as a state that set the two nations against each other.
Significantly, both before and during the Tamil upheaval, Sri Lanka faced Maoist upheavals. Both were led by the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna, JVP (People’s Liberation Front), 1971 and 1987-90, and had more of a class character (i.e., poor versus “them”). Even such a general description does not do justice to the complexity of Sri Lankan society that saw the same effort to harness local divisions, whatever they were, by the JVP.
In particular, in a characteristic shared with Nepal’s Maoist insurgency, the first JVP bid for power was driven by upheaval within the young. An agriculturally-based economy; limited alternative sectors unable to provide employment for a rapidly expanding population; an age-pyramid dominated by youth; an educational system teaching the wrong things (and generally in the wrong languages for the jobs available); strong caste influences that further narrowed opportunities; and a democracy which was neither transparent nor efficient; all served to make “liberation” or “revolution” an attractive prospect. The result was death and destruction.
Crushed, the JVP plotted its comeback, which was provided by Indian intervention. “Peacekeeping” to New Delhi, “invasion” to most Sri Lankans, the social explosion that shook the island led to a level of upheaval that would be familiar to Nepalese. With the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) locked in its own battle against the Tamil insurgents in the North and East, the Sri Lankans were able to focus on the Southern, terror-driven violence and finish it. The entire JVP leadership was eliminated, and the survivors joined legal politics – where their bizarre positions today make India’s Marxists appear almost rational.
Significantly, by the time the chastised Indians departed (after a thousand-plus dead and twice that wounded), LTTE had become a full-spectrum insurgency, complete with armor and artillery. Ultimately, it would field everything from aircraft to underwater demolitions teams to suicide squads in three dimensions (land, air, and sea). Large battles included an entire brigade camp (1,200-men) wiped out on the government side.
A post-9/11 ceasefire left LTTE as the de facto rulers of the Tamil-dominated Northern and Eastern Provinces. Yet LTTE leader Prabhakaran was simply unable to leave well enough alone. Just as the Nepali Maoists had their assassination and bombing command in the Kathmandu Valley during the 1996-2006 war), so LTTE had its equivalent. And just as the Maoist-directed YCL is encouraged to continue its depredations, so LTTE executed a campaign of terror in government-controlled areas. The main target was moderate Tamils, hundreds (literally) of whom were assassinated.
Enabling the LTTE effort were the same external actors one finds so dominant in Nepal – even some of the same countries – any number of which have now been told, in so many ways (some directly), that they are no longer welcome in Colombo.
How Did the Sri Lankans Win?
Colombo’s position on foreign intervention in its affairs highlights the key element which led to successful resolution of the present stage of conflict: a mobilization of national will. In this, one could argue that Sri Lanka engaged in a state version of the successful Nepali Maoist mass mobilization in the latter’s surge to power. Taking the analogy a step further, it could be argued that the “lost” decades for Colombo were occasioned by adopting a “Nepali government approach” – unfocused, under-resourced, and lacking mobilization and will.
Early on, 1983-87, the Sri Lankan approach was completely military, even as the 1987-90 counter-JVP effort utilized all elements of national power (with, to be sure, a very “big boy rules” mentality guiding the whole). Thereafter, a gradual but steady shift occurred in which Colombo, while understanding the root causes of the struggle, realized it would have to adopt a philosophy of total mobilization for the ultimate clash.
Why had it not done this previously? States invariably seek to fight limited wars until forced by circumstances to do otherwise. For insurgents, wars are always total. Similarly, internal wars have phases. What is an appropriate course of action at one point in time, say, 1983-87, is not necessarily the path to take in, say, 2006-2009.
In 2006, faced with an LTTE which had wiped out all rival insurgent groups (there were once at least three dozen) – as well as all moderate Tamil politicians it could liquidate – Colombo saw no recourse but renewed violence. The increasingly shrill efforts of external actors to push “peace” foundered on the reality that LTTE was already at war. It had used the latest “ceasefire” in exactly the manner it had done in the past, as a weapon to refit, regroup, and reposition its forces.
In this, LTTE was no different than the Nepali Maoists, who used ceasefires for similar purposes. As I have pointed out in recent articles, the only surprising element in “Prachandagate” is how many seem to have forgotten the earlier evidence of the same behavior. This can not surprise: The Maoists share with LTTE a worldview that sees “struggle” as the normal condition of mankind. Violence and nonviolence are but sides of the same coin. “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
To their credit, the Sri Lankan leadership saw through this strategy and turned the coin on its edge. Indeed, the superb effort at the top, of planning and motivation, was in many respects a family affair, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa relying upon his brothers – Gotabaya, Secretary of Defense, and Basil, special advisor. The three responded with their own “coin,” skillfully constructing a multifaceted effort.
The cutting edge was military, led by the increased professionalism of a very large, battle-hardened military led on the ground by General Sarath Fonseka. But it was built upon political and popular mobilization, combined with astute cultivation of foreign support beyond Sri Lanka’s normal, pro-Western allies.
For the Sri Lankans recognized that, when all was said and done, their Western supporters, whether states or INGOs, would see to their own designs and leave Colombo in the lurch. When this indeed turned out to be the case, Sri Lanka had constructed a position, built upon a network of alternative sources of arms and supplies (notably from China and Pakistan), which allowed it to finish the business.
The elimination of the LTTE counter-state was carried out systematically, despite an active, increasingly shrill campaign that sought outright invasion of the country – under the guise, to be sure, of “humanitarian intervention” a la the former Yugoslavia, with, apparently, a “Tamil Kosovo” to follow.
That the same approach was used by external actors to neutralize the Nepali state in the 1996-2006 period needs no highlighting. That the result looks rather more like the Balkans and rather less like a nation-state also needs no highlighting.
For the neo-colonialists, the very fact that Nepal experienced upheaval meant its old-order lacked legitimacy. Hence, went their logic, it had no right to defend itself.
Sri Lanka provides the same evidence of imperfection, as Sri Lankan politicians, pundits, and intellectuals are quick to point out. Still, they note further, they are Sri Lankan imperfections and will now have a Sri Lankan solution. Nepal remains yet a neo-colony, and there is no leadership in sight of the quality one sees in Colombo.
Road Ahead
Nevertheless, a great deal of effort is now being put into discussing what could go wrong in Sri Lanka. It seems something of a parlor game for the Western media, with the more liberal outlets outraged (the only word for it) that any small Asian country would have the gall to ignore the commands of the “usual suspects,” so used to issuing orders backed by threats of aid cut-offs and “war crimes trials.”
As Colombo continues to steer its own course, the threats have again begun to escalate. They are fruitless. Sri Lanka has committed to reconciliation, but it is unwilling to have the terms of its internal arrangements dictated to it.
What will matter, then, is sincerity. Whether the state can deliver upon its promises to its marginalized minority will become clear soon enough.
This is the state of play in Nepal, as well, with little sincerity in evidence on the part of the prime culprits in the current mess, the Maoists. Indeed, recent Maoist pronouncements do not bode well for timely or acceptable resolution.
Once again, having created a disaster, the Maoists have resorted to threats as their “solution.” They have stated that they will allow the processes of governance and constitution-writing to go forward – but only if they are given what they have demanded all along – the right to run roughshod over NA, as the last stumbling block in their ability to stage a slow-motion coup.
That threatening violence, if one does not get his way, is but violence camouflaged does not enter into Maoist calculations (or those of their external backers). Yet, in the shadow of Sri Lanka, with its carnage enroute to peace, the Maoists have been offered a chance to establish their bonafides.
They can either commit to peaceful politics, or they can choose to continue their sub-rosa violence (much of which is not particularly “sub”). They had eight months to place their cards on the table and proved themselves utterly incompetent at all save 3M: menace, mugging, and murder.
If the Maoists are sincere, it is time to disband the goon squads and engage in politics as per the plain definition of the word, the process whereby society decides and implements who gets what – rights, resources, privileges, and obligations. Politics pursued by “other means” is, as per Clausewitz, no longer politics but war.
History and geography have left Nepal a very imperfect state in search of a nation. As Sri Lanka has been given a second chance, so is this the case for Nepal. It has been given an opportunity to become a nation-state.
In this, the Maoists have a voice, but they must respect that of others. As for the Nepalese chattering classes, on the verge of trying their hand at the ultimate balancing act, coalition politics, they can draw another lesson from the ancients: Carpe Diem – seize the day.
When a victorious general was granted a “Triumph” in ancient Rome – a parade through the streets – the sources claim a man rode behind him in his chariot with the specific job of whispering, “All this is fleeting.”
So it must seem with Prachanda and his Maoists.
Indeed, “Fierce One” seemed so spooked by ongoing events in Sri Lanka that he scored an own-goal by bringing up the subject in the recent Kathmandu rally. There will be no such end for the Maoists, he railed, lest any be tempted to think that his band of not-so-merry men would go the way of the declawed Tigers.
Poor Prachanda – the photos of LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) supremo Prabhakaran's body are widely available on the net. Thus it seems he had been reminded that "all are mortal," which is the other phrase the man in the chariot is supposed to have been directed to say.
Antiquity aside, it is useful to draw some lessons for Nepal from the Sri Lankan case. I have spent considerable time in both and cover them in separate chapters of my recent book. In one sense, they are very different, in another much the same.
Dynamics of Sri Lankan Conflict
Democracies struggle in South Asia, where the holding of elections conceals a great deal that is profoundly undemocratic. In particular, parliamentary mechanisms often lead to lack of safeguards for minority positions and marginalization of entire communities.
In Sri Lanka, such a dynamic took the post-independence form of marginalization of the Tamil minority (17%) by the very large Sinhalese majority (80%). Though both communities in reality had further divisions, especially the Tamils (notably, between Sri Lanka and Indian Tamils), it was the need to define the identity of Sri Lanka as a state that set the two nations against each other.
Significantly, both before and during the Tamil upheaval, Sri Lanka faced Maoist upheavals. Both were led by the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna, JVP (People’s Liberation Front), 1971 and 1987-90, and had more of a class character (i.e., poor versus “them”). Even such a general description does not do justice to the complexity of Sri Lankan society that saw the same effort to harness local divisions, whatever they were, by the JVP.
In particular, in a characteristic shared with Nepal’s Maoist insurgency, the first JVP bid for power was driven by upheaval within the young. An agriculturally-based economy; limited alternative sectors unable to provide employment for a rapidly expanding population; an age-pyramid dominated by youth; an educational system teaching the wrong things (and generally in the wrong languages for the jobs available); strong caste influences that further narrowed opportunities; and a democracy which was neither transparent nor efficient; all served to make “liberation” or “revolution” an attractive prospect. The result was death and destruction.
Crushed, the JVP plotted its comeback, which was provided by Indian intervention. “Peacekeeping” to New Delhi, “invasion” to most Sri Lankans, the social explosion that shook the island led to a level of upheaval that would be familiar to Nepalese. With the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) locked in its own battle against the Tamil insurgents in the North and East, the Sri Lankans were able to focus on the Southern, terror-driven violence and finish it. The entire JVP leadership was eliminated, and the survivors joined legal politics – where their bizarre positions today make India’s Marxists appear almost rational.
Significantly, by the time the chastised Indians departed (after a thousand-plus dead and twice that wounded), LTTE had become a full-spectrum insurgency, complete with armor and artillery. Ultimately, it would field everything from aircraft to underwater demolitions teams to suicide squads in three dimensions (land, air, and sea). Large battles included an entire brigade camp (1,200-men) wiped out on the government side.
A post-9/11 ceasefire left LTTE as the de facto rulers of the Tamil-dominated Northern and Eastern Provinces. Yet LTTE leader Prabhakaran was simply unable to leave well enough alone. Just as the Nepali Maoists had their assassination and bombing command in the Kathmandu Valley during the 1996-2006 war), so LTTE had its equivalent. And just as the Maoist-directed YCL is encouraged to continue its depredations, so LTTE executed a campaign of terror in government-controlled areas. The main target was moderate Tamils, hundreds (literally) of whom were assassinated.
Enabling the LTTE effort were the same external actors one finds so dominant in Nepal – even some of the same countries – any number of which have now been told, in so many ways (some directly), that they are no longer welcome in Colombo.
How Did the Sri Lankans Win?
Colombo’s position on foreign intervention in its affairs highlights the key element which led to successful resolution of the present stage of conflict: a mobilization of national will. In this, one could argue that Sri Lanka engaged in a state version of the successful Nepali Maoist mass mobilization in the latter’s surge to power. Taking the analogy a step further, it could be argued that the “lost” decades for Colombo were occasioned by adopting a “Nepali government approach” – unfocused, under-resourced, and lacking mobilization and will.
Early on, 1983-87, the Sri Lankan approach was completely military, even as the 1987-90 counter-JVP effort utilized all elements of national power (with, to be sure, a very “big boy rules” mentality guiding the whole). Thereafter, a gradual but steady shift occurred in which Colombo, while understanding the root causes of the struggle, realized it would have to adopt a philosophy of total mobilization for the ultimate clash.
Why had it not done this previously? States invariably seek to fight limited wars until forced by circumstances to do otherwise. For insurgents, wars are always total. Similarly, internal wars have phases. What is an appropriate course of action at one point in time, say, 1983-87, is not necessarily the path to take in, say, 2006-2009.
In 2006, faced with an LTTE which had wiped out all rival insurgent groups (there were once at least three dozen) – as well as all moderate Tamil politicians it could liquidate – Colombo saw no recourse but renewed violence. The increasingly shrill efforts of external actors to push “peace” foundered on the reality that LTTE was already at war. It had used the latest “ceasefire” in exactly the manner it had done in the past, as a weapon to refit, regroup, and reposition its forces.
In this, LTTE was no different than the Nepali Maoists, who used ceasefires for similar purposes. As I have pointed out in recent articles, the only surprising element in “Prachandagate” is how many seem to have forgotten the earlier evidence of the same behavior. This can not surprise: The Maoists share with LTTE a worldview that sees “struggle” as the normal condition of mankind. Violence and nonviolence are but sides of the same coin. “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
To their credit, the Sri Lankan leadership saw through this strategy and turned the coin on its edge. Indeed, the superb effort at the top, of planning and motivation, was in many respects a family affair, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa relying upon his brothers – Gotabaya, Secretary of Defense, and Basil, special advisor. The three responded with their own “coin,” skillfully constructing a multifaceted effort.
The cutting edge was military, led by the increased professionalism of a very large, battle-hardened military led on the ground by General Sarath Fonseka. But it was built upon political and popular mobilization, combined with astute cultivation of foreign support beyond Sri Lanka’s normal, pro-Western allies.
For the Sri Lankans recognized that, when all was said and done, their Western supporters, whether states or INGOs, would see to their own designs and leave Colombo in the lurch. When this indeed turned out to be the case, Sri Lanka had constructed a position, built upon a network of alternative sources of arms and supplies (notably from China and Pakistan), which allowed it to finish the business.
The elimination of the LTTE counter-state was carried out systematically, despite an active, increasingly shrill campaign that sought outright invasion of the country – under the guise, to be sure, of “humanitarian intervention” a la the former Yugoslavia, with, apparently, a “Tamil Kosovo” to follow.
That the same approach was used by external actors to neutralize the Nepali state in the 1996-2006 period needs no highlighting. That the result looks rather more like the Balkans and rather less like a nation-state also needs no highlighting.
For the neo-colonialists, the very fact that Nepal experienced upheaval meant its old-order lacked legitimacy. Hence, went their logic, it had no right to defend itself.
Sri Lanka provides the same evidence of imperfection, as Sri Lankan politicians, pundits, and intellectuals are quick to point out. Still, they note further, they are Sri Lankan imperfections and will now have a Sri Lankan solution. Nepal remains yet a neo-colony, and there is no leadership in sight of the quality one sees in Colombo.
Road Ahead
Nevertheless, a great deal of effort is now being put into discussing what could go wrong in Sri Lanka. It seems something of a parlor game for the Western media, with the more liberal outlets outraged (the only word for it) that any small Asian country would have the gall to ignore the commands of the “usual suspects,” so used to issuing orders backed by threats of aid cut-offs and “war crimes trials.”
As Colombo continues to steer its own course, the threats have again begun to escalate. They are fruitless. Sri Lanka has committed to reconciliation, but it is unwilling to have the terms of its internal arrangements dictated to it.
What will matter, then, is sincerity. Whether the state can deliver upon its promises to its marginalized minority will become clear soon enough.
This is the state of play in Nepal, as well, with little sincerity in evidence on the part of the prime culprits in the current mess, the Maoists. Indeed, recent Maoist pronouncements do not bode well for timely or acceptable resolution.
Once again, having created a disaster, the Maoists have resorted to threats as their “solution.” They have stated that they will allow the processes of governance and constitution-writing to go forward – but only if they are given what they have demanded all along – the right to run roughshod over NA, as the last stumbling block in their ability to stage a slow-motion coup.
That threatening violence, if one does not get his way, is but violence camouflaged does not enter into Maoist calculations (or those of their external backers). Yet, in the shadow of Sri Lanka, with its carnage enroute to peace, the Maoists have been offered a chance to establish their bonafides.
They can either commit to peaceful politics, or they can choose to continue their sub-rosa violence (much of which is not particularly “sub”). They had eight months to place their cards on the table and proved themselves utterly incompetent at all save 3M: menace, mugging, and murder.
If the Maoists are sincere, it is time to disband the goon squads and engage in politics as per the plain definition of the word, the process whereby society decides and implements who gets what – rights, resources, privileges, and obligations. Politics pursued by “other means” is, as per Clausewitz, no longer politics but war.
History and geography have left Nepal a very imperfect state in search of a nation. As Sri Lanka has been given a second chance, so is this the case for Nepal. It has been given an opportunity to become a nation-state.
In this, the Maoists have a voice, but they must respect that of others. As for the Nepalese chattering classes, on the verge of trying their hand at the ultimate balancing act, coalition politics, they can draw another lesson from the ancients: Carpe Diem – seize the day.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
MAOIST INSURGENCY: RETURN OF THE NIGHTMARE
(Courtesy: Dr. Thomas A. Marks)
(Originally published in "India and Global Affairs [New Delhi], Apr-Jun 09," re-posted here with the Author's consent).
Dr. Thomas A. Marks is a political risk consultant based in Honolulu, Hawaii, who has authored a number of benchmark works on Maoist insurgency, to include his recent Maoist People’s War in Post-Vietnam Asia.
Maoist insurgency is back. People’s war, once thought to have ended with the Cold War, is alive and well in South Asia. Large parts of India are effectively “no-go” areas. Bangladeshi officers cite Maoism as a greater threat than violent radical Islamists. Sri Lanka, having twice decimated the Maoist JVP at considerable human cost, now has them in the ruling coalition, where their often-bizarre positions are a faithful replication of India’s own legal Maoist spectrum. And to the north, what was the world’s only official Hindu kingdom finds itself now ruled by a party which yet begins its meetings before pictures of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao (Nepalis all, cynics note).
Ironically, New Delhi can look to its own intervention for the Maoist victory in Nepal. It was South Bloc which gave heed to the legal left and, in return for the swing votes which allowed Congress to cling to power, effectively ceded control of Nepali policy to the Indian Marxists. The shift brought on by Marxist opposition to the nuclear pact with the US came too late to save Kathmandu, and the country is now a failed state, posing a far greater security threat than ever it did when it was convulsed by war.
Ironically, too, Maoist growth in the Subcontinent continues even as the last real threat elsewhere, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has been decimated and driven into a survival posture. Marxist but not Maoist, FARC nevertheless used a potent version of people’s war as its revolutionary doctrine. Copied from a combination of FMLN (El Salvador) and Vietnamese manuals, it was only national mobilization under President Alvaro Uribe (2002-present) which reversed the tide.
Why this stunning reality in South Asia? Why now?
Brave New World
The answer to the first query is that South Asia has long had the perfect conditions for Maoist upheaval. To the second, that the age of globalism has exacerbated many of these conditions.
Indeed, it can be argued that the present global situation is “the perfect storm,” combining as it does elements of two past eras of carnage. The first was the profound, irrevocable upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, which gave Europe the so-called “Age of Revolution” and the first age of terrorism. The second was the economic, social, and political despair of the interim between the world wars, which produced the twin nightmares of Stalinism and Fascism and their stupefying cost to humanity.
That terrorism has returned to lash out against the Brave New World of globalism hardly needs mention. It only needs emphasis how sterile is the approach that seeks to gather individual characteristics of those who, say, blow themselves up and then generalizes to the whole. Quite the contrary, it is the context, married to organizational acumen and finesse, that taps individual particulars. Nowhere is this more evident than in the violent radical Islamist organizations, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
It is the violent radical Islamists who are the modern manifestation of fascism (termed by some, Islamofascists), complete with an anti-Semitism that would make the early Hitler of Mein Kampf appear somehow inadequate in his virulence. It is the Maoists who are heirs to Stalinism. Indeed, South Asian communism is distinguished by its continued domination by the thought of one of history’s most loathsome figures, Stalin.
In “globalism,” what was often local is now all but invariably international. Eras of profound change produce winners and losers. Mao emerged from the death of the Chinese imperial system and the clash between two alternative views of its successor, the Republic of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the “People’s Republic” of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). By exploiting everything from economic-social-political dislocation to Japanese invasion, he was able to build a challenge capable in the end of seizing the world’s most populous country.
Inspired, self-proclaimed Maoist insurgencies emerged in the likes of Malaya, Thailand, the Philippines, Burma, Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka, Peru, and ultimately Nepal. Even communist but non-Maoist insurgencies recognized the efficacy of people’s war as strategy, and potent versions were seen in Vietnam, Laos, El Salvador, and Colombia. More often than not, linkages were established between the theaters of conflict, with China often directly involved in assisting its ideological partners.
For a time after the end of the Cold War, Maoism seemed a past nightmare. Globalism and the spectacular growth of challenges to the nation-state ensured that the heyday of people’s war was recreated in South Asia. Pronounced economic-social-political imperfections ensured that the 21st Century would see a new age of Maoist bloodshed, with ideologically inspired leaders mobilizing the alienated masses.
Nature of the Challenge
Maoism as a goal seeks to reorder society in a quest for social justice. There is no template as to how this reordering is to take place, except that it is to be Marxist-Leninist (communist). Theoretically a transitional dictatorship guiding socialism to achieve communal ownership of the means of production, in reality it has led only to would-be totalitarianism and attendant human carnage. Even China, where Mao Tse-tung invented the particular politico-military approach that is people’s war, has turned its back on “Maoist” ideology, which produced a tragedy conservatively estimated to have cost 80 million lives.
This is irrelevant to Maoists elsewhere. Arising in terribly flawed states such as Peru or Cambodia, Maoist insurgents seek a way out of the structural abyss by championing a triumph of the will.
Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) saw the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” of 1967-76 as a model for its future Peru. China saw it as a self-inflicted disaster that cost the lives of millions. The Khmer Rouge saw in their own “Year Zero” approach the Cambodian version of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” which latest research convincingly demonstrates to have cost between 30 and 50 million lives. In Cambodia, between one-fifth and one-third of the population perished.
Whatever the lack of a realistic goal, the means to achieve the end is manpower, mobilizing the masses in order to overwhelm the foe. The way, linking means to goal, is the strategy of people’s war. The mobilized masses are organized into a new state, a “counter-state,” to challenge the existing state.
In this mobilization, “all politics is local.” Leaders, normally drawn from marginalized elites – divorced either objectively or subjectively (in the mind) – look at the imperfections of the state and advance Maoism as the solution. Specifics need not be spelled out, since utopia is sufficient inspiration for followers, who seek redress of immediate grievances (as well as reinforcement of hopes and aspirations).
Any people’s war, then, is in reality myriad local wars, with “Maoism” serving only as the driver for leadership and committed cadres. Indoctrination of the so-called “grievance guerrillas” gives the effort greater cohesion.
Role of Violence
People’s war is a strategy for armed politics. The mistake is to think it is merely “war,” by which we normally mean action between armed forces. To the contrary, people’s war is very much like any electoral campaign – except violence ensures “the cards favor.”
Significantly, rebels such as the Maoists claim they are merely doing what the state itself has been doing all along. They assert there never has been “non-violent politics.” Rather, echoing Lenin, they label democratic politics practiced by the “old-order” but a façade for oppression. This oppression is carried out using the violence of the state through its armed component, the security forces, as well as the “structural violence” of poverty and injustice.
Thus the Maoists see themselves as engaged in a struggle for liberation, of self-defense even. Such a struggle will proceed along different but orchestrated lines of effort. Use of violence is but one line of effort. Within that line of effort, there are varied forms of violence, from assassinations to main force attacks – the large actions that seek to battle units of the armed forces on even terms.
Each type of violence – terror, guerrilla warfare, main force warfare, war of position (i.e., liberated areas) – may be thought of as a campaign, comprised of numerous discrete acts separate in time and space yet connected in a unity of action designed to achieve a goal. We can speak, for instance, of the campaign of terror that the Maoists use to eliminate all who oppose them in local areas, whether individuals or police. Who can forget those famous photos of the mutilated individuals in Nepal, especially teachers, their limbs hacked, their bodies hanging from poles?
Yet such terror occurs for a reason: to clear the space for political action, to eliminate competitors. This is why legal political activists are normally particular targets. They compete to mobilize the same target audience as the Maoists. Such rivals must be driven out so that the Maoist cadres have uncontested access to the masses. This clears the way for insurgent political mobilization.
Of course, such methods are anathema, even as certain portions of the party platform are attractive. It is for this reason that the Maoists sponsor a multitude of front organizations, the wide variety, for instance, of ethnic and community rights organizations one sees from the Philippines to Nepal to India. On the surface, they are not Maoist, but in reality fronts are controlled by the Maoists. Student, labor, and human rights organizations are normally prominent in this respect.
Such control need not be direct. Fronts can present themselves as independent, even as they are being used to enhance Maoist strength. Lenin called those who unwittingly join such fronts, thinking they are acting on their own, “useful idiots.”
Even as this goes on inside the country, the Maoists work outside. States tend to focus upon the tangible links. Much more important is the information campaign of the insurgents, designed to present their movement as almost benign. As states make mistakes, such as seen in instances of indiscipline when military units are deployed, these are exploited to claim the state itself is the problem, terror as but a natural, defensive component of the solution.
For a Maoist movement, the goal is always power. They must have power, because their goal is to refashion society. They are not seeking reintegration. That would be to accept the structure that exists and to play by that structure’s rules.
Quite vocally, they reject the legitimacy of that structure and its rules. That is why they are adamant that there must be a remaking of society.
Have they worked out the details of what this new society will look like? Of course not. That is the beauty of being the political challenger. Today’s realities can be opposed with tomorrow’s promises.
This is what politicians always do, even those who run “on my record.” The danger of left-wing ideologues, such as the Maoists, is that their worldview dramatically constrains their view of possibilities.
They tend to think of fantasies, such as “self-reliance” and “independence,” as ends that can be achieved if only “will” is harnessed. It was just such fantasies, implemented through violence, that gave us the astonishing crimes of the past century – crimes, it must be noted, the Maoists deny occurred.
India’s Need for Enhanced Approach
India’s approach to the Maoists in South Asia, whether internal or elsewhere, has been consistently misguided, improperly inspired and organized, and wholly tactical.
Internally, there has been a failure to take the threat seriously. The conceptualization of the Maoists as having a military and a political wing quite misses the reality of an armed political party advancing on five lines of effort – political (mass mobilization), allies (creating fronts), violence (of various types, not all present but interlocking when such is the case), political warfare (using nonviolent actions, such as subversion, to make violence more effective), and international (which can be decisive).
The inability or unwillingness of the center to coordinate an inter-state response allows the unified Maoist challenge to play the seams between state forces. Such assistance as New Delhi has provided has been tactical. Calling an individual and small unit tactical center for police “counterinsurgency training” highlights the point. Counterinsurgency is a strategic category. There are no “counterinsurgency tactics,” only tactics applied appropriately in support of correct strategy and operational art.
Externally, India has erred in thinking the Maoists are but a version of the Northeast ethnic insurgents and thus can be “bought.” Nepal offers the best example to the contrary.
There, the Maoists first used the monarchy as their foil, as a surrogate for what they claimed was its role in the old-order. If the “feudal monarchy” is swept away, they endlessly repeated, all would be right with Nepal. In this, they certainly were assisted by the tragic circumstances which placed the then-incumbent, Gyanendra, on the throne. Similarly, they were assisted by his mistakes in maneuvering through the maze of Nepali politics.
A number of elements figured into their calculations. First, as the hegemonic power in an unstable subcontinent, India wanted restoration of order. This was necessary for precisely the reasons stability is desired in Sri Lanka. Disorder produces refugees, unleashes intra-Indian passions, transfers elements of the conflict to Indian soil, and sucks New Delhi into foreign policy nastiness. Second, having opted for order, India played a hand well known to its smaller neighbors: intervention. The only question was how to intervene.
Here, there are several schools of thought. My past work in Sri Lanka has led to my being less than charitable as to Indian motives. In the Sri Lankan case, New Delhi was into everything from supporting terrorism to running covert ops in a friendly, neighboring democracy. Only when the Frankenstein it helped to create, LTTE, turned on its former benefactor did logic and morality reassert themselves in New Delhi’s policy.
In this case, in Nepal, it is perhaps too early to speak in such terms. What we know at the moment is that is that the weak position of the coalition government in New Delhi, combined with its normal “Great Game” psychology and the eagerness of certain Indian personalities, especially on the left, to expand their own role and spheres of involvement, led to a policy shift that supported SPAM (the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists).
It was disappointing and tragic that the SPA and the Palace could not have a meeting of minds. Parliamentary democracy should have been the ultimate bulwark against the Maoist challenge, but the very nature of Nepali parliamentary democracy, with its corruption and ineptitude, led to its marginalization. The increasingly bitter split between SPA and the king became all but inevitable in such circumstances, but personalities also played a central role, as they do in all that occurs in Nepal.
It seems equally clear that India, as it did previously in Sri Lanka, went into the present endeavor quite misinformed by its alleged experts, not to mention its intelligence organs, and that it was ignorant as to the actual nature of the Maoists – no matter the efforts of those same personalities just mentioned to claim how wise, thoughtful, and caring Prachanda and other members of the Maoists leadership were.
In once again misreading the situation in a neighboring state, India now seeks a “soft landing.” To get one, New Delhi’s strategy has been to facilitate in Nepal creation of a “West Bengal” or a “Kerala” – states where the tamed Indian left challenges and even rules (sometimes, in the case of the latter), where it continues with its nasty verbiage and bizarre worldview, but where it must respond to the realities of power and hence stay within the lanes on the national political highway.
What New Delhi has overlooked is that such realities occur in India only because of the capacity of the national state to force compliance. Subtract the Indian military, paramilitary, and police forces from the equation, and India would be anarchy. Not surprisingly, that is the very term being used by many to describe the situation in Nepal.
This has its own implications for India’s security and for its struggle against the growing strength of the Indian Maoists. What Nepal itself is facing is the “state within a state” as seen in Palestine with Hamas and Lebanon with Hezbollah. Whether events play themselves out as we are seeing even now in the Middle East depends quite upon what the Maoists are actually up to.
Hamas and Hezbollah have behaved as the Nepali Maoists seem determined to behave, to participate in “the system” only to use it for their own ends. Those “ends,” obviously, have now made life even worse for the population.
The Way Ahead
What Nepal as a state never understood was that it faced an armed political campaign. This means – a lesson for India -- that democracy, no matter how messy, accompanied by good governance and transparency, should be at the heart of any response to the Maoists, with the security forces providing the shield.
Nepali parliamentary democracy proved incapable of using mobilization of democratic capacity to defend itself. It did not do what the Thai, the Filipinos, the Peruvians, and the Sri Lankans (against the JVP, twice) did to defeat their Maoists. They brought reform to imperfect systems and made them better. They remain imperfect, but so are all systems. And they are not the vicious, man-eating systems as desired by the left-wing, of which the Maoists are the premier representatives.
It should be obvious that the claim that there is “no military solution” to insurgency is simply a canard. Armed capacity enables the campaign of reform, because armed capacity is what enables the challenge to the old-order.
In circumstances such as India (or Nepal earlier), security forces are not committed simply to defend the status quo. They must be committed to defend transformation. That transformation, though, must look rather more like what can be seen in India as it advances toward economic, social, and political modernity – and a lot less like Mao’s China.
(Originally published in "India and Global Affairs [New Delhi], Apr-Jun 09," re-posted here with the Author's consent).
Dr. Thomas A. Marks is a political risk consultant based in Honolulu, Hawaii, who has authored a number of benchmark works on Maoist insurgency, to include his recent Maoist People’s War in Post-Vietnam Asia.
Maoist insurgency is back. People’s war, once thought to have ended with the Cold War, is alive and well in South Asia. Large parts of India are effectively “no-go” areas. Bangladeshi officers cite Maoism as a greater threat than violent radical Islamists. Sri Lanka, having twice decimated the Maoist JVP at considerable human cost, now has them in the ruling coalition, where their often-bizarre positions are a faithful replication of India’s own legal Maoist spectrum. And to the north, what was the world’s only official Hindu kingdom finds itself now ruled by a party which yet begins its meetings before pictures of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao (Nepalis all, cynics note).
Ironically, New Delhi can look to its own intervention for the Maoist victory in Nepal. It was South Bloc which gave heed to the legal left and, in return for the swing votes which allowed Congress to cling to power, effectively ceded control of Nepali policy to the Indian Marxists. The shift brought on by Marxist opposition to the nuclear pact with the US came too late to save Kathmandu, and the country is now a failed state, posing a far greater security threat than ever it did when it was convulsed by war.
Ironically, too, Maoist growth in the Subcontinent continues even as the last real threat elsewhere, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has been decimated and driven into a survival posture. Marxist but not Maoist, FARC nevertheless used a potent version of people’s war as its revolutionary doctrine. Copied from a combination of FMLN (El Salvador) and Vietnamese manuals, it was only national mobilization under President Alvaro Uribe (2002-present) which reversed the tide.
Why this stunning reality in South Asia? Why now?
Brave New World
The answer to the first query is that South Asia has long had the perfect conditions for Maoist upheaval. To the second, that the age of globalism has exacerbated many of these conditions.
Indeed, it can be argued that the present global situation is “the perfect storm,” combining as it does elements of two past eras of carnage. The first was the profound, irrevocable upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, which gave Europe the so-called “Age of Revolution” and the first age of terrorism. The second was the economic, social, and political despair of the interim between the world wars, which produced the twin nightmares of Stalinism and Fascism and their stupefying cost to humanity.
That terrorism has returned to lash out against the Brave New World of globalism hardly needs mention. It only needs emphasis how sterile is the approach that seeks to gather individual characteristics of those who, say, blow themselves up and then generalizes to the whole. Quite the contrary, it is the context, married to organizational acumen and finesse, that taps individual particulars. Nowhere is this more evident than in the violent radical Islamist organizations, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
It is the violent radical Islamists who are the modern manifestation of fascism (termed by some, Islamofascists), complete with an anti-Semitism that would make the early Hitler of Mein Kampf appear somehow inadequate in his virulence. It is the Maoists who are heirs to Stalinism. Indeed, South Asian communism is distinguished by its continued domination by the thought of one of history’s most loathsome figures, Stalin.
In “globalism,” what was often local is now all but invariably international. Eras of profound change produce winners and losers. Mao emerged from the death of the Chinese imperial system and the clash between two alternative views of its successor, the Republic of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the “People’s Republic” of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). By exploiting everything from economic-social-political dislocation to Japanese invasion, he was able to build a challenge capable in the end of seizing the world’s most populous country.
Inspired, self-proclaimed Maoist insurgencies emerged in the likes of Malaya, Thailand, the Philippines, Burma, Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka, Peru, and ultimately Nepal. Even communist but non-Maoist insurgencies recognized the efficacy of people’s war as strategy, and potent versions were seen in Vietnam, Laos, El Salvador, and Colombia. More often than not, linkages were established between the theaters of conflict, with China often directly involved in assisting its ideological partners.
For a time after the end of the Cold War, Maoism seemed a past nightmare. Globalism and the spectacular growth of challenges to the nation-state ensured that the heyday of people’s war was recreated in South Asia. Pronounced economic-social-political imperfections ensured that the 21st Century would see a new age of Maoist bloodshed, with ideologically inspired leaders mobilizing the alienated masses.
Nature of the Challenge
Maoism as a goal seeks to reorder society in a quest for social justice. There is no template as to how this reordering is to take place, except that it is to be Marxist-Leninist (communist). Theoretically a transitional dictatorship guiding socialism to achieve communal ownership of the means of production, in reality it has led only to would-be totalitarianism and attendant human carnage. Even China, where Mao Tse-tung invented the particular politico-military approach that is people’s war, has turned its back on “Maoist” ideology, which produced a tragedy conservatively estimated to have cost 80 million lives.
This is irrelevant to Maoists elsewhere. Arising in terribly flawed states such as Peru or Cambodia, Maoist insurgents seek a way out of the structural abyss by championing a triumph of the will.
Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) saw the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” of 1967-76 as a model for its future Peru. China saw it as a self-inflicted disaster that cost the lives of millions. The Khmer Rouge saw in their own “Year Zero” approach the Cambodian version of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” which latest research convincingly demonstrates to have cost between 30 and 50 million lives. In Cambodia, between one-fifth and one-third of the population perished.
Whatever the lack of a realistic goal, the means to achieve the end is manpower, mobilizing the masses in order to overwhelm the foe. The way, linking means to goal, is the strategy of people’s war. The mobilized masses are organized into a new state, a “counter-state,” to challenge the existing state.
In this mobilization, “all politics is local.” Leaders, normally drawn from marginalized elites – divorced either objectively or subjectively (in the mind) – look at the imperfections of the state and advance Maoism as the solution. Specifics need not be spelled out, since utopia is sufficient inspiration for followers, who seek redress of immediate grievances (as well as reinforcement of hopes and aspirations).
Any people’s war, then, is in reality myriad local wars, with “Maoism” serving only as the driver for leadership and committed cadres. Indoctrination of the so-called “grievance guerrillas” gives the effort greater cohesion.
Role of Violence
People’s war is a strategy for armed politics. The mistake is to think it is merely “war,” by which we normally mean action between armed forces. To the contrary, people’s war is very much like any electoral campaign – except violence ensures “the cards favor.”
Significantly, rebels such as the Maoists claim they are merely doing what the state itself has been doing all along. They assert there never has been “non-violent politics.” Rather, echoing Lenin, they label democratic politics practiced by the “old-order” but a façade for oppression. This oppression is carried out using the violence of the state through its armed component, the security forces, as well as the “structural violence” of poverty and injustice.
Thus the Maoists see themselves as engaged in a struggle for liberation, of self-defense even. Such a struggle will proceed along different but orchestrated lines of effort. Use of violence is but one line of effort. Within that line of effort, there are varied forms of violence, from assassinations to main force attacks – the large actions that seek to battle units of the armed forces on even terms.
Each type of violence – terror, guerrilla warfare, main force warfare, war of position (i.e., liberated areas) – may be thought of as a campaign, comprised of numerous discrete acts separate in time and space yet connected in a unity of action designed to achieve a goal. We can speak, for instance, of the campaign of terror that the Maoists use to eliminate all who oppose them in local areas, whether individuals or police. Who can forget those famous photos of the mutilated individuals in Nepal, especially teachers, their limbs hacked, their bodies hanging from poles?
Yet such terror occurs for a reason: to clear the space for political action, to eliminate competitors. This is why legal political activists are normally particular targets. They compete to mobilize the same target audience as the Maoists. Such rivals must be driven out so that the Maoist cadres have uncontested access to the masses. This clears the way for insurgent political mobilization.
Of course, such methods are anathema, even as certain portions of the party platform are attractive. It is for this reason that the Maoists sponsor a multitude of front organizations, the wide variety, for instance, of ethnic and community rights organizations one sees from the Philippines to Nepal to India. On the surface, they are not Maoist, but in reality fronts are controlled by the Maoists. Student, labor, and human rights organizations are normally prominent in this respect.
Such control need not be direct. Fronts can present themselves as independent, even as they are being used to enhance Maoist strength. Lenin called those who unwittingly join such fronts, thinking they are acting on their own, “useful idiots.”
Even as this goes on inside the country, the Maoists work outside. States tend to focus upon the tangible links. Much more important is the information campaign of the insurgents, designed to present their movement as almost benign. As states make mistakes, such as seen in instances of indiscipline when military units are deployed, these are exploited to claim the state itself is the problem, terror as but a natural, defensive component of the solution.
For a Maoist movement, the goal is always power. They must have power, because their goal is to refashion society. They are not seeking reintegration. That would be to accept the structure that exists and to play by that structure’s rules.
Quite vocally, they reject the legitimacy of that structure and its rules. That is why they are adamant that there must be a remaking of society.
Have they worked out the details of what this new society will look like? Of course not. That is the beauty of being the political challenger. Today’s realities can be opposed with tomorrow’s promises.
This is what politicians always do, even those who run “on my record.” The danger of left-wing ideologues, such as the Maoists, is that their worldview dramatically constrains their view of possibilities.
They tend to think of fantasies, such as “self-reliance” and “independence,” as ends that can be achieved if only “will” is harnessed. It was just such fantasies, implemented through violence, that gave us the astonishing crimes of the past century – crimes, it must be noted, the Maoists deny occurred.
India’s Need for Enhanced Approach
India’s approach to the Maoists in South Asia, whether internal or elsewhere, has been consistently misguided, improperly inspired and organized, and wholly tactical.
Internally, there has been a failure to take the threat seriously. The conceptualization of the Maoists as having a military and a political wing quite misses the reality of an armed political party advancing on five lines of effort – political (mass mobilization), allies (creating fronts), violence (of various types, not all present but interlocking when such is the case), political warfare (using nonviolent actions, such as subversion, to make violence more effective), and international (which can be decisive).
The inability or unwillingness of the center to coordinate an inter-state response allows the unified Maoist challenge to play the seams between state forces. Such assistance as New Delhi has provided has been tactical. Calling an individual and small unit tactical center for police “counterinsurgency training” highlights the point. Counterinsurgency is a strategic category. There are no “counterinsurgency tactics,” only tactics applied appropriately in support of correct strategy and operational art.
Externally, India has erred in thinking the Maoists are but a version of the Northeast ethnic insurgents and thus can be “bought.” Nepal offers the best example to the contrary.
There, the Maoists first used the monarchy as their foil, as a surrogate for what they claimed was its role in the old-order. If the “feudal monarchy” is swept away, they endlessly repeated, all would be right with Nepal. In this, they certainly were assisted by the tragic circumstances which placed the then-incumbent, Gyanendra, on the throne. Similarly, they were assisted by his mistakes in maneuvering through the maze of Nepali politics.
A number of elements figured into their calculations. First, as the hegemonic power in an unstable subcontinent, India wanted restoration of order. This was necessary for precisely the reasons stability is desired in Sri Lanka. Disorder produces refugees, unleashes intra-Indian passions, transfers elements of the conflict to Indian soil, and sucks New Delhi into foreign policy nastiness. Second, having opted for order, India played a hand well known to its smaller neighbors: intervention. The only question was how to intervene.
Here, there are several schools of thought. My past work in Sri Lanka has led to my being less than charitable as to Indian motives. In the Sri Lankan case, New Delhi was into everything from supporting terrorism to running covert ops in a friendly, neighboring democracy. Only when the Frankenstein it helped to create, LTTE, turned on its former benefactor did logic and morality reassert themselves in New Delhi’s policy.
In this case, in Nepal, it is perhaps too early to speak in such terms. What we know at the moment is that is that the weak position of the coalition government in New Delhi, combined with its normal “Great Game” psychology and the eagerness of certain Indian personalities, especially on the left, to expand their own role and spheres of involvement, led to a policy shift that supported SPAM (the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists).
It was disappointing and tragic that the SPA and the Palace could not have a meeting of minds. Parliamentary democracy should have been the ultimate bulwark against the Maoist challenge, but the very nature of Nepali parliamentary democracy, with its corruption and ineptitude, led to its marginalization. The increasingly bitter split between SPA and the king became all but inevitable in such circumstances, but personalities also played a central role, as they do in all that occurs in Nepal.
It seems equally clear that India, as it did previously in Sri Lanka, went into the present endeavor quite misinformed by its alleged experts, not to mention its intelligence organs, and that it was ignorant as to the actual nature of the Maoists – no matter the efforts of those same personalities just mentioned to claim how wise, thoughtful, and caring Prachanda and other members of the Maoists leadership were.
In once again misreading the situation in a neighboring state, India now seeks a “soft landing.” To get one, New Delhi’s strategy has been to facilitate in Nepal creation of a “West Bengal” or a “Kerala” – states where the tamed Indian left challenges and even rules (sometimes, in the case of the latter), where it continues with its nasty verbiage and bizarre worldview, but where it must respond to the realities of power and hence stay within the lanes on the national political highway.
What New Delhi has overlooked is that such realities occur in India only because of the capacity of the national state to force compliance. Subtract the Indian military, paramilitary, and police forces from the equation, and India would be anarchy. Not surprisingly, that is the very term being used by many to describe the situation in Nepal.
This has its own implications for India’s security and for its struggle against the growing strength of the Indian Maoists. What Nepal itself is facing is the “state within a state” as seen in Palestine with Hamas and Lebanon with Hezbollah. Whether events play themselves out as we are seeing even now in the Middle East depends quite upon what the Maoists are actually up to.
Hamas and Hezbollah have behaved as the Nepali Maoists seem determined to behave, to participate in “the system” only to use it for their own ends. Those “ends,” obviously, have now made life even worse for the population.
The Way Ahead
What Nepal as a state never understood was that it faced an armed political campaign. This means – a lesson for India -- that democracy, no matter how messy, accompanied by good governance and transparency, should be at the heart of any response to the Maoists, with the security forces providing the shield.
Nepali parliamentary democracy proved incapable of using mobilization of democratic capacity to defend itself. It did not do what the Thai, the Filipinos, the Peruvians, and the Sri Lankans (against the JVP, twice) did to defeat their Maoists. They brought reform to imperfect systems and made them better. They remain imperfect, but so are all systems. And they are not the vicious, man-eating systems as desired by the left-wing, of which the Maoists are the premier representatives.
It should be obvious that the claim that there is “no military solution” to insurgency is simply a canard. Armed capacity enables the campaign of reform, because armed capacity is what enables the challenge to the old-order.
In circumstances such as India (or Nepal earlier), security forces are not committed simply to defend the status quo. They must be committed to defend transformation. That transformation, though, must look rather more like what can be seen in India as it advances toward economic, social, and political modernity – and a lot less like Mao’s China.
The Washington Times Editorial - Nepal's Maoists Double Cross
The video clip referred to in the Washington Times editorial may located at the following URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL-OuByKFJQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emyrepublica%2Ecom%2Fportal%2F&feature=player_embedded
Video of Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) telling his Maoists how they plan to install a one party communist republic in Nepal (and how they've used the international community as "useful idiots").
EDITORIAL: Nepal's Maoist double-cross
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/07/nepals-maoist-double-cross/
So the chairman of Nepal's Maoist radicals brags that he and his fellow-travelers tricked United Nations officials and admits that the 2006 peace deal was a sham - and gets caught on videotape doing it. The video of the recently resigned Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, was shot in January 2008 and just surfaced.
Revealingly, he instructs his fellow communists not to be fooled by the compromises struck with Nepal's democratic government. Seizing total power, he makes clear, remains the communist goal.
The latest crisis in Nepal is a useful case study in communist duplicity and instructive for those who believe that the path to peace with guerillas is cutting deals with them. The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) joined Nepal's government after a decade-long insurgency that left more than 12,000 dead. Under terms of the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the Maoists agreed, among other things, to cut the size of their force in half, place their weapons under U.N. supervision and participate peacefully in the political process. In the 2008 elections, the Maoists emerged as the largest party in parliament with 30 percent of the vote, and Prachanda was named prime minister.
But the communists didn't consider the war really ended. The Maoists steadily maneuvered to increase their power with a view toward implementing their revolutionary agenda.
The latest step was an attempt to remove Nepal Army Chief Gen. Rookmangud Katawal, who had resisted Maoist demands to integrate their guerrilla army into the national force. He maintained that the "former" guerrillas are brainwashed fanatics seeking to seize control of the army. He's got a point.
Nepal's President Ram Baran Yadav blocked Prachanda's move to sack Gen. Katawal. Prachandra resigned in protest. Nepal's Supreme Court now has the case.
Prachanda says it is a question of civilian control of the military. That's rich. Meanwhile communist thugs are taking to the streets in coordinated demonstrations calling for further intervention from the U.N.
The video of a relaxed Prachanda addressing his party faithful exposed the Maoists' cynical manipulation of the political system. In true communist spirit, Prachanda said that the compromises struck with the government were only tactical expediencies, and that the "bidroha," or rebellion, was still on. He joked about how they duped the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) into thinking they had 35,000 fighters when in fact they only had 7,000 to 8,000, which allowed them to swell their ranks to 20,000 while claiming to be demilitarizing. And he confirmed Gen. Katawal's suspicions by saying it would take only a small number of his guerrillas to establish "complete Maoist control" of the Nepal Army.
He added that they had not turned over their weapons as required and that relief money earmarked for the victims of the civil war would be diverted to party coffers. "You and I know the truth," he slyly told his comrades, "but why should we tell it to others?"
In an unguarded moment, Prachanda revealed he is still a terrorist at heart and those who make deals with him are dupes. "Why would we abide by [the peace deal] after we win?" he said on the tape. "Why would we follow it when we have the upper hand?"
The situation in Nepal and Pakistan's Swat Valley illustrate the risks in bargaining with extremists, who do not change their goals, only their methods. The lesson is important when contrasted to Sri Lanka and Colombia, where we have seen the value of taking the fight to insurgents. U.S. deal makers should understand that there is more than one way to lose a guerrilla war. Sometimes it happens with the stroke of a pen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL-OuByKFJQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emyrepublica%2Ecom%2Fportal%2F&feature=player_embedded
Video of Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) telling his Maoists how they plan to install a one party communist republic in Nepal (and how they've used the international community as "useful idiots").
EDITORIAL: Nepal's Maoist double-cross
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/07/nepals-maoist-double-cross/
So the chairman of Nepal's Maoist radicals brags that he and his fellow-travelers tricked United Nations officials and admits that the 2006 peace deal was a sham - and gets caught on videotape doing it. The video of the recently resigned Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, was shot in January 2008 and just surfaced.
Revealingly, he instructs his fellow communists not to be fooled by the compromises struck with Nepal's democratic government. Seizing total power, he makes clear, remains the communist goal.
The latest crisis in Nepal is a useful case study in communist duplicity and instructive for those who believe that the path to peace with guerillas is cutting deals with them. The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) joined Nepal's government after a decade-long insurgency that left more than 12,000 dead. Under terms of the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the Maoists agreed, among other things, to cut the size of their force in half, place their weapons under U.N. supervision and participate peacefully in the political process. In the 2008 elections, the Maoists emerged as the largest party in parliament with 30 percent of the vote, and Prachanda was named prime minister.
But the communists didn't consider the war really ended. The Maoists steadily maneuvered to increase their power with a view toward implementing their revolutionary agenda.
The latest step was an attempt to remove Nepal Army Chief Gen. Rookmangud Katawal, who had resisted Maoist demands to integrate their guerrilla army into the national force. He maintained that the "former" guerrillas are brainwashed fanatics seeking to seize control of the army. He's got a point.
Nepal's President Ram Baran Yadav blocked Prachanda's move to sack Gen. Katawal. Prachandra resigned in protest. Nepal's Supreme Court now has the case.
Prachanda says it is a question of civilian control of the military. That's rich. Meanwhile communist thugs are taking to the streets in coordinated demonstrations calling for further intervention from the U.N.
The video of a relaxed Prachanda addressing his party faithful exposed the Maoists' cynical manipulation of the political system. In true communist spirit, Prachanda said that the compromises struck with the government were only tactical expediencies, and that the "bidroha," or rebellion, was still on. He joked about how they duped the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) into thinking they had 35,000 fighters when in fact they only had 7,000 to 8,000, which allowed them to swell their ranks to 20,000 while claiming to be demilitarizing. And he confirmed Gen. Katawal's suspicions by saying it would take only a small number of his guerrillas to establish "complete Maoist control" of the Nepal Army.
He added that they had not turned over their weapons as required and that relief money earmarked for the victims of the civil war would be diverted to party coffers. "You and I know the truth," he slyly told his comrades, "but why should we tell it to others?"
In an unguarded moment, Prachanda revealed he is still a terrorist at heart and those who make deals with him are dupes. "Why would we abide by [the peace deal] after we win?" he said on the tape. "Why would we follow it when we have the upper hand?"
The situation in Nepal and Pakistan's Swat Valley illustrate the risks in bargaining with extremists, who do not change their goals, only their methods. The lesson is important when contrasted to Sri Lanka and Colombia, where we have seen the value of taking the fight to insurgents. U.S. deal makers should understand that there is more than one way to lose a guerrilla war. Sometimes it happens with the stroke of a pen.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Holding the Preachers of Accountability, Accountable for their Actions - The UN's Failure in Nepal
In light of the evidence caught on video, readers are encouraged to review the chronology of events captured in the postings below.
The question that every Nepali must ask themselves is who we should hold accountable for the callous manner in which the UNMIN (United Nations Mission in Nepal) handled the arms (and armies) verification process?
As was the case in East Timor, Ian Martin parachuted in and out of Nepal. But those who will bear the consequences of Martin’s (and the UN’s) willingness to play the role of a (most) “useful idiot,” remain in-country.
If the United Nations as an institution fails to hold its personnel accountable, then Nepalis need to hold Ban Ki Moon and the UN hierarchy accountable for the UN’s complete failure in executing its mandate in Nepal.
February 25, 2007
Summary of Declared (by State) vs. Inventoried (by UNMIN), Weapon Counts
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/02/symmary-of-declared-by-state-vs.html
February 25, 2007
Discrepancies in Maoist Weapons Inventoried by UNMIN – Do the Math
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/02/discrepancies-in-maoist-weapons.html
March 01, 2007
The UN and Maoist Arms Controversy: Overkill or Negligence?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/02/un-and-maoist-arms-controversy-overkill.html
March 01, 2007
UN Fast Losing Credibility in Nepal
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/03/un-fast-losing-credibility-in-nepal.html
June 18, 2007
UNMIN Clarifies its Role but Just in Time to be Humiliated by the Maoists
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/06/unmin-clarifies-its-role-but-just-in.html
July 04, 2007
UNMIN's Arms Verification Process in Nepal - More Timely Information and Transparency Needed
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/unmin-in-over-its-head-in-nepal-arms.html
July 15, 2007
The UN's (UNMIN) Involvement in Nepal's Peace Process: A turning point or another fiasco in the making?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/uns-unmin-involvement-in-nepals-peace.html
July 17, 2007
UNMIN's July 16 Press Release and Subsequent Q&A Disaster
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/unmins-july-16-press-release-and.html
July 19, 2007
UNMIN's "Consulting" Mentality Not Conducive to Nepal's "Stakeholder" Needs
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/unmins-consulting-mentality-not.html
September 21, 2007
What has UNMIN Accomplished in Nepal?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-has-unmin-accomplished-in-nepal.html
November 01, 2007
What UNMIN Should Do to Manage Nepal's Peace Process
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/11/courtesy-krishna-hari-pushkar-un-is.html
November 26, 2007
UNMIN in Need of Immediate Reform
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/11/unmin-in-need-of-immediate-reform.html
December, 2007
Constructive Feedback for Ian Martin - Time for a change in UNMIN's Leadership
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/12/constructive-feedback-for-ian-martin.html
February 04, 2008
Deficient UNMIN
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2008/02/deficient-unmin.html
February 07, 2008
UNMIN's (Matthew Kahane's) Observations Completely Legitimate; India's Guilt-Ridden Reaction, Nonsense
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2008/02/unmins-matthew-kahanes-observations.html
The question that every Nepali must ask themselves is who we should hold accountable for the callous manner in which the UNMIN (United Nations Mission in Nepal) handled the arms (and armies) verification process?
As was the case in East Timor, Ian Martin parachuted in and out of Nepal. But those who will bear the consequences of Martin’s (and the UN’s) willingness to play the role of a (most) “useful idiot,” remain in-country.
If the United Nations as an institution fails to hold its personnel accountable, then Nepalis need to hold Ban Ki Moon and the UN hierarchy accountable for the UN’s complete failure in executing its mandate in Nepal.
February 25, 2007
Summary of Declared (by State) vs. Inventoried (by UNMIN), Weapon Counts
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/02/symmary-of-declared-by-state-vs.html
February 25, 2007
Discrepancies in Maoist Weapons Inventoried by UNMIN – Do the Math
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/02/discrepancies-in-maoist-weapons.html
March 01, 2007
The UN and Maoist Arms Controversy: Overkill or Negligence?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/02/un-and-maoist-arms-controversy-overkill.html
March 01, 2007
UN Fast Losing Credibility in Nepal
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/03/un-fast-losing-credibility-in-nepal.html
June 18, 2007
UNMIN Clarifies its Role but Just in Time to be Humiliated by the Maoists
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/06/unmin-clarifies-its-role-but-just-in.html
July 04, 2007
UNMIN's Arms Verification Process in Nepal - More Timely Information and Transparency Needed
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/unmin-in-over-its-head-in-nepal-arms.html
July 15, 2007
The UN's (UNMIN) Involvement in Nepal's Peace Process: A turning point or another fiasco in the making?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/uns-unmin-involvement-in-nepals-peace.html
July 17, 2007
UNMIN's July 16 Press Release and Subsequent Q&A Disaster
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/unmins-july-16-press-release-and.html
July 19, 2007
UNMIN's "Consulting" Mentality Not Conducive to Nepal's "Stakeholder" Needs
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/unmins-consulting-mentality-not.html
September 21, 2007
What has UNMIN Accomplished in Nepal?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-has-unmin-accomplished-in-nepal.html
November 01, 2007
What UNMIN Should Do to Manage Nepal's Peace Process
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/11/courtesy-krishna-hari-pushkar-un-is.html
November 26, 2007
UNMIN in Need of Immediate Reform
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/11/unmin-in-need-of-immediate-reform.html
December, 2007
Constructive Feedback for Ian Martin - Time for a change in UNMIN's Leadership
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/12/constructive-feedback-for-ian-martin.html
February 04, 2008
Deficient UNMIN
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2008/02/deficient-unmin.html
February 07, 2008
UNMIN's (Matthew Kahane's) Observations Completely Legitimate; India's Guilt-Ridden Reaction, Nonsense
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2008/02/unmins-matthew-kahanes-observations.html
Prachanda's Admission Caught on Tape...
For all the Maoist apologists, "civil society" politicians and those who commended the United Nations on a job well done in Nepal, the following video is a MUST SEE.
Maoist Leader Admits Making an Ass out of UNMIN and the International Community.
In light of the evidence caught on tape, readers are encouraged to review the chronology of events captured in the postings below. The question that every Nepali must ask themselves is who we should hold accountable for the eggregious
Maoist Leader Admits Making an Ass out of UNMIN and the International Community.
In light of the evidence caught on tape, readers are encouraged to review the chronology of events captured in the postings below. The question that every Nepali must ask themselves is who we should hold accountable for the eggregious
Friday, May 01, 2009
Federalism Will Hinder Optimal Exploitation of Water Resources
(Courtesy: Ratna Sansar Shrestha)
For this scribe “People’s Movement II” is “Rhododendron Revolution” of 2006 which not only paved path for the abolition of much maligned monarchy, subsequent to Royal Palace massacre – reportedly committed by the then Crown Prince who is alleged to have committed suicide after committing heinous crime of regicide (also patricide), matricide, fratricide (both bother and sister) and also killing off an uncle and couple of aunts (however, most of the people still do not believe this “yarn” – which denigrated royalties (mainly the last “monarch” of Nepal and his son) in the eyes of the “loyal subjects” of Nepal, in 2001 June, but also afforded an opportunity for the people of Nepal to write a constitution of their own – through the elected Constituent Assembly. The assembly is supposed to decide the form and content of the constitution and also the structure of the state as to whether federal or unitary. However, the overzealous people in the commission writing Interim Constitution went out of way to declare that Nepal will be a federal state; preempting the people’s representatives in the assembly from deliberating about it and arriving at a well thought through decision. Now it has become a contentious issue as to whether spinning off of Nepal into an indeterminate number of provinces under federal structure is really a good idea. Here an attempt is being made to analyze how will federalism affect optimal exploitation of water resources.
Water Resource – Unique Natural Resource
Optimal exploitation of most of the natural resources can be done locally. They can benefit by cultivating land, harvesting it, collecting herbs, living off forest or extracting minerals. But water resource is a different kind of natural resource and things are not that simple with its exploitation. Local inhabitants can benefit, for example, by building micro hydropower project (less than 100 kW) or from water based tourism like rafting. But exploitation at a larger scale to benefit from scale economy results in different set of additionalities and externalities.
Construction of a run-of-the-river (RoR) hydropower at a specific site deprives upper riparian populace from using the river water for consumptive uses (i.e. irrigation) as any reduction in the quantum of water will result in decrease in electricity generation and in turn downsizing the revenue stream. Similarly, a patch of the river will become dewatered as water will be diverted from the river into powerhouse through a network of canal/tunnel and eventually penstock pipe by building intake. The people dependent on this patch of river will face severe water scarcity – amply demonstrated by the dewatered area in Marshyangdi River by the highway to Pokahra. If the users of electricity come from a different province, the people adversely impacted as such will never agree to construction of implementation of hydropower plant in their province resulting in failure to generate electricity at optimum level.
Reservoir Project
Contrasted with RoR project, a storage project will entail building a reservoir resulting in inundation/submergence of large tracts of fertile agricultural land, forest and even extant infrastructure and will also displace the inhabitants. Daily pondage project also causes similar adverse impact, by a lesser magnitude, though. In this scenario, people of the province set to lose their land and to get displaced will not be too eager to build a project if the electricity is to be used in another province. Moreover, storage project also generates downstream benefit in terms of augmented flow which benefits the lower riparian people by making water available for water supply, irrigation, industrial use, improvement of watershed and they can also use the same for water sports based tourism and navigation. In this backdrop people in upper riparian province will have no reason to agree to build such a project, thus scuttling the prospect of implementation of a multipurpose project, but for federal structure.
Resettlement of people displaced by a multipurpose project will also become problematic as there is scarcity of good land in the hills where such projects could be sited while the resettlement in the area where necessary land is available will not be allowed for reasons of disturbing ethnic balance. Tharus in western Terai are already objecting to the resettlement plan for people to be displaced by West Seti project. After formation of separate provinces, the ensuing tussle will take the form of agitation as to why should upper riparian province lose land and its people to electricity for some far off city.
Irrigation and Flood Control
Nepal has 3.97 million hectares of cultivated land (mostly in Terai) and only 0.5 million hectares (only 12.6%) has some irrigation (mostly during rainy season). Cultivation of multiple crops in a year – imperative to ensure food security in the country (including high value cash crop that will make the farmers there prosperous) – requires massive irrigation during dry season which is possible only by building a reservoir in the hills that will store water during the rainy season (about 4 months in year) for irrigation during other 8 months. Building reservoirs as such will also control flood in the river’s flood plain in the Terai. But such a scheme will be precluded after splitting the country into federal structure for reasons explained above, especially if Terai is to become a separate province.
Electricity
Suppose it is decided to have 5 provinces in the lines of current development regions, then western development region will be generating most of hydropower (over 329 MW), using only about half of its generation capacity, while eastern region will be consuming a lot more than what it generates (under 14 MW). Central development region will consume a little more than it generates (275 MW). Under federal structure this type of happy sharing will not be possible. Simple issue like pricing can spin out of control and provinces with more generation capacity can shut off power if the price is not right.
Dispute over water resource
What is happening in India should be an eye opener for us in Nepal about to cross the threshold into federalism. There is dispute between Punjab and Haryana over Yamuna Sutlej Link canal. A clutch of states are fighting over Narmada and Tamil Nadu and Karnataka do not see eye to eye on Cauvery. All this is impeding optimal exploitation of water resource in India, although she has adopted federal structure due to her huge land mass.
Negotiating power
From Koshi through Gandaki, Tanakpur and Mahakali treaties Nepal has ended up getting raw deals. These things took place before Nepal went federal. After implementing federalism, each province will be squabbling with other province/s and Nepal’s negotiation capacity will be further weakened vis-Ã -vis India and the nightmare of a “monkey” from abroad settling dispute between two “cats” over sharing of a bread of loaf (water resource) and monkey ending up eating the bread bite by bite will become a reality. Merely this should persuade patriotic Nepali people from breaking up Nepal into several provinces real.
Conclusion
Implementing water resource projects in a federal structure will become difficult/daunting task due to competing demands over water and clashing aspirations of each province and several provinces. The complications will get compounded due to the convention of demarcating provinces by using rivers as the boundary. This will result in diametrically opposite aspiration of one province with that of the province on the other side of the river.
In view of this, and also due to the fact that Nepal is as small or smaller than a reasonable sized province of India and most federal nations, we need to tread cautiously before going for federal structure. As far as water resource is concerned, splitting the country in haste will provide us ample opportunity to repent at leisure.
(A shorter version of this writing was published in the Nepali Times # 449 (1-7 May 2009).
For this scribe “People’s Movement II” is “Rhododendron Revolution” of 2006 which not only paved path for the abolition of much maligned monarchy, subsequent to Royal Palace massacre – reportedly committed by the then Crown Prince who is alleged to have committed suicide after committing heinous crime of regicide (also patricide), matricide, fratricide (both bother and sister) and also killing off an uncle and couple of aunts (however, most of the people still do not believe this “yarn” – which denigrated royalties (mainly the last “monarch” of Nepal and his son) in the eyes of the “loyal subjects” of Nepal, in 2001 June, but also afforded an opportunity for the people of Nepal to write a constitution of their own – through the elected Constituent Assembly. The assembly is supposed to decide the form and content of the constitution and also the structure of the state as to whether federal or unitary. However, the overzealous people in the commission writing Interim Constitution went out of way to declare that Nepal will be a federal state; preempting the people’s representatives in the assembly from deliberating about it and arriving at a well thought through decision. Now it has become a contentious issue as to whether spinning off of Nepal into an indeterminate number of provinces under federal structure is really a good idea. Here an attempt is being made to analyze how will federalism affect optimal exploitation of water resources.
Water Resource – Unique Natural Resource
Optimal exploitation of most of the natural resources can be done locally. They can benefit by cultivating land, harvesting it, collecting herbs, living off forest or extracting minerals. But water resource is a different kind of natural resource and things are not that simple with its exploitation. Local inhabitants can benefit, for example, by building micro hydropower project (less than 100 kW) or from water based tourism like rafting. But exploitation at a larger scale to benefit from scale economy results in different set of additionalities and externalities.
Construction of a run-of-the-river (RoR) hydropower at a specific site deprives upper riparian populace from using the river water for consumptive uses (i.e. irrigation) as any reduction in the quantum of water will result in decrease in electricity generation and in turn downsizing the revenue stream. Similarly, a patch of the river will become dewatered as water will be diverted from the river into powerhouse through a network of canal/tunnel and eventually penstock pipe by building intake. The people dependent on this patch of river will face severe water scarcity – amply demonstrated by the dewatered area in Marshyangdi River by the highway to Pokahra. If the users of electricity come from a different province, the people adversely impacted as such will never agree to construction of implementation of hydropower plant in their province resulting in failure to generate electricity at optimum level.
Reservoir Project
Contrasted with RoR project, a storage project will entail building a reservoir resulting in inundation/submergence of large tracts of fertile agricultural land, forest and even extant infrastructure and will also displace the inhabitants. Daily pondage project also causes similar adverse impact, by a lesser magnitude, though. In this scenario, people of the province set to lose their land and to get displaced will not be too eager to build a project if the electricity is to be used in another province. Moreover, storage project also generates downstream benefit in terms of augmented flow which benefits the lower riparian people by making water available for water supply, irrigation, industrial use, improvement of watershed and they can also use the same for water sports based tourism and navigation. In this backdrop people in upper riparian province will have no reason to agree to build such a project, thus scuttling the prospect of implementation of a multipurpose project, but for federal structure.
Resettlement of people displaced by a multipurpose project will also become problematic as there is scarcity of good land in the hills where such projects could be sited while the resettlement in the area where necessary land is available will not be allowed for reasons of disturbing ethnic balance. Tharus in western Terai are already objecting to the resettlement plan for people to be displaced by West Seti project. After formation of separate provinces, the ensuing tussle will take the form of agitation as to why should upper riparian province lose land and its people to electricity for some far off city.
Irrigation and Flood Control
Nepal has 3.97 million hectares of cultivated land (mostly in Terai) and only 0.5 million hectares (only 12.6%) has some irrigation (mostly during rainy season). Cultivation of multiple crops in a year – imperative to ensure food security in the country (including high value cash crop that will make the farmers there prosperous) – requires massive irrigation during dry season which is possible only by building a reservoir in the hills that will store water during the rainy season (about 4 months in year) for irrigation during other 8 months. Building reservoirs as such will also control flood in the river’s flood plain in the Terai. But such a scheme will be precluded after splitting the country into federal structure for reasons explained above, especially if Terai is to become a separate province.
Electricity
Suppose it is decided to have 5 provinces in the lines of current development regions, then western development region will be generating most of hydropower (over 329 MW), using only about half of its generation capacity, while eastern region will be consuming a lot more than what it generates (under 14 MW). Central development region will consume a little more than it generates (275 MW). Under federal structure this type of happy sharing will not be possible. Simple issue like pricing can spin out of control and provinces with more generation capacity can shut off power if the price is not right.
Dispute over water resource
What is happening in India should be an eye opener for us in Nepal about to cross the threshold into federalism. There is dispute between Punjab and Haryana over Yamuna Sutlej Link canal. A clutch of states are fighting over Narmada and Tamil Nadu and Karnataka do not see eye to eye on Cauvery. All this is impeding optimal exploitation of water resource in India, although she has adopted federal structure due to her huge land mass.
Negotiating power
From Koshi through Gandaki, Tanakpur and Mahakali treaties Nepal has ended up getting raw deals. These things took place before Nepal went federal. After implementing federalism, each province will be squabbling with other province/s and Nepal’s negotiation capacity will be further weakened vis-Ã -vis India and the nightmare of a “monkey” from abroad settling dispute between two “cats” over sharing of a bread of loaf (water resource) and monkey ending up eating the bread bite by bite will become a reality. Merely this should persuade patriotic Nepali people from breaking up Nepal into several provinces real.
Conclusion
Implementing water resource projects in a federal structure will become difficult/daunting task due to competing demands over water and clashing aspirations of each province and several provinces. The complications will get compounded due to the convention of demarcating provinces by using rivers as the boundary. This will result in diametrically opposite aspiration of one province with that of the province on the other side of the river.
In view of this, and also due to the fact that Nepal is as small or smaller than a reasonable sized province of India and most federal nations, we need to tread cautiously before going for federal structure. As far as water resource is concerned, splitting the country in haste will provide us ample opportunity to repent at leisure.
(A shorter version of this writing was published in the Nepali Times # 449 (1-7 May 2009).
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Strategic intent
(Courtesy: Dr. Hari Bansha Dulal)
Annie Lowrey of Foreign Policy, the award-winning magazine of global politics, economics, and ideas founded by Samuel Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel lists Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s government as one of the five governments worldwide that deserves to fail. One of the major charges against him is that he has been unable to maintain political stability and contain violence. Lowrey asserts, “Prachanda must maintain political stability and avoid any violence at all costs – or Nepal risks catastrophe.”
Lowrey correctly identifies what needs to be done in order to avert catastrophe, which in my view is not that difficult, but whether or not Prime Minister Dahal is doing enough to maintain political stability and contain violence is the most important question. Is Lowrey overreacting? No! Somalia and Afghanistan are excellent examples that showcase what political instability and violence can do to a nation.
Some of us think that political instability and violence are part of a package that a nation trying to take a giant leap has to live with for a while. But how long should that period be allowed to exist? The shorter, the better. And, it really depends upon the ability of the political leadership of the country in question to understand what political instability and violence can do to the overall economy and social fabric. For example, in poor landlocked Botswana, a unique form of democracy combining British parliamentary ideas with African traditions has been functioning well since the 1960s. A free press and a lively political system have developed. One of the many reasons why Botswana is a functional democracy in a largely dysfunctional continent is because the statesmen that took over were mindful of the importance of political stability and law and order in the country. On the contrary, seemingly endless ethnic conflicts in Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Nigeria, Chad, Angola, Ethiopia, and the Congo have cost many millions and made these countries highly unstable. One of the major reasons behind political instability in these countries is that the politicians deliberately invoke "ethnic action and nationalism", for ulterior motives, to achieve political and economic objectives. When that happens conflict takes shape of a vicious circle with no end in sight making political instability a norm rather than an exception.
We have started to see similar signs in Nepal too. While lawlessness continues, politicians talk as if a peaceful democratic transition can be taken for granted. But it cannot. Failure to combat lawlessness and instability undermines a country´s stock of ´social´ capital - that is, the relations of inter-group solidarity and cohesion which allow negotiation, compromise, and agreement between opposing factions. In Nepal, the consequence of the failure to stem the vortex of violence and lawlessness is that the country is fragmenting into an archipelago of competing power factions. Unless these centrifugal forces are contained, the country will drift further and further from a social compact.
The question, however, in the case of Nepal is whether or not Dahal is interested in maintaining political stability and containing violence? If the answer is yes, why is political instability and violence increasing with each passing day?
Anyone following Nepali politics closely knows very well that the Maoists want more political violence and chaos—not less. If you look at the Maoists movement, it becomes evident that as the frequency and magnitude of their violent activities increased, so did their level of recognition and their domination over the existing political parties and the state got greater. For the Maoists, violence pays and as long as they benefit politically from it, they are not going to abandon violence. It’s a no-brainer. The chief ideologue of the Maoist movement, Baburam Bhattarai, has openly admitted that violence and chaos benefits his party politically. If violence did not matter and benefit them politically, they would not have formed the Young Communist League (YCL).
Unlike visionary statesmen such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Nelson Mandela, who followed acts of destruction with greater acts of construction, Nepali Maoists ideologues’ quench for destruction seems to have no boundary. Nehru and Mandela fought tirelessly against oppression and injustices, but after coming to power, they spent many years preserving the systems that their predecessors had put in place. Once in power, Mandela, who had approved radical and violent resistance to apartheid, reached out to White’s to create a multicultural South Africa. Maybe, it is absurd to compare Bhattarai – who thinks destruction alone will pave the way for construction – with Nehru, who preserved existing institutions, which he rightly thought was necessary to build a modern democratic state. The point I am trying to make here is that people without violent streaks have proved to be more constructive in world history. If destruction was the only way towards construction, Somalia and Afghanistan by now would have been the most prosperous state on the face of this earth.
It is time that we, Nepalis, realize that putting too much faith on politicians will only result in disappointment. The moderates within the society need to come out before it is too late. We need to force the state to address the genuine grievances of ethnic minorities and maintain law and order. It is not the ordinary Nepali citizens who are blocking the emancipation of ethnic groups. It is the ruling coalition’s largest partner which is not able to fulfill the promises that it made on its way to get where they are today. Why should an ordinary Nepali struggling to remain afloat pay the price for someone else’s wayward political ambitions?
(This piece was originally published at the following URL: http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/?action=news_details&news_id=4320. It is re-posted here with the author's consent)
Annie Lowrey of Foreign Policy, the award-winning magazine of global politics, economics, and ideas founded by Samuel Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel lists Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s government as one of the five governments worldwide that deserves to fail. One of the major charges against him is that he has been unable to maintain political stability and contain violence. Lowrey asserts, “Prachanda must maintain political stability and avoid any violence at all costs – or Nepal risks catastrophe.”
Lowrey correctly identifies what needs to be done in order to avert catastrophe, which in my view is not that difficult, but whether or not Prime Minister Dahal is doing enough to maintain political stability and contain violence is the most important question. Is Lowrey overreacting? No! Somalia and Afghanistan are excellent examples that showcase what political instability and violence can do to a nation.
Some of us think that political instability and violence are part of a package that a nation trying to take a giant leap has to live with for a while. But how long should that period be allowed to exist? The shorter, the better. And, it really depends upon the ability of the political leadership of the country in question to understand what political instability and violence can do to the overall economy and social fabric. For example, in poor landlocked Botswana, a unique form of democracy combining British parliamentary ideas with African traditions has been functioning well since the 1960s. A free press and a lively political system have developed. One of the many reasons why Botswana is a functional democracy in a largely dysfunctional continent is because the statesmen that took over were mindful of the importance of political stability and law and order in the country. On the contrary, seemingly endless ethnic conflicts in Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Nigeria, Chad, Angola, Ethiopia, and the Congo have cost many millions and made these countries highly unstable. One of the major reasons behind political instability in these countries is that the politicians deliberately invoke "ethnic action and nationalism", for ulterior motives, to achieve political and economic objectives. When that happens conflict takes shape of a vicious circle with no end in sight making political instability a norm rather than an exception.
We have started to see similar signs in Nepal too. While lawlessness continues, politicians talk as if a peaceful democratic transition can be taken for granted. But it cannot. Failure to combat lawlessness and instability undermines a country´s stock of ´social´ capital - that is, the relations of inter-group solidarity and cohesion which allow negotiation, compromise, and agreement between opposing factions. In Nepal, the consequence of the failure to stem the vortex of violence and lawlessness is that the country is fragmenting into an archipelago of competing power factions. Unless these centrifugal forces are contained, the country will drift further and further from a social compact.
The question, however, in the case of Nepal is whether or not Dahal is interested in maintaining political stability and containing violence? If the answer is yes, why is political instability and violence increasing with each passing day?
Anyone following Nepali politics closely knows very well that the Maoists want more political violence and chaos—not less. If you look at the Maoists movement, it becomes evident that as the frequency and magnitude of their violent activities increased, so did their level of recognition and their domination over the existing political parties and the state got greater. For the Maoists, violence pays and as long as they benefit politically from it, they are not going to abandon violence. It’s a no-brainer. The chief ideologue of the Maoist movement, Baburam Bhattarai, has openly admitted that violence and chaos benefits his party politically. If violence did not matter and benefit them politically, they would not have formed the Young Communist League (YCL).
Unlike visionary statesmen such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Nelson Mandela, who followed acts of destruction with greater acts of construction, Nepali Maoists ideologues’ quench for destruction seems to have no boundary. Nehru and Mandela fought tirelessly against oppression and injustices, but after coming to power, they spent many years preserving the systems that their predecessors had put in place. Once in power, Mandela, who had approved radical and violent resistance to apartheid, reached out to White’s to create a multicultural South Africa. Maybe, it is absurd to compare Bhattarai – who thinks destruction alone will pave the way for construction – with Nehru, who preserved existing institutions, which he rightly thought was necessary to build a modern democratic state. The point I am trying to make here is that people without violent streaks have proved to be more constructive in world history. If destruction was the only way towards construction, Somalia and Afghanistan by now would have been the most prosperous state on the face of this earth.
It is time that we, Nepalis, realize that putting too much faith on politicians will only result in disappointment. The moderates within the society need to come out before it is too late. We need to force the state to address the genuine grievances of ethnic minorities and maintain law and order. It is not the ordinary Nepali citizens who are blocking the emancipation of ethnic groups. It is the ruling coalition’s largest partner which is not able to fulfill the promises that it made on its way to get where they are today. Why should an ordinary Nepali struggling to remain afloat pay the price for someone else’s wayward political ambitions?
(This piece was originally published at the following URL: http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/?action=news_details&news_id=4320. It is re-posted here with the author's consent)
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
India Halts Power Supply Deal – No Wonder!
(Courtesy: Ratna Sansar Shrestha)
The following was reported by myrepublica.com on 24th April:
"KATHMANDU, April 24: The action initiated by the Maoist-led government against army chief General Rookmangud Katawal and the polarized views of the political parties on the issue have now affected the power import deal between Nepal and India.The Indian government on Thursday put on hold the agreement to supply 30 MW power to Nepal just two days before it was supposed to be signed."We had finalized everything from our side. But the agreement has now been put on hold," a Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) official told this daily. The source informed that as per the request of the Bihar Board, a letter requesting government of India´s approval on the agreement was sent to the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi through the Indian embassy in Kathmandu on April 22. However, the Ministry did not send a consent to the request.A week ago, the NEA had forwarded a memorandum of understanding to the Power Board of Bihar to import the additional 30 MW of electricity at the rate of IRs 4.79 per unit for a period of two months.“Both sides had settled all issues and conditions for the import,” the source added.The Power Trading Corporation (PTC) of India was making necessary arrangements for the import to Nepal via Ramnagar in Bihar.The development comes amid reports that the Indian government has been inserting pressure on the Maoist-led government in Nepal against the dismissal of the army chief.Indian ambassador to Nepal Rakesh Sood on Thursday flew to New Delhi, canceling all appointments here, to brief the South Block on the ´current developments´ in Nepal."
However, it will take a while for it to dawn on most of our hydrocracy (bureaucracy, politicos, intelligentsia, media persons, business community, bankers involved in the hydropower sector) that export of power to Nepal is an additional weapon in Indian arsenal for her against Nepal (as is the trade and transit) to ensure that Nepal toes the line, they want her to. I dare to trust that people in Nepal haven’t forgotten (although “people” are famed to have very short memory) about the trade embargo and transit blockade that India imposed on Nepal in late 80’s leading to “people’s movement I”. What ensued is in the pages of history obviating repetition here.
In the same vein, when I read about Nepal’s plan to import 500 MW from India, while I was vacationing in Vientiane with my brand new granddaughter, I had tears in my eyes trying to stop myself from laughing uncontrollably for quite a while. This was exactly what I was worried about – India using “power” (electric) to have Nepal dance to their tunes (according to their caprices). Besides, I felt sad and also felt like smiling (simultaneously!) at the tragicomic situation, after reading that PTC has offered a “generous” rate of INR 3 while Nepal is set to export at NPR 3 – offering a handsome markup of 60% straight (how magnanimous we are!). Eventually they will be importing from Nepal at Rs 3 and export the same to us at Rs 4.80 – reinforcing the firmly held belief in Indian politicos and bureaucracy that Nepali people are nice and, therefore, dumb (except for those who sell their souls for “a few silvers”).
An interesting thing about the “halt” is that it is Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi that has thrown wrench in the works. It is surprising that simple export of power to Nepal requires approval of Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi. However, hydrocracy of Nepal deems export of power normal trade (simply trading in “electron”) and they proclaim that exporting power does not have anything to do with water resources (even Supreme Court of Nepal has delivered a verdict in this line in the case of west Seti. When reference is being made to west Seti, it needs to be remembered that Nepal wasn’t importing 30 MW dedicated power from a specific project. However, west Seti it is dedicated export oriented project. What is more galling is that west Seti generates augmented flow of 90 m3/s which ends up benefiting farmers in India (can irrigate 270,000 ha land for non paddy cultivation), but the deal, even from this perspective was deemed not sharing of water resources.
This also calls on us to look at the other side of this very coin (export of power to India). Intransigent people (including those who would like to replicate Bhutan model in Nepal) dream of having India “jump” at our bidding by exporting power to her as she will be dependent on “us” for substantial amount of power from large plants – up to 10,000 MW from Karnali (and making Nepal "immensely" rich). I have pointed out the fallacy behind this belief in my article published in Nepali Times (# 314, 8-14 September, 2006) as “India is uncomfortable being dependent on an independent Nepal on such a scale. The comfort level would have gone up significantly if the security of such a project is to be guaranteed by the Indian Army.” With regard to Bhutan, being a protectorate of India, India does not feel uncomfortable being dependent on her. I hope I don’t need to overemphasize it here by saying that Indians would hate to lose sleep by having to wonder when someone in Nepal is going to switch off power from plants in Nepal exporting to India (exactly the reverse of what they have just done to Nepal suffering from chronic load shedding). In view of this, the idea of dedicated export oriented power plants in Nepal for India will never work as long as Nepal will fail to graciously accept Indian security arrangement of such plants in Nepal. I have gone on to opine in that article that “But Nepali people are famous for their “intransigence” in this matter” (Thank God!). I would like to believe that I am not off mark in this matter
Before concluding, I would like to repeat, ad nauseoum (since I have been repeating this over and over again) that Nepal’s best interest will be best served by ensuring energy security and being self reliant in the matters of energy – from our own water resource.
I would like to close here by reiterating that Indian interest in Nepal’s hydropower is just a façade to capture water belonging to Nepal – we can find abundant examples in Koshi, Gandaki and Mahakali treaties. My belief as such has been confirmed by current union water resources minister of India Mr. Saif Uddin Soz (no less a person) who has been frank and honest in admitting, with Navin Singh Khadka, BBC Nepali Service, 12 September 2008 that “Our main interest is flood control and irrigation. Those are our first and second priority. If we get hydroelectricity as by product, that will be a bonus for us.” I pray to god almighty that he gets elected once more and ascends the same ministerial berth in Delhi.
The following was reported by myrepublica.com on 24th April:
"KATHMANDU, April 24: The action initiated by the Maoist-led government against army chief General Rookmangud Katawal and the polarized views of the political parties on the issue have now affected the power import deal between Nepal and India.The Indian government on Thursday put on hold the agreement to supply 30 MW power to Nepal just two days before it was supposed to be signed."We had finalized everything from our side. But the agreement has now been put on hold," a Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) official told this daily. The source informed that as per the request of the Bihar Board, a letter requesting government of India´s approval on the agreement was sent to the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi through the Indian embassy in Kathmandu on April 22. However, the Ministry did not send a consent to the request.A week ago, the NEA had forwarded a memorandum of understanding to the Power Board of Bihar to import the additional 30 MW of electricity at the rate of IRs 4.79 per unit for a period of two months.“Both sides had settled all issues and conditions for the import,” the source added.The Power Trading Corporation (PTC) of India was making necessary arrangements for the import to Nepal via Ramnagar in Bihar.The development comes amid reports that the Indian government has been inserting pressure on the Maoist-led government in Nepal against the dismissal of the army chief.Indian ambassador to Nepal Rakesh Sood on Thursday flew to New Delhi, canceling all appointments here, to brief the South Block on the ´current developments´ in Nepal."
However, it will take a while for it to dawn on most of our hydrocracy (bureaucracy, politicos, intelligentsia, media persons, business community, bankers involved in the hydropower sector) that export of power to Nepal is an additional weapon in Indian arsenal for her against Nepal (as is the trade and transit) to ensure that Nepal toes the line, they want her to. I dare to trust that people in Nepal haven’t forgotten (although “people” are famed to have very short memory) about the trade embargo and transit blockade that India imposed on Nepal in late 80’s leading to “people’s movement I”. What ensued is in the pages of history obviating repetition here.
In the same vein, when I read about Nepal’s plan to import 500 MW from India, while I was vacationing in Vientiane with my brand new granddaughter, I had tears in my eyes trying to stop myself from laughing uncontrollably for quite a while. This was exactly what I was worried about – India using “power” (electric) to have Nepal dance to their tunes (according to their caprices). Besides, I felt sad and also felt like smiling (simultaneously!) at the tragicomic situation, after reading that PTC has offered a “generous” rate of INR 3 while Nepal is set to export at NPR 3 – offering a handsome markup of 60% straight (how magnanimous we are!). Eventually they will be importing from Nepal at Rs 3 and export the same to us at Rs 4.80 – reinforcing the firmly held belief in Indian politicos and bureaucracy that Nepali people are nice and, therefore, dumb (except for those who sell their souls for “a few silvers”).
An interesting thing about the “halt” is that it is Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi that has thrown wrench in the works. It is surprising that simple export of power to Nepal requires approval of Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi. However, hydrocracy of Nepal deems export of power normal trade (simply trading in “electron”) and they proclaim that exporting power does not have anything to do with water resources (even Supreme Court of Nepal has delivered a verdict in this line in the case of west Seti. When reference is being made to west Seti, it needs to be remembered that Nepal wasn’t importing 30 MW dedicated power from a specific project. However, west Seti it is dedicated export oriented project. What is more galling is that west Seti generates augmented flow of 90 m3/s which ends up benefiting farmers in India (can irrigate 270,000 ha land for non paddy cultivation), but the deal, even from this perspective was deemed not sharing of water resources.
This also calls on us to look at the other side of this very coin (export of power to India). Intransigent people (including those who would like to replicate Bhutan model in Nepal) dream of having India “jump” at our bidding by exporting power to her as she will be dependent on “us” for substantial amount of power from large plants – up to 10,000 MW from Karnali (and making Nepal "immensely" rich). I have pointed out the fallacy behind this belief in my article published in Nepali Times (# 314, 8-14 September, 2006) as “India is uncomfortable being dependent on an independent Nepal on such a scale. The comfort level would have gone up significantly if the security of such a project is to be guaranteed by the Indian Army.” With regard to Bhutan, being a protectorate of India, India does not feel uncomfortable being dependent on her. I hope I don’t need to overemphasize it here by saying that Indians would hate to lose sleep by having to wonder when someone in Nepal is going to switch off power from plants in Nepal exporting to India (exactly the reverse of what they have just done to Nepal suffering from chronic load shedding). In view of this, the idea of dedicated export oriented power plants in Nepal for India will never work as long as Nepal will fail to graciously accept Indian security arrangement of such plants in Nepal. I have gone on to opine in that article that “But Nepali people are famous for their “intransigence” in this matter” (Thank God!). I would like to believe that I am not off mark in this matter
Before concluding, I would like to repeat, ad nauseoum (since I have been repeating this over and over again) that Nepal’s best interest will be best served by ensuring energy security and being self reliant in the matters of energy – from our own water resource.
I would like to close here by reiterating that Indian interest in Nepal’s hydropower is just a façade to capture water belonging to Nepal – we can find abundant examples in Koshi, Gandaki and Mahakali treaties. My belief as such has been confirmed by current union water resources minister of India Mr. Saif Uddin Soz (no less a person) who has been frank and honest in admitting, with Navin Singh Khadka, BBC Nepali Service, 12 September 2008 that “Our main interest is flood control and irrigation. Those are our first and second priority. If we get hydroelectricity as by product, that will be a bonus for us.” I pray to god almighty that he gets elected once more and ascends the same ministerial berth in Delhi.
Tharuwat Joint Struggle Committee (TJSC) - Press meeting of April 17th, 2009
(Courtesy: Tharuwat Joint Struggle Committee (TJSC))
Tharus, the indigenous habitants of Terai-Tharuwat had been reassured on March 14th by the Prime Minister, Puspa Kamal Dahal that the Winter Session of the Legislature-Parliament would conclude by repealing and amending various acts and laws infringing the dignity and fundamental rights of the Tharus in the Interim Constitution, thereby making provisions for their self determination. Tharuwat movement escalated from March 2nd to 14th 2009, against the existing, repressive government, which passed the ordinance of enforced inclusion of 92 indigenous peoples living in the Terai within the Madeshi category. The movement heightened to a peak, when TJSC blockaded the Terai to a virtual standstill for 13 days, which literally paralyzed the country. This was in retaliation to the government’s undemocratic action against the political issues raised by the Tharus, infringing their fundamental rights. On behalf of the Government of Nepal, the Minister for Peace and Reconstruction, Janardhan Sharma had concluded a six point agreement with Tharuwat Sangharsha Samiti (TJSC). However, contrary to the signed agreement, the Government of Nepal has violated the terms and conditions agreed upon, between the two parties. TJSC has resumed its second round of protest, objecting the ordinances, bills, acts and amendments against the fundamental rights of the indigenous peoples of Nepal.
Violation of terms
1) The Nepal government had agreed to revoke the ordinance of enforcement inclusion in the Madeshi category by explicitly eliminating the terminology “Madesh” in the Interim Constitution and reinstatement of the word “Terai”. The Interim Constitution would thereby recognize the inhabitation of the Adhibasi Janajati (indigenous) – Tharus, other Adhibasi Janajatis, Dalits, Muslims, Madeshis and other minorities and adopt / adapt provisions to ensure the equal rights to their self determination without discrimination.
2) Since Article 21 of the Interim Constitution makes comprehensive provision for proportionate representation by % in ratio to population distribution, thus securing social inclusion in all organs of government services and offices, the conflicting ratio of 55% - 45% is illogical and unconstitutional. The objection to this discriminatory ratio distribution not only marginalizes the participation of the Adhibasi Janajati – Tharus, Adhibasi Janajatis, Dalits, Muslims and Madeshis but the Reformed Bill incites conflicting interests without an acceptable formula and rule of law that allows an amicable co-existence of the above mentioned identities. The Tharu movement had demanded the implementation of the provisions for separate quota from the Madeshi category to fulfill their aspiration for separate independent identity. This would ensure them opportunities in various public services, to develop and empower the potential of the Tharus, who have been incessantly victimized by the state in oppressing, discriminating and exploiting them; whereby the State has been successful in marginalizing the Tharus from actively participating in the reconstruction of the State.
This transparent decision by the present government, headed by Puspa Kamal Dahal, confirms the Brahminbadi autocracy in oppressing the justifiable demands of the inalienable rights of the Adhibasi Janajati – Tharus, Adhibasi Janajatis, Dalits, Muslims, and Madeshis. Since the government of Prime Minister, Puspa Kamal Dahal has violated the trust agreement signed between the two parties; we are obliged to continue our Civil Rights Movement with various civil disobedience acts. We demand that the government attend to the social justice issues as key to the political rights of the Adhibasi Janajati, Dalits, Muslims, Madeshis and the minority groups to establish a foreseeable peace in Nepal.
Main political agendas
Tharus, the indigenous habitants of Terai-Tharuwat had been reassured on March 14th by the Prime Minister, Puspa Kamal Dahal that the Winter Session of the Legislature-Parliament would conclude by repealing and amending various acts and laws infringing the dignity and fundamental rights of the Tharus in the Interim Constitution, thereby making provisions for their self determination. Tharuwat movement escalated from March 2nd to 14th 2009, against the existing, repressive government, which passed the ordinance of enforced inclusion of 92 indigenous peoples living in the Terai within the Madeshi category. The movement heightened to a peak, when TJSC blockaded the Terai to a virtual standstill for 13 days, which literally paralyzed the country. This was in retaliation to the government’s undemocratic action against the political issues raised by the Tharus, infringing their fundamental rights. On behalf of the Government of Nepal, the Minister for Peace and Reconstruction, Janardhan Sharma had concluded a six point agreement with Tharuwat Sangharsha Samiti (TJSC). However, contrary to the signed agreement, the Government of Nepal has violated the terms and conditions agreed upon, between the two parties. TJSC has resumed its second round of protest, objecting the ordinances, bills, acts and amendments against the fundamental rights of the indigenous peoples of Nepal.
Violation of terms
1) The Nepal government had agreed to revoke the ordinance of enforcement inclusion in the Madeshi category by explicitly eliminating the terminology “Madesh” in the Interim Constitution and reinstatement of the word “Terai”. The Interim Constitution would thereby recognize the inhabitation of the Adhibasi Janajati (indigenous) – Tharus, other Adhibasi Janajatis, Dalits, Muslims, Madeshis and other minorities and adopt / adapt provisions to ensure the equal rights to their self determination without discrimination.
2) Since Article 21 of the Interim Constitution makes comprehensive provision for proportionate representation by % in ratio to population distribution, thus securing social inclusion in all organs of government services and offices, the conflicting ratio of 55% - 45% is illogical and unconstitutional. The objection to this discriminatory ratio distribution not only marginalizes the participation of the Adhibasi Janajati – Tharus, Adhibasi Janajatis, Dalits, Muslims and Madeshis but the Reformed Bill incites conflicting interests without an acceptable formula and rule of law that allows an amicable co-existence of the above mentioned identities. The Tharu movement had demanded the implementation of the provisions for separate quota from the Madeshi category to fulfill their aspiration for separate independent identity. This would ensure them opportunities in various public services, to develop and empower the potential of the Tharus, who have been incessantly victimized by the state in oppressing, discriminating and exploiting them; whereby the State has been successful in marginalizing the Tharus from actively participating in the reconstruction of the State.
This transparent decision by the present government, headed by Puspa Kamal Dahal, confirms the Brahminbadi autocracy in oppressing the justifiable demands of the inalienable rights of the Adhibasi Janajati – Tharus, Adhibasi Janajatis, Dalits, Muslims, and Madeshis. Since the government of Prime Minister, Puspa Kamal Dahal has violated the trust agreement signed between the two parties; we are obliged to continue our Civil Rights Movement with various civil disobedience acts. We demand that the government attend to the social justice issues as key to the political rights of the Adhibasi Janajati, Dalits, Muslims, Madeshis and the minority groups to establish a foreseeable peace in Nepal.
Main political agendas
- Repeal and amend all acts and rules related to public services, Citizens Act, Election Act etc. in the Interim Constitution of Nepal, violating the spirit of the six point agreement signed between the Tharuwat Movement and the Government of Nepal. The government must uphold the spirit of equality by including the issues raised by the Tharuwat Movement to be tabled by this Winter Session.
- Replace the term “Madeshi” with “Tharuwat” in the Interim Constitution.
- Recognize the territorial expanse of Tharuwat stretching from Jhapa in east to Kanchanpur in the west, including Udaypur valley, Kamala gorge of Sindhuli, Chitwan, Dang, Surkhet as “Tharuwat Autonomous Federal State” and Limbuwan, Magarat, Tamuwan, Newa Mandal, Tamangsaling, Khambuwan, Khasang as other autonomous federal states in the Interim Constitution and the drafting of the new constitution.
- Enact immediately all rights enshrined in ILO Convention No. 169, UN General Assembly Declaration on indigenous peoples, Earth Summit Declaration 1992 etc. amending the constitution and formulate the legislation in the interest of indigenous nationalities as Nepal government has ratified the international rule of laws binding to its partners.
- Implement equal rule of law by providing constitutional guarantee of full proportionate representation for all castes/ethnicities based on ratio of census at all levels of state organs and sectors of the state.
- Immediate appointments of Adhibasi Janajati – Tharus in the posts of Judges, Chief district Officers, Local Development Officers, Education Officers, Police and Army Chiefs, Constitutional Commissions, Diplomatic Missions, Ministries, Departments, various Commissions, The Supreme Court, including all government offices/corporations and companies in Tharuwat districts. In addition, correspond to appoint the Adhibasi Janajati – Tharus immediately in International Multinational donor agencies and organizations etc.
- Include Tharu language as an official language alongside other languages and special arrangement for education up to higher secondary level in Tharu language for the Tharus.
- Constitutional guarantee should be provided for the political rights of the Adhibasi Janajati – Tharus, Adhibasi Janajati, Muslim, Dalits and minorities.
- Execute immediately the task of compensation, re-establishing and empowering the freed ex- Kamaiyas ( bonded labourers).
Public bandhs and strikes program
21st April, 2009 06:00 PM
- Torch rally in all Tharuwat districts.
22nd April, 2009 onwards
- Public bandhs and strikes for indefinite period.
23rd to 26th April, 2009
- Padlock all government offices in Tharuwat region
27th April, 2009 onwards
- Continuous public bandhs /strikes, boycotting local governance.
29th April, 2009 onwards
- Tharuwat joint Struggle Committee will control all its natural resources, including water, forest, land by right of ILO-169
Tharuwat Sangharsha Samiti:
- Laxman Tharu
- Upendra Gachhedar
- Dilli Bahadur Chaudhary
- Yogendra Chaudhary
- Shakun Sherchand Leslie
- Gopal Dahit Tharu
- Shailendra Chaudhary Tharu
- Min Raj Chaudhary
- Ramananda Chaudhary
- Saraswati Chaudhary
- Shrawan Chaudhary
- C.N/ Chaudhary
- Chandra Chaudhary
- Chanda Tamang
- Rukmini Chaudhary
- Ganga Chaudhary
- Chandra Prasad Chaudhary
- Binod Chaudhary
Friday, April 03, 2009
Hindutsva Challenged
(Courtesy: Briat Simha)
As the campaigning for the Indian parliamentary elections heats up, Varun Gandhi, a 28-years old candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been taken into custody under the National Security Act. His misdeed: making fiery speeches supposedly inciting communal disharmony. That this has happened in the alleged largest functioning democracy in the world is remarkable; that the protagonist is a scion of the Gandhi clan, son of Menaka and the late Sanjay Gandhi and nephew of the Indian Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi, adds another angle to the story.
Freedom of speech is a basic pillar of democracy. What the young Gandhi exercised was this freedom. In the recently concluded American presidential elections, strong words were exchanged among of the candidates. Radio show hosts were criticized for inflammatory and racist remarks. But no one was hustled into prison. The reason, of course, is that none of these remarks threatened the national security of the United States. That Varun Gandhi's remarks may have threatened the national security of India indicates the fragility of the Indian strain of democracy.
India has made spectacular gains recently in the economic sector. It is also a country where at least a quarter of its billion plus population is mired in abject poverty. Social indicators, especially those on health, do not reflect the political lead that India tries to take in the sub-continent. As a more telling illustration, the Gandhi family - that of Jawaharlal Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi (not Mahatma Gandhi) - has become almost the "royal family" of India. That the oldest political party of India, the Congress, is currently headed by a woman of Italian birth says much for the awesome clout of the Gandhi name. Sonia just happened to be the wife of the pilot-turned-politician, the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who in turn may never have had to give up flying if his younger brother, Sanjay Gandhi, had not died in an aircraft mishap. Varun Gandhi is the son of this very same Sanjay.
Varun Gandhi's arrest has its political overtones. The BJP is challenging the Congress to lead the next government of India, which will almost surely be a coalition government. BJP has gained its fame, and has actually ruled India once, as a pro-Hindu party. It is today trying to downplay its Hindu origins to court non-Hindu votes. Varun Gandhi's speeches should not have come as a surprise to anyone. "Theocracy", something that most people believe ended when the Pope lost political power, is alive and well. The numerous Islamic states testify to this, as does the state of Israel. In this state of affairs, Hinduism is unique in that it does not accept converts. So with other religions on a conversion spree, Hindus will gradually have the least adherents. That the BJP should try to downplay its pro-Hindu roots and is almost disowning Varun Gandhi today illustrates this inherent hesitation among Hindus to stand up for Hinduism, that most tolerant of religion which is now facing extinction because of that very tolerance.
Another case in point: about three years ago, Nepal - then the only Hindu kingdom on earth - was declared secular by a motley crew of polticians, without so much as a peep from the people. While the Maoists have been logically blamed for this, the real culprits were the proselytizing grpups from Western donor countries who have made Nepal their conversion laboratory. While its Hindu population, comprising about 65% of the total, remained silent - or perhaps, tolerant! - Nepal lost its Hindu identity with a simple government ordnance.
Therefore, for Varun Gandhi to exercise his right to freedom of speech in the cause of Hindutsva is novel and laudatory. That his country is so insecure that it cannot allow him this freedom is a separate matter. All Hindus, especially those who have remained silent and docile so far, must view this imcident as a young Hindu stalwart's fight for his freedom, his beliefs and his religion!
The time has come for Hindus to stand for their rights and beliefs. This is not an exhortation to violence. Peaceful action is best. The symbol of universal peace, Gautam Buddha, was born a Hindu. Let us not be afraid, however, to fight if that is the only resort left us by our opponents. Let us not forget the Mahabharata and the Bhagvad Geeta when Lord Krishna himself, incarnation of Vishnu, went to battle to defend justice and righteousness.
As the campaigning for the Indian parliamentary elections heats up, Varun Gandhi, a 28-years old candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been taken into custody under the National Security Act. His misdeed: making fiery speeches supposedly inciting communal disharmony. That this has happened in the alleged largest functioning democracy in the world is remarkable; that the protagonist is a scion of the Gandhi clan, son of Menaka and the late Sanjay Gandhi and nephew of the Indian Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi, adds another angle to the story.
Freedom of speech is a basic pillar of democracy. What the young Gandhi exercised was this freedom. In the recently concluded American presidential elections, strong words were exchanged among of the candidates. Radio show hosts were criticized for inflammatory and racist remarks. But no one was hustled into prison. The reason, of course, is that none of these remarks threatened the national security of the United States. That Varun Gandhi's remarks may have threatened the national security of India indicates the fragility of the Indian strain of democracy.
India has made spectacular gains recently in the economic sector. It is also a country where at least a quarter of its billion plus population is mired in abject poverty. Social indicators, especially those on health, do not reflect the political lead that India tries to take in the sub-continent. As a more telling illustration, the Gandhi family - that of Jawaharlal Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi (not Mahatma Gandhi) - has become almost the "royal family" of India. That the oldest political party of India, the Congress, is currently headed by a woman of Italian birth says much for the awesome clout of the Gandhi name. Sonia just happened to be the wife of the pilot-turned-politician, the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who in turn may never have had to give up flying if his younger brother, Sanjay Gandhi, had not died in an aircraft mishap. Varun Gandhi is the son of this very same Sanjay.
Varun Gandhi's arrest has its political overtones. The BJP is challenging the Congress to lead the next government of India, which will almost surely be a coalition government. BJP has gained its fame, and has actually ruled India once, as a pro-Hindu party. It is today trying to downplay its Hindu origins to court non-Hindu votes. Varun Gandhi's speeches should not have come as a surprise to anyone. "Theocracy", something that most people believe ended when the Pope lost political power, is alive and well. The numerous Islamic states testify to this, as does the state of Israel. In this state of affairs, Hinduism is unique in that it does not accept converts. So with other religions on a conversion spree, Hindus will gradually have the least adherents. That the BJP should try to downplay its pro-Hindu roots and is almost disowning Varun Gandhi today illustrates this inherent hesitation among Hindus to stand up for Hinduism, that most tolerant of religion which is now facing extinction because of that very tolerance.
Another case in point: about three years ago, Nepal - then the only Hindu kingdom on earth - was declared secular by a motley crew of polticians, without so much as a peep from the people. While the Maoists have been logically blamed for this, the real culprits were the proselytizing grpups from Western donor countries who have made Nepal their conversion laboratory. While its Hindu population, comprising about 65% of the total, remained silent - or perhaps, tolerant! - Nepal lost its Hindu identity with a simple government ordnance.
Therefore, for Varun Gandhi to exercise his right to freedom of speech in the cause of Hindutsva is novel and laudatory. That his country is so insecure that it cannot allow him this freedom is a separate matter. All Hindus, especially those who have remained silent and docile so far, must view this imcident as a young Hindu stalwart's fight for his freedom, his beliefs and his religion!
The time has come for Hindus to stand for their rights and beliefs. This is not an exhortation to violence. Peaceful action is best. The symbol of universal peace, Gautam Buddha, was born a Hindu. Let us not be afraid, however, to fight if that is the only resort left us by our opponents. Let us not forget the Mahabharata and the Bhagvad Geeta when Lord Krishna himself, incarnation of Vishnu, went to battle to defend justice and righteousness.
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