(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.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
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-à-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-à-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.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Environment, Energy and Water in Nepal
(Courtesy: Dwarika N. Dhungel)
Environment, Energy and Water in Nepal: A Key Note Address of Dwarika N. Dhungel delivered at an International Symposium on Environment, Energy and Water in Nepal: Recent Researches and Future Directions, organised in Himalaya Hotel, Kathmandu ( March 31 and April 1, 2009 ) by University of Yamanashi, Japan
1. All of you are aware that our world is facing an important environmental problem: climate change and global warming and their consequences. Nepal is not an exception to this global problem.
2. Climate change is now unequivocal. Recently the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) pointing to the recent studies announced that without decisive action, global warming in the 21st century is likely to accelerate at a much faster pace and cause more environmental damage than predicted. All sectors especially the socio-economically active sectors like water resources, agriculture, tourism, and health and areas such as biodiversity, natural disasters, extreme events etc are affected. Developed or developing, no country can escape from its impacts. Nepal is also strongly affected by the climate change, though her contribution in changing the climate is negligible.
3. Such changes are more pronounced in mountainous areas. This will accelerate the glacier melt in the Himalayas, which is projected to increase flooding, within the next two to three decades. This will be followed by decreased river flows as the glaciers recede. Freshwater availability not only in Nepal but also in the whole South Asia region is projected to decrease due to climate change.
4. In many years, there was practically no rainfall during the recently gone winter of 2008-009. We have observed the beginning of early warm season in the country. Japan's celebrated cherry blossomed early. If the trend continues, we may have to face a severe drought in the coming rainy season. Study by Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHoM) shows that the annual mean temperature of the country is increasing steadily at the linear rate of about 0.04oC/year. This rate is much higher than the mean global rate. The mean annual temperature has increased by 1.8°C between 1975 and 2006. Study shows that not only the mean annual temperature is increasing, but also all the seasons are warming. The rate of warming is also varied, which is higher in winter compared to the other seasons. Apart from change in mean state of climate, the changes in frequency and intensity of extreme climate events have profound impacts on nature and society.
In Nepal:
5. With the long dry period and unusually high temperature, this winter in Nepal has brought a lot of hardships to the public. Water level in most of the rivers has decreased. The wells, tube wells and ancient waterspouts (Dhunge Dharaa) have started drying in the Katmandu Valley. This has created drinking water scarcity in the valley. A 12,000 liter tanker water now costs Nrs. 2,600 up from Nrs. 1,200. After 2006 that was marked as one of the driest winters in Nepal, 2009 winter is another similar drier winter within a span of 3 years.
6. The rivers are not only getting dry day by day, but they are also getting polluted. Due to the lack of landfill sites facility, most of the urban rivers in the country have become west dumping sites. Almost all the rivers within the Kathmandu valley have turned into very dark pool of filths, dirt and wastewater - an open sewer. They could be easily called cesspools. The morning walkers along the river banks, which I also undertake along the Bagmati River with a senior colleague, have to use handkerchiefs in their noses to avoid very bad odor. If people like us cannot face or tolerate five to ten minutes in the dirty and filthy environment along the famous rivers banks of Kathmandu, one can imagine, in what hazardous conditions people must be living on the posh bungalows and shanty huts on the banks of this river. The Pashupati Aryaghat on the bank of the River Bagmati, where pauper and prince, both are normally cremated, may be the dirtiest place and whatever drop of water is available in it, is very hazardous and contaminated. But many after their cremation would like to get a piece of their bones buried underneath the clean water of the Bagmati River at Aryghat. Therefore, one of my friends wants me to answer his query, that is, Should we not have the respect for our sacred Bagmati River? He further thinks that 'we have for over a decade, environmental laws and regulations framed with the assistance of our friends (donors). Yet the will to implement those laws are totally lacking, why? I do not have the answers to these questions of my friend.
7. 53 percent of the total population (65 percent in the urban areas and 51 percent in the rural areas) is supposed to be enjoying the piped drinking water facility. Yet people face the drinking water problem. According to the ADB (2004), it is reported that nearly 50 percent of drinking water supply schemes are not functioning as designed due to the lack of proper maintenance in Kathmandu valley. Other urban drinking water schemes also suffer from this problem.
8. Water pollution is the most serious public health issue in Nepal. Water-borne diseases such as diarrhea, dysentery, cholera and skin diseases are among the top ten dreadful leading diseases. The quality of both surface and ground water sources used for drinking water purpose is deteriorating mainly due to both natural and anthropogenic contaminations. Discharge of untreated domestic sewers and industrial effluents into rivers, and landslides, soil erosion and floods pollute the river water. The ground water in the Katmandu valley is polluted with fecal contamination. Whereas, arsenic problem is rampant in the Terai (southern plains) area. This shows that the quality of drinking water in Nepal is miserably substandard.
9. Drinking water is the basic minimum requirement of all the human beings. Access to safe and adequate drinking water is the commitment of the government. Therefore, the government needs to raise the awareness of the people on sanitation and promote, operate and maintain domestic as well as industrial wastewater treatment plants to reduce the pollution of surface water and safeguard the public health. Studies have also recommended community wastewater management treatment plants and separate treatment plants for populated institutions such as hospitals, prisons and army camps. It may be recalled that wastewater management promotes water conservation by preventing pollution from untreated discharges to surface water, groundwater and soils.
10. The demand for water is increasing due to increase in population and industrialization and the rate of ground water recharge is decreasing with increase in pavement area due to rapid urbanization. As a result the ground water aquifer is vulnerable to drying of the wells, contamination of water and possible land subsidence. Among others, the depletion of ground water table is threatening agricultural development that is the main source of GDP in the region. But let me remind you that the people in Terai and the Kathmandu valley are very much dependant on ground water. Therefore a proper sustainable management of groundwater is urgently needed.
11. More than 30 year long study of glaciers in Nepal shows the alarming rate of glacier retreat from few meters to over 30 meters in a year. The most serious impact of climate change on glaciers is the expansion of these glacier lakes and formation of new ones, posing danger of glacier lake outburst flood (GLOF). Nepal has already observed 15 GLOF events. 20 glacier lakes in Nepal are potentially dangerous.
12. The fresh water resource of the Himalayas is depleting fast affecting the water resources of both Nepal and the populous Indo-Gangetic Plain. The mighty Ganges, whose 75 percent of the flow during the three lean months is fed from the rivers flowing from Nepal, supports 42 percent of the Indian population. There is going to be increasing demand for fresh water in our part of the world.
13. The heavy precipitation events show the increasing trend. This implies the occurrence of more extremely high rainfall in future and water induced disasters such as floods and landslides are expected to be more common. There may be high possibility of increased water induced disasters in the country. Moreover, the studies on observed trend in water-induced disasters also show the increasing trend in disaster (floods, landslides and droughts) events and damage. Nepal has; therefore, to develop a comprehensive disaster management strategies and frameworks for disasters risk reduction to adjust the sudden shocks.
14. It may be recalled that Nepal is known to be one of the richest countries in water resources. With her more than 6,000 rivers, having a combined run-off of more than 200 billion cubic meters (bcm), and contributing 46% (as high as 71% during the lean season) of the flow in the Ganges has immense potential for the development of hydropower, which, if developed to the maximum possible extent, would not only fulfill the total demand of the country but also some requirements of other countries of South Asia: India and Bangladesh. The theoretical hydropower potential of Nepal's rivers is estimated to be about 83,000 mega watts (MW) of which about 43,000 MW is considered to be financially and technically feasible for exploitation. However, Nepal’s per capita energy consumption is one of the lowest in the world reflecting the low level of development and prosperity. As of March 2008, the country had exploited only 556.4 MW of hydropower (public sector: 408.1 MW and private sector: 148.3 MW) of the hydropower potential. The country is undergoing 16 hours of reeling load shedding having serious consequences in the economy. It is most likely to increase in the days to come. Despite the fact that Nepal may organize programme to celebrate 100 years of the establishment of the first hydropower plant, 500 KW Pharping power plant, in two year's time, she seems to going back to the dark days. Thus one major question that needs to be raised: Why we are undergoing the worst load shedding in Nepal's history? Have the Initial Environmental Examination and Environmental Impact Assessment laws and regulations relating to hydropower development become a burden or, a constraint? The government's recent 35 Point Agenda that has been brought to deal with load shedding problem appears to indicate that.
15. The current energy consumption scenario shows that Nepal’s energy supply is primarily based on traditional, commercial and alternative energy of which the large portion of the energy consumption (over 85%) is dominated by the use of traditional non commercial forms of energy, the biomass fuels particularly fuel wood, agriculture residue and animal dung. As population increases, and economy expands, the energy demand would also increase. Coping the increasing demand and diversifying the sources of energy are the major challenges before the country.
16. The way the present and future demands are met affects not only the environment but also the overall development. Indiscriminate use of fossil fuel is leading to global warming and climate change. Nepal, therefore, has to pursue an energy policy that ensures energy for present and future use from sources that are dependable, affordable, safe and environmental friendly. Nepal’s energy development therefore got to be guided by the following principles:
Firstly, promotion of indigenous renewable sources such as solar, wind, biomass, hydro etc.
Secondly, energy diversification as no single source is likely to fulfill all types of energy needs and dependence on one source alone is not sustainable in the long run.
Last but not the least, efficient use of energy in the production, supply and consumption stages need to be maintained.
The key to a secure energy future is the efficient and effective use of a diverse mix of energy sources. But how sustainable, without the donor support, in solar, wind and biomass for a country like Nepal needs to be seriously analysed.
17. In the light of all the facts and realities, what I personally think is that friends of scholars working on Nepal, and professionals in the subject matters covered by this symposium, should in addition to undertaking studies and researches pay attention to the following matters and provide solid analytical basis to understand the problems and undertake the measures that would address the problems:
Above all, I want to urge all of you to make an analytical study and diagnose the chronicle disease that Nepal has been suffering for a long time, i.e. Nepal is good in plan preparation but in the water and energy: no drinking water, no power, and cesspools all around. What a paradox?
Kathmandu
March 31, 2009
Environment, Energy and Water in Nepal: A Key Note Address of Dwarika N. Dhungel delivered at an International Symposium on Environment, Energy and Water in Nepal: Recent Researches and Future Directions, organised in Himalaya Hotel, Kathmandu ( March 31 and April 1, 2009 ) by University of Yamanashi, Japan
1. All of you are aware that our world is facing an important environmental problem: climate change and global warming and their consequences. Nepal is not an exception to this global problem.
2. Climate change is now unequivocal. Recently the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) pointing to the recent studies announced that without decisive action, global warming in the 21st century is likely to accelerate at a much faster pace and cause more environmental damage than predicted. All sectors especially the socio-economically active sectors like water resources, agriculture, tourism, and health and areas such as biodiversity, natural disasters, extreme events etc are affected. Developed or developing, no country can escape from its impacts. Nepal is also strongly affected by the climate change, though her contribution in changing the climate is negligible.
3. Such changes are more pronounced in mountainous areas. This will accelerate the glacier melt in the Himalayas, which is projected to increase flooding, within the next two to three decades. This will be followed by decreased river flows as the glaciers recede. Freshwater availability not only in Nepal but also in the whole South Asia region is projected to decrease due to climate change.
4. In many years, there was practically no rainfall during the recently gone winter of 2008-009. We have observed the beginning of early warm season in the country. Japan's celebrated cherry blossomed early. If the trend continues, we may have to face a severe drought in the coming rainy season. Study by Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHoM) shows that the annual mean temperature of the country is increasing steadily at the linear rate of about 0.04oC/year. This rate is much higher than the mean global rate. The mean annual temperature has increased by 1.8°C between 1975 and 2006. Study shows that not only the mean annual temperature is increasing, but also all the seasons are warming. The rate of warming is also varied, which is higher in winter compared to the other seasons. Apart from change in mean state of climate, the changes in frequency and intensity of extreme climate events have profound impacts on nature and society.
In Nepal:
- Cool days and cool nights have decreased.
- Warm nights and warm days have increased.
- Frequency of warm spells has increased and incidence of cold spells has decreased.
5. With the long dry period and unusually high temperature, this winter in Nepal has brought a lot of hardships to the public. Water level in most of the rivers has decreased. The wells, tube wells and ancient waterspouts (Dhunge Dharaa) have started drying in the Katmandu Valley. This has created drinking water scarcity in the valley. A 12,000 liter tanker water now costs Nrs. 2,600 up from Nrs. 1,200. After 2006 that was marked as one of the driest winters in Nepal, 2009 winter is another similar drier winter within a span of 3 years.
6. The rivers are not only getting dry day by day, but they are also getting polluted. Due to the lack of landfill sites facility, most of the urban rivers in the country have become west dumping sites. Almost all the rivers within the Kathmandu valley have turned into very dark pool of filths, dirt and wastewater - an open sewer. They could be easily called cesspools. The morning walkers along the river banks, which I also undertake along the Bagmati River with a senior colleague, have to use handkerchiefs in their noses to avoid very bad odor. If people like us cannot face or tolerate five to ten minutes in the dirty and filthy environment along the famous rivers banks of Kathmandu, one can imagine, in what hazardous conditions people must be living on the posh bungalows and shanty huts on the banks of this river. The Pashupati Aryaghat on the bank of the River Bagmati, where pauper and prince, both are normally cremated, may be the dirtiest place and whatever drop of water is available in it, is very hazardous and contaminated. But many after their cremation would like to get a piece of their bones buried underneath the clean water of the Bagmati River at Aryghat. Therefore, one of my friends wants me to answer his query, that is, Should we not have the respect for our sacred Bagmati River? He further thinks that 'we have for over a decade, environmental laws and regulations framed with the assistance of our friends (donors). Yet the will to implement those laws are totally lacking, why? I do not have the answers to these questions of my friend.
7. 53 percent of the total population (65 percent in the urban areas and 51 percent in the rural areas) is supposed to be enjoying the piped drinking water facility. Yet people face the drinking water problem. According to the ADB (2004), it is reported that nearly 50 percent of drinking water supply schemes are not functioning as designed due to the lack of proper maintenance in Kathmandu valley. Other urban drinking water schemes also suffer from this problem.
8. Water pollution is the most serious public health issue in Nepal. Water-borne diseases such as diarrhea, dysentery, cholera and skin diseases are among the top ten dreadful leading diseases. The quality of both surface and ground water sources used for drinking water purpose is deteriorating mainly due to both natural and anthropogenic contaminations. Discharge of untreated domestic sewers and industrial effluents into rivers, and landslides, soil erosion and floods pollute the river water. The ground water in the Katmandu valley is polluted with fecal contamination. Whereas, arsenic problem is rampant in the Terai (southern plains) area. This shows that the quality of drinking water in Nepal is miserably substandard.
9. Drinking water is the basic minimum requirement of all the human beings. Access to safe and adequate drinking water is the commitment of the government. Therefore, the government needs to raise the awareness of the people on sanitation and promote, operate and maintain domestic as well as industrial wastewater treatment plants to reduce the pollution of surface water and safeguard the public health. Studies have also recommended community wastewater management treatment plants and separate treatment plants for populated institutions such as hospitals, prisons and army camps. It may be recalled that wastewater management promotes water conservation by preventing pollution from untreated discharges to surface water, groundwater and soils.
10. The demand for water is increasing due to increase in population and industrialization and the rate of ground water recharge is decreasing with increase in pavement area due to rapid urbanization. As a result the ground water aquifer is vulnerable to drying of the wells, contamination of water and possible land subsidence. Among others, the depletion of ground water table is threatening agricultural development that is the main source of GDP in the region. But let me remind you that the people in Terai and the Kathmandu valley are very much dependant on ground water. Therefore a proper sustainable management of groundwater is urgently needed.
11. More than 30 year long study of glaciers in Nepal shows the alarming rate of glacier retreat from few meters to over 30 meters in a year. The most serious impact of climate change on glaciers is the expansion of these glacier lakes and formation of new ones, posing danger of glacier lake outburst flood (GLOF). Nepal has already observed 15 GLOF events. 20 glacier lakes in Nepal are potentially dangerous.
12. The fresh water resource of the Himalayas is depleting fast affecting the water resources of both Nepal and the populous Indo-Gangetic Plain. The mighty Ganges, whose 75 percent of the flow during the three lean months is fed from the rivers flowing from Nepal, supports 42 percent of the Indian population. There is going to be increasing demand for fresh water in our part of the world.
13. The heavy precipitation events show the increasing trend. This implies the occurrence of more extremely high rainfall in future and water induced disasters such as floods and landslides are expected to be more common. There may be high possibility of increased water induced disasters in the country. Moreover, the studies on observed trend in water-induced disasters also show the increasing trend in disaster (floods, landslides and droughts) events and damage. Nepal has; therefore, to develop a comprehensive disaster management strategies and frameworks for disasters risk reduction to adjust the sudden shocks.
14. It may be recalled that Nepal is known to be one of the richest countries in water resources. With her more than 6,000 rivers, having a combined run-off of more than 200 billion cubic meters (bcm), and contributing 46% (as high as 71% during the lean season) of the flow in the Ganges has immense potential for the development of hydropower, which, if developed to the maximum possible extent, would not only fulfill the total demand of the country but also some requirements of other countries of South Asia: India and Bangladesh. The theoretical hydropower potential of Nepal's rivers is estimated to be about 83,000 mega watts (MW) of which about 43,000 MW is considered to be financially and technically feasible for exploitation. However, Nepal’s per capita energy consumption is one of the lowest in the world reflecting the low level of development and prosperity. As of March 2008, the country had exploited only 556.4 MW of hydropower (public sector: 408.1 MW and private sector: 148.3 MW) of the hydropower potential. The country is undergoing 16 hours of reeling load shedding having serious consequences in the economy. It is most likely to increase in the days to come. Despite the fact that Nepal may organize programme to celebrate 100 years of the establishment of the first hydropower plant, 500 KW Pharping power plant, in two year's time, she seems to going back to the dark days. Thus one major question that needs to be raised: Why we are undergoing the worst load shedding in Nepal's history? Have the Initial Environmental Examination and Environmental Impact Assessment laws and regulations relating to hydropower development become a burden or, a constraint? The government's recent 35 Point Agenda that has been brought to deal with load shedding problem appears to indicate that.
15. The current energy consumption scenario shows that Nepal’s energy supply is primarily based on traditional, commercial and alternative energy of which the large portion of the energy consumption (over 85%) is dominated by the use of traditional non commercial forms of energy, the biomass fuels particularly fuel wood, agriculture residue and animal dung. As population increases, and economy expands, the energy demand would also increase. Coping the increasing demand and diversifying the sources of energy are the major challenges before the country.
16. The way the present and future demands are met affects not only the environment but also the overall development. Indiscriminate use of fossil fuel is leading to global warming and climate change. Nepal, therefore, has to pursue an energy policy that ensures energy for present and future use from sources that are dependable, affordable, safe and environmental friendly. Nepal’s energy development therefore got to be guided by the following principles:
Firstly, promotion of indigenous renewable sources such as solar, wind, biomass, hydro etc.
Secondly, energy diversification as no single source is likely to fulfill all types of energy needs and dependence on one source alone is not sustainable in the long run.
Last but not the least, efficient use of energy in the production, supply and consumption stages need to be maintained.
The key to a secure energy future is the efficient and effective use of a diverse mix of energy sources. But how sustainable, without the donor support, in solar, wind and biomass for a country like Nepal needs to be seriously analysed.
17. In the light of all the facts and realities, what I personally think is that friends of scholars working on Nepal, and professionals in the subject matters covered by this symposium, should in addition to undertaking studies and researches pay attention to the following matters and provide solid analytical basis to understand the problems and undertake the measures that would address the problems:
- Find out what has been done to deal with the issues related to climate change, measures undertaken, their success or hard realities and lapses?
- Successes and lapses in controlling river pollution and contamination and growing scarcity of drinking water especially in urban areas and arsenic problem related to the ground water.
- Warning system and alertness/preparedness to deal with the GLOF burst and glacier related issues.
- Development of more non-grid based hydro projects in isolated pockets and getting them hooked to the national grid.
- Concerted and sustained effort to develop different energy sources.
Above all, I want to urge all of you to make an analytical study and diagnose the chronicle disease that Nepal has been suffering for a long time, i.e. Nepal is good in plan preparation but in the water and energy: no drinking water, no power, and cesspools all around. What a paradox?
Kathmandu
March 31, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Re-thinking Maoist Democracy
(Courtesy: Dr. Hari Bansha Dulal)
The populist floodgates that have been thrown open have dangerously destabilized the country. In the name of equality, ethnic fundamentalism is on the rise. Law and order situation is in a shambles. Judiciary is being ridiculed and attacked. Can a nation with an acutely vulnerable judiciary, absence of law and order, and social capital (dangerously depleted by rising ethnic hatred) prosper and consolidate democracy? Nepal represents a failing democracy in which the prospects for consolidation have narrowed down significantly mainly due to the politicians´ inability to manage peoples’ expectations and to look for solutions for domestic political problems from within the country.
The ruling party has been inconsistently consistent about their lack of faith in multi-party democracy and the opposition parties do not have the required strength and vision to mainstream the Maoists. Democratic consolidation in Nepal now is a generational challenge, requiring a long-term process of locally embedded civil society development, party institutionalization, and the disarmament of insurgency groups.
Virtually nothing will be achieved at this point by blaming the Maoists for derailing the democratic process and looking for an external solution to the problem. Why would the Maoists strengthen a system in which they never had faith to begin with? The Maoists had it all figured out. They wanted to get rid of the old political structure and fill the vacuum, which they have succeeded in doing so. With their militia controlling rural areas, they knew very well that major political parties of yesteryears would not be able to stand their wrath for long. The Maoists’ calculation went awry when ethnic dissent sparked off. But they quickly figured out a way to deal with it. By accommodating Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) and Nepal Sadbhavana Party in the government, they have frozen the chances of large scale ethnic revolt that could potentially bring down their government. As far as small-scale ethnic dissent is concerned, they are ready to strike a deal even if such deals have the potential to hurt the nation in the future. Their past deals clearly show how well they have mastered the art of using “useful idiots.”
Their biggest hurdle for now is neutralizing the Nepali Army (NA) and overhauling the bureaucracy. They want to neutralize the army because it is the only institution in Nepal that can put a brake to the Maoists march towards establishment of one party rule. By neutralizing the army—the process has already begun with the formation of Army Integration Special Committee—they want to negate the possibility of a takeover by the army or an army-backed government. For the Maoists, overhauling the bureaucracy is equally important because the Maoists know it very well that the Nepali bureaucracy is not neutral. The Maoists will not hesitate to provide golden parachutes so that they can get rid of civil servants they don’t want. By doing so, the Maoists will not only substantially reduce the threat to their regime but also please donors and other external players that have been advocating for reforms in security sector and bureaucracy. Actually, it might be perceived as a step towards promoting good governance by the donors and the Maoists government might end up benefiting both diplomatically and financially.
The Maoists have never shied away from making known their desire to establish one-party rule in Nepal. The one-party rule they want to establish does not have to be like North Korea´s. They can live with the West Bengal-type model, where they can run the show without much of a threat from other political players. Probably, that is the easiest and safest route for the Maoists. All they have to do is continue what they have been doing so far—flush out the political cadres of major political parties from rural areas. That way they can guarantee the outcome of future elections and appear democratic to the external world at the same time. This formula was successfully experimented in Constituent Assembly elections and it worked out pretty well in favor of the Maoists. They might want to take this experiment to the urban areas now. But how difficult would that be when you have the covert support of security forces, and the bureaucracy is willing to do the needful?
While the Maoists are working hard to find a way within the country to consolidate their rule, the opposition parties appear clueless regarding how to preserve their political space. The leaders of the opposition parties once again want our southern neighbor to devise a survival formula for them.
What the politicians of opposition parties fail to understand is, even if they come to the power and rule the country, which is only possible through NA´s backing, they will not be able to run the show for very long. They want to rule the country that no longer exists. Today’s Nepal is drastically different from the past. Nepal, as a nation, has gone too far left. First of all, even if India supports the opposition’s quest for power, removing the Maoists from power will not be as easy as removing Gyanendra Shah. The support that Pushpa Kamal Dahal has and the scale of violence that he can unleash is no match to the support and options that the former king had. So even if opposition parties bounce back with tacit support from India and the backing of NA, which in my view is completely unacceptable and undemocratic, they will not be able to rule for long. Dahal has way more support than what Gyanendra enjoyed during his rule. And, think about the cross-mobility of communists from the CPN-UML to the Maoist party. The recent college elections have clearly shown that the younger generation in Nepal is increasingly leaning towards the left. There is nothing to be cheerful about the poor showing of the Maoists in recent student union elections. Third place is good enough. It will not take very long for student leaders from the UML-affiliated student wing to migrate to the Maoist wing. They share the same ideology.
The options that the opposition parties in Nepal have at this point are very limited. For now, they should forget about scratching the backs of foreign leaders to garner support to bounce back to power. Such move is neither democratic, nor will it help them remain in power for long. The only way to keep the Maoists deviating away from democratic path is by keeping them engaged. It will take time, which Girija Prasad Koirala and other aged leaders unfortunately do not have on their side given their age and desire to establish their siblings in politics. We had an option to taste the success that Mahendra Rajapaksa in Sri Lanka is enjoying now, but we decided not to take that route and it is now too late to even think about it. Now, it is an ideological battle between the hardcore leftists and true democrats, if any. NA should not be dragged into this fight.
Let the people of Nepal themselves realize the difference between living in a liberal society and under hardcore leftists´ rule. A revolution that will occur then after will be the real revolution for democracy. It will be a long slog but would be worthier than the shortcut our southern neighbor devises for us. Not very long ago they devised a formula to establish democracy in Nepal and we all know how well it worked out. We are the ones who are now paying for their five-decade-long expertise in democratic consolidation. Do we really need another set of formulas from them again?
(Originally published at: http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/?action=news_details&news_id=3146)
The populist floodgates that have been thrown open have dangerously destabilized the country. In the name of equality, ethnic fundamentalism is on the rise. Law and order situation is in a shambles. Judiciary is being ridiculed and attacked. Can a nation with an acutely vulnerable judiciary, absence of law and order, and social capital (dangerously depleted by rising ethnic hatred) prosper and consolidate democracy? Nepal represents a failing democracy in which the prospects for consolidation have narrowed down significantly mainly due to the politicians´ inability to manage peoples’ expectations and to look for solutions for domestic political problems from within the country.
The ruling party has been inconsistently consistent about their lack of faith in multi-party democracy and the opposition parties do not have the required strength and vision to mainstream the Maoists. Democratic consolidation in Nepal now is a generational challenge, requiring a long-term process of locally embedded civil society development, party institutionalization, and the disarmament of insurgency groups.
Virtually nothing will be achieved at this point by blaming the Maoists for derailing the democratic process and looking for an external solution to the problem. Why would the Maoists strengthen a system in which they never had faith to begin with? The Maoists had it all figured out. They wanted to get rid of the old political structure and fill the vacuum, which they have succeeded in doing so. With their militia controlling rural areas, they knew very well that major political parties of yesteryears would not be able to stand their wrath for long. The Maoists’ calculation went awry when ethnic dissent sparked off. But they quickly figured out a way to deal with it. By accommodating Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) and Nepal Sadbhavana Party in the government, they have frozen the chances of large scale ethnic revolt that could potentially bring down their government. As far as small-scale ethnic dissent is concerned, they are ready to strike a deal even if such deals have the potential to hurt the nation in the future. Their past deals clearly show how well they have mastered the art of using “useful idiots.”
Their biggest hurdle for now is neutralizing the Nepali Army (NA) and overhauling the bureaucracy. They want to neutralize the army because it is the only institution in Nepal that can put a brake to the Maoists march towards establishment of one party rule. By neutralizing the army—the process has already begun with the formation of Army Integration Special Committee—they want to negate the possibility of a takeover by the army or an army-backed government. For the Maoists, overhauling the bureaucracy is equally important because the Maoists know it very well that the Nepali bureaucracy is not neutral. The Maoists will not hesitate to provide golden parachutes so that they can get rid of civil servants they don’t want. By doing so, the Maoists will not only substantially reduce the threat to their regime but also please donors and other external players that have been advocating for reforms in security sector and bureaucracy. Actually, it might be perceived as a step towards promoting good governance by the donors and the Maoists government might end up benefiting both diplomatically and financially.
The Maoists have never shied away from making known their desire to establish one-party rule in Nepal. The one-party rule they want to establish does not have to be like North Korea´s. They can live with the West Bengal-type model, where they can run the show without much of a threat from other political players. Probably, that is the easiest and safest route for the Maoists. All they have to do is continue what they have been doing so far—flush out the political cadres of major political parties from rural areas. That way they can guarantee the outcome of future elections and appear democratic to the external world at the same time. This formula was successfully experimented in Constituent Assembly elections and it worked out pretty well in favor of the Maoists. They might want to take this experiment to the urban areas now. But how difficult would that be when you have the covert support of security forces, and the bureaucracy is willing to do the needful?
While the Maoists are working hard to find a way within the country to consolidate their rule, the opposition parties appear clueless regarding how to preserve their political space. The leaders of the opposition parties once again want our southern neighbor to devise a survival formula for them.
What the politicians of opposition parties fail to understand is, even if they come to the power and rule the country, which is only possible through NA´s backing, they will not be able to run the show for very long. They want to rule the country that no longer exists. Today’s Nepal is drastically different from the past. Nepal, as a nation, has gone too far left. First of all, even if India supports the opposition’s quest for power, removing the Maoists from power will not be as easy as removing Gyanendra Shah. The support that Pushpa Kamal Dahal has and the scale of violence that he can unleash is no match to the support and options that the former king had. So even if opposition parties bounce back with tacit support from India and the backing of NA, which in my view is completely unacceptable and undemocratic, they will not be able to rule for long. Dahal has way more support than what Gyanendra enjoyed during his rule. And, think about the cross-mobility of communists from the CPN-UML to the Maoist party. The recent college elections have clearly shown that the younger generation in Nepal is increasingly leaning towards the left. There is nothing to be cheerful about the poor showing of the Maoists in recent student union elections. Third place is good enough. It will not take very long for student leaders from the UML-affiliated student wing to migrate to the Maoist wing. They share the same ideology.
The options that the opposition parties in Nepal have at this point are very limited. For now, they should forget about scratching the backs of foreign leaders to garner support to bounce back to power. Such move is neither democratic, nor will it help them remain in power for long. The only way to keep the Maoists deviating away from democratic path is by keeping them engaged. It will take time, which Girija Prasad Koirala and other aged leaders unfortunately do not have on their side given their age and desire to establish their siblings in politics. We had an option to taste the success that Mahendra Rajapaksa in Sri Lanka is enjoying now, but we decided not to take that route and it is now too late to even think about it. Now, it is an ideological battle between the hardcore leftists and true democrats, if any. NA should not be dragged into this fight.
Let the people of Nepal themselves realize the difference between living in a liberal society and under hardcore leftists´ rule. A revolution that will occur then after will be the real revolution for democracy. It will be a long slog but would be worthier than the shortcut our southern neighbor devises for us. Not very long ago they devised a formula to establish democracy in Nepal and we all know how well it worked out. We are the ones who are now paying for their five-decade-long expertise in democratic consolidation. Do we really need another set of formulas from them again?
(Originally published at: http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/?action=news_details&news_id=3146)
Friday, March 27, 2009
Arun III Project: Nepal’s Electricity Crisis and it’s Role in Current Load Shedding and the Potential Role 10 Years Hence
(Courtesy: Ratna Sansar Shrestha, FCA)
Abstract
It, has become fashionable to blame “cancellation” of Arun III project, by the World Bank in 1995, in reference to current electricity crisis, inferring that had it been implemented consumers in Nepal would not have been facing current load shedding problem. Now is time for a dispassionate and detached analysis of the two scenarios, the Arun III route and the route sans Arun III. The analysis of alternative scenarios demonstrates that the implementation of Arun III 201 MW project in 1995 would have not eliminated load shedding from 2000 onwards; in fact the power deficit would have been of a higher magnitude. Now, Arun III planning is for a new incarnation with a capacity of 402 MW, expected to be completed within next 10 years. But as the output of this proejdct has been slated for export, it, too, will not alleviate load shedding problem of Nepal.
Nepal is facing severe electricity crisis due to supply constraint and it has already been forecast that the load shedding is here to stay in the increasing magnitude. During this year’s wet season Nepal faced the problem of flood which resulted in loss of life and limb as well as property in the hilly areas and Terai in Western Nepal. Besides, the breach of Koshi embankment played a havoc in East Nepal where people got drowned (and unfortunately killed, too) and displaced, homes washed away, and farmers’ investment of time, energy and resources in the cultivation of their land washed out (in some areas even fertile land was converted to sandy “beach”). Moreover, communication network and infrastructure including road network was brought to disarray. Industries in the area also suffered due to break down of transportation system; either because of failure to access raw materials and other supplies or because of inability to supply finished product to its customers (most of the industries suffered on both counts).
In the past, Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) used to trot out the excuse of no water in rivers whenever it came up with a new load shedding schedule or made changes in them resulting in the increased hours of load shedding. However, this rainy season, even in the abundance of water (or flood!), NEA imposed a load shedding of 2 hours each day, two days a week, till third week of August 2008. With effect from 27th August, 2008 the load shedding hours was increased to 16.5 hours/week which kept on increasing ad nauseaum. The Chief of Load Dispatch Center of NEA announced in a program in Butwal on 11th November 2008 that there will be load shedding at the rate of 10 hours/day in Marga (November-December), which will go up to 12 hours/day in Paush (December-January) and it will peak at 14 hours/day during Magh (January-February) this year[i].
Many a pages have been written wherein the root cause of Nepal’s electricity crisis has been ascribed to the cancellation of Arun III by the World Bank in 1995, scheduled to be completed in 2005. Besides the journalists of many hues, a number of luminaries have also “invested” time and energy to write on this topic, including a special chapter dedicated to this subject, forming a part of the book by a renowned economist, who has occupied the position of finance minister of Nepal a number of times over last two decades and was the first Vice Chair of National Planning Commission of democratic Nepal in 1991[ii]. It is high time to examine/analyze if there is any truth in it. Irrespective of whether there is an iota of truth in this logic or not, it is also time to draw lessons from this phenomenon so that Nepal is able to learn from this episode and undertake projects for implementation in future prudently. In other words, a dispassionate and detached analysis is called for to test if the argument attributing current load shedding problem to the cancellation of Arun III project by the World Bank is rooted to ground reality or not and find out what lessons could be learnt from this episode. This entails conducting an autopsy of this logic, as it will also be able to throw ample light on the intellect and mindset of the hydrocracy (intelligentsia, politicos and bureaucracy involved in water resource sector) in Nepal.
FOR A FULL VERSION OF THIS TEXT, PLEASE REFER TO THE FOLLOWING SITE:
http://ratnasansar.blogspot.com/2009/03/arun-iii-project-nepals-electricity.html
[i] Source: Kantipur of November 13, 2008.
[ii] Mahat, Dr Ram Sharan, 2005: In Defence of Democracy, Adroit Publishers.
Abstract
It, has become fashionable to blame “cancellation” of Arun III project, by the World Bank in 1995, in reference to current electricity crisis, inferring that had it been implemented consumers in Nepal would not have been facing current load shedding problem. Now is time for a dispassionate and detached analysis of the two scenarios, the Arun III route and the route sans Arun III. The analysis of alternative scenarios demonstrates that the implementation of Arun III 201 MW project in 1995 would have not eliminated load shedding from 2000 onwards; in fact the power deficit would have been of a higher magnitude. Now, Arun III planning is for a new incarnation with a capacity of 402 MW, expected to be completed within next 10 years. But as the output of this proejdct has been slated for export, it, too, will not alleviate load shedding problem of Nepal.
Nepal is facing severe electricity crisis due to supply constraint and it has already been forecast that the load shedding is here to stay in the increasing magnitude. During this year’s wet season Nepal faced the problem of flood which resulted in loss of life and limb as well as property in the hilly areas and Terai in Western Nepal. Besides, the breach of Koshi embankment played a havoc in East Nepal where people got drowned (and unfortunately killed, too) and displaced, homes washed away, and farmers’ investment of time, energy and resources in the cultivation of their land washed out (in some areas even fertile land was converted to sandy “beach”). Moreover, communication network and infrastructure including road network was brought to disarray. Industries in the area also suffered due to break down of transportation system; either because of failure to access raw materials and other supplies or because of inability to supply finished product to its customers (most of the industries suffered on both counts).
In the past, Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) used to trot out the excuse of no water in rivers whenever it came up with a new load shedding schedule or made changes in them resulting in the increased hours of load shedding. However, this rainy season, even in the abundance of water (or flood!), NEA imposed a load shedding of 2 hours each day, two days a week, till third week of August 2008. With effect from 27th August, 2008 the load shedding hours was increased to 16.5 hours/week which kept on increasing ad nauseaum. The Chief of Load Dispatch Center of NEA announced in a program in Butwal on 11th November 2008 that there will be load shedding at the rate of 10 hours/day in Marga (November-December), which will go up to 12 hours/day in Paush (December-January) and it will peak at 14 hours/day during Magh (January-February) this year[i].
Many a pages have been written wherein the root cause of Nepal’s electricity crisis has been ascribed to the cancellation of Arun III by the World Bank in 1995, scheduled to be completed in 2005. Besides the journalists of many hues, a number of luminaries have also “invested” time and energy to write on this topic, including a special chapter dedicated to this subject, forming a part of the book by a renowned economist, who has occupied the position of finance minister of Nepal a number of times over last two decades and was the first Vice Chair of National Planning Commission of democratic Nepal in 1991[ii]. It is high time to examine/analyze if there is any truth in it. Irrespective of whether there is an iota of truth in this logic or not, it is also time to draw lessons from this phenomenon so that Nepal is able to learn from this episode and undertake projects for implementation in future prudently. In other words, a dispassionate and detached analysis is called for to test if the argument attributing current load shedding problem to the cancellation of Arun III project by the World Bank is rooted to ground reality or not and find out what lessons could be learnt from this episode. This entails conducting an autopsy of this logic, as it will also be able to throw ample light on the intellect and mindset of the hydrocracy (intelligentsia, politicos and bureaucracy involved in water resource sector) in Nepal.
FOR A FULL VERSION OF THIS TEXT, PLEASE REFER TO THE FOLLOWING SITE:
http://ratnasansar.blogspot.com/2009/03/arun-iii-project-nepals-electricity.html
[i] Source: Kantipur of November 13, 2008.
[ii] Mahat, Dr Ram Sharan, 2005: In Defence of Democracy, Adroit Publishers.
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