Saturday, April 14, 2007

चाहिँदैन गणतान्त्रिक मोर्चा : गगन थापा, बिद्यार्थी नेता नेबिसंघ


















१. नेबिसंघको नेता तपाई, तर संगठन भित्र र पार्टी भित्रको पनि स्थायी प्रतिपक्ष जस्तो, सँधैबिरोधी आवाजमात्रै चर्काएर संगठन चल्छ ?

सँधैको प्रतिपक्षी त होइन, तर पार्टी भित्र पनि अलगधारको कुरा राख्दा कहिलेकाही त्यस्तो स्थिती आउँछ । पार्टी संगठन भित्र आफ्ना धारणा राख्नुपर्छ र कुन सिद्धान्त र बाटोमा अघि बढ्नुपर्छ भन्ने मार्गलाई छलफल गरेर अघि लैजानुपर्छ । संगठनले अबलम्बन गरेका अहिलेका मुद्दाहरु तथा सैद्धान्तिक बिषयमा यसरी जाउँ भनेर भन्दा त्यसले संगठनलाई फाइदा नै पुग्छ ।

२. संगठन भित्र यसरी प्यानलाइज जस्तो गरेर जाँदा संगठनको चाहिँ हित हुन्छ ?

हामीले प्यानलाइज गरेको भन्ने होइन । मत मिल्ने भन्ने जहाँ पनि हुन्छ। फेरि हामीले उठाएका बिषयलाई आखिरीमा पार्टी संगठन पनि हामीले उठाउने गरेको मुद्दामै एकीकृत हुन आइपुगेको छ । यसले हामीले गलत बिषयलाई उठाएका हौँ, भन्ने पनि लाग्दैन । हामीले लोकतन्त्रको कुरा उठाएका थियौँ, कुनैबेला हामीले उठाएका बिषयलाई लिएर पार्टी भित्रै आलोचना हुनथ्यो भने अहिले त्यही बिषयमा पार्टी सहमति मा आएको छ । सही बिचारको लागि एकीकृत हुनु पार्टी संगठनलाई मार्ग निर्देश गर्न र अगाडि बढाउनको लागि पनि राम्रो कुरा हो, यसले फाइदा नै पुग्छ ।

३. लोकतन्त्रको कुरा गर्ने पार्टी भित्रको लोकतन्त्र बिकास हुन सकेन भन्ने लाग्दैन ?

हों, यो हामीले पनि अनुभव गरेको र बारंबार उठाउँदै आएको कुरा हो । पार्टी भित्रको लोकतान्त्रिक संस्कार मजबुत हुनुपर्छ । आफ्ना मान्छे र नजीकको सम्बन्धले संगठनलाई सही दिशामा पुर्‍याउदैन भनेर हामीले भन्दै आएका हौ, कतिपय अवस्थामा यही संस्कारले नराम्रो स्थिती पनि बनाएको छ.........


४. तपाई आफै पनि पिडीत हुनुभयो, होइन ?

पूराना कार्यकर्ताको भन्दा नजिक र स्वार्थ युक्त ब्यक्तिले जिम्मेवारी पाउने स्थिती रहन्छ यदि अलोकतान्त्रिक संस्कार रह्यो भने । तर अहिले पार्टी भित्रै पनि ब्यापक छलफल भएको छ, पार्टी भित्रैका नेताहरुले पनि कुरा उठाउनुभएको छ । बहस भएको छ । कांग्रेस भित्र लोकतान्त्रिक संस्कार बिकास हुँदै गएको छ ।

५. तरल राजनैतिक स्थितीमा पार्टी स्पष्ट एजेन्डा राख्न सकेको छैन, किन होला ?

यो जटिल स्थिती हो । अहिले लिने निर्णयहरु निकै संबेदनशील हुन्छन, र त्यसैले निर्णय प्रक्रियामा केही बिलम्ब हुनु अस्वाभाविक होइन । कतिपय निर्णयहरु त हाम्रो पार्टी यसअघिको महाधिबेशनले पनि गरीसकेको छ तर अन्य कुराहरुमा संबिधानसभाको निर्वाचनको तिथिनै तोक्ने बेला हुन लाग्दा पनि ठोस निर्णय लिन हतारो भयो भन्ने हामीलाई पनि लागेको छ । छिट्टै निर्णय आउँछ, आन्तरिक छलफल र गृहकार्य जारी नै छ ।

६. पार्टी संगठनको मुलधार सँग अहिले तपाईको सम्बन्ध कस्तो छ ?

संगठन भित्र आफ्ना कुरा राख्ने कुरा जहिले पनि रहन्छ । त्यसैले त्यसलाई सम्बन्ध कस्तो छ भनेर हेर्ने मिल्दैन । मैले आफ्ना अडानहरु राखेको छु, केन्द्र नेतृत्वसँग कुरा भइरहेको छ । पार्टी तथा संगठनका सिद्धान्त तथा ब्यबहारका मुद्दाहरुमा कसरी जाने भन्ने कुरामा हाम्रो आफ्नो स्पष्ट बिचार राखेकै छौँ ।

७. अहिले चाहिँ नेतृत्वसँग चित्त नबुझेको कुरा के छ ?

संगठन भित्रको आन्तरिक लोकतान्त्रिकरणको कुरा, जस्तै महाधिबेशन स्थगित भएको छ । अन्य कारणहरु पनि छन् यसमा तर संगठनले लिनुपर्ने निती नियम र मान्यताहरुको कुरामा हाम्रो छलफल चलिरहेको छ । नेबिसंघ कांग्रेसको भातृ संगठन हो तर पुच्छर जस्तो मात्रै भएर हिड्ने होइन, दबाबमुलक र निर्णयप्रक्रियामा पनि निर्णयात्मक भुमिका खेल्न सक्नुपर्छ भन्ने हाम्रो सोचाइ हो । संगठनले अहिले को परिस्थितीमा जति दबाबमुलक लगायतका काम गर्नुपथ्र्यो त्यति भएको छैन भन्ने लागेको छ ।


८. गणतान्त्रिक मोर्चाको कुरा उठ्यो, तर सेलायो, अखिल संगठनहरुले मोर्चा बनाएर जाने सम्भावना देखाएका छन्, तर नेबिसंघले स्पष्ट रुपमा त्यसलाई अस्वीकार गरेको छ , किन होला ?

हामी गणतन्त्रको मोर्चामा छौँ, निश्चय पनि हाम्रो लडाइ गणतन्त्र प्राप्तिकै लागि केन्द्रित छ, तर सबैमोर्चानै बनाएर जानुपर्छ भन्ने चाहिँ होइन। हाम्रा आफ्नै मान्यता सिद्धान्त छन्, दायराहरु छन् । तिनले सबै संगठनलाई एउटै मोर्चामा समेटिन जटिल स्थिती बनाउछन् । कार्यगत रुपमा कतिपय स्थितीमा सँगै जाउँ भन्न सकिन्छ तर लौ मोर्चानै बनाएर जाउँ भन्ने चाहिँ सम्भव होइन ।
हामी गणतन्त्रको लागि नै लड्दैछौ भने आबश्यक परेको बेलामा सल्लाह गरेर सँगै यसो गरौँ भनेर जान चाहिँ नसकिने होइन ।

९. नेबिसंघको केन्द्रय महाधिबेशन मुखैमा आएको छ, तपाई उठ्ने योजना छ ?

म कुनै समय संगठनमा बसेँ र जति सकियो त्यति संगठनको लागि गरेँ पनि । तर म अब पार्टी जिम्मेवारी तर्फपनि गइसकेको छु । फेरि एउटै ब्यक्तिले सँधै पद ओगट्ने पनि राम्रो कुरा होइन । नया साथीहरु आउनुहुन्छ संगठनलाई नया जोशका साथ लैजानुहुशनछ । त्यसैले म आफैले चाहिँ उम्मेद्वारी दिने योजना छैन ।

१०. तर आफ्ना मान्छेलाई जिताउने पहल त होला ?

पक्कै पनि निर्वाचनमा सही ब्यक्तिले जितोस भन्ने सबैको चाहना हुन्छ । आफुले योग्य ठानेको ब्यक्तिलाई जिताउने पहल अबश्य गरिन्छ ।

११. बाहिर गएर नेबिसंघको नेता भन्ने तर आफु पदीय दायित्वमा चाहिँ नहुँदा दिक्क लाग्दैन ?

होइन, म मेरो पदको लागि होइन कामको लागि हिडेको छु । मलाई चिन्नेहरुले माया गर्नेहरुले मेरो पदलाई होइन, मेरो काम र बिचारलाई माया गर्नुहुन्छ । केन्द्रिय नेतृत्वसँग नियमित छलफल हुन्छ , सरसल्लाह सुझाव दिने काम हुन्छ । आबश्यक परेका राम्रा कुरा अँगाल्न नेतृत्वलाई सुझाव पनि दिनेनै गरेका छौँ । त्यसैले संगठनमा भएर पदीय जिम्मेवारी लिनैपर्छ भन्ने चाहिँ लाग्दैन ।


Interviewed by : Shasi Pokharel

Politics of No Return in Pakistan and Bangladesh


By J. Sri Raman


Friday 13 April 2007

"Speculation is rife in Pakistani media that two-time former Premier Benazir Bhutto is heading for a dramatic showdown with the military regime by flying back into the country along with prominent mediapersons, US and European Union politicians and a battery of lawyers."
That sensational announcement has not followed the declaration by Bhutto on April 2 of a resolve to return to her country. It was a quote from a newspaper report dated August 1, 2002. The spectacular comeback and confrontation never took place.
Much had happened in Pakistan meanwhile. In October 1999, General Pervez Musharraff had staged his coup d'etat. By June 2001, he had proclaimed himself the country's president, albeit with his uniform on. The tragedy of the Twin Towers followed in three months, and the military dictator became a dear ally of the "crusaders for democracy" in Washington.
The US congressmen and lawyers, who were to travel with Bhutto, "rush" to Pakistan's Supreme Court and seek her bail in a corruption case, were perhaps dissuaded. The case against her was considered flimsy, as the court had taken a stern view of her nonappearance before it. The geopolitical case against helping her return, however, seemed to appear stronger for the George W. Bush administration.
The conditions are pretty similar now. Bhutto was reported to be planning her return this time because the court had ordered her retrial, suspending her earlier conviction in a corruption case. The only difference is that she made the earlier announcement from Dubai and made the recent declaration from New York.
Five years ago, she had talked of returning home despite threats of arrest from the Musharraff regime. She has now spoken of returning despite "threats of assassination" - not from Musharraff and his men, but, she has stressed for the sake of official US listeners, from al-Qaeda. The shift in emphasis was no surprise. Not long ago, Musharraff himself was reported to be not averse to the idea of her return (and, a bit earlier, even to a homecoming of the other former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif). Carried away by it all, some have even speculated on a Musharraff-Bhutto compact to retain him as president, but restore her premiership.
In 2002, she was expected to enhance the drama of her return by bringing home with her Sharif, also exiled in Jeddah. He, reportedly, backed out at the last moment, possibly not ready to repose faith in Bhutan and preferring to assign the task of running his party to his close relatives. This time too, both former premiers were expected to make a joint trip back to Pakistan. Again Sharif, whom Musharraff overthrew after the military misadventure in Kargil, has been left out in the cold.
It is not, however, as if Bhutto can look forward to a warm official reception in the land she was forced to flee. Chances, in fact, are that the non-history of 2002 will be repeated. Those waiting for her dramatic return may be in for disappointment a second time. The speculation was, among other things, a result of the recent story of apparently official inspiration in the New York Times (discussed in these columns before). Speculation caused by the story over an early end to the Musharraff rule has been set to rest after Washington's reaffirmation of support for him and his role in "war on global terror."
While we have not heard further about Bhutto's plans, there has been talk of the return of another former premier in another South Asian country. Sheikh Hasina Wajed recently left Bangladesh under an army-backed regime, purportedly to visit relatives in the US, but there is a distinct possibility of the holiday turning into an exile of indefinite duration. The emergency regime, which completed three months on April 11, has made it clear that it is in no hurry for Hasina's return.
She had left Bangladesh with a series of largely laudatory statements about the regime, which is formally under chief adviser Fakhruddin Ahmad. Really, few doubt it is controlled by army chief Moeen U Ahmed. The fact that the regime had arrested her arch rival Begaum Khaleda Zia's son, Tarique Rahman, seemed to add some fervor to Hasina's support for it. While she was in the US, however, the regime categorically ruled out elections until the end of 2008. Hasina reacted by calling the decision "undemocratic and unconstitutional." Instantly, she was confronted with a serious corruption case, charged by a businessman with "extortion" of 30 million takas (about $240,000).
Hasina responded with a Bhutto-like announcement of her decision to return to her country in order to "face the charges." As if on cue, a case was almost immediately filed in a court, charging her with the murder of four members of a rival party, Jamaat-e-Islami, an ally of Khaleda's Bangladesh National Party. An equally Bhutto-like revision of the decision has followed.
Hasina's Awami League has just announced that the leader's return plans have been postponed. Meanwhile, according to reports based on official briefing, the regime is negotiating the terms of a self-exile with Khaleda. It has yet to agree to the former premier's formula, which offers the same escape option to her detained son.
The role of the "crusaders for democracy" in the recent Bangladesh developments is no closely guarded secret. They endorsed the imposition of an emergency regime, along with the cancelation of elections originally due in January. The US may have asked for a "timetable" in regard to the promised elections, but has not demurred unduly at Dhaka's decision to put democracy on hold indefinitely. Lieutenant-General Moeen's "academic" papers, emphatically ruling out a return of Bangladesh to "elective democracy," do not seem have caused the least concern in Washington.
What Pakistan and Bangladesh are witnessing today is a politics of no return - not only for former prime ministers to their countries but, more importantly, for people to self-rule.



A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA).


Source: Truthout

Friday, April 13, 2007

Getting to know the Intellectual


By Shoma Chaudhury


Who is a public intellectual? It is a measure of the receding presence of this idea in our collective lives, that having proposed a cover examining public intellectuals in India, we at Tehelka ourselves found it difficult to arrive at a consensus on what that term means today, and who qualifies.
Searching for names, we skittered off in different directions. Amartya Sen? Irfan Habib? MS Swaminathan? Arundhati Roy? VP Singh? Kanshi Ram? Arun Shourie?
Amartya Sen might be the architect of an urgently humane economic philosophy: the primacy of education and health for real development in the Third World. His scholarly rigour might bestow immense credibility to his views. But has he used his eminence as a Nobel winner to be more interventionist?
MS Swaminathan, father of the “green revolution” might have staved off famine in the 60s. He might now be busy creating what he calls “pro-poor technology.” But does that make him a public intellectual?
It was not enough to merely have an original idea, or cause, or excellent professional body of work, some of us argued. One had to engage with public issues beyond one’s domain and speak out. Use mass media. There was a danger of mistaking activism for intellect, others countered. Rhetoric for rigorous argument.
The past offered us simpler choices. Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Sri Aurobindo, Bhagat Singh, Gandhi, Nehru, Vinoba Bhave, JP, Lohia. Each of these were grand figures, espousing big ideas. They dissented, pushed the limits of perception. Modernity, freedom, democracy, socialism, caste identity. There could be no quarrel over them.
The concerns of our times are more fractured. Globalisation, communalism, poverty, affirmative action, corruption, nationalism. And perhaps the biggest demon of them all: individualistic self-fulfillment. In this supermarket of concerns, some preoccupations have seduced us as being more important than others. When we dropped Swaminathan from our considerations altogether, did we do so because he has not spoken out on issues like Gujarat or the rich-poor divide?
After pruning several long lists, we finally arrived at some consensual indices. A public intellectual is someone blessed with the tools of articulation, who uses that to influence public opinion. Someone who espouses a worldview and is willing to articulate and defend it. Someone willing to speak out. Engage. Open new ways of seeing. In doing this, they must display rigour, knowledge, accuracy, and ideological consistency. We have looked also for edginess, fearlessness, an appetite for battle if necessary. It is not easy to fulfill such demanding requirements, and many people chosen here fulfill only a few of the indices. The list of course is not definitive, or even a big enough sampling. Nor is it a beauty contest of intellectuals. There is no hierarchy of choice here, no awards, no ratings. Many names have fallen through the cracks for reasons as pedestrian as space. Or lack of consensus. Still, if the list provokes readers into argument or the impulse to send us better choices, it will have done its job.
Source: Tehelka

The Necessity Of Flowered Man

The definition of the Public Intellectual escapes the best of us but can humanity escape the importance of the Public Intellectual?

God is dead. Marx is dead. Lenin is dead. Gandhi is dead. I am alive and not feeling too well myself— Graffiti, JNU, May 1983


By Amit Sengupta

I think therefore I am. I don’t think therefore I am. I am not the public. I am not The Intellectual. The public is not The Intellectual. So who is the Public Intellectual? From which etherised planet of self-righteous, high moral ground has he found his residence on earth? What is his destiny and why should he exist? In which existential realm of unfolding history? Is she/he only interpreting the world, or is she/he interpreting the world to change it? And what are they wanting to change? What? Why?
The cabaret. A subversive space of body and mind in pre-Hitler Germany. It was not a sex show. The working class, intellectuals, dissenters, would gather in these dark joints full of smoke. Also anti-fascists, mostly communists. Marlene Dietrich used to perform in one of these black holes of clandestine rebellion before she became a Hollywood legend in post-war America. Apart from sanitising the banks and publishing houses, the first thing Hitler did was to ban all the cabaret joints. The smoke moved elsewhere, floating subversion, all through the Holocaust, when great German philosopher Martin Heidegger joined the Nazis and burned the books.
But the books returned. Like Samizdaat during the Stalinist purges, the underground literature, when poets, writers and dissenting academics disappeared, when Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky were banned. So was Anna Akhmatova. When Vladimir Mayakovsky, the people’s poet, almost anarchist but committed to the Bolshevik revolution, was asked to write poems on tractors and agriculture, he committed suicide. And the fact is, they banned Beethoven during the Cultural revolution in Maoist China, even though Karl Marx loved Beethoven.
Almost three decades later, in June 1989, when thousands of Chinese students were using Gandhian satyagraha at the Tiananmen Square seeking freedom and democracy, and moments before the tanks rolled in, the public speakers were playing two musical masterpieces — the beautiful communist anthem, the Internationale, and, yes, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. What would Marx, one of the greatest ‘public intellectuals’ of all time in history, have said to that?
Irreverence, denial, anti-joke, laughter as life-affirmation; obscenity as liberation; caricature and parody as rebellion, funerals and carnivals as mass protests, as folk celebrations of the ‘plebeians’, camouflaged under feudal tyranny, the banal tyranny of banal mediocrity, as in our times, the lyrical anti-narrative below the sacred space deifying the Gods, the satanic verses — with the holy text between the unholy text, the text as oppressor, language as power. The politics and philosophy of thought-control. Of liberation.
There are stories within stories. Eyes within lies. Wisdom outside knowledge.
There is this story about Gabriel Garcia Marquez meeting his grandmother after he wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude. He told her the story. She laughed: “Oh! This? I can tell you much more crazier stories.”
Most intelligent men and women hate to break their satiated, frustrated, domestic bliss, the public bliss of false recognition and designed semi-contentment. They become boring and meaningless, trapped in atrophy, condemned by their own brilliance or mediocrity, their ideas don’t seek out or break through anymore. They are not even Sisyphean slaves, waiting for that momentary pause of clear thought. That is why they are so few who can dare to put their heads under the guillotine, shake and stir and dissolve their own fixated paradigms, experiment with the heady adventure of ideas, stick their neck out, challenge the establishment, resist the one-dimensional discourse.
All men and women are philosophers. That is why, Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who broke through the reductionism of Marxism, said all men and women are intellectuals, and not only those fated to be ‘class intellectuals’. All who can use their skills, intelligence, memories, hands, eyes, touch, senses, feelings, experiences, histories, oral traditions, craft, learning, unlearning — they are all intellectuals. The cobbler, weaver, blacksmith, carpenter, plumber, farmer, those who till the soil, understand its soul, the seasons, the craftsmen, the woman who cooks and preserves, the man who digs your grave: they too are intellectuals — if such a category must exist.
Should such a category exist at all? And why must it exist?
Noam Chomsky was recently elected through an Internet poll as the No. 1 intellectual in the world. Chomsky laughed it off saying his friends must have voted for him. Arundhati Roy also laughed it off, “You mean, that intellectual beauty contest?” she said.
The cattle trade of beauty apart, Chomsky has repeatedly shifted the radar of ‘manufactured consent’ not only through his huge body of knowledge, but also through his sharp, polemical, rigorous, public, political stances against the new empire of culture and commodity, and the many fetishes of power and new-militarism. Chomsky has inherited a great tradition of intellectual and public dissent, where the body of work of an individual has often coincided with the catalytic political currents of struggle across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. Hundreds of thinking stars went chasing the red star during the Spanish civil war against Franco’s bloody dictatorship, young Christopher Caudwell one among them, who died fighting. Of his many books, The Crisis of Physics and Illusion and Reality were pathbreaking. In the latter, a quote from Lenin, which he wanted to use as an epigraph, explains a few things: “Communism becomes a mere empty phrase, a mere facade, and the communist a mere bluffer, if he has not worked over in his consciousness the whole inheritance of human knowledge.”
Later, in France, Jean Paul Sartre was grappling with the dilemmas of Stalinism in the epoch of fascism and cold war: a philosopher and novelist who created an original, activist existentialism of freedom (every man is responsible for his own freedom), he and his writer-companion Simone de Beauvoir broke the private-public domain of bourgeois, sexual, family suffocation, she especially, with a refreshing feminist sensibility in the enduring landmark work, The Second Sex. They never became card-holders of the party, but their was never a ‘cause’ which they did not take up, including Sartre’s famous public debate with student leader Cohn Bendit in Sorbonne during the electrifying May uprising, 1968.
The cia killed Salvador Allende in Chile. Pablo Neruda travelled the world, especially the third world which apparently no more exists, reading his magical poetry among workers, but internalised his friend, Allende’s death, like his own. Meanwhile, Spain’s greatest poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, Neruda’s comrade, was picked up and murdered by the cia-backed military. His crime was obvious: he was a people’s poet, and he was a thorn in their flesh.
In recent times let’s not forget hundreds of intellectuals, writers, artists, academics who have broken the threshold of conformism with the greatness in their craft, whose brilliance made them integral to popular and marginal consciousness, who dared to face the death squads and consciously challenged the status quo: among them, writer Ken Saro-Wiwa of Nigeria, who was hanged. In our times, when writers (including Indo-Anglian writers, Karva Chauth guest editors etc) are chasing nothing but money and publicity, novelist Orhan Pamuk has now decided to take on the Turkish establishment, not because he is an activist, but because if he has to be intellectually honest about what he writes, his past, he can’t dissolve the mass elimination of Kurds and Armenians in the Turkish Armenian snow, the snow becoming red, like blood.
Pamuk should take a lesson from Czech writer and former President Vaclav Havel when he was leading the post-Perestroika Velvet Revolution in his country. He said, if I am quoting him correctly, “I often think when I go to bed that I would never find it surprising that next morning I will land up in a jail cell.” Havel might have become what he has become, but to me, this is the finest definition of a ‘public intellectual’, if there is such a category.
In India, before and during and after the freedom movement, Sahir, Sajjad Zaheer, Balraj Sahni, Munshi Premchand, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chugtai, Rajender Singh Bedi, Yashpal, Rahul Sankratayan, Salil Choudhury, Ritwick Ghatak, Harindranath Chattopadhyay, Kaifi Azmi, Muktibodh, Suryakanth Tripathi Nirala, Sukanto, Bhisham Sahni (so many names are missing): it’s a long, radical tradition we have inherited and discarded so easily for the pathetic soap of the Shahrukh Khans and Ekta Kapoors. These greats were not compulsive marginals or artificial celebrities. They were inside our homes, in the most interiors of our private selves, uncomprisingly anti-establishment, rebels and failures, great minds and souls, the slow, sensitive, intimate song of the long road which haunt us in the most unlikely of times, in the strangest of places.
That is why the Sahir song comes back yet again: Woh subha kabhi to aayegi… Like the El Salvador slogan in the early 1980s: The Dawn is No Longer An Illusion.
Nov 05 , 2005
Source: Tehelka

Thursday, April 12, 2007

‘In India we are at the moment witnessing a sort of fusion between corporate capitalism and feudalism — it’s a deadly cocktail’

Arundhati Roy in conversation with Amit Sengupta

I start with an old question: When Tehelka was being cornered you had said there should be a Noam Chomsky in India. Later you had once told me that ‘I am not an activist’. What is this idea of Noam Chomsky in a context like India?


I think essentially that whether it is an issue like Tehelka being hounded or all the other issues that plague us, much of the critical response is an analysis of symptoms; it’s not radical. Most of the time it does not really question how democracy dovetails into majoritarianism which edges towards fascism, or what the connections are between this kind of ‘new democracy’ and corporate globalisation, repression, militancy and war. What is the connection between corruption and power?At one point when the Tehelka expose happened, I thought, thank God the BJP is corrupt, thank God someone’s taken money, imagine if they had been incorruptible, only ideological, it would have been so much more frightening. To me, pristine ideological battles are really more frightening. In India we are at the moment witnessing a sort of fusion between corporate capitalism and feudalism — it’s a deadly cocktail. We see it unfolding before our eyes. Sometimes it looks as though the result of all this will be a twisted implementation of the rural employment guarantee act. Half the population will become Naxalites and the other half will join the security forces and what Bush said will come true. Everyone will have to choose whether they’re with “us” or with the “terrorists”. We will live in an elaborately administered tyranny. But look at the reaction to the growing influence of the Maoists — even by political analysts it’s being treated as a law and order problem, not a political problem — and like militancy in Kashmir and the Northeast, it will be dealt with by employing brutal repression by security forces or arming local people with weapons that will eventually lead to a sort of civil war. That seems to be perfectly acceptable to Indian ‘civil society’. Those who understand and disagree with the repressive machinery of the State are more or less divided between the Gandhians and the Maoists. Sometimes — quite often — the same people who are capable of a radical questioning of, say, economic neo-liberalism or the role of the state, are deeply conservative socially — about women, marriage, sexuality, our so-called ‘family values’ — sometimes they’re so doctrinaire that you don’t know where the establishment stops and the resistance begins. For example, how many Gandhian/Maoist/ Marxist Brahmins or upper caste Hindus would be happy if their children married Dalits or Muslims, or declared themselves to be gay? Quite often, the people whose side you’re on, politically, have absolutely no place for a person like you in their social, cultural or religious imagination. That’s a knotty problem… politically radical people can come at you with the most breathtakingly conservative social views and make nonsense of the way in which you have ordered your world and your way of thinking about it… and you have to find a way of accommodating these contradictions within your worldview.


In the Hindi heartland, the same terrain that had Munshi Premchand, Muktibodh, Nirala, Kaifi Azmi is still one of the most stagnating, backward, poverty-stricken terrains of India. But in terms of the lilt of the languages here, humour, bawdy jokes, hard politics, there is a vibrant churning going on; there is Dalit churning. This is engagement with reality in a very different manner. There are new theatre, literary, cinema journals; a vibrant culture.


There is a lot of excitement in the air and it is actually happening here in India, an excitement that is in a way absent in the West. If you live in America or Europe it is almost impossible to really believe that another world is possible. Over there, anybody who talks about life beyond capitalism is part of a freak show, they’re just considered nuts and weirdos, going through teenage angst. But here, it actually still exists, though they are being rapidly destroyed. It is very important, the anarchy of what you were saying, there are magazines, and little pamphlets, all over India, which cannot be controlled by the corporate establishment, and that’s very important, the way communication links are kept alive. We are in a very striking phase. But how powerful are these alternative ways of communication? You can see these mighty structures of capitalism. Can you fight them with these alternatives? The only way you can be optimistic is to insist on being irrational, unreasonable, magical, stubborn, because what you see happening is an inevitable crunching through of these structures.


Is it possible for anyone to stand up against these structures, as Chomsky has done again and again, or you, and not be hounded out by the entire apparatus?


Until recently, we all hoped that it was the question of getting the facts out, getting the information out, and that once people understood what was going on, things would change. Their consciences would kick in and everything would be alright. We saw it, rather stupidly, as a question of getting the information out. But getting the story out is only one small part of the battle. For example, before the American elections, Michael Moore’s film was in every smalltown cinema hall everywhere; the film was an evidence-based documentary, it was by no means a piece of radical political thought, it was just a fact-based political scandal about the House of Bush, but still, Bush came back with a bigger majority than the earlier elections. The facts are there in the world today. People like Chomsky have made a huge contribution to that. But what does information mean? What are facts? There is so much information that almost all becomes meaningless and disempowering. Where has it all gone? What does the World Social Forum mean today? They are big questions now. Ultimately, millions of people marched against the war in Iraq. But the war was prosecuted, the occupation is in full stride. I do not for a moment want to undermine the fact that unveiling the facts has meant a huge swing of public opinion against the occupation of Iraq, it has meant that America’s secret history is now street talk, but what next? To expose things is quite different from being able to effectively resist things.I am more interested now in whether there are new strategies of resistance. The debate between strategies of violence and non-violence…


One option is to keep digging, keep digging and there is always the danger of stagnation, becoming self-righteous, dogmatic, moralistic, losing your sense of humour, songs, masti. You stop laughing. As if the poor or the working class don’t laugh…


You are absolutely right on that one. In India particularly, self-righteousness is the bane of activists or public thinkers. It’s also the function of a kind of power that you begin to accumulate. Some activists have unreasonable power over people in their ‘constituencies’, they have adulation, gratitude, it can turn their heads. They begin to behave like mainstream politicians. Somebody like me runs a serious risk of thinking that I’m more important than I actually am — because people petition me all the time, with serious issues that they want me to intervene in… And of course an intervention does have some momentary effect, you begin to think that it is in your power to do something. Whereas actually is it or is it not? It’s a difficult call. At the end of the day, fame is also a gruesome kind of capitalism, you can accumulate it, bank it, live off it. But it can suffocate you, block off the blood vessels to the brain, isolate you, make you lose touch. It pushes you up to the surface and you forget how to keep your ear to the ground. I think it is important to retreat sometimes. Because you can really get caught up in fact and detail, fact and detail, and forget how to think conceptually, and that’s a kind of prison. Speaking for myself, I’m ready for a jail-break.


You mean even anti-conformism can become a conformist trap?


There is the danger, especially for a writer of fiction, that you can become somebody who does what is expected of you. I could end up boring myself to death. In India, the political anti-establishment can be socially very conservative (Bring on the gay Gandhians!) and can put a lot of pressure on you to become something which may not necessarily be what you want to be: they want you to dress in a particular way, be virtuous, be sacrificing, it’s a sort of imaginary and quite often faulty extrapolation of what the middle class assumes the ‘people’, the ‘masses’ want and expect. It can be maddening, and I want to say like Bunty in Bunty aur Babli, ‘Mujhe yeh izzat aur sharafat ki zindagi se bachao…’There are all kinds of things that work to dull, leaden your soul…to weigh you down…


I like Jean Paul Sartre. He used to say money must keep circulating. He used to blow his money on taxis, without any purpose. Blow it up on booze. Money should etherise. That does not take away his strange involvement with histories or literature: the Spanish civil war, Stalin. I don’t agree with the term, Intellectual. Anybody with skills and intelligence can be intellectual. A cobbler is an intellectual.


I don’t really want to work out the definitions. It’s just the opposite of what novelists do. They really try to free their thinking from such definitions.As for money, I have tried to take it lightly. Really, I have tried to give it away, but even that is a very difficult thing to do. Money is like nuclear waste. What you do with it, where you dump it, what problems it creates, what it changes, these are incredibly complicated things. And eventually, it can all blow up in your face. I’d have been happier with Less. Yeh Dil Maange Less. Less money, less fame, less pressure, more badmashi. I hate the f***ing responsibility that is sometimes forced on me. I spent my early years making decisions that would allow me to evade responsibility; and now… People are constantly in search of idols, heroes, villains, sirens — in search of individuals, in search of noise. Anybody in whom they can invest their mediocre aspirations and muddled thinking will do. Anyone who is conventionally and moderately ‘successful’ becomes a celebrity. It’s almost a kind of profession now — we have professional celebrities — maybe colleges should start offering a course.It’s indiscriminate — it can be Miss Universe, or a writer, or the maker of a ridiculous TV soap, the minimum requirement is success. There’s a particular kind of person who comes up to me with this star-struck smile — it doesn’t matter who I am — they just know I’m famous; whether I’m the ‘BookerPrizeWinner’ or the star of the Zee Horror Show or whatever is immaterial. In this freak show, this celebrity parade, there’s no place for loss, or failure. Whereas to me as a writer, failure interests me. Success is so tinny and boring. Everyone is promoting themselves so hard.


You gave your Booker money to the NBA. Your Sydney prize money to aborigine groups. Another award money you gave to 50 organisations who are doing exemplary work. You trusted them. You gave away your money, okay, it’s not your money, the money came from somewhere; but you gave it away. Very few people do that in this world. No one does that. So you can’t stop the society to look at you in a certain way.


Well, I haven’t given it all away. I still have more than I need. If I gave it all away I might turn into the kind of person that I really dread — ‘the one who has sacrificed everything’ and will no doubt, somewhere along the way, extract a dreadful price from everybody around them. I’ve learned that giving money away can help, but it can also be utterly destructive, however good your intentions may have been. It is impossible to always know what the right thing to do is. It can create conflict in strange and surprising places. I am not always comfortable with what I do with my money. I do everything. I give it away extravagantly. I blow it up, extravagantly. I have no fix on it — it comforts me, it bothers me, I’m constantly glad that I can afford to pay my bills. I’m paranoid about its incredible capacity for destruction. But the one thing I’m glad about is that it is not inherited. I think inherited money is a curse.


Giving money away is dangerous and complicated and in some ways against my political beliefs — I do not subscribe to the politics of good intentions — but what do I do? Sit on it and accumulate more? I’m uncomfortable with lots of things that I do, but can’t see a better way — I just muddle along. It’s a peculiar problem, this problem of excess, and it’s embarrassing to even talk about it in a land of so much pain and poverty. But there it is…


Last question. There is a conflict within oneself. There is a consistency also, of positions, commitments, knowledge. And there are twilight zones you are grappling with. So why can’t you jump from this realm to another: there is no contradiction in saying, what is that, ‘mujhe izzat…’


I think we all are just messing our way through this life. People, ideologues who believe in a kind of redemption, a perfect and ultimate society, are terrifying. Hitler and Stalin believed that with a little social engineering, with the mass murder of a few million people, they could create a new and perfect world. The idea of perfection has often been a precursor to genocide. John Gray writes about it at some length. But then, on the other hand, we have the placid acceptance of Karma which certainly suits the privileged classes and castes very well. Some of us oscillate in the space between these two ugly juggernauts trying to at least occasionally locate some pinpoints of light.

Nov 05 , 2005

Source: Tehelka

‘A self-contained, happy village is a myth’


In the first of a series of interviews exploring the rural-urban divide, economist Shankar Acharya tells Shantanu Guha Ray why the two must connect.


Why are Bharat and India not connecting?
It is not that they are not connecting. But the connections should be stronger. Two areas that worry me in that dimension are — one, we are not getting a rapid expansion of durable blue-collar jobs. The vast majority of professionals coming into India’s employment exchanges are those who barely finish high school or are dropouts of the school system. It would be good if they get got jobs in the radically growing factory sector; that is the way countries like South Korea, Malaysia, Ireland and of course China have grown rich. The mechanism is very weak in India. Organised sector jobs are stagnant. The other thing where ‘Bharat versus India’ does not work is the failure of government policies and our poor delivery system.
There are two types of infrastructure in question — the hard infrastructure, which we rarely have, and that too is better off in urban localities. In the rural areas it is largely missing. And the other area is of course the so-called social sectors; education and health. Education has a long history of very high spending, both at Central and state government levels. Very few people send their children to government schools because of the state of those schools. And that’s sad. And the role of education is very critical in bridging the potential divide between Bharat and India.
You have said in your book that though initial reforms have happened, all is not hunky dory. 200 million people remain below the poverty line.
Well, one way is rapid growth. I don’t think a solution to mass poverty can be found through anything other than strategy that gives a central role to rapid, sustained economic growth. We need job-creating growth. Why don’t we have large-scale textile factories like China? We have cheap labour and skills that go back hundreds of years, yet our textile exports, for example, are quite small. We should improve labour-intensive employment in manufacturing and change our labour laws, which — in the name of protecting labour — are actually anti-labour. Public services must be more accountable.
What kind of public services?
Education and health. Why is a government school not able to run well? Why aren’t there enough doctors in a rural clinic? We spend the money, but we do not seem to have the accountability. Another concern is poverty.
You call agriculture sluggish. That’s strange.
Our agricultural growth rate in the long run has, except for a very short period, averaged below 3 percent. In the last decade or so, it has dropped to even lower to about 2 percent. There are stagnations in agriculture because crucial issues have not been tackled, whether it is rural infrastructure, irrigation or big dams. The actual development of canals — making sure that the water is actually flowing — is very poor. I think irrigation water must be given away at very low prices. It is a very important resource, but that doesn’t mean it should be free, because we do not have incentives to conserve, rebuild or recharge it.
The impact of money on politics always revolves around industrialisation or the urbanisation model. Why not on agricultural industries?
If you look at the development of countries over time, one way of thinking about it is the development of production, and then of the labour force or employment. From low-productivity agriculture, which is what everybody in a sense starts with, to much higher-productivity industry and services. And that’s the pattern of development all over the world; it is not unique to India. If you look at India’s national accounts, the share of agriculture is dropping. It used to be around 55 percent in 1950, it is now less than 20 percent. We are different from other countries — in a negative way — since the share of our labour force remains 60 percent in agriculture. And that is mainly because expansion of factory jobs in labour-intensive manufacturing in India has been much slower and weaker than in successful countries.
The China comparison. Is it justified? Ours is a very democracy-based government, theirs is a dictatorial regime, so why should there be a comparison?
Well, I would say it’s a natural comparison, because these are two countries with billion-plus populations. Together we account for around one-fourth of the world’s population. We both had roughly the same standards of living in the early 1970s, but today on an average, their standard of living is almost twice as good as ours. Also, we are both Asian countries, we live in the same part of the world, and they are our biggest neighbour. Though they are a totalitarian government, it’s a mistake to think that the Chinese government doesn’t allow different points of views. In fact, India is an open economy with a largely closed mind and China is a closed society with and open mind. They have raised their standards of living, virtually abolished poverty to somewhere between 5 percent-10 percent of the population. Whereas here, around 20 percent-25 percent of people still live in poverty.
Because of China’s larger engagement with the West?
In the late 1970s, they opened up the economy to foreign trade and development. Since the leading economic powers were largely Western, this meant opening up to the West.
Land acquisition for SEZs today is the biggest crisis zone.
I think the idea of a self-contained, happy village is a myth. Development comes from openness to trade, commerce, ideas, technology and capital. Isolation breeds poverty and stagnation. The poorest parts of India today are the parts least connected to commerce in the country and the rest of the world. But isolation is not an answer. The younger generation in villages want well-paid urban jobs.
But why sell off land for a factory that could go somewhere else?
Handling land is definitely a very delicate and critical issue. But I would suggest that one reason why it has got so challenging in India is precisely because our pattern of development in the last 50-60 years has not been sufficiently job-creating. If most of our labour force, which has remained trapped in agriculture, had been pulled into urban, industrial jobs in earlier decades, then this issue would have been much less of a problem today. I think we have to distinguish where land will be used for a public purpose and where it will be given to the private sector. In the latter case, it is much better to allow market forces to work, so that if farmers want to sell their land at a higher price to a company, they can. But the State does have a special right to buy land at a fair price for a public purpose; and it can be handled badly or well.


Apr 14 , 2007


Source: Tehelka

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The United States of Nepal?


Michael Poulsen


Kathmandu, April 6: At the moment there is a lot of debate on whether Nepal ought to convert to a federation along ethnic lines. This is mainly a demand from the Maoist and the UML but grassroots movements like NEFIN (Federation of Indigenous Nationalities) are also making their voices heard.

However if Nepal would look to the latest experience with federations along ethnical borders (Sudan and Nigeria), they will quickly realize that ethnical disturbance will very likely increase if a federations border are drawn to make according to ethnic demands.

Furthermore, such a construction would very likely lead to the strengthening of the ethnic identities at the expense of the Nepalese identity, which in turn would make the nation open to identity "struggle", where the group that articulates the strongest claim to the land receives autonomy over it –and thereby access to the political and economical sphere, in spite of any other claims.

This would lead to continuing resentment among the ethnic groups which has not articulated as strong a claim. And lastly this would lead to a nation with divided loyalties–which any foreign power (private or nation) can exploit.

But as with many examples of federalism, be it USA or Nigeria, there are no easy or fast solutions.


(Michael Poulsen is a Danish national currently doing internship in Nepal)

Monday, April 9, 2007

Abuse of Indian children 'common'

By Geeta Pandey BBC News, Delhi

Two out of every three children in India are physically abused, according to a landmark government study.

Commissioned by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the study says 53% of the surveyed children reported one or more forms of sexual abuse. This is the first time the government has done such an exhaustive survey on the controversial issue of child abuse. Abuse of children, particularly sexual abuse, is rarely admitted in India and activists have welcomed the study.

Releasing the report at a press conference in the capital, Delhi, Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury said: "In India there's a tradition of denying child abuse. It doesn't happen here is what we normally say.

"But by remaining silent, we have aided and abetted the abuse of children."
Thousands quizzed

Describing the findings of the study as "disturbing", Ms Chowdhury called for an end to the "conspiracy of silence". The issue of child abuse has been raised in the past by non-governmental organisations, but this is the first time an attempt has been made by the government to document the scale of the problem.

The study took two years to complete, and covered 13 states where 12,247 children (between five and 12) and 2,324 young adults (over the age of 12) were quizzed. Dr Loveleen Kacker, the official in charge of child welfare in the ministry, compiled the report. She said the study had revealed that contrary to the general belief that only girls were abused, boys were equally at risk, if not more. She said a substantial number of the abusers were "persons in trust and care-givers" who included parents, relatives and school teachers.

Dr Kacker said a disturbing finding of the study had been that 70% had not reported the abuse to anyone. Besides surveying physical and sexual abuse, the study also collected statistics on emotional abuse and neglect of girls. The study called for efforts to make society aware of the rights of children and officials say the data will help them formulate better policies to protect children.

'One too many'
The report has been welcomed by child rights activists who say such a study was sorely needed in India. Roland Angerer, country director of Plan International, told BBC News it was "very important that the government has finally taken up the issue". "It doesn't matter what statistics say. Whether the percentage of abused children is 75 or whether it is 58 is unimportant. Each child that is abused is one too many," he said. "It's important that parents and adults must learn that children are not property, that they have rights too."
In India, parents are often reluctant to admit child abuse and sexual abuse of children involving family members is almost always hushed up.

Perhaps that is why - as the study shows - more than 50% of the young adults surveyed wanted the matter of abuse to remain within the family. Only 17% of the abused young adults wanted harsh punishment for the abusers. Officials and activists say the biggest challenge for the authorities and society is to ensure that children are encouraged to report abuse.

India is home to almost 19% of the world's children. More than one-third of the country's population - 440m people - is made up of children below 18 years of age. According to one study, at least 40% of these children are in need of care and protection. The country has millions of child workers. Many are employed in hazardous industries and also in homes and small restaurants, which makes them vulnerable to violence and exploitation.

Last year the government banned children under 14 from being employed in homes and at restaurants to avoid their exploitation and abuse, but millions of children continue to work in these sectors.

India is a signatory to various international laws on the protection of children, but implementation of these laws is often lax.
Source: BBC

Video Footage of Gaur massacre

Please watch the video here

Why is the government hesitating to take action against the perpetrators? It does't make any hell of a difference if Prachanda or Upendra Yadav is guilty. People died, the race of the body count doesn't make any hell of a difference.

Save Nepal: Tension in south could lead to war, analysts warn


Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)


KATHMANDU, 9 April 2007 (IRIN) - As Nepal continues its transition from a decade-long armed conflict towards a peaceful democratic nation, analysts say a serious hurdle stands in its way - violence and unrest in the country's southern Terai region.
For the past three months, ethnic Madhesi groups have been demanding regional autonomy and greater political rights for their community in the Terai - home to almost half of Nepal's 27 million inhabitants, the majority of whom are Madhesis.
More than 60 people have been killed in violent clashes between police and Madhesi protestors, largely led by the popular Madhesi People's Rights Forum (MPRF) - known as a platform for all pro-Madhesi activists and supporters but yet to be recognised as a political party.
There are other Madhesi political groups, including militant ones, which are gaining notoriety for abductions, kidnappings and killings of civilians, government officials and observers say.
What started as anti-government protests has turned into violence between various ethnic groups, largely the Madhesis and the Pahadis. The Pahadis are from the hill areas, but over the past half-century many migrated to the Terai to escape hardship in the hills.
Terai is a fertile area which is considered the country's breadbasket, in contrast to less productive hill and mountain areas. Pahadis make up about 30 percent of the Terai population.
Most of the Pahadis are better educated and richer than the Madhesis, say analysts. They are more active and dominant in Nepal's political parties and government offices.
The Madhesi leaders say their community has been neglected and excluded from most of the country's developmental and political processes due to Pahadi leaders discriminating against them.
Security in Terai worsening
Analysts say the security situation in the Terai is worsening with extortions, intimidation, threats and kidnappings occurring every day. The government frequently announces curfews to maintain security.
Last week, some senior officials were abducted by a Madhesi-affiliated group known as the Terai People's Liberation Front. The police have been pursuing the case but with no success.
Independent analysts, both local and international, have urged the government to take Madhesi demands seriously.
There are fears that if these demands are not addressed, the current regional uprising is at risk of escalating into a full-blown war between the Madhesi and Pahadi communities.
"This fear is always there. The risk of communal war is always there whenever you have inefficient political parties and government," said Chandra Kishore Lal, a prominent analyst in Nepal. He added that the government was taking the issue as a law and order case rather than a crucial political issue.
International specialists say Madhesi demands should not be construed as political gimmicks to jeopardise the peace process, as has been implied by the Maoists and other political parties.
"The issues need to be taken seriously as we have already seen that the country was recently on the brink of paralysis," Rhoderick Chalmers, an analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG), told IRIN. He added that there was still a chance to address the Madhesi issue by promoting an inclusive political process, particularly one that includes a majority of Madhesis in the electorate.
Pivotal role of elections
Nepal is for the first time preparing for Constituent Assembly (CA) elections, scheduled for June, but the CA hardly addresses the Madhesi issue, analysts say.
"Even the formation of the CA mechanism fails to address any aspiration of the Madhesi and there is still no talk of how to develop the mechanism process," said Lal. He added that instead of resolving the issue, its main aim is to legitimise former Maoist rebels by bringing them into mainstream politics.
With the elections nearing, Madhesi groups have said they will jeopardise them and make the CA irrelevant. Madhesi leaders have already gone underground and taken refuge in India, from where they are giving directions for more protests, said Lal, an ethnic Madhesi himself.
Some political party leaders, who did not want to be identified, said the elections should be postponed until the Madhesi issue is sorted out.
"The next few months prior to the elections will be very critical for Nepal's new phase but there are fears of the country slipping into conflict again if the Terai issue is not resolved," said Natalie Hicks from International Alert, an NGO working on early warning issues.
Local NGOs say that many families in the Terai have already left their villages and migrated to India in search of better security and livelihoods. They say there is no longer the old harmony between the Madhesis and Pahadis.
"I fear to walk at night in the Madhesi neighbourhood," said Sharan Poudel, an ethnic Pahadi in the southwestern city of Nepalgunj.
Om Kumar Kurmi, a Madhesi who also lives in Nepalgunj, now fears the Pahadis. "I fear that I might get beaten up by the Pahadis for my Madhesi identity. I have nothing against them and most of my friends used to be from the Pahadi community, but the situation has completely changed now," he said.

Source: Reliefweb

Sunday, April 8, 2007

एउटा नयाँ नाटक वा नयाँ अवसर


- नरेश कुमार उप्रेती

एक वर्ष अघि जब नेपाली जनता सडकमा उत्रिएका थिए, उनीहरु न कुनै वाद्का निम्ति या कुनै राजनैतिक शक्तिलाई पुनर्स्थापित गर्नका निम्ति टाउकोमा कात्रो बाँधेर प्रहरी र सैनिकको बन्दुक का गोली छिचोल्दै स्व स्फुर्त आन्दोलनमा अघि बढेका थिए । नेपाली जनता त देशमा मर्ने र मार्ने द्वन्दको पिँडाबाट वाक्क भएका एकतिर थिए भने अर्कोतिर राजा विरेन्द्र को हत्यामा हात रहेको भनेर जनताका नजरमा गिरेका ज्ञानेन्द्रको चुरिफुरिको अन्त चाहन्थे। त्यसैले जनताले बिगतमा पार्टिहरुले गरेका भ्रस्टाचार र दन्ड हिनताको शासनलाइ बिर्सिएझैँ गरेका थिए। त्यसैले जनताको त्यो आन्दोलनलाइ भजाएर, माओवादी वा खाओबादि, लाओबादी वा अरु कुनै वादि ले जनताको नाममा ठूला ठूला कुरा गर्नु मूतको न्यानो जस्तो मात्रै हो भन्दा यहाँ अतिशयोक्ति नहोला।

जनता लोकतन्त्र चाहन्छन्, शान्ति चाहन्छन्, बांच्नका लागि बिकास चाह्न्छन। एउटा नयाँ नेपालको परिकल्पना साकार भएको हेर्न चाह्न्छन। जनताको जनमत बिना शासन गर्ने यूग यो होइन। जनता नै सर्वोपरि हुन र उनिहरुको मत नै सर्वोपरि हुन्छ। त्यसैले जनताले निर्धक्क भएर मत हाल्ने वातावरणको सिर्जना गरी संबिधान सभाको चुनावमा जानु र त्यसको मतलाई कदर गर्दै नयाँ नेपाल निर्माणमा लाग्नु नै सबैको कल्याण हुने बाटो हो। तर चुनावलाइ एउटा बिगतको नाराको रूपमा बाध्यता सम्झेर जसो तसो सक्ने अनि मिलिजुलि बाँडिचुडि खाने आन्तरिक उद्देश्य जुन देखिन थालेको छ,त्यो आफैमा खतरनाक कदम हुन सक्छ।

चैतको अन्त भैसक्यो, दल दर्ताको प्रकृया बल्ल सुरु हुदैँछ। मार्टिन स्वयँले हतारमा जसो तसो गरिएको चुनाव अन्तररास्ट्रिय समूदायलाई मान्य छैन भने पनि हामी जसरी भए पनि चुनाव असारमै गराएर छाडछौँ भन्दै कुर्लिने प्रचन्डलाई ताली को निम्ति गालि गर्न रमाउने कम्युनिस्ट शैलि भन्ने कि उही ज्ञानेन्द्रले गराएको चुनावी नाटकको दोस्रो पाटो भनेर जनताले बुझ्ने ? जनताको मतलाई कदर गर्ने उद्देश्य साँच्चिकै राखिएको हो भने र बिगतमा जनताको त्यो उर्लिएको महासागर आफ्नै पार्टीको नेतृत्त्वमा देश चलाउने आह्वानको लागि हो भनेर सोचेको हो भने कुनै पनि शक्तिले अहिले कू गर्छन भन्ने बहाना देखाएर भागबन्डाको चुनाव गर्न खोजियो भने देशले शान्तिपूर्ण अवतरणका लागि अझै धेरै पापड बेल्नु पर्ने देखिन्छ।


देशका प्रधानमन्त्री कै अनुसार राजा ज्ञानेन्द्र बाट ज्ञानेन्द्र मात्रै भैसकेको अवस्थामा, नेपाली सेना र माओबादि सेना दुबै आफ्नै मातहतमा रहेको अवस्थामा पनि अब असारमा चुनाव भएन भने यस्तो हुन्छ, उस्तो हुन्छ भनेर भन्छन भने नेपाली जनताले यिनिहरुलाई हुति नभएका, असफल नपूंसक नेता भन्दा फरक पर्ला र? कू भनेको जहिले पनि हुन सक्छ, चुनाव पछि पनि हुन सक्छ, त्यो नहुनका लागि जनचाहना अनुसार काम गर्नु पर्छ, पार्टीभन्दा राष्ट्रलाई प्राथमिकतामा राख्नु पर्छ। जनता आफ्नो पक्षमा छैनन भने, कू गर्नका लागि ज्ञानेन्द्र चाहिदैन, नयाँ शक्तिको जन्म हुन्छ जस्ले आजका स्वघोशित(चुनावको परिणाम आईनसकेकोले) महाशक्तिहरु पनि भोलि कठघरामा उभिनु पर्ने हुनसक्छ। बिगतका हत्या र बिध्वँसको जवाफ दिनु पर्ने हुन सक्छ।

जनताले धेरै नाराहरु सुनिसके,अब कुनै क्रान्तिकारी नारा बिक्ने अवस्था कमसेकम म चाँही देख्दिन। चुनाव असारमा हुन नसक्ने भयो, मँसिरमा गर्नु पर्ला भनेर कुनै नेताले भन्यो भने जनता सडकमा ओर्लिदैनन,बरु एउटा नेता त सही बोल्ने पाइयो भनेर दंङ्ग पर्छन नेपालि जनता। उनीहरु यतिखेर कुनै पनि मूल्यमा शान्ति र विकाश चाहन्छन। उनिहरुका हातमा फोका उठिसक्यो तालि बजाउँदा बजाउँदा,उनिहरुका गला सुकिसक्यो नारा लगाउँदा लगाउँदा,उनिहरु वाक्क दिक्क भैसके नेपालीले नेपालीलालाई मारेको देखेर। केवल चाह्न्छन त शान्ति सँग दुई छाक बिहान बेलुका खाना पाइयोस र बेलुका सुते पछि बिहान ज्युँदै उठ्न पाइयोस। उनीहरुलाई चुनाव असारमा होस य मँसिरमा,केहि हतार छैन।

चाहे राजा रहून् या नरहून,यसले नेपाली जनतालाई कुनै फरक पर्दैन,माओबादि सत्तामा जाउन या नजाउन;यसले पनि उनीहरुलाइ कुनै महत्त्व राख्दैन,गिरिजाप्रसादले चुनावी मसला खोलून् या नखोलून्,त्यस्ले पनि कुनै लछार् पाटो लाउँदैन। माधवले के बोल्छन त जनताले सुन्नै छोडिसके। खालि चाहन्छन् त कुकुरले हड्डीमा लुछा चुँडि गरे झैँ; पद र शक्ति, फालिएको हाडमा होइन जनताको मतमा खोजेको हेर्न चाहन्छन आफ्ना नेतालाई। सायद एउटा नया सुद्दिकरणको क्रान्ति नभए सम्म दम्भको राजनितिले अन्त पाउंदैन र तबसम्म नेपाली जनताले पनि एउटा स्वच्छ सफा समाज देख्न्न पाउंदैन। आशा गरौँ त्यो सुद्दिकरणको आन्दोलन आगामी चुनावको परिणामको रूपमा सुरु होस। त्यसैले, चुनाव एउटा नाटक मन्चन् मात्र नभएर एउटा परिवर्तनको अवसर बनोस।


(Uprety currently works as an IT Consultant in US . He has instructed at various educational institutions and is involved with projects related to education. He can be reached at
upretynaresh@yahoo.com
)

Peace Spoilers

What we need at a time like this is courageous leaders and cohesion among the groups in negotiation: courageous leaders to harness the outrage of the public and not let them vent it out in adverse ways and cohesion among the main parties to continue working together to complete the peace process that they started.
- By Dipendra Tamang

Given the resurgence and predominance of violence in the last few months, especially with the ghastly massacre of 28 people at Gaur on 21 March, I turn to theory and general experience to explain it. Nepal has undergone massive changes in the last one year, from a country under dictatorial rule of the King with an ongoing violent conflict to a nascent re-emergent democracy with a comprehensive peace process. But violence always poses fundamental challenges to peace processes.

We all need to know that peace is very fragile during the implementation of agreements. In the recent opinion poll conducted by International IDEA in the Balkan countries, societies in the immediate post-conflict phase are characterised by a high degree of hope, energy and trust in domestic and international institutions. And the failure of working in stabilisation and rehabilitation efforts can - within a few years - turn this hope and trust into skepticism, desperation and disillusionment. After the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed between the Maoists and the Seven Political Parties, the Nepali people expected everything to be resolved and life to return to pre-conflict normality. But the reality is that this is an agreement between two or more former conflicting parties and in order to make it work, it will require cooperation
This means that the Maoists must be able to bring all their followers with them, the government must be able to persuade the army and the disaffected parties and ones who own guns must be persuaded to lay them down. But establishing and consolidating peace is not so easy, it inevitably takes time and duly, frustrations rise. Different actors in violent conflict hardly choose peace at the same time and the ones who seek to end the conflict will often face opposition from parties who are excluded or who exclude themselves from peacemaking. These spoilers - leaders and factions who view peace as opposed to their interest and who are willing to use violence to undermine it - pose a grave threat to those who risk making peace.
In Nepal , we are seeing the emergence of more groups demanding their rights, justifiably so, but through the use of violence and weapons. With the Maoists literally shooting their way to the Talks Table, other groups seems to be copying their strategy. Given the current security vacuum in the country, with the Maoists inside cantonments and the Army confined to their barracks, the situation seems a ripe moment, not for peace but for the resurgence of violence, as demonstrated in Gaur. There is no surefire answer to a dilemma like this, but one of the solutions is for the political parties to behave more responsibly and take more proactive measures to form the interim government as quickly as possible (which have been done) and hold the Constituent Assembly elections at the earliest feasible date. But the process to the formation of the CA should also be well thought out, so that there is equal representation of all groups and classes.
One of the solutions is maintaining participatory approach of working- involving civil society, academicians and the experts in its stabilisation and peace building process. The lack of it undermines basic democratic institutions, democratic reforms and reconciliation and stabilisation efforts.

Another solution, which should go along with the previous one, is the provision of international resources. When there is no economic interdependence between or among warring parties, then there is not much incentive for them to cooperate in the face of spoilers. Research shows that differences vary predictably with the amount of international resources and attention they receive. In Bosnia , over $16 billion was provided to implement peace which translated to $4200/person where as in Rwanda , to implement the Arusha Accord, $35 million was provided translating to about $4/person. Although the international actors may do too much, but where difficulty is high and local capacities are weak, international actors must increase the resources allotted to making and building peace.

Occasionally, certain atrocities provoke universal condemnation and galvanise popular reaction against the perpetrators. So, let the Gaur atrocity be such an example as the1998 Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland or the 1992 massacre at Boipatong in South Africa . In these cases, instead of destabilising negotiations or an agreement, they became a stimulus for negotiation. What we need at a time like this is courageous leaders and cohesion among the groups in negotiation: courageous leaders to harness the outrage of the public and not let them vent it out in adverse ways and cohesion among the main parties to continue working together to complete the peace process that they started.

(Tamang is the Director (Programs) at the Alliance for Peace - Nepal , a non-governmental organisation working to enable and empower Nepali youths and can be reached at dipendra@afpnepal.org)


Source: Nepalnews.com




NEPAL: Girls not spared by violence in Terai

NEPAL: Girls not spared by violence in Terai



RAUTAHAT, 29 March 2007 (IRIN) - In the remote Pathaya village of Rautahat district, some 200km southeast of the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, local women are coming to terms with seeing three young girls killed in recent clashes between supporters of the ethnic Madhesi party and former Maoist rebels.

“There have been sleepless nights for every witness and yet they could do nothing to save these girls from their perpetrators,” said women’s rights activist Shobha Gautam, who had travelled to the area to report on the incident. “This was a crime against humanity. I’m still too shocked to recount the details.”

Rights groups say Saraswati Upreti, Pratima Pariyar and Usha Thapa - all aged between 16 and 18 years old and Maoist sympathisers - were killed by supporters of the Madhesi People’s Rights Forum (MPRF) on 21 March.

The girls were dragged to a local Hindu temple in Rautahat where they were raped, tortured, had their breasts cut off and their heads crushed with rocks in front of hundreds of people in broad daylight. “Why is there so much hatred? Why is it always helpless women who have to suffer the most?” cried a local female villager who declined to reveal her name for fear that she would be killed for sharing any information about the incident. No villager in Pathaya was willing to say anything about the incident as they too feared for their lives.

Hundreds of villagers have reportedly left their homes in Pathaya and neighbouring villages fearing recurring violence.

The MPRF has been organising protests for the past three months, demanding autonomy for the Madhesi people in the southern Terai region. During the protests, some MPRF protesters have targeted Pahadis, Nepalese hill people who make up the majority of Maoist supporters in the region. NGOs have expressed concern that the deteriorating security in the Terai is affecting the most vulnerable and that the recent killing of three girls will lead to more violence against women. The fact that most local Terai men live and work in India, trying to provide for their families, makes the many women living alone with their children feel more insecure.

“The Terai violence has so much impact on women. This incident has stirred so much fear of insecurity among women across the nation, mostly in the Terai region, where there is no sign of violence stopping now,” said Devkumari Mahara, an activist with the Women’s Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC), a national NGO focussing on the protection of women.

Mahara added that women’s rights activists were also at risk. “We often get attacked and abused, even as women’s rights defenders. You can imagine the vulnerability of ordinary women,” she said. Kamala Rai, an activist who works in Dhanusa, one of the most volatile districts of the Terai, said that incidents of rape and abuse could be on the rise amid escalating violence. But most of them would go unreported as the victims would not be willing to report the cases to the police, whom they do not trust, she said. “Can you believe that a 72-year-old woman was recently raped many times? But the rapists managed to get away as the security system of the country has totally failed,” Rai said.

Source: IRIN Asia