VOL. 05, NO. 01, July 01, 2011 (Ashar 17, 2068)]

By Troy Edige

On arriving in Nepal, an outsider can immediately notice the state of the country’s roads, the garbage strewn on the streets, the power cuts that can range from 6 to 18 hours depending on the season and region,and the lack of sanitary sources of water, amongst certain things.Without difficulty, one can infer that Nepal is facing development challenges. Besides these obvious shortcomings, however, there are also the more subtle problems that an outsider may not be able to immediately observe.

Rice Planting

The Human Development Report (HDR) published by the UN Development Program sheds light on Nepal’s several development issues. There is an endless amount of numbers compiled in the report, and they never seem to be favouring Nepal, not even in one of the 18 different criteria assessed. Nepal’s Human Development Index (HDI) score puts it in the 138th place in the overall rankings. That is out of 169 countries included in the survey. It is important to realise that the variables that go into calculating HDI scores are not only economic indicators,but are mostly concerning people’s access to resources and facilities such as education, healthcare and infrastructure. Political participation and freedom are also important factors, and one of the most important notions that the report takes into account, especially in Nepal’s case, is social inequality. In fact, inequality is such an important obstacle for Nepal’s development that it is pointed out as a major underlying reason for underdevelopment in the UNDP Country Report for Nepal and the Asian Development Bank’s Outlook Report. This fact seems to have hit home domestically as well, as the National Planning Commission’s policy agenda includes terms such as “social inclusion” and “equitable distribution”.

It is now clear that economic growth alone is not the answer to development. Since the concept of Human Development gained currency and validity in the global arena in the early 1990s, governments have started to accept the responsibility to take into consideration social factors that make up the base for the HDR’s assessment criteria. It is, however, an inescapable fact that economic growth is an enabling factor that will open the doors for social restructuring and the provision of basic needs and resources for all. And not only does Nepal need to rebuild its social structure, but it also has to sort out its economy to be able to accomplish the former. For quite some time now, Nepal has been struggling to generate a decent amount of capital. The growth rate, which was 4.5% this year, falls far behind some of Asia’s more successful economies. Moreover, lately the economy has been declining even further. Economists say that this is the result of neglect from the CA, which is busy with other issues, such as drafting the constitution, or rather bickering over which party and which leader is going to take the reigns once the constitution issue is settled. It seems as though development efforts, which Nepal is in dire need of, are being hindered because of the current turbulent political environment.

If the politicians are too busy to shift their focus on development,then whose responsibility is it to take care of it? Here, it is necessary to make an important distinction. While the politicians are the ones who make the important decisions and get all the media attention, it is the bureaucracy that does the work that matters. This work ranges from creating policy guidelines and agendas to the work of actually implementing such plans at the practical level. On both ends of the spectrum, however, the efforts are undercut by the current political situation.

The Vice-Chairman of the National Planning Commission Dr. Dinesh Chandra Devkota repeatedly underlined the importance of the settlement of the constitutional process, and remarked that political instability is “a major issue” hampering development, and in fact, is a result of the uprising of the people who are excluded from development. In this light, he explained that the development plans firstly focus on the impoverished regions and strive to provide basic needs and provisions to the poorest. He also admitted that the economy has not been the priority of the CA lately, but expressed his hope that once the new constitution is settled, the economic agenda, with the efforts of the NPC, will become very important for the government and the economy will take a turn for the better.

On the other end, where the policies are transformed into concrete projects, the Secretary of the Ministry of Local Development, Sushil Ghimire, expressed that they face practical problems. He said that even though the bureaucracy functions within its own system separate from the government, they face several problems as a result of current political affairs. Firstly, he explained, some of the important policy-level decisions that enable them to do their work get delayed, and secondly there is a “political vacuum” in rural areas (the Ministry’s main area of operation), meaning that there are no elected government officials due to the lack of elections. This results in certain responsibilities not being taken, making things even more difficult for the MLD.

The one point of concern is that the 2063 (2007) Interim Constitution has also laid out clear terms for the social and political inclusivity of “Women, Dalit, indigenous tribes, [the] Madheshi community,oppressed group[s], the poor peasant[s] and labourers, who are economically, socially or educationally backward,” but these principles have to a great extent remained on paper. The public has now to a great extent lost its hope and believes that the new constitution, if it is ever completed, might still not fulfil all of its promises in practice. And what of the federal system, which might not appease all of the ethnic groups in Nepal’s complex social fabric and lead to further uprisings and instability? There is of course also the added likelihood that the three-month extension period might not bear any fruit. What may we face then? The aspiration to find political stability and finally to be able to move on to developing the country is encouraging, but for now, just as it has done for the past two decades, Nepal plays the waiting game.

At a time Nepal has been passing through a very critical transition, the recently released World Bank’s World Development Report 2011 has many insights to offer the country .

By A CORRESSPONDENT

The World Development Report 2011 has revealed a pathetic scenario for conflict affected countries of the world. According to the report, some 1.5 billion people live in countries affected by repeated cycles of political and criminal violence, causing human misery and disrupting development.

“To break these cycles, it is crucial to strengthen legitimate national institutions and governance in order to provide citizens security, justice and jobs, as well as alleviating the international stresses that increase the risks of violent conflict,” said the report.

Despite a decade long history of conflict, Nepal has made unbelievable achievements in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, the World Bank’s World Development Report revealed that no low-income fragile or conflict-affected country has yet achieved a single MDG.

Nepal went though an intense conflict with the loss of more than 15,000 people and infrastructure worth of millions of rupees but it was able to achieve MDGs in three critical areas, including infant mortality, maternal mortality and girl education.

As conflict and criminalization are global phenomena, the World Bank chose the topics, conflict, security and development, as a theme for the World Development Report 2011,” said Nigel Roberts, special representative/director of the Report. “Political violence is growing in the countries around the world slowing down economic development work. As political stability and peace are a prerequisite for high economic growth, the challenges are there for the country like Nepal to restore them.”

According to the study, violence is spurred by both local and international stresses: youth unemployment, inequality between social, ethnic, regional, or religious groups, economic shocks, infiltration of trafficking networks and foreign security interference. In survey areas affected by violence, citizens cited unemployment as the main motivation for recruitment into both gangs and rebel movements – with corruption, injustice and exclusion, the main drivers of violence.

“The report reveals that violence happens where states and sub-national governments do not provide security and access to justice, markets do not provide employment opportunities and communities have lost the social cohesion that contains conflict. No country can afford to ignore areas where violence flourishes and citizens are excluded from social justice and economic progress.”

The report finds out those countries where government effectiveness, rule of law, and control of corruption are weak have a 30 to 45 percent higher risk of civil war and significantly higher risk of extreme criminal violence.

The report showed that violence cannot be confined to certain areas. “The effect of violence in one part of the world spreads to other more stable areas though refugee flows, criminal networks, drug trafficking, epidemic diseases and shocks to the prices of commodities such as oil.”

Countries with recent human rights abuses are far more likely to experience conflict than countries with a strong history of respect for human rights. Each one-step deterioration on the five point political terror scale- which measures arbitrary detention for non-violent political activity, torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings- resulted in a more than 43 percent increase in the risk of civil war in the following five years.

The report also found that countries with weak government effectiveness, rule of law, and control of corruption have a 30-45 percent higher risk of civil war, and significantly higher risk of extreme criminal violence than other developing countries.

“Following the end of the cold war, the number of conflict supported by state actors decline but the loss of human life in other kinds of conflict grows. Forty-two million people are displaced today as a result of conflict, violence or human rights abuse. Of these, 15 million area refugees outside their own country and 27 million are displaced internally within their own country.

As a country like Nepal will have to pass though a long cycle of violence and conflict, the trauma of violence will continue to haunt Nepalese society where legal impunity is encouraging various criminal elements to commit more crimes, it said.

Nepali Anti-trafficking Hero Honored in Washington

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, hugs Charimaya Tamang of Nepal, a trafficking survivor herself, as she is awarded the 2011 Hero Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery Award, Monday, June 27, 2011, during the release of the 2011 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, at the State Department in Washington. Shortly before her departure for the U.S., Ambassador DeLisi welcomed Ms. Tamang to the Embassy in Kathmandu to congratulate her and wish her safe travels.

The 2011 TIP Report notes: “Born into a poor family made poorer by the passing of her father, Charimaya Tamang was 16 when she was trafficked to India. She spent 22 months enslaved in a brothel before the Indian government rescued her and more than 200 other Nepali women in 1996. Upon her return to Nepal, Ms. Tamang faced social stigma and was outcast from her own community. But she courageously filed a case against her traffickers, becoming the first person to file personally a trafficking case with the district police. In 1997, the District Court – in a landmark decision – convicted and sentenced eight offenders involved in her case.

“In 2000, Ms. Tamang and 15 other survivors established Shakti Sumaha, an anti-trafficking NGO. She received a national honor for her work in 2007 and is currently one of two trafficking survivors serving as members of the government-led National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking, which was founded in 2009. In that role, Ms. Tamang raised the importance of including survivors in each district-level working group. There are now five trafficking survivors serving as members of district-level committees around the country.”

By RADHA PAUDEL

The Comprehensive Peace Accord (2006) had clearly mentioned that “the government army and the Maoist PLA shall assist each other to mark landmines and booby traps used during the time of armed conflict by providing information within 30 days and defuse and excavate the same within 60 days.”

We civilians do not know much about the nature of landmines, their impacts and what policies are there regarding them. People don't care about this unless these explosives cause immediate loss to them. But according to INSEC, 78 persons were killed and 395 others were injured by Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) during 2006-2011.

Both Nepal Army and Maoist PLA used the landmines as a strong defense strategy during the decade of insurgency. Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were used massively everywhere, especially in places like Kalikot, Jumla, Dang, and Arghakhachi where exchange of firing occurred.

In all, Nepal Army planted 275 explosives and Maoist PLA 52, 617. As part of implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Accord, the government declared Nepal a mine free country in June 14, 2011. Phulchoki of Lalitpur was called the last site for clearance of the anti-personnel landmines. Nepal also announced that it is the second landmine free Asian country.

Unfortunately, two days after the declaration, on June 16, this writer was in Manma, Kalikot asking for help to the victims of landmines. A bomb blast occurred in Phuhemahadev village of Kalikot. A 16-year boy, named Ananda Pandey, was injured severely while he was in his maize farm. He was brought to Bir Hospital and transferred to teaching hospital in June 26. He lost one of his eyes completely, and another eye had injuries. He lost fingers, suffered broken arms and had severely damaged mouth, nose, forehead, and chest. Now, he is getting surgery and treatment in the teaching hospital where Action Works Nepal (AWON), a non-governmental organization working for Karnali, is taking care of him under Miteri Gaun (Let's Live Together) campaign.

In this scenario, the government still needs to consider landmines as a serious concern for the following reasons; i) the civilians do not have access to information about the policies and systems, ii) no access to well equipped health institutions, iii) poor mechanism to respond to the survivors of landmine accidents. Thus, the government should continue to educate the people for taking consideration of nearby cantonments, barracks and areas of cross firing. The government also should ensure the system is in place to take care of survivors fully even after the declaration announcing the country as landmine free. Otherwise the risks are there that more negative impacts occur. For example, if Ananda had got immediate treatment (such as by rescuing him via a helicopter) and treatment, he wouldn't lose his vision. In this connection, provisions of free health treatment matters little. The needful action always matters, therefore, the government should be serious to serve landmine survivors. In a landmine free country, there should not be more people suffering like Ananda. Never Again.

Large number of under SLC are eyeing for foreign employment brining huge foreign remittances. The question is it a long term solution?

By Joshua Leslie

Every day more than eight hundred young Nepalese leave the country hoping to get the job in Gulf and East Asian countries. However, all are not lucky at all and many returned with empty hand even working after years.

According to Nepal’s central bank, Nepal received over 230 billion NRs from foreign remittances in 2009-2010, covering over 22% of the country's GDP, and more than the annual budget of the government; however, the flip side of such an overreliance on remittances is the low SLC results.

PM Khanal in Landmine Sweeping Ceremony

The decline in the number of students passing their SLC compounds fears of Nepal turning into a country that supports developed and developing countries, especially the Gulf States and India, by providing prodigious amounts of unskilled laborers. The Ministry of Labor and Transport shows that Nepal is currently sending over 300,000 people for foreign employment every year, and the country is estimated to have the total population absent from Nepal to be around 6.5 percent, significantly higher than the official record of 3.3 percent.

Experts argue that high rates of poverty and a high unemployment rate further exacerbate the problem of mass migration as the youth begin to feel disenfranchised by the lack of job opportunities available in Nepal. Furthermore, the high salaries, compared to local earnings, found for these unskilled positions in foreign markets make a potential laborer more determined to find a job in a foreign country than in Nepal.

Nepal seems to find its absolute advantage within the global economic market by providing cheap, unskilled laborers to more advanced countries.  A case study done in 2002 on the amount of money remitted per person found that migrants in India remit around 9,000 NRs per year, migrants in Western countries are able to send an average 450,000 NRs, and remittances from Gulf States average to 90,000 NRs per year. Nepal's GNI per capita in 2009 was $440 (31,500 NRs per year), clearly demonstrating an almost pure arbitrage between working in Nepal and in foreign states.

The opportunity cost of a college education, especially if one wants to reach masters or PhD levels, has lost its intrinsic value as post-secondary schooling is extremely costly and the current low SLC test scores seem to indicate that the Nepali society at large is aware of the futility in finding professional, well-paying jobs in the Nepali market. Therefore, the encouragement and support usually afforded to pre-SLC students begins to diminish as parents realize that they are only pushing their children into a deeper and more difficult abyss from which to rise out of, so, instead of putting money into their child's education, a family would rather risk entrusting their child's future well-being to a manpower agency rather than an educational institution. With a rise in the number of workers going to foreign lands and earning more money, in jobs that require less skills, than they could possibly earn in Nepal, Nepalese students themselves are probably not as keen to study and pass their SLC without at least a semblance of assurance over their immediate future.

Foreign countries use the large pool of unskilled laborers currently available from Nepal to decrease their own costs, but as xenophobia, protection of citizen’s rights, and immigration become larger problems within foreign countries in the near future, it would be foolhardy for Nepal to rely on foreign countries to provide jobs for its population. The SLC results will not increase without substantial assurances of high paying, professional jobs by market forces and the government of Nepal. Until then, this country will remain to be the pool in which foreign countries remove the every so necessary flow of young educated people.

(Joshua Leslie is an intern)