A Forgotten Population

TKP 22/12/08

The Gulf States’ army of remittance workers must run the gauntlet of risky working conditions, corrupt employers and often crippling debt obligations before they can send their hard-earned wages back to their home countries, and have few places to turn to for assistance if they find themselves in trouble. The Gulf is a dangerous place for migrant labourers from all over the developing world, but the situation of Nepali workers is particularly precarious, since Nepal does not maintain embassies in several Gulf countries, leaving workers unable to access diplomatic support in cases of abuse, accidents or pay disputes. Globalisation has brought the Gulf countries a windfall of cheap labour, which governments and corporations alike have been quick to use- and abuse – as they race one another to build up glitzy megacities and infrastructure projects. But Nepal has been slow off the mark in providing its citizens with the support they need as they grapple with the dangers and iniquities of migrant life.

A quick scan of the local press in countries such as Bahrain and the UAE often reveals a litany of fatalities, industrial accidents, and pay disputes involving South Asian construction workers and domestic staff, although these rarely receive any coverage or investigation beyond a mention in the news shorts. The media in the Gulf States prefers to devote column inches to stories of foreign investment and ambitious building projects, keeping the dark underbelly of their economies out of the public eye. But it is precisely this dark side of the Gulf that most Nepalis inhabit when they join the region’s blue-collar workforce.
It comes as a surprise to even the most educated Arabs that Nepal is now such a major supplier of labour to the Gulf. ‘Do Nepalis really need embassies here?’ one incredulous academic and political scientist said to me during a recent trip to Bahrain when rights for migrant workers came up in conversation ‘There must only be about five or six of them it this part of the world, at most. Remember that Nepal is a small country’.

The truth is that well over one and a half million Nepalis work in the Gulf States, where the stereotype of the Nepali as hardworking, loyal and willing to take on the dangerous or dirty jobs that locals shun is alive and well. Despite the risks, a rising number of Nepalis are heading overseas for work; Nearly 220,000 Nepalis migrated for employment in the 2007-8 financial year, compared with 104,736 in 2001-2, the majority leaving for low-skilled jobs in the Gulf and Malaysia. However, the death toll is rising too; over 700 Nepalis labourers died in the Gulf States in 2007, according to reports from Nepali Embassies, including 153 in Qatar, 49 in the UAE and a staggering 301 in Saudi Arabia. Only 49% of the deaths reported in Saudi Arabia were thought to have been due to natural causes, while the rest were attributed to cardiac arrests, industrial accidents and suicides. Heart attacks are now a common phenomenon among Nepali labourers in the Gulf, even the young and healthy, thought to be the result of working on construction sites in blazing temperatures.

For the most part Nepali labourers and domestics leave home with little idea of what to expect in the Gulf, and few places to turn if they run into trouble. Existing embassies in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates provide vital backup to Nepalis, especially to housemaids fleeing abusive employers, but an insufficient number ILO-labour attachés struggle to cope with the volume of the demands for help. In a recent interview, Surya Nath Mishra, Nepali Ambassador to Qatar, revealed that the embassy in Doha receives as many as 100 requests per day for intervention in disputes over pay and conditions.

Under its Foreign Labour Act of 1985 (reviewed in 2007) Nepal is required to provide embassies in all countries where more than 5000 of its citizens work, but it has, for the most part failed to do this, and remittance workers in the Gulf are paying a heavy price. With no embassy of their own in Kuwait and Bahrain, Nepalis have to undertake a costly and time-consuming journey to Saudi Arabia to access diplomatic support, or must put themselves at the mercy of the host country’s legal system. But in many cases, the embassy in Riyadh is just too far away. In October this year 125 Nepalis arriving in Bahrain to work with a security firm were stranded at the airport after their sponsor cancelled their contract, and were held under tight security by Bahraini authorities until the Nepali government eventually stepped in to arrange their transport home.

These workers were among the lucky ones; countless others in find themselves entirely cut off from all channels of support when faced with a crisis. Around 30,000 Nepalis work in Kuwait, and around 30 Nepali housemaids – most with children born out of wedlock – are languishing in jails, unable to contact an embassy to secure legal advice or repatriation. One Nepali woman, 29-year old Dolma Sherpa, is on death row after being accused of murdering her Philippina room-mate while their Kuwaiti employer was away on the Haj pilgrimage last year. The details of the case remain patchy; Dolma allegedly killed the woman after the Nepali was caught meeting her lover in secret. Dolma’s was a rare example of a case which received any international support or media attention. Her husband, Ang Tenzi Sherpa, who was working as a cook in an American military camp in neighbouring Iraq, returned to Nepal immediately after hearing of her sentence, and begged the Nepali government for help. The result was that Nepal’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Hamid Ansari, mounted an international campaign to save Dolma’s life. As of the last update from the campaign, Dolma is still in jail awaiting the verdict of an appeal. Had her husband not been nearby and able to raise the alert, Dolma would have been left at the hands of the Kuwaiti justice system with no legal support, and most likely would have been added to growing number of Nepalis who don’t make it back home from the Gulf.

Since the governments of the Gulf States appear to have washed their hands of any responsibility for the welfare of migrant labourers, the Nepali government needs to radically rethink the level of support it provides for its citizens working in the region. The phrase ‘out of sight, out of mind’ seems to sum up the attitude of host countries towards Nepali workers in the Gulf, where there is a dangerous misperception that they are an insignificant and forgettable minority from a faraway land. Now it falls to Nepal’s government to ensure that it does not replicate this attitude with regards to its own brave remittance men and women in the Gulf.

read, peruse, pander and sing: a mesocosm Christmas and end of year message

Several years ago an elderly brother and sister sent our family the best Christmas letter I have ever read. They were well-known eccentrics who lived together in a small village in the east of England. They could recount the whole history of the local area as if it happened yesterday and they never failed to ask me 'when are you joining the merchant navy?' each time we met. Here is the last part of that (to me) magical letter:

It will be a good year...we look forward with hope, Press on, must not give up, enjoy each moment, pause awhile, rest, use the talents you have, read, peruse, pander, and sing yes a good Book, Our Christmas letter to you, sunshine reach me as I sit at the table, if I pause for a while....it is Christmas, we work together...

Happy Christmas readers (assuming we have any)! Have a good 2009 too. Don't forget to pause awhile and yes a good Book.

Open minds, closed borders

TKP 29/11/2008

Are news reports about hundreds of Nepalis leaving their country each day to work abroad sad and depressing? Lant Pritchett, the author of Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Labour Mobility, doesn't think so. Pritchett is an economist who used to work for the World Bank. He believes that the biggest boost that the West can give to poor nations is not more aid, trade or debt relief but instead to relax border controls and allow more migrants from poorer nations into their countries. We are talking here about unskilled migrants (potential cleaners, shop workers, restaurant staff), not skilled migrants or refugees. Pritchett has proposed a controversial giant guest-worker program that would put millions of the world's poorest people to work in its richest economies.

Trade and aid, in his view, has already failed to help Nepalis and the world's poor. Also richer nations in the West will pay for unskilled labour and they typically have increasingly ageing populations requiring additional young, tax-paying workers to support them. In Nepal's case, migration beyond India took off in the mid-1980s. Political and economic troubles in Nepal 'pushed' migrants into the waiting arms of Malaysia, South-east Asia and, from the 1990s, into the rapidly expanding Gulf countries. An estimated 300,000 newcomers enter the Nepali 'job market' every year, many of whom end up part of the remittance economy.

Pritchett wants to help people trapped, as he sees it, inside their national borders and liberalise the movement of people. For him, greater labour mobility makes economic sense but is also morally right: 'We shouldn't keep people locked in place within some arbitrary post-colonial boundaries just so we can continue with the bold experiment of trying to make nation-states develop. People should be free to move.'

The objections to Pritchett are long, varied and mostly right. The current economic climate is not exactly favourable towards increasing migration. During this global economic slowdown, in which thousands of 'indigenous' jobs are being lost in the West, large-scale increases in migration are even more politically sensitive than usual. No government in the West will realistically want to further endanger the jobs or wages of their own citizens by encouraging the entry of cheap foreign labour. Turkeys, after all, don't vote for Christmas. However, despite this, let us assume that Pritchett's proposals are still worth exploring for use in sunnier economic times.

Pritchett sensibly recognizes that open borders and more migrants are, economic crisis or not, politically very hard to sell in the West. As a result he suggests that short-term bilateral, temporary agreements between sending and receiving nations are realistic compromises to encourage more migration. Pritchett also believes that ensuring a migrant worker's right to earn is more important than ensuring their political or citizenship rights. He says his proposals would ease a migrant's passage by helping to counter political and cultural opposition in the receiving country. In these agreements, Pritchett suggests, the migrant's political rights, length of stay and the right to bring family would all be curtailed or non-existent. He suggests that, for the USA, unskilled labourers would stay three to five years, with no path to citizenship, no hope of bringing their families and would only work in fields with identified labour shortages.

Pritchett's proposals to deny citizenship and family unification opportunities as well as making the stay temporary would help create a permanent global underclass with no hope of respect or dignity. Currently many Nepali migrants across the world are already second-class citizens. Existing labour agreements with countries like South Korea have not offered complete protection. Pritchett's proposals would only enshrine their second-class status in law and in bilateral agreements. He claims that denying rights is a trade-off worth making and that 'one of the awkward paradoxes of the world is that Bangladeshis and Pakistanis and Nepalis are enormously better off precisely because…Gulf states don't endow them with political rights.' By moving to richer nations the world's poor do usually increase their earnings. However the personal and human costs to individual migrants are immense and migration is also not a solution to development challenges back home.

Both Nepalis who scoff at modern-day 'lahures' and Westerners who live in migrant-receiving nations are perhaps equally ignorant about the true human cost of migration. Despite their exaggerated claims of success with relatives back home, seasoned migrant labourers from Nepal know the reality of life abroad. Their lives involve dealing with unscrupulous middlemen and abusive bosses. A lot of time is spent paying off loans which got them there in the first place. Qualified PhDs and doctors end up doing menial shelf-stacking, restaurant or hard construction work. Nepalis who have skipped visas and slipped into illegality eke out half-lives underground with few or no rights. Many migrant workers need more than one job to survive. News reports on the lives (and deaths) of Nepalis working in places like Qatar have helped dispel the illusions about 'life abroad'.

Given the problem of migrant working conditions, Pritchett's proposal to legally recognize unskilled migrants is welcome. But if migrants are going to be recognized it must be as full members of the receiving societies. Working legally must also mean working with dignity and rights. Gaining access to 'modernity' and the West must not come at the cost of second-class citizenry. Unfortunately, Pritchett's proposals would only reinforce the authority of employers who already exploit vulnerable migrants and disregard labour agreements.

That labour mobility has not been liberalized is more disturbing to Pritchett than the lack of protection of individual guest workers' rights. In his view, it is individual migrant workers who create wealth for the poor back home. Aid and trade through nations is an irrelevant and outmoded delivery system for development. However, remittances from migration cannot substitute the economic development of the home country. Remittances are typically used to buy things and are not often invested in industry or infrastructure development. They cannot replace aid, trade and development work. Pritchett, however, implies that Nepal would only be useful as a giant manpower agency.

Nepalis abroad nearly always form associations to preserve a sense of community and to support each other. In such organising and gathering, migrants across the world show their desire not just to earn money quickly but to live with dignity and respect for their identity.

One Dasain, I was in a friend's village in remote eastern Nepal. All the men of working age were away, working in foreign countries. There were only old people, children and women left. On the day of tika, my friend's sister couldn't control the tears streaming down her face. Her husband, father of her three children, was away for yet another Dasain. Emptying villages and families without fathers exist across Nepal. Migration issues are complex and there are no easy answers.
However, a policy which seeks to institutionalise and perpetuate this pain and sadness is surely misguided. Also, a policy that neglects the economic development and future employment-generating capacity of Nepal is undoubtedly wrong.

lard-filled links and Gurkha deaths

Look what Gurkhas in the British Army get up to in their spare time. The film concentrates on Amrit Limbu's Buddha creation but there are other ornate lard-based creations briefly shown at the start including my favourite: man with horse.

Its not the Gurkhas who are odd and 'bored' though. Apparently:

Fat carving is a very old European tradition which grew out of a desire to decorate and embellish the presentation of food for feasts and elegant meals.

So there you have it, not odd traditions from the East but funny Army ones. Still I am not convinced by lard Buddha's eyes....something not quite right there.

If Amrit is really bored and homesick or the lard runs out then he could do worse than to check this melodramatic masterpiece of a film set in east Nepal Limbu lands - Numaphung.

The first Nepali Gurkha to be killed in the Afghanistan conflict was also from East Nepal. Yubaraj Rai was killed last month and was described as

an avid sportsman who enjoyed all competition, but his number one passion was football and in particular, Manchester United.

A second Gurkha died soon after.

Shopping for China

TKP 9/12/2008

China prefers to have a single Nepali partner which has a stable grasp over the state. It was the monarchy in the past; now it seems to have found in the CPN (Maoist) the elusive, stable one-door partner.

The recent visits to Kathmandu by a number of high-level diplomats from various countries -- the British minister for International Development, the foreign ministers of India, China and Denmark -- has brought Nepal's foreign relations under public scrutiny. And it has become apparent that although Nepal's place in the world has changed substantially in the past half-century, there is inadequate understanding of this shift.

For one, it is not easy to whip up anti-India sentiment as it was in the past. The decade-long war of attrition, which started in 1996 after the Maoists launched “People's War”, was a heavy blow to the Nepali psyche and self-esteem. The old notion of hard nationalism, which both the left and the monarchy used to drum up support, is not potent anymore. The monarchy has collapsed. There is not a strong centre, the polity is fragmented, and a new idea of nationalism, built around recognition of Nepal's diversity, is still in the making.

India's economic growth has also contributed to a softening of feelings towards our southern neighbour. Of course, Nepalis have been flocking to India to find employment for generations, but in recent years India has become a more welcome place for them. The majority of Nepalis in India are still engaged in menial jobs that do not offer the means of upwards mobility, but there are also thousands of educated Nepalis who have been partially schooled in India and continue to live there to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the booming Information Technology sector, the media and various other entrepreneurial ventures.

It is also difficult to sustain the idea of India as a big bully that constantly twists Nepal's arm to gain concessions to its own advantage. Memories of the 1989 blockade that caused suffering in Nepal, the various unequal water treaties, and more recently, the encroachment of Nepali territory by India, still remain and are a source of some resentment. But it is also not possible to disregard the fact that since November 2005, the Indian establishment has played a largely positive role in Nepal's peace process and has not sought to take advantage of Nepal's vulnerability and political instability. And although India did engage in some arm-twisting to make political leaders come around to a consensus in February 2008, without this the Constituent Assembly (CA) elections would not have taken place.

The tendency to view the Maoists' recent cultivation of ties with the Chinese as a return to Mahendra-era foreign policy is also out of step with the times. Nepal is no longer in a situation where India has the capacity or the inclination to take over its sovereignty and independence. Many Nepalis, though subconsciously aware of this, are reflexively stuck in viewing their country as involved in a perpetual tug of war between India and China. The foreign policy establishments of these countries, however, have long been aware that reality has shifted.

The major cause of this shift is the cultivation of diplomatic ties with the countries of the West that Nepal has been engaged in for the past half-century. These ties and the influx of foreign aid from Western countries have oriented Nepal away from India and China and towards new patrons. And in the wider world, this has led to a change in perception about Nepal's place in the world. It is no longer considered to be an Indian protectorate. Nepal may be a poor and weak country that is acutely in need of help, but it is a poor and weak country that is independent and distinct from India. Even if India did attempt to annex Nepal (which it will not), this move would meet with severe disapproval from the wider international community.

There are Chinese Nepal experts who visit this country regularly and give interviews in the nationalist media to warn against the “Sikkimisation” of this country and promise that China will vigilantly protect Nepal's sovereignty and independence. These disingenuous remarks are meant for the consumption of a Nepali public that still hasn't come around to understanding their country's position in the world. By raising fear of Indian interference, the Chinese seek to make Nepalis more positively oriented towards their own country. And this hides the fact that the Chinese are less concerned about India, and more concerned about the penetration of Nepal by Western diplomatic missions and aid agencies.

This is so obvious that it hardly needs explanation. China's chief worry regarding Nepal is that it will be used as a base for Tibetan refugees to engage in “anti-China” activities. Those most sympathetic to the Tibetan cause and most likely to provide it with support are Western missions and agencies. The Chinese now find that a party that is not only pragmatically but also ideologically anti-Tibetan leads Nepal's government. They are keen to provide whatever support they can to this government to ensure that it remains in power for some time and will, hopefully, curtail the activities of the liberal West.

So three Chinese delegations -- two military and one from their foreign ministry -- have come to Nepal within the space of a month, and have announced that China will provide 18 million Yuan for the Nepal Army (NA). By doing so, China is attempting to consolidate relations between the NA and the Maoists, to show the NA that the Maoists are going to be an outstanding patron. And to show that the Maoists are the only political force that can assure the Army the wholehearted support of the Chinese.

The Chinese foreign minister's visit caused some discontent within the parties that are not in government and among leaders whose parties are in government but are themselves not in it. There was grumbling that the minister met only those who occupy positions in the state structure. What was clear is that, unlike our other neighbour, the Chinese are not interested in bringing the parties together and healing the rifts that currently pose threats to the peace process. This is partially due to the nature of the Chinese state: it is monolithic and unsure of how to deal politically with diversity and dissent within its own country. It is even more averse to dealing with a variety of actors in a fragmented and complicated foreign nation. Its preferred mode of operation is to find a representative that appears to have a relatively stable grasp over the state and deal with it alone. It was the monarchy in the past; now it seems to have found in the CPN (Maoist) the elusive stable one-door partner.

The Chinese foreign minister, when he was in Kathmandu last week, said that his country was keen to see Nepal's peace process reach its conclusion. But the Chinese view of the peace process is substantially different from that of the majority of the Nepalis and of many of Nepal's international well-wishers. What the minister meant was certainly not that the Chinese wish to see an institutionalized political system that ensures multi-party competition and the inclusion of all of Nepal's diverse ethnic groups in the state structure. Nor did he mean that the Chinese want to see a reform of Nepal's security forces to bring them under civilian control. The Chinese wish to see stability in Nepal, it is true. But stability for them means a hard state with a firm and long-lasting grip. It is towards this end that their foreign policy efforts in Nepal are focused.

NA is no longer a national army

TKP 9/12/2008

Chandra Dev Khanal 'Baldev' is a Central Committee member of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and Deputy Commander of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). He shares joint responsibility, along with Nanda Kishore Pun 'Pasang', of the command of all seven divisions of the Maoist army, and is particularly responsible for the first and second divisions. Baldev spoke to Aditya Adhikari and Phanindra Dahal about the current condition of Maoist combatants, the plans his party has for integration of the PLA and the Nepal Army (NA) and the party's relations with other political forces.

Q: What changes have occurred in the Maoist army after entering the peace process?

Baldev: We're no longer continuously in movement. We're confined to barracks, to a fixed system. That's new. Our training used to be unstructured, now it has become more institutionalised.

Q: Maoist combatants are still confined to the cantonments. What is the mood among them right now?

Baldev: Some time ago, the party had taken a decision regarding the army. And I think this should apply to all armies in the world. We feel that the army should not only be constrained to barracks. There have to be methods to unite the army with the people, whether it is the NA or the PLA. They have to be involved in leading the people or in social work. But because we are in the peace process and are under UN monitoring, we are not able to come out of the cantonments. We have requested the government -- we recently asked the peace ministry -- that we should be given some development-oriented work. The NA is involved in a number of activities like constructing roads, and we too should be given the same. We don't want to just keep staying in the camps.

Q: What views do the combatants in camps have regarding integration? Do they wish to enter the Nepal Army or are they looking for other possibilities?

Baldev: Anyone can go to the cantonments and ask the combatants what they personally think. As a party, we feel that integration is not simply a matter of the PLA being merged into the NA. PLA combatants will not join the NA just to get a job, under standards and norms created in the past. We have made this clear. What we're saying is that both the PLA and the NA need to be raised to a new standard. This means that the Army can't simply keep its old structure under which they were used and deployed by the feudalists and the monarchy. And the PLA also can't remain as the army of a single party. Both these armies need to be transformed, a new national army and a new national security policy created. The NA is no longer a national army as the conception of nationalism it operated under has come to an end.

Q: But some people within your party -- Biplab and Ananta, for instance -- have been saying that the PLA will not be integrated, that they will be kept separately and strengthened.

Baldev: No, that's not true. I don't know where they said that and what context they said it in. It's not that we are against integration. The question is regarding the manner in which it will take place. We will not accept a simple mixing of the PLA into the NA as the Nepali Congress (NC) seems to think will happen. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen at all; it needs to happen on a new basis.

Q: When you speak of this “new basis”, do you mean to say that PLA officers will have the same rank in the NA as they possess in the PLA? Or that there will be a joint command of leaders of the two armies?

Baldev: There are many models of integration across the world, which, as we have been saying, do not apply to Nepal. In line with Nepal's new situation, we should create a joint command. In the first phase of integration a coordination command of the top leadership of the two armies can be created. They can form plans together, but the orders given will be passed down through separate channels. The units of the NA and PLA will remain separate. Then according to the new policy, we will undertake downsizing. According to this decision, there may be a reduction in the numbers of both PLA and NA commanders. We may agree to somewhat different modalities after further discussion, but there is no question of sending our people outside our command.

Q: You're saying there will be separate units of the NA and PLA within the same army?

Baldev: There is a misconception that people in the Army have no political beliefs. They do, they are allowed to vote after all. But they can't, on the basis of their political beliefs, stage a revolt or organize politically within the Army. They have to follow the norms of the constitution and of the Army. Until full integration takes place, we can place the units separately. But we shouldn't say this unit belongs to the Maoists, that belongs to the country. Some people say the Armed Police Force (APF) belongs to the NC as that party created it when it was in government to suppress the Maoists after the Army refused to go after us. But this doesn't mean that the NC directly controls the APF. It has already become an organ under the constitution.

Q: What about the discharge of the 4,000 combatants who haven't been verified by UNMIN? Will the discharge process happen earlier or will it occur simultaneously with the integration process?

Baldev: Yes, the UN has been raising such questions with us. Not just UNMIN, UNICEF and all the other UN agencies are very interested in this and ask us why we aren't taking any steps to discharge those who haven't been verified. They ask us about this all the time. What we say is that discharge isn't a problem. But the decision of the previous NC-led government to give the disqualified combatants a total of 12,000-15,000 rupees and send them home is not acceptable to us. There has to be a proper structure for their rehabilitation. Someone has to take responsibility for this first, whether it is the government or some donor organization. At the very least, there have to be basic guarantees for these people's education and employment. We have been telling them that we will discharge the unverified combatants after this preparation is complete.

Q: There have been problems bringing the NC into the Army Integration Special Committee (AISC). Do you think the NC has any role to play in the integration process?

Baldev: There are currently major differences between the NC's point of view and ours. I don't know what they thought when they came into the peace process. They knew that the Maoists have a large army that fought a war. They should have understood that mechanisms should be created to deal with both armies. They seem to have thought that this wouldn't be a big problem, that the PLA would do whatever the NC wants them to do. But we have been saying for a long time that, according to the desires of the people, we need a new army. If the NC agrees to this, that's fine, we can move ahead together. But if they continue to say that only a selected number of PLA combatants will be integrated, and that too only after their chests have been measured, we won't agree to that. I will tell you this right now: that is impossible.

Q: What about the NA? It doesn't seem that they will accept your proposal either.

Baldev: This is not an issue for the NA to get involved in. Many people have this illusion that if the NA doesn't agree, integration can't take place. This is nonsense. If they want to have a say they should be able to dare to come forward and say that they are a political organ and stage a coup like Musharraf did. It's the same for the PLA. If they don't agree to the decisions of the government or the party they should revolt. What else can they do? Otherwise, both armies have to move ahead according to the provisions in the new constitution. The NA, I say, will not even have a small role. Yes, we have to take their suggestions. But it must be understood that the army didn't create the political parties and nation; the nation and political parties created the army, for the state.

Q: How is the relationship between your party and the NA these days?

Baldev: As the Defence Minister belongs to our party, our relations with the NA are currently quite good. They say they will follow any political decisions that are taken. Now, there are some people in the Army who in the past enjoyed perks and privileges, were engaged in getting commissions and were corrupt. They may try to pose some hindrances. But a major portion of the Army, I think, is moving forward in a positive manner.

Q: So there have been major changes in the NA after the peace process started?

Baldev: There has been positive change. Some say that the Army will not change, that it remains the same, but that is not true. Time has changed the NA. It could have engaged in some mischief when the King was asked to leave the palace. But they understood that a political decision had been taken and the monarchy's place in history had come to an end. We also hear that there have been changes within the culture of the army.

Q: Your party is now in government, and has made efforts to increase relations with other countries. Has there also been greater engagement between the Maoist army and the armies of other countries?

Baldev: The PLA itself hasn't directly made efforts to engage with the armies of other countries. But there have been efforts to cultivate relations internationally. The UN has also been helping with this. People from the NA and our army have gone together to other countries to participate in some international programmes. We had a good discussion with the Norwegian Army, with the German Army and other armies of European countries. They had positive advice to offer regarding how the two armies should work together.

Q: The reason I ask is because officers from the NA have been going to receive training from various military institutes for many years. Do you have plans to send officers from the PLA abroad for training as well?

Baldev: Yes, we do. Past agreements state that the armies need to be professionalized and democratized. The PLA needs to be professionalized, and should be sent to receive training. The NA is relatively professional, but needs to be democratized. I say relatively because, compared to the US Army for instance, it is very poor. Among the 13 or 14 international norms that characterize a professional army, the NA does not meet even two or three. So there isn't that much of a difference between the PLA and the NA. During the past two years we have received much training and have become quite capable. If adequate training is given, the PLA can reach the level of the NA in six months.

Q: There has been much talk of inclusion in the security forces? How many women are there at the higher levels of the PLA?

Baldev: The highest level women have reached in our army is to the level of brigade commander. But there are very few of them at the higher levels. The total proportion of women in the PLA has also decreased. It used to be 40%; now it is around 25%. But proportionality aside, our army is quite inclusive. It includes members from almost all ethnic groups.

Q: Even Madheshis?

Baldev: Approximately, 1,100 out of the 20,000 people in the PLA are Madheshis. The highest ranking Madheshi is a brigade commander. The PLA included all ethnic groups but not according to their share of the population. Janajatis form a large portion of our army.

Q: Let me ask about yourself. When did you enter the PLA? When did you become Deputy Commander?

Baldev: I joined the Nepal Communist Party in 2038 B.S. (1981-82). I have worked continuously in the party since then and handled various responsibilities. But I started working towards the formation of the army after 2048 (1991-92) when our party made a policy to wage war and destroy the regime. A combatant group of 15 people was then formed under my command. We began collecting weapons, engaging in various kinds of training. I had received some training before that as well. I underwent a 22-day weapons training course in the jungle in 2045 (1988-89).

Q: Who trained you?

Baldev: There is an advisor to the party; his name is Megh Raj Gyawali. He had been trained in India. Later, Prachanda himself trained us. Before this we had studied many theoretical works, primarily of Mao, Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. We also studied the writings of Che Guevara. On a practical level, we received two or three rounds of training before the war started on 2051 Falgun 1, 2051 (February 13, 1996).

Q: Have you received training in other countries as well?

Baldev: Yes, some of our well-wishers trained us before the war started. The People's War Group (PWG) in Andhra Pradesh, for example. I have also been trained in Bihar and Nagaland.

Staying in touch in the Gulf

''Ever since I came to Dubai seven years ago, I have been using this
[cassette player] to talk to my wife and children and hear their voices. I have
started making calls in the last few years, but there is nothing more comforting
than listening to my wife's voice on a cassette player," -Mohammed Hussain,
Bangladeshi worker in Dubai

UAE-based paper Gulf News ran this story recently about the practice of staying in touch with ''back home'' using casette recordings . Even though mobile phones have become more affordable in recent years, low-paid South Asian workers in Dubai still resort to cheap and inventive ways of keeping in touch with their families. Pakistani migrant Ayoub tells Gulf News that that he records 45-minute conversations to his wife on a bashed-up casette player and sends the tapes back home by courrier. His family in Pakistan then reciprocate by recording their own tapes for him, which he listens to over and over again.

I was glad to see a Gulf-based paper running a story like this about South Asian expatriate labourers, a group of society is rarely given any column inches in the media in Dubai, or elsewhere in the region. Notable that the piece was written by a desi though (Anjana Sankar). Western expatriate and local journalists alike in this region seem to veer away from any discussion of low-paid Asian workers.

I hope this doesn't sound vomit-inducingly trite, but I must add that this article really put the untimely death of my laptop (and susbsequent communication issues) during a business trip to the Gulf lands over the past week into perspective.

Selling poverty

TKP 13/11/08

Around this time just before Christmas INGOs and development organisations across Europe are gearing up for their big Christmas fundraising appeals. Christmas has always been a time for fundraising and ongoing global economic problems won't alter that. So, right about now, potential donors in the West will be reading newsletters and e-mails all about the work of charities or NGOs which help the poor. In the development industry Africa is widely seen as the centre of world poverty. After annual TV reports of droughts, flood and civil war, Africa, for the Western TV viewer, now feels instinctively poorer than anywhere else too. Nowadays, the marketing process for funds in the top INGOs has moved on and caught up with these TV viewers. Images of starving children have now been replaced by catalogues of goats and chickens, ready for you to buy for a poor villager. Oxfam's Unwrapped catalogue, to take one example, now offers an amazing range of feel-good Christmas gifts for you to choose for the underprivileged; from 'safe water for 12 people' to a genuine 'build a bog' (toilet) option!

Amongst all of this, jamboree fundraisers for Nepal have, as charity appeals might say, 'a mountain to climb'. Oxfam and many others fundraisers for and work in Nepal too but their major focus is on Africa. How can Nepal ever compete with a whole continent for Westerners charitable donations? It is, after all, not often that the rest of the world see images of Nepalis starving or (except this year, sadly) suffering from floods. And being well-known in the West as the home of Everest, trekking and as a spiritual playground doesn't necessarily help development organizations raise money for Nepal either. However there are ways of getting around this visibility problem, namely by selling Nepali poverty in certain unique ways. In this way foreign NGOs and INGOS can, in the process, help create false perceptions and make Nepal appear as another Africa.

Fundraising efforts on behalf of Nepal range from the sleek, glossy brochures of INGOs to the efforts of much smaller charities. They all have good intentions and the huge sacrifices of people involved in supporting them (especially of volunteers) are clear. I have seen many of them do excellent grassroots work too, none of which, however, is my focus here. These smaller, informal efforts at aid probably began when the first Western mountaineers in Nepal donated their equipment to Sherpas. It continues today in admirable and often fulfilled post-trek promises to 'do something for Nepal'. However, the constant need for these NGOs and INGOs to raise money does seem to promote odd and simplified ways of viewing Nepal, particularly amongst the less regulated smaller scale and single issue NGOs and charities.

In these smaller organizations the simplification and selling of poverty in Nepal for funds encourages a desperate race downwards to the bottom of the poverty league table. Fundraising literature ditches efforts to portray the complexity, diversity and positive signs in Nepal in favour of a plethora of statistics that prove the extent of Nepal's poverty and backwardness. Long-term food insecurity, lack of infrastructure, education issues and many other topics are clearly just too difficult to sell and package. Some of those involved also appear to hold a somewhat naïve and travel-book-based view of Nepal and Nepali culture. By which I mean that Nepal, unlike the West, has apparently not been granted a history except one of vast corruption and endless, caste-ridden, poverty, all of which should be explained to sponsors and donors. Old images of Africa are re-awakened in pictures of poor but grateful Nepalis recipients, pictures which can also hide the details of what organizations get up to and divert awkward questioning. For some working in these organizations learning to speak Nepali and working closely with local staff is unimportant but pleasing sponsors becomes everything. And though organized on a small-scale, these organizations belong to a huge industry. To know this it is only necessary to observe the hundreds of hostels for children in the Kathmandu Valley that are supported by Westerners.

The impact of small-scale NGOs is also not small in other ways. For many donation-givers abroad their whole image of Nepal and other parts of the 'third world' may come from these charities. The NGOs newsletter, website or fundraising coffee morning might provide them whole knowledge of Nepal and help determine Nepal's reputation abroad. Short-term foreign volunteers working for NGOs may also add to this process, writing back home or on the charity website about the exotic, humorous and visually shocking, often with a focus on poverty. This is often funny, natural and understandable but, when used by the NGO to raise funds, represents the reverse of the Nepali worker exaggerating their success abroad; in other words, a skewed representation of a perhaps more mundane reality. Interestingly travelling to Nepal itself can provide more than one type of shock to sponsors and better feedback than any donor-driven newsletter. Kathmandu's modernity came as a shock to sponsors on one trip: 'It was supposed to be poorer'.

Back in fundraising and donor countries, women in a coffee morning for the NGO mutter about the inequities of the caste system; their knowledge of Nepal almost solely reliant on desperate literature from the NGO. The business executive running a marathon for an INGO now only has to mention the word 'Nepal' and, thanks to endless fundraising efforts, more and more people abroad now associate Nepal with poverty. In this way people make Nepal into another Africa: another area of darkness without hope which urgently needs your help now!

The very difficult job worthy INGOs and NGOs have of separating Westerners from their cash in order to help Nepal may not require further complication, especially in these financially straightened times. Many potential donors and sponsors may prefer to consider Nepal as a vast region of no hope and little complexity. That is their choice. However it is odd that perceptions of Nepal created by Western fundraising efforts have not been more critically examined or thought through. Many of the Westerners involved would never dream of portraying socially deprived areas of their own countries in the same way, particularly without, at the very least, involving those who are going to be represented in the process. Donors are here to stay. Development aid to Nepal, in all shapes and sizes, is also not going away. What we can change is how we talk, think and portray poverty and the aid game in Nepal.

Utopian dreams

TKP 02/12/2008

The recent Maoist proposal on federalism shows a party struggling to match ideology with domestic and international realities

When all attention was focused on the internal struggle within the Maoists earlier this month, the Maoist Minister for Culture and State Restructuring Gopal Kirati released a policy document that offered a model of federalism. This document was widely criticized and dismissed, for, it was said, a government minister had no business presenting his views on issues that should be discussed in the Constituent Assembly (CA). But the document is worth a consideration, not because it offers a viable model for state restructuring that will find wide acceptance, but because it represents an evolution of the Maoist ideology on issues of caste/ethnicities (nationalities), nationalism and international relations.

The Maoists previously laid out many elements of the document out in their election manifesto. The state structure is to have three tiers: the central (federal) government, which is to control the army, international relations, monetary matters and large industries; autonomous state governments, which will engage in the struggle for political rights for oppressed nationalities, classes and genders; local governments, which are to have complete responsibility for security and development. One more proposed autonomous state, for Sherpas, is added to the ones listed in the election manifesto. And the three proposed sub-states, Mithila, Avadh and Bhojpura, have been upgraded to the status of fully autonomous states.

In their manifesto the Maoists stated that each of these autonomous states would in principle possess the right to self-determination, but that in practice they will only exercise substantial autonomy within the larger Nepali state. This claim is repeated in Kirati's document. But while the manifesto made it seem that the political demands of the oppressed nationalities and the Maoists fully converge, Kirati's document reveals that the Maoists' conceptions regarding the question of nationalities is significantly different from that of Madheshi, Janajati and Dalit leaders and scholars.

Nepal's communist movement has historically had an ambivalent relationship with deprived caste/ethnic groups. On the one hand, they have recognized that certain groups have been historically wronged by the state, and they deserve full equality and reparations. On the other, they have always felt that ethnic assertion is a retrograde form of parochialism and “false consciousness” that requires transformation into a national consciousness. This, they felt, could be achieved through the transformation in culture that would occur through the combined struggle against the oppressive state elite. This transformation would lead to a convergence of the cultures of all social groups into one, overarching national culture.

Naturally, such a formulation had no place for demands for federalism and state restructuring. The Maoists realized during the course of the war that it was necessary to encompass these demands within their movement if they were to attract the support of the many deprived communities. So there was an ideological reformulation. Instead of viewing the various indigenous cultures as stuck at a certain primitive level of evolution, they claimed that caste/ethnic consciousness had been forced upon the people by the oppressive state. The semi-feudal state worked in connivance with international powers to extract the resources of the people for export, and used this to fund luxury imports for the use of the elite. This process of exploitation made the oppressed come together in solidarity, and as they mostly lived in areas where one language and culture prevailed, to form an ethnic/caste identity.

Thus, while the long-term goal for the Maoists is a coming together of all groups to form a singular national identity, they believe that in the interim ethnic/caste identities need to be recognized and adequate compensations for historical wrongs provided. As Baburam Bhattarai wrote in a 2004 political paper, quoting Lenin, “in the same way as mankind can arrive at the abolition of classes only through a transition period of the dictatorship of the oppressed classes, it can arrive at the inevitable integration of nations only through a transition period of the complete emancipation of all oppressed nations, i.e. their freedom to secede.”

The view that the politics of identity, while temporarily legitimate, needs to be abolished in the long term, found no mention in the Maoist election manifesto. This was presumably because the party did not wish to alienate those very groups whose support they were attempting to gain. But this view is very much present in Kirati's document, which appears to have the endorsement of the party leadership, and he offers some policy suggestions to attain this goal.

He proposes the formation of four economic development councils. Each of them is to consist of a number of autonomous provinces and is to function as administrative organs of the federal government. These councils are to help formulate economic policy and encourage the mutual relations of the autonomous states. Eventually, the document states, after a certain level of economic development and liberation has been achieved, the states within the councils may converge to form a single autonomous state.

In addition to explicitly providing the Maoist point of view, the document also reveals that the Maoists have recently refined their ideology regarding Nepal's relationship with the international community in the era of globalization. In an aside, the document makes a distinction between Bahuns-Chhetris and other groups. The former are classified as national castes/ethnicities (rastriya jati) who are privileged and have access to the resources the state has to offer. The other groups are said to have not reached the status of rastriya jati yet, and their immediate attempts will be to attain that status. To this end, the state is to help them through various affirmative action measures.

All this falls within the context of the abovementioned Maoist position on nationalities. But in addition to rastriya jati, there is mention of international castes/ethnicities (antarastriya jati). The privileged Bahuns-Chhetris are, according to the proposal, to focus their efforts on becoming antarastriya jatis by taking advantage of globalisation and inserting themselves as productive members into the international order.

Further, Kirati's proposal provides for a surprisingly high level of devolution to the proposed 800 districts that are to exist as the third tier of the state structure. These 800 districts, each with its own hospitals, universities and communes, are to be established as “communication centres” with international society. Each of these districts is to have the right to bypass the central government and deal directly with other countries for aid and trade.

With its utopian visions, Kirati's is a dream proposal. It is sparse on important policy issues of immediate concern such as the concrete separation of powers between centre and state and the protection of minorities within autonomous regions. It is unable to reconcile contradictory policy goals such as the necessity of taking advantage of the globalised order with the need to combat “imperialism.” It is unlikely to find sympathy with hard-headed policy makers. Nonetheless, the document is fascinating: it is the latest formulation of a formerly purist Maoist party that has suddenly found itself in a position of power and is struggling to match its ideology with discordant international and domestic realities.