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Gurcharan Das’ latest book, a memoir entitled ‘Another Sort of Freedom’ is a compilation of reflections on the author’s own life events, from early childhood till his septuagenarian days. In order to write about his early childhood, he utilizes the diary of his mother. From his mother’s diary, he concludes that he was a difficult child.

The initial part of the book recollects his childhood as a troublemaker, how partition destroyed the lives of Muslim and Hindu people, divided the communities, and created hatred for one another. The partition’s hangover is still vivid to the author as he along with his family had to leave Punjab without any preparations, just with clothes, a few essentials and importantly their own physical bodies. Gurcharan recalls the memory of his junior school days frequently throughout the book, especially that of the stealing of a rich kid’s pencil box and handing it over to a poor Muslim friend Ayan without anybody knowing about it. Later, the blame rests upon Ayan who is punished and the author, despite his interest to save Ayan, keeps silent and becomes a mere spectator. The author regrets this throughout his life for not speaking up the truth and saving his friend.

The author’s life seems to be interesting for readers who find him traveling to many countries frequently. Initially, he gets the opportunity to study high school in the US because his father is a government engineer. Later, the author secures enrollment in Harvard University for an honors degree in philosophy. Instead of taking the path of Doctor of Philosophy, he decides to try his luck in business, starting his career as a sales manager. The journey of his life is written in a linear and vivid fashion. He follows his heart and despite many hurdles in his career, he continues to progress ahead and becomes a manager at a young age. There are many stories of his career, something mid-career professionals can get inspired from.

There are a few connections with Nepal in the book. Donald J, the roommate of the author, who happens to be an avid reader of Nietzsche, leaves a copy of ‘Thus Spake Zarathushra’ to the author when he leaves for a trek to Nepal. Gurcharan falls in love with Nepali woman Bunu whom he encounters at a theater. There are some cultural differences between Nepali and Indian traditions which the author narrates as they were. Though there were mishaps in the wedding ceremony, the author manages to fix them right. The author’s meetings with different people in his life gives him lessons about life to live lightly. The core message Gurcharan preaches is, “Take your work seriously but do not take yourself seriously.” The words like ‘lightness’ and ‘lightly’ are repeated in many instances to emphasize that our being should be light. One should not take oneself too seriously and perhaps due to the same reason, the author follows the heart and takes an early retirement after reaching the top of his corporate career.

The author also shares life incidents when he seems to be pressured by the corporate rat race. Without any remorse, he shares how he had started to speak to himself alone and how he thought depression was taking his life. In such difficult phases, he sought the reference of the ‘Upanishad’ and drew analogy. He says that man’s search for meaning is due to the second Upanishadic bird that is the observer of the first bird, our regular physical body that follows the daily routine. That same second Upanishadic bird questioned the dull routine of the clock following man, without any natural joy. Following the same bird, Gurcharan takes an early retirement from Procter & Gamble as a vice-president in order to become a full-time writer. Though the writing job was a Sisyphean task to him, similar to the business career he was in, he found more freedom and satisfaction in the writing job, which he used to do as a weekend writer, just after graduating from Harvard and joining the business world.

The book is profound and philosophical, allowing readers to draw many comparisons and contrasts between the author and oneself, inspires us to live lightly and follow our natural instincts. Personally, reading ‘Another Sort of Freedom’ took me to the memory lane of reading the ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’.

Autobiography 

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/199623354 

Another Sort of Freedom

Gurcharan Das

Year: 2023

Publisher: Penguin Allen Lane

Pages: 296

Nirmal Kumar Upreti, an advocate and social worker with almost 20 years of experience, believes what Nepal needs right now is more awareness. Through his organization, Forum for Nation Building (FNB), he educates people in remote areas about legal awareness, and legal literacy, and provides free legal counseling to marginalized and vulnerable groups.

Upreti, 40, is doing some impressive work at FNB. He’s taking a synergic approach to addressing issues like human rights, access to justice, foreign employment, sustainable development, migration, and youth concerns. Apart from all that, FNB does a lot of different things too, from quick disaster rescue to legal awareness programs and leading advocacies for good causes. 

Since 2014, his organization has been at the forefront of advocating a ban on nuclear weapons in Nepal, which is indeed a groundbreaking initiative for the country. They’re also associated with Nobel Peace Prize-winning International organizations like ‘International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons’ (ICAN). Under Upreti’s leadership, FNB has been acknowledged with two significant nominations. They were finalists in the 2017 Justice Prize Competition and also won the 2018 Public Interest Litigation Network (PILnet) Pro Bono Local Impact Award for their voluntary legal awareness work.

Over the past ten years, they’ve personally helped over 48,000 people and reached nearly 26 remote areas in Nepal. Despite Nepal making progress, Upreti still believes not everyone is getting the information they need. That is why he has been to those places, to lend a hand and directly share necessary information. “I like to help people in any way I can. It makes me happy and brightens my day,” he says.

Upreti is also a founder president and currently the patron of the Nepalese Law Students Association (NeLSA), where law students and professionals have come together to start the Community Mobile Legal Clinic Aid project in Nepal. The project aims to assist people in understanding the law better and getting the justice they deserve.

Upreti believes lawyers are ‘social engineers’ and can bring about change and tweak society. 

He hopes students will step up to fulfill their roles in their communities too. The project helps students become socially responsible legal professionals and encourages them to help those in need of legal aid. The project received the UNDP Success Story Award in 2010. But that’s not all. The advocate has been teaming up with the Nepal Bar Association, Bar Council, and various law colleges to get more students involved in the project.

“Through the project, I want to focus on offering free legal services to people in remote places of Nepal,” says Upreti, talking about their work during the earthquake and COVID. “We were quick to respond to disasters and provide supplies, give counseling, and legal aid.” What’s more, international organizations like Nelson Mandela University in South Africa and the Ontario Legal Clinic, in Canada, are now adopting their pioneering project approach. “This has helped us connect with larger donor agencies,” he says.

Upreti talks about the challenges faced by Nepali migrant workers, emphasizing the missed opportunities and their lack of access to essential services. Concerns over this have prompted him to speak out on the matter, focusing on how fundamental rights are being violated. He also collaborates with other networks to try to provide legal support to migrant workers.

He is also on the board of the National Network for Safe Migration (NNSM), which is the umbrella body for all the organizations responsible for migration-related issues. He says his three-year experience working in the Foreign Employment Board under the Ministry of Labor, Employment, and Social Security has provided him insight into the matter. During his time there, he helped rescue injured and scammed workers from various countries.

His efforts in advocating for youth policy in 2010 are noteworthy. Before then, youth matters were only dealt with by a small section under the Ministry of Education. Upreti wasn’t happy with how things were so he, along with some youth groups, took out protests and presented a memorandum, asking for a separate policy and ministry for youth. Their actions led to the formulation of youth policy laws and even a new ministry, which also contributed to achieving the Millennium Development Goals at that time.

He’s been speaking up against age discrimination as he believes it’s wrong for people to be judged by their age. “It goes against fundamental rights because capabilities and needs can’t be determined solely by age,” he says. He finds it unfair that members of the national assembly and other higher government posts must be at least 35 years old. This, he says, is a huge disadvantage for Nepal’s youth population. 

Apart from that, he’s also actively involved in sustainable development initiatives including gender-responsive programs, promoting women’s participation, engaging in policy discussions, creating laws, and gathering community feedback.

Upreti believes Nepal is committed to universal human rights standards but struggles to implement them fully. He says just having laws in place isn’t enough. We need clear procedures and policies while monitoring inclusivity. He pledges to do his part in enhancing social welfare through mobile clinics, policy dialogues, and legal initiatives.

Over the past two decades, the world has made remarkable progress in the fight against tuberculosis (TB). However, TB is still a serious challenge from a global health and development perspective.  According to WHO, more than 10m people continue to fall ill with TB every year. More importantly, a heavy burden of TB is on poor, vulnerable and socially marginalized populations.

In this context, the strategic interventions primarily focus on a unified response to end all the sufferings by addressing social determinants of TB. However, in many low-income countries, there are still inadequate policies and strategies to support implementation of universal health coverage, social protection, and regulatory frameworks to prevent and end TB.

Nepal has set the goal to end TB by 2035. The first-ever prevalence survey in 2018-19 shows that TB incidence and prevalence in Nepal are 245 and 416 per 100,000 people, respectively with a majority of TB patients from productive age groups. Interestingly, the prevalence among men is more than in women. Considering this reality, Nepal’s strategic plan to end TB (2020/21-2025/26) offers fresh hopes to many TB patients in terms of an easy access to timely diagnosis, treatment, prevention and care.  

An ambitious plan

By 2025, the ambitious strategy aims to significantly increase treatment coverage, success rate, uptake of new diagnostics and new drugs, and reduce catastrophic costs. The strategic priorities primarily include integrated patient-centered care, treatment and prevention, multi-sector engagement, and research for creating synergies for a unified response. Putting patients at the heart of the delivery, the strategy calls for consistent actions to ensure early detection, treatment and prevention for all TB patients.

A recent review of the strategic plan to end TB suggests that there are significant gaps in strengthening prevention and treatment services, community engagement, multi-sectoral coordination and accountability in the federal context. While social protection services for improved service delivery are critically needed, the rollout of new tools and innovative digital technologies are crucial for an effective TB response. This will help ensure treatment for all people with TB, including the drug-resistant strain.

A priority agenda

Engaging the private sector is a priority agenda in TB response. However, there are limited interventions to strengthen implementation of the public-private partnership strategies at all levels. Experiences from Bangladesh, India and Myanmar suggest that non-governmental organizations can play a critical role in providing essential TB services at the community level.

Effective implementation of the strategic plan is crucial at the local level. Because of inadequately-trained human resources for TB services, it is a challenging task for local governments to provide quality TB services. Therefore, concerted efforts are needed to ensure supportive supervision, periodic review, monitoring and evaluation, and timely feedback mechanism for actions at the local level.   

Despite persistent challenges of ensuring human and financial resources, Nepal has implemented a TB-free initiative at the local level for enhancing political leadership and ownership in TB response. The scaling up of the TB-free initiative is critical to strengthen local health policies and harness the power of multi-sectoral engagement for timely notification, diagnosis, prevention, treatment and care.

Inadequate efforts

However, existing efforts are inadequate to enhance the capacity of local governments in participatory and inclusive planning of a TB-free initiative. More focus is needed in the area of ensuring meaningful engagement of TB patients so that their representation, voiced experiences, and choices of prevention, treatment and care are realistically addressed at all levels. While TB is heavily influenced by socio-cultural, economic and health risk-related factors such as undernutrition, diabetes, HIV infection, and smoking, multi-sector actions are needed to combat the epidemic.   

More importantly, there are high-level global and regional events that have significantly reaffirmed commitments toward ending TB. In Sept 2023, the political declarations adopted at the UN High-level Meeting on TB include commitments toward universal access to TB services in both high and low-burden countries, with time-bound targets of reaching, with health services, at least 90 percent of people with or at risk of TB between 2023 and 2027. Moreover, there is a critical need to increase investments, and fast-track the development and availability of new tools to prevent, diagnose and provide treatment for TB.  

Undoubtedly, TB is largely a social disease that poses significant development challenges. There are growing needs to reduce human suffering and the socio-economic burden of TB by providing mental health and social protection services at the community level. Toward this end, anthropology of infectious diseases is instrumental in understanding interaction among socio-cultural, economic, political and biological variables in prevention and treatment of TB.

In this context, it is evident that TB is disproportionately common among disadvantaged populations. From an anthropological perspective, the relationship between poor health and poverty is a consequence of biosocial and biocultural factors. Still, stigma and discrimination associated with TB is another challenge to provide necessary care and support in the families. Therefore, apart from TB prevalence surveys, it is equally important to better understand people’s indigenous knowledge, attitude and health–seeking behavior to prevent and provide treatment for TB in the communities.

Urgent action necessary

To sum up, urgent actions are necessary to ensure universal access to TB prevention, treatment and care at all levels. The strategic priorities must focus on multisectoral actions to address wider determinants of the TB epidemic and effective management of the co-morbidities. In addition, there is an emerging need to strengthen health systems for ensuring essential TB services during disasters and pandemics such as Covid-19. 

The author is a health policy analyst

Every year, in the run up to the International Women’s Day (March 8), local bodies organize various programs centered around women empowerment, inclusion, and representation. There are several women groups, such as Aama Samuha, Tole Vikas Sanstha, Mahila Samiti, and Women Vikas Sanjal, that take up women’s issues. Meanwhile, local governments do their part by allocating a certain amount of funds for the upliftment of targeted groups, including women, children, marginalized communities, and senior citizens. Lal Subba Gurung, Vice-chairperson of Rupa Rural Municipality, says while the conditions of rights and representation of women have improved over the years, there are still many challenges—from budget allocation to policy making to better representation—that need to be overcomed. Smita Adhikari of ApEx spoke with Gurung on the challenges faced by women and the works being done by Rupa Rural Municipality to address them.

Tell us what your rural municipality is doing for the local women?

We have been carrying out several programs to empower targeted women groups by providing them training, orientations, and resources, as well as providing them with social and legal consultations. For this, we have been reaching out in the community to ask local women about their needs, especially in regard to implementing the programs designed for targeted groups. We have also been increasing the size of our budget for women.  

What changes have you observed regarding the condition of women in your area over the years?

In the initial days, women here faced immense challenges because of traditional perception held by men towards women. Gathering women in one place for an event or a program was very difficult. It turned out that many women weren’t allowed by their family members to attend the program. We also found that some women choose not to attend the program because they were too caught up with their household chores. As a result, we were unable to teach them about their rights and responsibilities. The situation has improved a lot over the years, but we are yet to make the desired progress.

What are the consequences of women staying passive and not seeking their role in local development?

First of all, when women are passive about their rights and roles in local development,  there is a risk of the budget allocated to the target women groups getting frozen. We have experienced this in our municipality, which has led to limited allocation in the women development sector. In such a case, the local government will be powerless when it comes to coming up with better programs and policies for women. The women’s population in most parts of the country is higher than that of men, so logically it is the women who should be given the first priority in terms of developing ownership. But that is not happening. To increase women’s participation and engagement in development works, we have enhanced community outreach to pull the attention of local women. Conventional perception of society towards women and financial dependency are the major problems as to why women in rural areas are not able to make their voices heard. So we are trying to address these problems through various programs, such as skill development and social counseling.  

What is the current status of women in villages?

If you compare the situation of women now and a couple of years back, you can see that today there are many committees focused on women development. Most of these committees are registered with the municipal offices as Aama Samuha, Mahila Sanjal, Mahila Adhikar Dabab Samuha, and so on. Similarly, Many Tole Vikash Sanstha (Neighborhood Development Organization) actively work in local areas, and they have seen increased participation of women over the years. Obviously, it indicates a silver lining of hope for women’s development in rural Nepal. But again, there are lots of improvements left to be desired. 

What do you expect from local women groups? 

Only forming groups and carrying out minor programs is not enough to meet the goal of inclusion and equity. Local women should actively seek their role in development works and governance. We want to empower women groups and enable them to participate actively in planning and execution of development programs.