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In “Changing Course: Nation over Notion – Abolition of Federalism by Restructuring and strengthening Local Bodies, Referendum on Secularism,” Rabindra Mishra, a journalist, writer, philanthropist, and now politician, offers an unabashed inside view into the minds of privileged Nepali society that is unnerved by the changes sweeping across the country.

Mishra’s paper has gained greater notoriety for its headline conclusions. But those are a distraction from the rest of the paper, which reflects nostalgically on the glory of yesterday’s authorities.

The monarchy, for instance, “never stooped so low to harm the self-respect of the country compared to the present stock of our political leaders.” “Secularism has led to further religious divisions,” he observes wistfully, while in the past, “Nepal had not faced such a situation despite being a Hindu nation.”    

Towards the end of the paper, Mishra invokes the analogy of the former US president, Donald Trump. “White Americans,” he remarks, “felt that their feelings were being ignored,” which Trump harnessed into a political movement.

Mishra doesn’t realize it (perhaps, a Freudian slip) but by that point in the paper, he is the Donald Trump of Nepal. Like Trump, Mishra seeks to harness the grievances of Nepal’s privileged class whose traditional sources of authority are being challenged by the new republican, federal, decentralized, and secular structure.  

Just as Trump did, Mishra attempts to show that Nepal is in a state of grave decline. He has noticed “clear signals of ongoing irreparable damage to Nepal's independence, integrity, sovereignty as well as ethnic, religious and cultural harmony in recent years.” Exactly what those may be, he doesn’t explain.

On religious harmony, for example, he highlights the fact that churches are popping up in rented apartments and that temples are not adequately conserved. For him, these are symbols of religious discord. But, perhaps, these symbols are nothing more than a reflection of the poor state of governance in a changing Nepal.  

Like Trump, Mishra peddles a narrative of decline based on a false sense of lost glory. He writes about religious groups (exactly who, remains unclear) “proselytizing through enticement or spreading bitterness and hatred in the society.”

The growing cases of religious conversion are a common refrain among leaders who claim to represent Hindus. Mishra joins the bandwagon, arguing that “proselytizing” is hurting “the sentiments of majority Hindus.” Where or how those “hurt” Hindus have expressed themselves, he doesn’t say. He has been hurt, that’s proof enough.

Mishra makes no effort to understand why those that are converting have chosen to do so, or why they are being “enticed.” For him, as with Nepal’s traditional authority, retaining the flock was more important than empowering individuals on all matters, including their choice of God.

Like Trump, Mishra weaves a contrived tale of misinformation and imaginary history on how foreign powers subverted Nepal’s own progress. The fall of the monarchy and the Maoist movement, he suggests, were engineered by the Indians. Western power pushed the ideas of federalism and secularism, he imagines.

Such interpretations of history resonate with many who benefitted from generations of privilege and access to authority. It is hard for them to understand why they are being held accountable for the actions of their forefathers, when they are now working just as hard and honestly as anyone else.

Mishra taps into their “grievance” with an alternative history. No, he offers, Nepalis in the past were poor but in harmony. Nepalis never wanted federalism or secularism; foreign powers forced it upon them. Like Trump, Mishra is showing us how to exploit grievances into a political movement.

Mishra’s paper echoes the voice of Nepal’s traditional central powers: you people, we know what is best for you, listen to us.

“If we do not speak about our national interest, who else will?” he asks, echoing that voice.

He says resolving discrimination “requires a long struggle.” Only those who have never been subjected to social injustice—i.e., the privileged—could suggest we wait for “a long struggle” to end discrimination. Those on the receiving end want justice now.

Mishra’s demands challenge the very foundations of Nepal’s constitution. Nevertheless, Nepal’s democracy must provide him space and protection to convert those demands into a political movement. As our republic, federal, decentralized, and secular constitution struggles to strike roots and yield dividends, Nepal enters its final battle between those that benefitted and those that were marginalized. Within a democracy, we may have an opportunity to get through the battle without bloodshed.   

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Nepal and Bangladesh are two of South Asia’s closest friends and peace-loving neighbors, their ties made closer by recent high-level state visits. President of Bangladesh Abdul Hamid visited Nepal in 2019. Nepal’s President Bidya Devi Bhandari likewise visited Bangladesh in 2021 as a guest on the birth centenary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Nepal recognized Bangladesh as a sovereign state in 1971 and bilateral relations solidified after Bangladesh established six trade routes with Nepal in 1976. Relations were further enriched by the visit of King Birendra of Nepal to Dhaka in 1986. The two countries are currently members of several forums, including the United Nations, the WTO, BIMSTEC and SAARC and both Nepal and Bangladesh are on the way out of the club of LDCs.

In 2019, 40,000 Bangladeshi tourists went to Nepal. At present, nearly 4,000-5,000 Nepali students are studying in medical colleges and universities in Bangladesh. After joining workplaces in Nepal, these doctors are prescribing medicines for Bangladeshi companies. As a result, a good market for Bangladeshi medicines has been created in Nepal and currently eight companies export medicines to Nepal. Unfortunately, lack of the desired SAFTA agreement is hurting their trade potential even as the two countries are moving towards a bilateral free trade agreement.

Nepal has a free trade agreement with India. It has also expressed its interest in signing a preferential trade agreement or PTA with Bangladesh to boost bilateral trade. Although talks on this started last year, Nepal is frustrated that the agreement has not been finalized. As Nepal is a close country, Bangladesh can easily import fruits, herbs and spices. On the other hand, Bangladesh’s entry into the Nepali market has multidimensional potential as Nepal currently imports 90 percent of the goods it uses.

Nepal has a population of 29 million and a GDP of nearly $30 billion. Nepalis are a very fancy nation. As a result, Nepal can be a good market for Bangladesh’s electronics, ceramics, garments, furniture and local clothing brands. The completion of the desired PTA will open new horizons in trade between the two countries; Bhutan-Bangladesh trade has doubled since the signing of the PTA between them. The Kathmandu Post quoted the country's foreign ministry as saying that Nepal had already sent a draft PTA to Bangladesh and now it is waiting for a response.

Power imports could open up another horizon in relations between the two countries. Nepal has the capacity to export about 42,000 MW of hydropower. Bangladesh, which is on the path of rapid industrialization, can import electricity from Nepal, and India too seems to be positive on this.

Bangladesh can export its apparels and fertilizers to Nepal. Some Nepali media outlets had reported that 52,000 metric tons of urea was imported from Bangladesh in July.

Tourism, Covid-19, counter-terrorism, microfinance, exchange of training expertise and education are some sectors in which Bangladesh and Nepal can collaborate. Bangladesh faces a refugee problem after the massive influx of Rohingya refugees into the country in 2017. Now Bangladesh wants to repatriate them to Myanmar. Nepal should support Bangladesh at all international fora to repatriate them peacefully. Such a gesture will not go unnoticed in Dhaka.

The shortest distance between Nepal and Bangladesh is only 22 kilometers, and the road distance from Banglabandha in Bangladesh to Kakarvita in Nepal is just 39 km. In this connection, railways could offer much-needed connectivity. Nepal wants to join the rail link from Rohanpur in Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh to Singabad in India. Kathmandu’s distance from this railway will be only 216 km. On the other hand, China is building a railway from Lhasa in Tibet to Khasa, a border town in Nepal, and Nepal wants to bring that railway to Kathmandu. As a result, if there is effort and desire, Bangladesh can even establish a rail link to China via Kathmandu.

At present Dhaka is connected to Kathmandu by air and Nepal wants to expand air connectivity to Sylhet and Chittagong. Another option would be linking Syedpur in Bangladesh and Bhadrapur airport in Nepal, which would be just a 15 minutes flight. For those who want to avoid the hassle of a road transit visa on a business or leisure trip, this sky connectivity will be a huge relief. Both the governments may withdraw international tariffs on this route, in which case potentially millions of Bangladeshis could visit Nepal in coming years.

Bangladesh could also help with the development of cricket in Nepal.

Many people think sending goods to Nepal is difficult but the task has been made much easier by the establishment of the Nepali warehouse at Banglabandha port. Bangladeshi products thus have great potential in Nepal and the private sector should be encouraged to join. In the end, again, the cooperation between the two countries will be useful in building a peaceful and prosperous South Asia.

The author is a Dhaka-based NGO worker and freelance writer 

I come from a farming family in the mid-hills of Nepal. My mother, approaching 60, wakes up before 5 am every day, and toils in the field or with the livestock till 9 pm. Since the time I have known her I have seen her work these long hours. But as far as I remember, she has never had enough money of her own earning. Our upbringing and education was rather supported by earnings from my father’s job in the Indian Army.

Why are millions of hardworking small-scale farmers, like my mother, so poor and helpless? Why has the system remained so unjust, inefficient and unrewarding? Why is her hard work outside the radar of government policies? What does it take to integrate her work into the national economy? These are the kind of questions that have vexed us Nepalis for decades. 

Under King Mahendra, the state system was designed to create expertise loyal to the monarchy in different fields. He initiated many scholarships and sponsored educational tenures for bright minds from across the country. This system created many state sponsored endeavors that became milestones in our path to progress.

The underlying unstipulated requirement of the feudal and autocratic Panchayat system however had problems. In general, an autocratic system, when compared to a democratic system, is inefficient, un-entrepreneurial and relies more on strong control from the top. Such systems have led to misleading results, great blunders, even famine and mass poverty—Mao’s China being the best (or worst) example of the same. The situation in Nepal wasn't as severe but false reporting, misrepresentations and misappropriations were the norm. As a result, the production system was not efficient and entrepreneurial. 

Post-1990, the role foreign agencies and the INGOs played was even worse. The ‘Bikase’ interventions, till date, are aimed at publicity and documentation rather than bringing in real efficiency and output-oriented productivity in the ecosystem. Shamefully, the development agencies have spent an average of over 80 percent of money on their own administration. The money claimed to have been spent for poor countries like Nepal hasn't reached the targeted people; and in recent years some INGOs have even been blamed for high levels of corruption. In short, the highly bureaucratic mammoth international organizations became the harbingers of the malpractices and inefficiencies that they were supposed to teach us to fight against.

With the promulgation of the new constitution, I had high hopes that the ‘radically decentralized’ state structure would bring in a lot of positive change at the grassroots. In 2017, with a turnout of over 70 percent, Nepal had elected local governments after almost two decades. Optimism had no limit as Nepal exceeded the economic growth target for the year. 

I was fully convinced that visionary local leadership would be the catalyst to allow Nepal to pick itself up, and I happily took the offer to work as an advisor in the municipality. Dilip Pratap Khand had built and successfully sold to voters the dream of Waling as a ‘Smart City’. But four years later, with less than half a year of his tenure left, Khand is struggling to show evidence of his government’s impact.

Khand’s plan to ‘develop the municipality as a cluster of really well administered productive villages supported by a strongly self-reliant town at the center’ has been limited to a well-documented handbook on Smart City indicators. 

My mother still toils extra hours without any support from the governments at three levels. The benefits from interventions of development agencies have not reached her directly or indirectly. Our traditional small scale farming in the mid-hills of Nepal is neglected by the government and not enthusiastically pursued by new generation farmers. Efforts at mechanization and modernization or other reforms in farming have been misguided; big-scale mono-crop specialized and corporatized farming practices are unsuitable to our terrain.

What a small-scale farmer has is the land handed down by ancestors, and no policy has been designed to make farming in such terrains sustainable. Lack of methodical experimentation, recording and evidence-guided innovation in agricultural practices of rural small-scale households have thus contributed to the unsustainability of the majority of farming families.

After serving as the advisor to my municipality for a year, I was left disillusioned at the lack of ingrained capacity of our system. Since then, I have decided to work as a farmer myself to bring in innovations in small-scale farming. That's the least I can do for my mother.

As the monsoon approaches, Kathmanduites are terrified of rains and subsequent swellings of rivers and streams, often resulting in inundation of roads, fields and homes. At first sight, we blame global warming and climate change. But deeper inspection reveals a different cause-and-effect relationship.

Let us first see how we have treated our surroundings. Recent population growth, urbanization and hike in the land prices have resulted in the occupying and capturing of river banks, the guthi lands meant to support religious, cultural and social activities. The open space is being encroached upon by nearby settlements, skyscrapers, squatters or even government agencies.

We don’t respect history. Set aside are the altruistic wishes of the donors that such land be used for a defined public benefit—as in the case of Sohrakhutte Pati, the traditional hut and adjoining stone spout built in Bikram Era 1862 and 1864 respectively by Bhottu Pandey for the benefit of remote travelers visiting ‘Nepal’, the Kathmandu Valley. In the name of development, the land and structure have been sacrificed to build roads and god knows what else. The founder is long gone, the creation cannot argue for itself, and bystanders are free to decide the fate of something they do not own. Some locals sought the intervention of the Department of Archeology, requesting the application of the ‘Ancient Monument Preservation Act 1956’ and to stop the Pati’s demolition—in vain. Likewise, the 2,000-year-old open space Tundikhel Square is getting fragmented, partly concreted and ‘closed’ to commoners. Even the Pashupatinath Temple has experienced encroachment, physically and culturally.

Ponds, spouts and streams

Once, Kathmandu Valley was a fertile land, covered with greenery that would wear a white frost in winter dawns, slowly giving rise to a transient thick fog, which would disappear under golden sunrays, resulting in a cool clear day. Man lived in harmony with nature. Until half a century ago, the man-water interactions were mainly friendly; they respected each other.

Water was considered a source of life. Wells, ponds and streams were sacred, had to be kept clean, therein lived naagas protecting bodies of water. Defecation and urination near a water source was prohibited. No one would think of discarding waste near standing or flowing water. Settlements had to maintain some distance from the waters, and such provisions were enforced with the popular saying that a stream changes course every 12 years. Safety from streams was sought by keeping ample distance and planting reeds on the banks. But slowly man began to conquer nature. Traditional outlooks became myths, superstitions and even contemptible.

Settlements continued to expand. Combined with population growth, two inventions fuelled the valley’s water crisis. The invention of cement and subsequent culture of covering courtyards with a waterproof layer gave rain water less opportunity to moisten the soil, fill the aquifer. The drilling of deep boreholes and installation of pumping machines began to suck a large amount of groundwater. Now, the water table is sinking, leaving some spaces void that can collapse any time and sink the city above. This is also a reason for drying out of many traditional springs.

If the above-mentioned problems are a byproduct of our endeavor to create clean and easy life, the following ones are different. We began to harness the streams and rivers with concrete embankments, sometimes snatching significant chunks of traditional territory of the rivers. The big boulders in the banks were split and taken away, pebbles and sand rampantly removed, such activities sometimes being auctioned by government bodies. Inspecting the banks that have grown green in the many years since the last flood, we began to think the river would not swell again. Had we utilized the banks for tree-plantation and agriculture, no problem of scale would emerge. Instead, we began to reclaim the land for construction of homes, hospitals and other structures. It is seen in the sweeping away during early monsoon this year by Melamchi River, a source of Kathmandu Valley drinking water project, of police stations, project camps, and government buildings.

Our greed for land has gone to such an extent that some rivulets are simply confined inside large-sized reinforced concrete hume pipes, covered with soil and roads built on top, houses on the previous banks. Others are not covered completely, but harnessed in a way that the stream gets just a few feet of passage and are prevented from flowing sideways by a few meters tall concrete or gabion walls. Nobody tends to their unhappy-but-serene voices in ordinary years, but some day in decades they rage. It pours over the nearby hills and in the city, water forms a flash flood as soon as the first drops of the rain hit the ground. The hume pipes and Corinth Canal-like passage cannot fulfill the conventional duty the unharnessed Manamati, Hanumante, Tukucha and other rivers were carrying out. Clogging of hume pipes or falling of walls over narrow streams are just excuses to conceal severe underlying causes. Engineering failures are second to wisdom failures.

The above-mentioned are not the only sort of problems. Rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, public spaces including squares, temples, roadsides and footpaths have become dumping sites. Sewage is drained in ailing streams and rivers. Polluted air, dusty roads and deformed water bodies now characterize the Valley. The hope the Valley could again be inhabitable was regained only during the Covid-19 lockdowns. No surprise that recently ‘Green Kathmandu, Clean Kathmandu’ has become a sellable election slogan.

Climate change, then?

Yes, global warming and climate change do impact us. But in the case of Kathmandu, they are scapegoats. Whenever some agitating group imposes a general strike banning vehicular movements and industrial operations, the air clears the next morning. This means, basically, our local activities and attitudes determine our environment.  

It is pleasing to note that Nepal is a carbon negative country. However, it does not mean that Kathmanduites have access to fresh air. Not only do man and plants exchange air. All living beings, rocks and rivers, industries and vehicles, walls and buildings breathe. It is only the manmade, the artificial, that pollutes the air. All others, though some of them may seem to pollute the air at first sight, ultimately contribute to its cleaning.

We are paying attention to global warming and cooperating with the international community in minimizing the impact of climate change. This is good. But there are also things we can do on our own to quickly produce sustainable benefits. This involves looking to our own roots, firmly holding our environment-friendly philosophy in dealing with nature, realizing that man is trusted with unparalleled power not only for his selfish needs. We have committed many blunders. We need to correct ourselves.

Let us begin by allowing water to become clean again. Let our interactions with water be friendly. Once we respect the ponds and streams, they will reciprocate. Let the water cycle be restored. Let streams breathe.

The author is professor of pharmacy, Tribhuvan University