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About three weeks ago the editor of this publication commented that I seemed to be running out of ideas to write about. Like many writers, I suffer occasionally from ‘writer’s block’ but this ‘running out of ideas’ is more than that. It is a reflection of the state of the world where on the one hand, politicians and health experts are struggling not to ‘run out of ideas’ as how best to tackle COVID-19 and on the other, the rest of us are struggling to find ideas to fill our time at home. Or, for those who have returned to work, find ways to ensure that the daily commute does not include bringing the virus back home. 

For those of us who are following the rules, or the rules of common-sense, there is no going for nights out or afternoon parties.  No art gallery openings; no launching of new products; no plays/concerts/films to review. So yes, I am running out of ideas. The world too has run out of non-essential practises and events such as the International Edinburgh Festival, Oktoberfest in Munich, and even reality TV. I am merely a reflection of that.  Having already written* about what you and your kids can do during lockdown, where you can buy food on-line, what recipes you can create with those same home-delivered products, and letting you know what hoteliers believe the short and long term scenario will be (and don’t get me started on that 2020 dead horse named tourism!), it is indeed hard to come up with new topics. New topics when my whole world for the past five months has been basically two rooms and a screen!  As I am sure yours has been too.

I was in much dismay to see that when Nepal opened up a couple of weeks ago, all caution was thrown to the wind.  I watched dumbfounded, as people I know headed to bars in and around Thamel and participated in traditional festivals, which involved hundreds of people.  I can understand the peer pressure to go out, but cannot understand the lack of sense of civic responsibility that enables people to participate in events without any attempt to physically distance or even wear a mask.  Ah the mask!  This is a country, particularly in Kathmandu, where we wear a mask a great deal of the time to protect ourselves from pollution. Is it because we can see and feel pollution or is it that no one is telling us to wear a mask against that filthy smog that we feel we can don that piece of fabric to protect ourselves?  Yet now we seem unable to wear the same mask to protect both ourselves and others.  The whole mask debate around the world bewilders me completely. Such a simple thing, with such a huge impact on our personal health and the health of our family and community. 

Leaving the anti-maskers aside, because you might as well tell me there are purple people living on the moon – it makes that much sense to me – and leaving aside the whole political and medical side to COVID-19 -  because I am not qualified to voice an  opinion publicly – there is very little left to talk/write about!

So I sit here, behind my screen, watching otherwise quite sensible people act like lemmings jumping off the metaphorical cliff. Even countries like my own, Scotland, where there is a strong (female) leader in charge and a new set of rules to follow almost weekly in the loosening and opening up of the country, the lemmings just keep on racing towards the cliff top. I want to scream and shout and punch quite a number of these careless lemmings but then I also have a civic responsibility not to cause physical harm.

Yes indeed the editor is right, it is getting pretty hard to remain positive and write like before, as nothing is like it was before.  And after five months of staring at four walls, it has finally dawned on me that nothing will ever be the same again.

*See my lockdown stories https://theannapurnaexpress.com/author/6 

Joe Biden’s pick of Kamala Devi Harris, a Black and Indian American, with a mother from India and father from Jamaica, as his running mate has generated some hype in India. Biden leads President Donald Trump by a margin in nearly all the polls for the US presidential election in November. Harris could soon be the US vice-president, and perhaps even the president one day. If the Biden ticket wins, what does a Harris vice-presidency mean for India? Not much, apparently. 

Harris does not speak much about her Indian origins, choosing to highlight her African American background instead. Biden chose Harris as his running mate largely because of her dedicated involvement in the #BlackLivesMatter campaign: the African Americans, who make up roughly 13 percent of the US electorate, could be casting the decisive vote in November. Going by what has appeared in the Indian press, the Indians don’t expect much from Harris, even as they are sure she will ease visa restrictions for Bangalore and Hyderabad techies who dream of Silicon Valley. Human rights are her forte and she could be more willing to take a principled stand on, say, Kashmir. But, then, she will also speak up on Tibet and Xinjiang.

Yet the broad contours of America’s Asian policy are likely to remain intact, whosoever comes to power in November. US-China ties will remain frosty and probably get a lot worse. There is now a bipartisan support in Washington DC for a tougher line on China. This naturally translates into strengthening ties with India to check China’s spreading ‘authoritarianism’ in South Asia. The White House could, once in a while, fire off a statement or two on the human rights situation in Kashmir, or over lack of protection for religious minorities in India. But on the whole, the two countries will work more closely. 

For they want to thwart a common enemy. So where does Nepal fit into this picture? China’s hold on Nepal will increase under any future communist dispensation in Kathmandu. In fact, even if Nepali Congress comes to power, it will have a hard time resisting Chinese charms. There is strong consensus in favor of closer ties with China, both in the ruling NCP and the opposition NC. By the same calculus, Kathmandu will be under pressure to maintain a safe distance from the US-India nexus. 

The NCP government espouses diversification, and yet it is not interested in looking beyond China. Tomorrow, if India takes offense and acts rashly in response, so much the better for the NCP’s electoral prospects. But what if the US wades in to protect Indian interests? Well, they will cross that river when they get to it. In sum: PM Oli and his China-leaning comrades will not resist the temptation to antagonize India at every opportune moment, even if the country may have to pay for it. 

Right now, Modi finds his hands full with Covid-19 but the health crisis will eventually abate. Then what? India has realized it alone cannot keep China out of its immediate neighborhood. Four years ago, I wrote about how the US-India ties would get stronger during Trump’s presidency. As of now, the relations are destined to get closer still under any future US government, Republican or Democrat. The US-China tussle will continue to be the defining feature of the first half of the 21st century. In this larger battle, small countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka could be collateral damage. 

Iih, whose original name is Ishan, is in news after completing 23 days of hunger strike (satyagraha). The 24 years old tall and handsome young man has been a known figure in protests in Kathmandu for many years now. He has completed second round of satyagraha, this week, against the criminal ineptitude and negligence this government has shown in issues of health in this pandemic.

Less than a month ago, he had led and completed a satyagraha for 12 days, along with Pukar Bam, against the same issue. It had ended with an agreement signed between them and government representatives. Bam is a PhD candidate, and a member of the youth-based political party Bibeksheel Nepali Dal, and has already fought two elections.

But Iih is an interesting phenomenon. He has come into limelight in many avatars. Originally Ishan, he doesn’t like to be called by that name, and doesn’t use his surname at all. From a well-to-do Kathmandu family and involved in political activism early in life, at the age of 15 he left home for such explorations, and has carved a place for himself slowly with a definitive assuredness.

He has swayed, zigzagged along the way. Once always seen fashioning a black Bhadgaule topi, he was part of the Hinduist Rashtriya Prajatantra Party led by Kamal Thapa, he was for some time part of the Bibeksheel, but has mostly been an independent activist. He is seen building alliances as well as character, in a slow yet steady manner, with a level of clarity much beyond his age.

The ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign initiated through his Instagram posts led to huge protests on streets all over the country. Hundreds of thousands of people marched on to the street defying the pandemic situation, ironically, demanding better government response to the pandemic. The satyagraha followed that. And the second satyagraha just ended this week with a record of 23 days of fasting.

The building of this movement and momentum hasn’t been easy. He has been supported individually and institutionally. He has mostly survived on the grace of friends in Kathmandu, and has been generating support and resources through his convincing.

During the protests, the core group that was formed centered around the Facebook group called ‘Enough is Enough’ got divided on the delicate issue of whether to protest or not on the day the New Emblem with the new map was proposed in the parliament. Many of the core team thought that the protest should be called off for the day, as it was sure to be manipulated by the Indian media and presented as a protest against the government stand on Lipulek and Limpiyadhura. But Iih thought otherwise.

The core team members had bitter arguments. Some of them were also unhappy that the protests were getting a political hue. Some core members of the steering team were members of the Bibeksheel Nepali Dal, and many influential celebrity protestors were angry that they were made to feel like pawns in a clandestine Grand Design that was controlled for a political cause.

Iih, however, ignoring the naiveté of the celebrity activists, seems to have navigated all this and trudged forward. He had a clarity on the strategy, and the way he had to fight the battle.

All his endeavors have continuously nudged the youth towards seeking a more aware role in the socio-political arena. He is a source of envy for many aspiring leaders, but he is inspiring too. Many leaders from different parties joined him in support for his fight. Iih seems on the path to build a greater coalition and support around him. Or, he might have to stand apart to stay tall.

But there is another young man who came in the news, and his image will be etched in our memory for a long time, as a symbol of the strange and precarious predicament of the Nepal society in the third decade of the 21^st century.

Nabaraj BK will now be remembered by the picture of a rustically handsome young man wearing a black Dhaka Topi and carrying the national flag attached to his rucksack, the picture that was splashed across news portals and social media. He was killed brutally and thrown into the river Bheri two months back.

A Dalit, and from a geographically distant land Kathmandu knows as the fortress of the Maoists, Nabaraj is a representative of the most marginalized community of Nepal and was killed by a group of upper caste men because he attempted to cross the lines of propriety set by the society, for his love. Strangely, the Maoists are hell-bent on protecting the perpetrators of the heinous crime, while the upper caste Thakuri community shows a hubris flared by the assurance of impunity.

From all we know of Nabaraj, he was a promising young man with a drive and patriotism not less in any way than Iih’s. But Nabaraj grabbed the headlines only after his death.

Somewhere, somehow, even after seven decades of fight for liberation, the fight for dignity of this oppressed community has failed to get a political voice in Nepal. The DalitLivesMatter hashtag came into being only after the George Floyd’s killing in America created a cyclonic effect with the BlacklivesMatter.

The nature of Nepali society shows severe inadequacy in being inclusive. Power is centered in and around Kathmandu and among the upper caste people. The mass that surged onto the streets following Iih’s call for action are the representative voice of the privileged youth of this country. And they have displayed a hunger for change. But a true dedication for social justice demands more. 

Why does sensitivity of Nabaraj's death have to be routed through America to get its space in the urban youth’s radar in Nepal? Are the fights that Nabaraj had to fight in Rukum aligned to the wars Iih is waging at Basantapur? I believe not. But I believe the day these fights become one, we will have the beginning of a new revolution.

One day in 1998 I was walking down the street at Kantipath when a man came straight at me with his elbow extended, and poked me in the breast. This sort of street harassment was fairly common back in the day, and may still be—it has eased off somewhat in my late 40s. The explosion of adrenaline that followed in my body is something I won’t forget. I remember lifting my knee, and smashing into his crotch with my DocMartens boots. (An aside: Men, if you are thinking of poking a woman on the breast, always make sure she’s not wearing DocMarten boots.) A group quickly gathered. An enraged female with adrenaline coming out of her ears surely has good cause, and the harasser was soon dispatched by the kangaroo court.

I think back to this episode at times, because it reminds me how casually the man asserted his droit du seigneur, his masculine right, to invade my space and violate my body.

As I read about the feminization of poverty and the ways in which the gender pay gap will not close in a hundred years, of how even the women of the most gender-equal countries do more hours of housework than their male spouses, it occurs to me the masculine grab is also well and truly operational in the economic sphere. A recent report concluded that women in India were less likely to be employed than they were a decade or so ago. Coupled with demographic loss of women due to amniocentesis, rising gender violence, and entrapment in bonded servitude in both home and low skilled employment, this is a surefire way towards one gender enslaving the other—in perpetuity.

How has this become possible? One reason is of course the current economic system which favors men. Money is printed, through some inexplicable sleigh of hand that only rich countries know the laws of, in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Europe. These marvelous currencies of great value are then distributed through Old Boys Networks, creating stock value and unicorns. Through old, established channels, they make it outwards to the colonies, where they are so valuable they pick up the tea, coffee, sugar, bananas, coconuts, and anything else edible grown in the “poor” countries. They also buy up the lithium, the gold, the diamonds, and any other material needed for the production of our current luxuries, including electronic goods and technological devices.

Where does this system which looks remarkably like colonialism of olden days leave the approximate 3.5 billion women of the world? If they’re not part of the elites of these rich countries, then it’s a $2/day existence, struggling for basic food, water and shelter. The fantastic capitalist system working so wonderfully for the rich never makes it down to the poor, not even with the generous crumbs handed out by the international banks like the World Bank and the IMF.

In other words, the slavery we thought we’d eradicated is still very much alive and working in invisible ways—through the billions of women who do unpaid household and care labor so their husbands may go abroad to the Gulf to work in semi-slavery conditions to pump up petrol, or mine minerals, or clean toilets for the uber-wealthy of the rich nations.

Women make up half the world but they are completely cut out of the current patriarchal system of Old Boys Networks and the networks of capital which flow in the West, crushing the autonomy and dignity of 99 percent of the world’s citizens.

Under the guise of the Enlightenment civilization, democracy and human rights, the West has effectively managed to garner the unpaid labor of billions of women in the Third World for its own utility. What we have now is slavery on a mass global scale involving billions of people, something not seen even in the days of the Atlantic slave trade.

The only way out of this morass is to take off the blinders and create an alternate financial system, one in which women globally get fair compensation for the work they do to keep the rich nations afloat. A Global Women’s Bank, which prints currency used only by women, and which can be used for food, water, education, shelter, clothes and health care, must be set up asap. This bank must also give out loans so women can access capital to start businesses. This bank must disburse a universal income to all women worldwide.

To imagine the current system, where men have grabbed all wealth and resources, time and money, opportunities and panel spaces, will bring about social change is to delude ourselves to the increasing degradation of human dignity. The current gendered state of have and have-nots is insupportable. Of course, men benefit when women are empowered: the more excluded the women from the economy, the poorer the community becomes.

As late capitalism has become more intense, so has poverty. Only for Bill Gates, Steven Pinker and their ilk is the global growth story a rosy one. For everyone else, it’s a struggle into a vaster and vaster quicksand of indentured slavery. The only way out is to create a completely separate system of finance, rather in the way women have their own toilets. Nobody objects to women having their own toilets—why should they object if they have their own currency?