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The Black Lives Matter movement has brought to the fore the need to decolonize spaces dominated by Eurocentric economics, philosophy, and epistemology. Nowhere is the need for this more urgent, in the era of locust attacks and imminent famine, than in the soil. I’m talking about the dirt beneath our feet that has become the next frontier in the life and death battle between the colonizers and the colonized.

When we talk about land being exploited—drilled, covered with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, dried out and blown away in extreme storms—we are talking about the dirt that we step on every day. The mud we are covering up, inch by inch, with asphalt is the mother earth, which gives us life. Without soil there would be no basis to grow food, no foundation to break down the cells of organic life when they die, no way to recreate the eco-cycle of water.

Yet Western science and technology has created a world in which the only rational way to live is to cover all of the life-giving, breathing skin of the planet with impermeable tar. Anything else is poverty.

As to where this astonishing conclusion came from, we’d probably have to go back to the history of the automobile. Automobiles require surfaces hard enough to withstand weight of thousands of tons of steel, and wear and tear on rubber tires. This then became our benchmark of human urbanity—the ability to cover every centimeter of breathing soil with black tar.

A 8 July, 2020 Guardian article ‘Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts of CO2 from air,’ by Damien Carrington, the paper’s environment editor, made the strange argument that pulverized basalt, a rock by-product of cement factories, would not only improve soil by adding minerals, but indeed was essential to add to agricultural soil as it absorbs emissions and halts climate change. Anyone dealing with industrial cement in their garden, as I have done in the past decade, knows that nothing will grow once you cover the soil with ingredients of concrete.

The casual way in which they assumed that this was the next logical step—cover last remaining landmass of living topsoil still exposed to the cycle of wind and weather with a by-product of cement—is proof of how easy it is for a big industry to tip the scales of entire ecosystems of nature with one money-hungry, self-enriching fix.

It also shows how human civilization has ended up with so much rubbish passed off as enlightened must-have goods. From plastic sneakers to pesticide-sprayed food, from bitumen highways to sealed concrete skyscrapers, we’ve been schooled to think of these giant follies of human capital and engineering as the acme of cognitive brilliance. People in the US and the UK are now facing the consequences of these foolish actions as hundreds of thousands die in a pandemic that remains under control in the Third World.

But who can tell this boastful, ego-bloated, uber-wealthy civilization that inhabiting a sealed concrete skyscraper, where the viruses of respiratory pandemics circulate through air conditioners, is in fact an appallingly stupid way to live?

Despite all evidence, the WHO will continue to insist that the vaccine is the only answer to the pandemic and keep collecting funds from poor countries to give to Bill Gates’ pet GAVI project. They will not examine the evidence of indoor air flow and how that could be the perfect conduit for viruses to go from one floor to the next, rather like the collapse of the World Trade Towers, which kept falling down in a perfect sequence, floor above crushing floor below. To do so would mean questioning the basis of their most cherished architectural edifice, the sealed concrete tomb of the skyscraper. The skyscraper is the 20^th century architectural model of urbane perfection, and the only model for how all buildings, including hospitals, should be built.

Nepali communists, inspired by dizzying spaghetti highways Chinese Communists proudly boast of, have also started to smash up our fragile mountains to build “pakki” roads that last a monsoon before washing away, taking hillsides with them. While consulting for World Bank in 2009, I took part in a discussion in which one official admitted the costs of repairing Nepal’s roads were like pouring water in sand. Any “pakki” blacktop road lasts only a few monsoons. Yet this is the only solution that is heavily funded with loans each year, including $450 million this year from the World Bank. Sustainable ropeways, horse and donkey trails, easily repaired pedestrian paved stone paths, and wire bridges get no funding.

Decolonizing the planet would require removing all bitumen and asphalt that now cover the earth. It would mean bringing down all skyscrapers that are ticking time bombs of epidemic contagion. It would mean treating the earth with respect, and fertilizing the soil with organic manure and hummus, not chemicals that now dry them out to moon dust. It would mean a complete halt to spraying of toxic pesticides that originated in labs as weapons of war. It would mean a global ban on all forms of plastic.

It would mean a return to our roots as creatures of nature, where survival depended on syncretic symbiosis with all of life, not a cyborg embrace and enslavement to digital technology. Decolonizing the planet would require a decolonizing of the mind. 

The face of rural Nepal is changing, and one of the major drivers in this process has been the growing number of roads. The government led by Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli claims to have been constructing black-topped roads at a rate of 5.7 km per day for the past two years. In recent years, both the government and people’s representatives have shown greater interest in transport infrastructure development.

The government is mainly guided by our new constitution, which emphasizes the decentralization of power and economy and includes a mandate that roads be built to remote settlements. Likewise, political actors are guided by the notion that promising roads to rural households can win them elections. Consequently, the roads are being promised and built everywhere—in the hills, along the mountains, across the rivers, and through the jungles.

Poorly built roads and excessive road digging along the mountain slopes have triggered a higher risk of flood, landslides and other natural disasters not only in the hilly region but also in the Tarai. As Nepal is going to see some of the heaviest rainfall across the nation this monsoon, daily landslides and flash floods will make our rural communities more vulnerable, even as the risk of the coronavirus pandemic is upon us. Poor farmers in food-deficit rural areas were already struggling. Disastrous floods resulting from poor road construction will be a straight punch in their gut, adding injury to their insult.

Connectivity is key for lifting the economic status of people and can have a direct impact on global effort to fight poverty by opening rural access. But the severe biophysical effects of the road boom cannot be neglected. The road construction spree in Nepal, with poor planning, incapable contractors, excessive corruption, and fragile geography can mean more vulnerability for rural families and cause more devastation. Unplanned and improper roads will result in more accidents and obstructed transport instead of enabling better connectivity.

Environmental impact

Despite being among the poorest and least developed countries in the world, Nepal is still a model for biodiversity conservation. Nepal’s success is largely attributed to an approach that combines community support and stable government policies. But in recent years, policymakers seem to have been neglecting the environmental aspect.

According to a report of the World Health Organization (WHO), the maximum level of particulate matter in the urban areas of Nepal is 10 times  the desirable standard value. The ancient city of temples has now become one of the most polluted in Asia. Unmanaged road extensions in Kathmandu Valley pose a severe threat to the health of its inhabitants as air pollution escalates to alarming levels. In a worsening scenario, the annual premature death, by poor outdoor quality in Nepal is expected to reach 24,000 by 2030.

Road and highway construction and transport infrastructure have enormous impact on our ecosystems. The expanding network of roads can quickly change the landscape and affect wildlife in several ways. Stretching highways through forest areas will impose a threat to the animal populations, not only by vehicular obstruction, noise and habitat fragmentation, but also by exposing them to human settlements and allowing easier access to poachers.

Economic impact

The roads have high economic values and are crucial in bringing the desired social change. The newly opened roads will ease transport and develop the nation’s economy – no doubt. For a landlocked country like Nepal, the proposed road projects will be the key to facilitate domestic as well as international trade, helping Nepal continue with its current economic progress.

Recent studies have shown that improving rural road access will aid local farming, increase average income, boost regional gross domestic product, and help with food security. Right rural roads will allow farmers to export their products to markets faster, fresher, and at much-reduced costs. It will also enable local cropland expansion, lower the farm input prices, and improve farming technologies.

Better rural access will enhance education in the rural areas as kids will not have to walk for hours to get to their schools. Better roads will also mean swift health service for the remote communities that are still hours of walk away from a basic health check-up facility. Roads and transport will thereby promote social engagement and social inclusiveness. Building safe, affordable, and reliable roads will also help us achieve our sustainable development goals by tackling poverty, facilitating economic growth, and building sustainable cities and communities. 

Build for the future

Nepal needs better road connectivity to support its own socio-economic goals—improvements in access to economic centers and social services for the people. But development shouldn't come at the cost of nature. Moreover, for a developing country like Nepal, which is vulnerable to natural hazards, physical structures should be built to withstand the future climate and seismic vulnerabilities. 

The local units should carry out environmental impact assessment surveys before finalizing road construction projects. The road planners should carefully examine road-environment issues at both the project planning level and the execution level.

Road-building decisions should come along with the decisions about forest and wildlife conservation, community design, public transport, and other modern planning features such as disability access, and walking and cycling space for people. In the program stage of construction, it is important to study whether a road should be built in the first place on a particular route. In the development stage, the effects of the road project on the local environment, local communities and individuals should be evaluated. After completion of the project, the local units should closely monitor the effects of older transport decisions and take corrective measures whenever required. We must ensure every project component fits with technical and scientific goals of sustainability.

 The author is pursuing a B.S. degree in Construction Management/ Risk Management and Insurance at the University of Louisiana Monroe

A fierce public debate has erupted about the $500 million grant offered by the United States Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to Nepal for construction of power transmission lines and strategic roads.

Every person in Nepal now has a story on the MCC. This is mine.

It begins in 2007. At the time, Nepal had just signed an agreement with an Indian infrastructure investment firm to build four cross-border transmission lines. The electricity crisis (load-shedding) in Nepal was deepening. Cross-border lines would enable Indian electricity imports and provide much needed relief.

Nepal was pursuing these lines with urgency. The first line (Dhalkebar-Muzaffarpur) was to be ready by 2010. Shortly after the agreement was signed, India changed its rules, calling for majority state-ownership in the project. Further complications came when Nepal had to sign an agreement to purchase electricity from India on that line for 25 years. The line finally came into operation in 2016, thus ending Nepal’s load-shedding.

Cross-border transmission lines integrate power markets. Once integrated, Nepal will have to compete against Indian power markets. This would mean, I argued at the Nepal Power Summit in 2007, that cheaper Indian power would displace newly added Nepali hydropower in the long run.

New hydropower may not be able to compete in the Indian power market in a way that allows Nepali hydro plants to secure long-term power purchase agreements. Without this security, new Nepali hydro plants cannot be commercially financed only with short-term trading contracts.  

Nepal’s strategy of using cross-border lines for imports in the short term and exports in the long term was a high-stakes gamble. That gamble is now a bedrock of Nepal’s power sector strategy.

A precondition to the MCC grant was that Nepal sign an agreement with India for the Butwal-Gorakhpur cross-border line. It was an odd condition, I thought, requiring Nepal to sign an agreement with India without Nepal having any real control on building the lines on India’s side of the border.   

For over 10 years, Nepal had been trying to secure an agreement on that line. India hadn’t agreed. But as in love, nothing is impossible in bilateral government relations.

In October 2019, India suddenly dropped its objections without explanation. It agreed to finance the cross-border line on Nepal’s terms, on a government-to- government basis. This meant there would be no consideration for the financial viability of the transmission line; it would simply be built.

India’s decision to reverse course was a dramatic shift, contrary to the spirit of its power market that is pushing for financially viable, commercially-led investments. MCC in Nepal became real at that point.    

A few months later, a fierce debate on the MCC swept across Nepal like an inferno, scorching everything in its path, tearing apart friends from friends, husbands from wives, brothers from sisters, and two key political personalities clearly vying for power.   

The funny thing is that none of this may matter anymore.

Earlier this week, in keeping with the India-Nepal understanding on the Butwal-Gorakhpur line, Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) and Power Grid Corporation of India (India’s state-owned transmission utility) agreed to move things forward. With or without the MCC, Nepal will be building the cross-border line.

Without a single penny from the MCC, Nepal is rapidly integrating with Indian power markets. When the cross-border line will be built doesn’t matter. Government announcements have already shaped expectations and market fundamentals.   

Only one of two outcomes is now possible.

Possibility 1: Cheaper electricity prices in India will displace new hydro capacity of Nepal. We remain reliant on Indian electricity imports.

Possibility 2: Nepal will generate thousands of megawatts in new hydro and sell all its excess generation to India, earning enormous revenues in the process.

I worry this high-stake gamble is one we have not fully thought through.

In those moments of worry, I return to the reassuring comfort of what the US ambassador to Nepal promised to the people of Nepal in his 3 October 2019 article in Republica.

“The MCC project focuses on constructing lines that will bring Nepal’s power to the consumers who will pay Nepal good money for it.  It is a simple fact of geography and economics that means India.”    

I shudder to think, what if it isn’t “simple” or if it isn’t a “fact.”

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The Buddha’s first utterance after his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree was: “I have gone through countless births in the cycle of existence, seeking the builder of this house. To be born again and again is dukkha (suffering). Now I have seen you, O housebuilder! You shall not build a house again for me.”

In Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna: “That which is born must die, and that which is dead must be born again. You and I have passed through many-many births. I can remember them all, you cannot.”

Attenuating one’s karma and stopping the endless cycle of rebirths is the central theme of Jainism. For Sikhs, human life is a unique opportunity to break the cycle of death and rebirth.

All major Indian philosophies talk of rebirth. For someone brought up in Western cultures, rebirth may be a topic difficult—or even absurd—to believe or understand. One may squarely say: “Why should I even care if I continue after death or not? I am not a religious person—not the least a follower of Indian religions.”

But rebirth does not have to be about religion. It can just be about ethics. It can be about following a few moral principles. Instead of going so far as having a new physical body, we can look at rebirth as the arising of a new state of mind. We all know our mind changes—or takes a new birth—all the time. We can view rebirth from that angle.

When the Indian traditions talk of rebirth, they do it in relation to karma. The bottom line: If you create healthy karma, it will lead to wholesome rebirth. Healthy karma is about taking actions that generate healthy states of mind. All traditions talk of refraining from actions that lead to misery. They talk of either extinguishing all forces of karma, or at least developing and keeping the helpful ones.

Healthy karma would lead to eradication of mental impurities. Mental impurities are mental residues of physical, verbal, or mental actions. So clearing the impurities will have to do with how we act, speak, and think. To do it in healthy ways, you don’t need a creator or a God or a religion—you can just have an intention to lead a happy life.

If you do morally wholesome acts, it will have wholesome effects on your mind. If you save a life, you will instantly feel love and peace in mind. If you speak the truth, you will never have to worry about guarding your lies. But if you steal money from the bank, you will definitely have sleepless nights. Whether you create nice karma for better physical rebirth or not, ethical action will reward you with peace of mind. 

Rebirth in terms of physical body may be distant. But in terms of mind, it is instant. Our wholesome acts lead to happy rebirths of the mind in real time, all the time.