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As a precaution over coronavirus, which has already spread to over 100 countries around the world, most political parties in Nepal have suspended their large-scale gatherings. And on time; but the parties need to do more. The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Nepal, along with other South Asian countries, is at high risk.

The ruling Nepal Communist Party has suspended all meetings and gatherings aimed at strengthening its organizational structure. The main opposition Nepali Congress too has canceled activities in the run-up to its General Convention. Smaller parties have acted similarly. But are our political parties doing anything substantive to proactively mitigate the corona scare?

With their nation-wide bodies, they can certainly contribute. “Political parties have organizations from the center to grass-roots level,” says political analyst Bhojraj Pokharel. “They have the biggest and widest networks of all entities in the country. So they can definitely help raise awareness about the virus.”

Political cadres can also reach far-flung areas with low presence of traditional or social media and discuss precautionary measures with the people.

Two months after the COVID-19 outbreak in next-door China and after the spotting of the first and only coronavirus case in Nepal thus far, our parties are yet to carry out any substantive awareness drive. (Of course, they claim otherwise.) Instead, major parties—ruling NCP and opposition NC—seem busy in internal power plays. In the parliament, lawmakers have raised questions about government preparations in tackling a possible outbreak. The parliament is also discussing a motion related to the coronavirus. Moreover, the political parties have posted some preventive measures against coronavirus in their social media. But there is as yet no public engagement.

“Political parties should constantly talk about safety measures with the people. But the top-down hierarchical nature of our parties hinders with this kind of public activism,” says Devraj Dahal, another political analyst.

“At the same time, there should be coordination among government agencies and ministries. For instance, the Ministry of Home Affairs is now issuing statements on coronavirus, which is not the right approach,” Dahal adds.

Political leaders and cadres can take to the streets, they can talk to the people, and they can give out the right information, which is not happening at the moment. A crisis can in fact be an opportunity for political parties to show their presence.

But it seems even people are unaware of the role of political parties during a crisis. They believe handling a crisis is solely the government’s duty. But it is worth asking: If parties can mobilize thousands of cadres during election campaigns, why can’t they do so to raise awareness against a potentially deadly disease?

Representatives of political parties reject the allegation that they have done nothing substantive on coronavirus. “We have already instructed party rank and file to launch door-to-door campaign to inform people about preventive measures,” says Nepali Congress Spokesperson Bishwa Prakash Sharma. He claims Congress was the first party in Nepal to prepare a coronavirus video and disseminate it over social media. Besides, Congress youth wing Nepal Tarun Dal is monitoring the market to check the artificial shortage of daily commodities.

Similarly, ruling NCP leaders say they have already issued a circular to their sister organizations and grassroots level cadres to help raise awareness. Party General Secretary Bishnu Poudel says they have instructed their cadres to go to every household with preventive measures against coronavirus. “They have been instructed to work in coordination with people’s representatives, civil society leaders and local media,” Poudel claims.

The Sajha Party has launched its own ‘Sajha Namaste Campaign’ urging people not to shake hands and to do a ‘Namaste’ instead. “We have prepared a video on corona incorporating the views of health experts and we are disseminating it through social media,” says the party’s Prakash Chandra Pariyar. Besides such messages on social media, the party, however, is yet to instruct its members to undertake a door-to-door campaign. But Pariyar claims Sajha fully understands the priority right now is “to inform people about preventive measures”.

Even though these parties claim to have deployed their cadres as well as their sister and youth wings against the virus, their workers are seldom seen in the field knocking on people’s doors.

If they are willing, the political parties can help in other ways as well. First, party cadres can identify any weakness on part of the government agencies and put pressure on them to correct them immediately. “Then, in case of an outbreak, they can coordinate with concerned agencies to provide medical care to the people,” according to Pokharel, the political analyst.

“Best of all would be for all the political parties to join hands to tackle the common challenge,” Pokharel says. Instead, in Nepal, the tendency is to go it alone to prove your loyalty to the people—even (or especially) in times of crisis.

People generally prefer private schools to public ones. But this does not apply to one public school in Bhojpur. The Janasewa Basic School at Bhojpur Municipality-7 is these days drawing more students compared to rival private schools in the vicinity.

Wanting their children to learn English, parents often send them to private schools that supposedly teach them ‘better in English medium’. Many private schools even advertise themselves as ‘English only’ zones. As the public schools don’t place such emphasis on teaching English, parents tend to shun them, and these schools are often neglected. The quality of education on offer is thus generally poor. Parents are willing to pay much more to private schools.

In the case of Janasewa though parents are enrolling their children in the school even by withdrawing them from private schools. This year, 52 new students were enrolled. The school is being developed as the district’s model government school. It uses teaching style and curriculum that are similar to those of private schools. Better exam results also naturally attract parents and guardians.

“They teach the same way boarding [private] schools teach. They use English medium. Results are good too,” says Tulasi Poudel, a parent. “It saves us from the high cost of boarding [private] schools.”

“Low-income people like us would be greatly relieved if all public schools had such good standards,” he adds. “We could then give English education to our children, and they would excel in studies.”

Apart from English medium, other important features of this school are: regular classes, good discipline, regularity of teachers and students, focus on classroom activities, and teacher-student engagement. Parents say the school offers them quality education at minimal cost.

Many public schools in the district were merged or closed down in recent years due to their poor teacher quality and their inability to attract good students. Not Janasewa; even relatively better-off parents send their wards here. As per school records, its alumni have done well in higher studies too.

“Although it is a public school, we offer the standard of private schools. We also offer scholarships and boarding facilities,” says teacher Sikshika Shrestha. “Our students are disciplined and both our teachers and students value the importance of time and learning.”

According to Headmaster Thir Bahadur Shrestha, teachers in other public schools are often more involved in politics rather on teaching. “This is why the quality of education in public schools is in a decline. These teachers are better qualified and better trained than their private school counterparts. The problem is that they don’t like working.”

The district has 341 basic and 69 secondary-level public schools where 61,240 students are enrolled. Among other things, lack of designated subject teachers and teachers’ frequent absence ail most.

People panic in a crisis. Logic does not always work in the face of a direct threat to you and your family. As the coronavirus originated in China, surely, all Chinese folks, and even those who look like them, are its potential carriers and must be rigorously avoided. A video that was reportedly shot in Kenya and has been doing the rounds on Twitter shows a crowd surrounding a Chinese couple. “You are corona!” a local shouts at the Chinese woman. The locals nearly punch the Chinese man who is trying to defend his compatriot. 

Nepal has thus far been lucky to have escaped the corona contagion, even though its entry cannot be ruled out, most likely via the open India-Nepal border. The arrival of Chinese nationals via air routes has not been completely halted either. Yet doctors and virologists have a point when they say that had corona entered Nepal, it would have been hard to keep it down; the number of infected people would have exploded in our jam-packed settlements. 

Coming back to the Chinese, Nepalis are naturally wary of the people they know little about. Different political systems, different self-beliefs, different food and language—there is so much that separates us. This is why even though most Nepalis have enormous goodwill towards China as a state, and as that important counterbalance to India, they can’t easily relate with the Chinese people. It won’t be a surprise if scenes like the one shot in Kenya were to be repeated here. Or in India. I remember an experienced Nepali diplomat telling me about how easy it was for him to deal with the Indians over the years. Yes, there were many differences, and yet there was also the feeling that the two sides understood each other. With the Chinese, it was a different matter altogether. The Nepali diplomat often felt his Chinese counterparts had agreed to certain things on the basis of what they had said, only to be later told that there had been no such agreement. The Chinese don’t mean what they say, he said. With them, you have to learn to read between the lines. Perhaps he would have said something similar about the Indians if he was not so familiar with the Indian way of life. 

Thankfully, thousands of our children are now learning Mandarin. There is no better way to understand a foreign people than by understanding their language. Let us hope that in the days ahead we will be in a position to deal with China more productively, both at diplomatic and people-to-people levels. 

Crisis creates panic. But a crisis like the coronavirus contagion also offers a rare opportunity to see the commonalities between us—and to build on them. We don’t need no foreign language to understand human suffering.

Many are blaming the Chinese government for the rather undiplomatic press statement issued by the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu over a syndicated article in The Kathmandu Post and the accompanying illustration of a masked Mao on a 100-yuan bill. But it can be argued that the statement has nothing to do with Beijing and in fact it’s a diplomatic faux pas on the embassy’s part.

China is going through a difficult time and maybe the embassy wrongly calculated that a firm stance on the article or the picture would make it appear patriotic.

It can also be argued that the blunder was due to unexperienced press secretary or those in charge of it here and s/he sought advises from the Nepali journalists close to the embassy who were against The Post and its Editor-in-chief Anup Kaphle, who, by the way, was to leave the newspaper the very next day. The Post’s assertion that the embassy had raised many objections to its articles before proves this point. Maybe some Nepali “advisors or friends” thought that they would benefit from a rift between the embassy and the newspaper. (And it’s a given and acceptable for embassies to maintain local network of friends to make sense of what’s happening in their host countries.)

Or maybe some staff of the embassy are influenced by meng zi’s idea or the nativist nationalist theories that state: big countries should love small countries and small countries should respect big countries. It’s the kind of nationalist humbug Beijing dislikes and discourages, but is popular among certain segments of the society. Maybe this group saw the article as an affront—or blatant disrespect by the small brother.

The interesting Cultural Revolution-era language also makes anyone familiar with Chinese history ask or make a wild guess: could it be that there was some sort of a factional rivalry in Beijing and the embassy people wanted to prove they stand with President Xi at this time of national health emergency?

Or the embassy thought it would ‘kill the chicken to scare the monkey’? You issue a statement against a newspaper to scare others in Nepal and elsewhere. Just like President Xi said during his Nepal visit: “We’ll crush the bones of those trying to destabilize China.”

Otherwise, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post regularly publishes articles critical of the Chinese government but Beijing doesn’t care. Beijing is a smart power and it understands it cannot control what people outside the Chinese mainland think of it. Also, it is a confident power that’s not affected by what gets published in newspapers worldwide. Or most of its embassies would be working overtime issuing statements. It also knows such statements backfire and affect its soft power abroad.

In Nepal’s case, we’ve had people from most diplomatic missions overstep their boundaries to prove their loyalty to their political masters—often to the chagrin of and embarrassment to their respective governments. The Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu too has at times overstepped its boundary. At one point it wanted the Nepal army to stop training foreign soldiers in its mountain warfare in Mustang. Whoever suggested this idea made it appear that it was coming from Beijing. But NA knew it had nothing to with the Chinese government but with someone at the embassy here who wanted to raise their profile by overstepping their mandate.

Therefore it will be a major folly to associate Chinese government with what transpired in Kathmandu recently. Foreign Ministry in Beijing under Wang Yi, a very capable diplomat, would have never approved a statement like that. Beijing is a very confident power and it has its own public support, and doesn’t care what some foreigners think about it.

But if the criticism was too much to handle, which is rarely the case, it would have written a letter to the editor and or used other ways to voice its dissatisfaction, most likely over dinner and drinks with the concerned parties, or via other indirect ways without any traceable links to Beijing.

Let’s just hope the embassy has learned its lesson and would be careful in its dealing with the press. Smart people in Beijing want just that, not firebrand statements affecting the excellent ties between the two countries.

And the embassy here needs to investigate the vested interests of some Nepalis who are more Chinese than the Chinese themselves. These people regularly poison its relations with Nepal’s mainstream media.

If they were the reason that led to such a strong and frankly undiplomatic and bizarre statement, it should tell them zai bu jian (let’s not meet again) and cut them loose. And if the push came from some Chinese citizens in Nepal who used the op-ed to prove their patriotism for whatever reasons, the embassy should not be swayed by them either in the future. You represent Beijing and its policies not what some random Chinese influenced by nationalistic writings think.

Let’s not let some crafty, overly emotional and nationalist people ruin our excellent bilateral relations and the stellar image China has in Nepal.

Ni zhong you yi wan sui.