The Plight of Bhutani Refugees

In the early 1990s more than 80,000 Bhutanese citizens were forced out of their country. These Nepali-speaking Hindus—whose forefathers settled Southern Bhutan in 1880s—had been systematically persecuted by the authoritarian government of King Jigme Singye Wangchuk and the Dzongkha-speaking Northern majority. Arbitrary rules, such as mandating universal adoption of the traditional Northern clothes and customs, and forbidding the official use of the Nepali language, were imposed. New citizenship laws classified most Southerners as non-citizens paving the way to eventual usurpation of their properties. Peaceful protestors of the unjust policies were imprisoned. Many were tortured. The Southerners, fearing their survival, fled, and were settled as refugees in Nepal by the local government and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Though the Bhutan government painstakingly tried to hide the fact, subsequent research by Amnesty International has established the fact that it was a case of meticulously planned religious, cultural and ethnic cleansing.

After almost twenty years, the Bhutanese refugees are still languishing in those makeshift camps in Eastern Nepal—battling difficult living conditions, suffering from mental and physical ailments, and subsisting in handouts from aid agencies—with no hope of ever returning to their homes. Their children were born and raised never knowing life outside the confines of the camps. In the tragic saga of the Bhutanese refugees, the injustice of the repressive government of Bhutan is matched in equal parts by the hypocrisy of India, the ineptitude of Nepal, and the indifference of the international community.

India claimed that the refugee crisis was a bi-lateral issue between Nepal and Bhutan. Their stance was not just inaccurate but also irresponsible for India, a country which sees itself as a regional leader, and besides controlling Bhutan’s foreign policy, also serves as the chief economic benefactor of the Bhutanese government. When the refugees fleeing from Bhutan’s security forces landed on the Indian soil, they were mercilessly nabbed by the Indian police and escorted all the way to Nepal’s border to be released. Such action punctures India’s hypocritical claim of respectable distance from the issue and shows whose side India took. For twenty years, India never used its considerable influence both in Thimpu and Kathmandu, to mediate or help resolve the Bhutanese refugee crisis.

Unity को सनजाल

In my previous post, I tracked down the shady companies that form Unity's pyramid. Now here is a graphical representation of Unity's web of fraud. First, what you see below is a photo from Unity's Website purporting the way to produce diesel from Jatropha plant. As I wrote before, Crystal Bio Energy Nepal, a company owned by Unity, goes around the country asking unsuspecting farmers to buy their seeds and pay for "technical expertise" to harvest Jatropha plants in their fields. Think for yourself if what is seen in this picture seems scientifically possible...

Of course, not. It is easy to see. Now why did Unity set up this bogus company called Crystal Bio Energy Nepal? To understand that look at the following picture depicting Unity को सनजाल:

Now you can see the reason why Crystal Bio and its impossible business of Jatropha diesel exists is to lure unsuspecting new people to give money to Unity's fraudulent Scheme.

How does the Pyramid Scheme of Rs. 600 करोड Work?

(Thank you to all the readers from Sajha. Hope you will browse around and leave comments to share your ideas. -mG.)

(Update on 4/28: Thanks to Khusbu Sarkar for pointing out that Rs. 6 Billion is actually equal to 600 crores and not 60 crores. As you said that is ten times as troubling! I have corrected the record.Thanks. )

Republica has a stunning report on a Nepali company called Unity Life International (ULI) which is apparently making some very, very big noises within the country and abroad. The sheer number on the headline - Rs. 6 Billion (600 करोड !!!) - is enough to attract attention. The full details of Unity's activities that Milan Sharma, the reporter, describes are frightening to read. So it turns out Unity has found its mojo in Nepal selling bogus products like life and health "assurance" plans (these sort of function like the energy drinks in the Quixtar/Amway scheme). Also Unity claims to have opened hospitals to build a network of providers for its health insurance.
Clearly the company is a pyramid scheme and Sharma commendably doesn't hesitate to call it that. Anyone in America who has been involved in the Amway or the Quixtar knows what a pyramid scheme is -- the idea is to use the promise of an easy but wildly profitable business venture (Quixtar sells daily use consumer products) to suck in a network of people whose only way of gaining profit is to help bring in more people to build a bigger and bigger network. The whole thing collapses in the end because the underlying business is a scam.
Sharma mentions in passing that: "Awash in cash, the company is now venturing into any field you care to name, from real estate to airlines to department stores to Direct to Home Satellite TV." So I decided to do a little bit of snooping to fill in the gap. What I found scared me further. Turns out there are not one, but already a extending web of numerous scam/fraud companies under this pyramid of fraud!
First here is Unity's website. Why is the life "assurance" company's first image on its website showing a picture of a rafting boat for a travel and tours company? What has travel and tours got to do with "life and health assurance?" Of course, it is not a crime to have various companies under one roof but why are the they marketed at one place?

नेपाली को हो?

I have been thinking about what is "Nepali." More than ever, I think this question is a vital one for our country.  Not only officially for the legitimacy and effectiveness of a new constitution but also for the social, cultural and national unity, we need to discuss, reflect upon and discover what it means to be a Nepali.

So it was a nice surprise to read the special edition of Himal Khabarpatrika where a number of articles start that discussion in an effort to try and answer what "Nepalipan" is. Must read for all Nepalis everywhere. Of the many gems from the articles, this from C K Lal: "नश्लवाद (रेसिज्म) नेपालीपन अवधारणासँग जोडिएर आउँछ। सोच-प्रयोगका लागि एकछिनलाई कल्पना गरौं; केन्याली बाबु एवं नेपाली आमाको कुनै सन्तान जनकपुरमा जन्मिन्छ र परिबन्दले उसको पालनपोषण जकार्तामा हुन पुग्दछ। नेपालीपनको जति नै उदार व्याख्या गरे पनि त्यस्तो व्यक्ति कहिल्यै नेपालमा बाराक 'वामा बन्न सक्दैन। नेपालमा त्यस्तो व्यक्तिले कर्म गर्दै फलको आशा राख्ने होइन, पुनर्जन्मको प्रतीक्षा गर्नुपर्ने छ।"

The Rinpoche and the Kumari

While the buzz on the Nepali online community was all about the PBS documentary, "The Buddha" for allegedly reporting that Buddha was born in India, I was much more taken in by the Independent Lens feature shown immediately afterwards in our local station.

The feature titled "Unmistaken Child" follows the story of Tenzin Zopa, a young Tibetan Buddhist monk from Kopan Monastary in Kathmandu, as he journeys to small villages and hamlets of Tibet in search of a little boy. Zopa's guru Geshe Lama has passed away due to old age and now the devotee is tasked with finding the reincarnation of his guru.

It is a arduous process of walking from village to village and performing tests on each little boy between the ages of one to one and a half that Zopa finds. While the villagers are generally helpful, the young boys, shy or even afraid of the stranger (and of course the camera crew of foreigners), only succumb to the test when bribed with balloons or toffee.

The test to determine true reincarnation, hence the "unmistaken," basically involves asking a boy to choose among a couple of prayer beads. Most children are more enamored of candy to pay much attention to the beads. So the Zopa continues his search to the next village and the next in the elusive search. When he finally finds a boy who he believes to be the reincarnation of his Guru, the story changes from a search to the tale of accommodating the little kid to his new role of a famous guru at the ripe old age of a year and a half.

It looked to me that the one characteristic that determines who gets chosen is the fortitude of character. The new Rinpoche shows a hardiness and fearlessness when he first meets the Zopa. He is curious and less shy that the other boys. And he wants the shiny beads, along with the toy cars and other trinkets.

Overall it is a good enough story, especially because of the exhaustive privilege of access enjoyed by the filmmakers (they get to film the scene where the Dalai Lama blesses the little boy as the new Rinpoche). The parts where the parents are asked to give up their young son to the monastery is so truly heart touching that no amount of invasion by the camera is able to cloak the basic grief in the mother and father's eyes.

At the end of the documentary, we leave the little boy, now about four years old, to his daily life of service and prayer and play, with the Lamas at Kopan, far away from his home in the tiny Tibetan hamlet, away from his mother, father and beloved grandma. Although he is too young to know it now, his whole life is changed merely by a chance encounter. I couldn't help feeling lonely for him.

The institution of the Kumari is much more well-known compared to the story of baby Rinpoche. When watching how the little boy was installed as the reincarnation of a Lama, I immediately made the connection to  the tradition of Kumari. (The journalist Deepak Adhikari elegantly describes one slice of that story in "The Goddess' Exam.") Of course, seen as the social and religious practice of installing a child to be a surrogate for a deity, the Rinpoche is the natural kin of the Kumari. So it is not surprising that both the traditions are linked to the Buddhist heritage in Kathmandu and Tibet.

GPK's Death and the Politics of Personality and Informality

(Thanks to Surath for spurring me to write after some absence.)

The recent death of Girija Prashad Koirala and the subsequent sense of vacuum in Nepali politics brought to fore the innate problematic nature of our political culture: the system of patrimony. 

Rishikesh Shaha in one of his political histories of Nepal, recounts how the the patrimonial elites have ruled the country through a politics of personal influence, proximity to the center of power, and informality. Shaha was describing the scene after the takeover of the country by King Mahendra on 1950 and subsequently as the Panchayati politics of chakadi and bribery flourished. The national politicians competed mightily to become closer to the palace, near the ear of the king, who in turn rewarded or punished public officials based on little more than his personal whim. This corruption of public power through informality extended from the king all the down to the local Panchayat leaders. 

Of course, these features of informality and unchecked power of personality in the political realm are derived from the same cultural notions in the larger society. No wonder, the same modes of behavior has continued to this day, two decades after the fall of the Panchayat System. In every level of society we can find the similar disregard for laws and norms in favor of informality. Whoever occupies a formal position, commands the level of power and influence that his personality and circumstance accords. Thus, legitimacy of action is provided not by the position held, but the personality holding the position.

Hence, it is not a surprise to see the emerging disputes in the Nepali Congress Party in the wake of GPK's death. Despite Ashutosh Tiwari's posthumous prescriptions about how to ably manage succession in the future, one suspects the party leaders vying to fill Girija's position are hardly in a advice-taking mode. Rather, all three potential successors, Deuba, Paudel and Koirala, are acting as rational actors by trying to flout their personal influence and seek support of the party members through informal channels. If our society was run by rules and laws and not by men like GPK, there would no issues with succession, the members of the party would simply vote for the person they trusted to be their leader.

अफ्फनो गाऊ अफ्फै बनाऊ!

In a recent Strictly Business column, Ashu Tiwari laments the case of missing local government in Nepal. For the last 9 years, there have been no local representatives in office. Their roles and responsibilities have been handed to hand-picked bureaucrats from the central government. 

That reminded me of the old A-MA-LE slogan:  अफ्फनो  गाऊ अफ्फै बनाऊ! And that slogan is not really a bad policy. Actually, I would like to extend Tiwari's argument. Why do we have bureaucrats from the center in every district office? In every organ of the state functioning in the districts--be it the education, water, roads--the managers, the हाकिम are the outsiders. They suffer from the same apathy towards their jobs and their postings as do the appointed representatives now. 

Of course, it would take a long time for Nepal to totally have decentralized public administration for each region and district. However, it should be mandatory that any official who aims for high office should come from a pool of locals as much as possible. That way, their expertise would help their own place. They may even be more responsible and strategic in their activities.

Philippines Sickness - Nepal's Future?

The most optimistic near term future for Nepal include the following three events: the PLA integration into Nepal Army; drafting of a compromise constitution (a few years behind deadline); and institution of a rough federalism model. All these would be monumental achievements as seen from the dire prospects of the present. However, those success may not come close to securing the Nepali dream of a functioning, responsive government and a developing nation. The most certain outcome is that even then Nepal would suffer from the sickness engulfing the present day Philippines. 

Banyan's analysis of the upcoming elections in Philippines highlights the cultural ills of that society, all of which are intimately familiar to any Nepali: "shortage of political commitment to the public good"; "violence embedded in the political system"; corruption; absence of policy from political campaigns; administrative and political gridlock. Also the brightest spot for Philippines are its people who work abroad to send back remittances, just like in Nepal. 

It is evident that the culture of political gridlock and absence of any policy discussion during campaigns will not be solved simply because a new constitution is written in Nepal. That means the system is not the culprit by itself. It is the culture of our political sphere that needs rewiring. Banyan's hope that the swelling population of emigrants would effect the domestic elections might be possible in Philippines. In Nepal, unless the new constitutions mandates voting rights and privileges for Nepalese abroad, even that possibility of change is dim.

In one respect Philippine politicians are different than their Nepali counterparts? There are no avowedly "pro-business" leaders in Nepal. We have numerous leaders and parties and constituents representing the failed Communist ideology, as well as those representing each and every ethnicity. But there is not a single leader or party, distinctly in favor of business, growth and capitalism. Without advancement in private investment and business, there is no development. But where is our pro-business leader? 

"What happened" vs. "Why this matters"

For one of the best commentators of Nepali politics, CK Lal's recent switch to become a media commentator, starting with a column on Lohani's death (if memory serves), could be a loss to his readers. However, there are many, many political prognosticators around and hardly any analysts dedicated to the task of watching the watchdog. Lal's astute observations and criticisms would surely benefit the Nepali media culture.

Development in the mass media sector is no doubt one of the brightest spots in Nepal since the restoration of Democracy in 1990. Going from complete government control and near-complete ownership of most print and all broadcast medium during the Panchayat rule, Nepal's media scene has exploded in the last 20 years. 

I still remember seeing the advertisement for "Kantipur Daily" near Sundhara as they were publishing their first issues. Then came the FM stations when everyone in the valley seemed to be walking around with a FM radio. The satellite TV stations from Hong Kong and then from India. Then came the private TV stations at home. And multiple dailies, numerous weeklies and monthly magazines.

No doubt that this flourishing of media has been a boon to Nepal. However, the media culture is still nascent. What the audience seem to want from the news sources is just basic information, which the reporters and editors are providing to some level. However, what the audience may not demand, or rather would not know to demand, and the journalists are not savvy or dedicated enough to provide is the quality of news that sustains a democratic culture. Nepali media does a good enough job of telling "what happened." They do a very poor job of explaining "why it matters." 

CK Lal's most recent "Fourth Estate" column goes to the heart of the matter. I agree with him that Nepali media operate as storytellers. However, I am not sure if I buy his rationale for the reasons why. Lal thinks the dearth of actual investigative journalism results from lack of resources, namely time and money. I rather think it is journalistic incompetence stemming from having scant role models of good journalism. And that goes back to the issue of the nascent culture of journalistic practices.

Of course, the way media has expanded in the last 20 years there is hope that sooner rather than later Nepali journalists evolve into deliberate practitioners of "why this story matters" journalism. And it is respected voices like Lal's that will guide the journalistic profession to that higher level. So his decision to focus on Nepali media scene is clearly a net gain for the readers. 

Countdown to New Nepal

In this first post at Muse Nepal (now called Aaraniko), I want to share the vision that prompted me to start this blog. These visions would also serve to establish the concerns and topics of coverage in this blog.

Nepali political culture is dysfunctional in many ways--the usual suspects of nepotism, corruption and institutional lack of democracy being the prime reasons. Nepali bureaucracy suffers from the same ailments. Actually, I think these corroding elements are pervasive throughout the society. When our leaders talk about development and prosperity, when they sell us the dreams of New Nepal, their words are less a vision of a changed society and more like daydreams. So far, our political or civic leaders have been unable to even identify the source of these problems, much less tackle them. 

The heart of the issue, as I see it, is dearth of diverse ideas. The problem is that Nepalis have very short history of wrestling with ideas of governance, democracy, and development. Even when we have been engaged in debates, our ideas have been limited in focus to the events of the day or wildly fantastical daydreams about changing the face our motherland overnight. We have scant institutional, social or academic practice of honest intellectual debates. There is essentially no marketplace of ideas to speak of. Yet, it is true that finger-pointing is easy; it is especially easy to find faults from the comfort of foreign soil. 

My attempt at Muse Nepal will be not just to keep track of the current developments in Nepal but also try to extend and enlarge the debate beyond the day-to-day events to the larger and more basic intellectual ideas, essentially to extend the marketplace of ideas to ask some fundamental questions about the nature of Nepali society, the history of our political system, and the shape of our shared future. I will try to engage in the intellectual underpinnings of change in our society. The hope is to offer some optimism about the prospect of change and improvement. Hence, the countdown to New Nepal. Also, the muse, motive and subject is Nepal and Nepalis--therefore Muse~Nepal.

While these decidedly lofty aims are primary, on the day-to-day scrum, I will highlight, engage and share any sundry observations, ruminations and thoughts that draws my interest. Hope some readers (when/if they join) would find them of interest as well. 

Jai Ganesh!