BILASH RAI
After the perpetrators of the Janakpur bomb in April 2012 that killed five Mithila activists were caught by the police, Madhesis are debating who really is in charge in the Tarai. That crime was the result of two local clans trying to finish each other off to control the budget allocations for local councils.
Sanjay Saha and Jiwanath Chaudhari, who were competing against each other in Janakpur, had risen to prominence because of the vacuum in local councils created by the absence of local elections. But they are not the only troublemakers in the Tarai, there are other members of organised crime who have political protection and have lined their pockets at the expense of the people.
It’s been 16 years since the last elections for village, district and municipal councils were held. Without elected councillors, Janakpur like other towns had an all-party mechanism, but even this has been disbanded. Now, there is a distinct group of people who have assumed charge of local resources as if it is their personal property. These local warlords are a new class unique to the Tarai: they control the political economy that thrives on the open border and politicians are powerless to stop them.
The second Constituent Assembly elections were Nepal’s most expensive, and part of the blame goes to the lifestyle of these middle men. Candidates are forced to distribute cash as soon as they enter villages, where local eateries have done away with beaten rice and yoghurt and have started serving barbeque and alcohol.
The politicians have a symbiotic relationship with the thugs. Also, by aligning themselves to new powers like ethnic committees, the local mafia enjoy more power than politicians. They use local youth as muscle to intimidate government offices to award tenders for infrastructure projects, and even mobilise a rent-a-riot at anyone’s behest.
In many cases, government officials themselves have planned and benefited from fraud. When officials resist graft, they are threatened into making decisions favourable to the armed groups. A lot of the violence in the Tarai is directly related to this.
Trans-border organised crime has a monopoly over natural resources: roads, canals, bridges, levees and other infrastructure take longer than planned to be built because the middle men always want their cut. Illegal sand-mining, smuggling of aggregates and rocks, logging are a result of the democratic deficit at the grassroots.
It is now up to the government to hold elections in order to elect local representatives and provide legal alternatives. The future depends on defanging a group that is sabotaging democracy from taking root because they benefit from the lack of it.