DIWAKAR CHETTRI
The political parties are busy coming up with manifestoes that promise to turn Nepal into a land of milk and honey. However, on the vexing question of federalism that caused the failure of the first Constituent Assembly, the manifestos are silent.
The agenda of federalisation suffers from major birth defects. The Maoists employed the slogan of ethnicity-based federalisation as a recruitment tactic among disadvantaged ethnic groups during the conflict. However, after spilling the blood of thousands of these simple folks and ascending to power, they are now confronted by increasingly strident resistance from the people of this densely multi-ethnic country. Both Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Baburam Bhattarai have gone on to opportunistically vacillate between ethnic and non-ethnic federalisation depending on their immediate audience.
Then, there are the NC and UML, the twin champions of multiparty parliamentary democracy in 1990, who had never thought of the need to federalise the country. But after squandering the gains of the People’s Movement and wasting a whole decade in partisan bickering, they have lost the people’s trust. So, the only option for them was to tag on to Maoist coattails of federalisation. BP Koirala must be rolling his eyes in the other world.
The Madhesi parties have a different view of federalism. By demanding the whole of the Tarai to be one province, they are enigmatically trying to tell themselves and the rest of the country that the tea-growers of Jhapa have more in common with rice farmers of Kanchanpur and not with their next door tea-farmers in Ilam, Panchthar, Dhankuta, and Taplejung.
While Nepali politicians dance to the snake charmers in New Delhi, one Madhesi leader at least is on record for having recognised the Indian capital as both the Mecca and Medina of Nepali politics and the political capital of Nepal too. Given that India blockaded us for nearly two years in 1989, dumped refugees from Bhutan on our territory, and supported the Maoists in a war that cost 17,000 Nepali lives, the Madhesi parties have some explaining to do. Exploiters of Sahani villagers in Mahottari are their own next door Rajput neighbours, not hill dwellers.
Given the serious implications and deep-seated contradictions of the federalisation project, the frivolity with which the parties in the CA treated it is shocking. For instance, in the then CA’s 43-member Committee on State Restructuring and Distribution of State Power the two main antagonists, the UCPN (M) and the NC, had agreed in a consensus up to its 126th meeting that two parallel proposals would be submitted to the CA full house. One proposed 14 provinces championed by UCPN (M) and the other for only six by the NC.
However, in the 127th meeting chair Dahal, who had 17 members in the committee, bought off the UML’s seven-member panel by replacing four of its 14 provinces with new ones that included a Sherpa and a Mithila province to satisfy the demands of two UML members. The 14-province model passed as the only proposal by majority decision to be presented to the CA. Dahal was able to humiliate the NC, but in doing so betrayed how lightly and for such short-term partisan gain, he handled such an important issue as the division of the country into autonomous provinces.
The attention of CA members was more focused on forming and felling governments in pursuit of the perks of power than in writing a viable constitution. There were other members who had side businesses of siphoning off funds meant for Maoist combatants, partaking of INGO money for inflaming ethnic tension, crossing the floor, selling red passports, or taking bribes under the assurance of getting things done in the government; just to name a few.
It is a farcical story of politicians who no longer fear the people, have no shame, no scruples, no principles. As 19 November draws near, the crisis for the sovereign people of Nepal is that most of these same faces are up for re-election and the people face the risk of reliving the same sordid history all over again. Therefore, given the limitations of the architecture of our democracy, the only difference people could make now is that they all vote for new faces.
That will give us a ray of hope that maybe the new lot will come with some fresh thinking and fresh commitment to deliver on their promise to the people.
Bihari Krishna Shrestha is an anthropologist and was a senior official in the government.