"Enjoy your dinner" – she ended her two-minute speech. That gave us a lot of time for chatter at our table. A government secretary, seated next to me, quickly broke out in praise of Nepali media. "You guys have done a great job keeping the politicians on their toes. Keep up the good work." But, then, his praise for media quickly gave in to cynicism about politicians.
I actually knew that it was coming. Each time I have bumped into bureaucrats, professionals, NGO activists and businessmen, they have – with rare exceptions – expressed visceral cynicism about politicians and about the system from which they have benefited the most.
Only last week one banker said in fury: This country will go down the gutter unless we wipe out all top leaders across the political parties. I felt like puking in disgust.
No, I am not an apologist for our awful lot of politicians. They perhaps rightfully deserve the public wrath for their failings. But I disagree when people put all the blame on politicians and the government for our society´s failings and fail to take any personal responsibility for where our society is today. These are often the very people who never take any individual initiative to change things, and even fail to fulfill their own basic duty.
The government is only a small part of society. And it plays a very small role, if at all, in influencing major trends and shifts that reshape any open society. Only in a closed society like North Korea does the state overwhelm society and control everything.
Let´s take India, for example. Yes, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is an honest and a hardworking man, but India also has corrupt politicians like A Raja, who, as a minister, sold 2G spectrum licenses at a dirt-cheap price that could end up costing the Indian state over US$40 billion.
The government is only a small part of society. And it plays a very small role, if at all, in influencing major trends and shifts that reshape any open society. Only in a closed society like North Korea does the state overwhelm society and control everything.
The political class, anywhere, is a mixed-bag – there are honest and crooked politicians and there are smart and dumb politicians. But that alone doesn´t stall progress.
Since it opened up in the early 1990s, the change Indian society has been going through owes little to its government and more to its entrepreneurial class and its people. Tata, Reliance, Wipro and many other world class companies were not established by the state, nor are they run by it. As India surges ahead, and eventually becomes the world´s second or third-largest economy and a global power, the Indian political class will have played only a small role in it all.
Even in Nepal, if you look at the sectors that have prospered the most during the last 20 years, the government has made little contribution, beyond taking the policy decisions, in their development. Media, banking and telecom, the three sectors that have made huge strides over the last two decades, are private sector success stories. Similarly, the state hardly matches the private sector´s contribution in quality education and health services, though there are disconcerting questions of access by the poor to these services.
The big and perhaps only role the government plays in the age of globalization is in giving its people their political and economic freedom to realize their individual potential and to unlock their entrepreneurial zeal. And I think the Nepali state has done a lot, if not enough, in that direction.
Why, then, just blame the politicians? Many people do so simply because it gives them an excuse for their own inaction or lack of initiative, and it can also be used sometimes, especially by bureaucrats and professionals, to cover up their own failings.
The secretary, seated next to me at the dinner, complained that people and media often go after a corrupt individual without understanding the context which encourages corruption. Yes, there is a context, I agree. And perhaps everyone understands that. But that can hardly be an excuse for an individual not to be honest – for not trying to change the system.
If Kathmandu Valley Police chief Ramesh Kharel can work to change a "corrupt and inefficient" system, so can any police officer. If Finance Secretary Rameshwor Khanal can work day and night, and remain above any controversies – financial or otherwise – so can other secretaries. If Nepal Rastra Bank Governor Yuva Raj Khatiwada can make the right policy choice to stop overheating in the realty sector and to discipline the financial sector, so could have past NRB governors.
At the end of the day, it´s all about the choice that you want to make – whether you want to belong to a small group of people, who work relentlessly, and help improve (and change) the system in the long run or you want to belong to a cynical lot, who keep on complaining all their lives about others but refuse to look inwards. The latter only perpetuate the system and the visceral cynicism that is fast becoming the Nepali mainstream.
ameetdhakal@gmail.com
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