Even the non-NC leaders, particularly Jhalanath Khanal, Bijay Kumar Gachchedhar and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, hailed NC’s founding figures and extolled its historicity in Nepal in such a way that you would not be wrong if you assumed, for that moment, that Nepal had and should have only one political party to which all political leaders should belong: NC.
But behind this grand convention involved a great deal of expenses. NC had to drain a good deal of money for this gala. Thousands of NC cadres had to be fed and accommodated in Kathmandu’s hotels and guest houses. In concluding the convention, NC is supposed to have squandered about 30 million rupees. Evidently, 30 million is a great deal of money. But that’s nothing compared to the amount UCPN (Maoist) spent in feeding its cadres ferried from all over Nepal during its two-week strike in May 2010: 10 million rupees a day.
These are only the known information. Political parties incur large expenses in Nepal. They are almost like the parallel force of the government and an integral part of the state. They have their own calendar of events, and their own programs (Read: Plenums, protests, rally, demonstrations, elections, etc) to execute. They organize programs in as much sumptuous and grand way as would the government. They employ and pay to their party activists. They spend a great deal of money in bringing their cadres to cities from villages for various programs.
So they must raise money to run the parties just as the government must extract tax to conduct its daily affairs.
Unquestionably, people are the resources for both the government and the political parties. Fund is extorted (I deliberately use this word because it is rare that one willingly donates for the non-performing political parties these days) from the businessmen, corporate chiefs, education workers, teachers, professors and the general public. Of them, businessmen are the hardest hit. A readymade clothes wholesaler in New Road, Kathmandu, told me the other day “you cannot say no to them. If you do not give these politicians, they will ruin your business when they are in power. We businessmen live under a constant terror of donation. Some are polite, others are intimidating, but in essence, they are all the same. If we speak up against them in the media, they will trouble us later. So, we must pay them anyway.”
Under threat or in free will, business community at large, and people in general, fund the political parties with which Nepali people have been forcefully kind. But the legacy of this kindness comes from the past. During the 19th century, for example, the state collected revenues from its people in form of crops. A farmer had to till the land but half of the harvest would go to the state. And during the Rana regime, the regime would increase land tax when it fell short of fund for its own indulgences. Perhaps conditioned to this culture of obedience despite being oppressed, Nepali people have always paid to the state.
After the fall of the autocratic Rana regime in 1950 and Panchayat in 1990, when political parties emerged, people took them for their liberators. People assigned them the role of alternative state. And in this optimism, the culture of donating for the political parties took roots. And now in the democratic system, political parties became an appendage of the state. In fact, they became the state. So, the people have been paying to the political parties, despite all the maladies that they have given in return, hoping from them prosperity and justice that otherwise were denied by the state in the past.
It is likely that political parties will continue to be paid like this for long as Nepalis are the most tolerant, complacent and magnanimous people. They paid to the state even when the state was the most oppressive to them. There is no reason why they should stop funding the political parties who at least give them dreams in return. But there are some fundamentals that a state, which is almost equivalent to saying the political parties that hold rein over state in Nepal’s context, must provide its people. Primary role of the state is to provide a range of services, in particular, law and order, public goods, social security, market regulation, independent judicial system to adjudicate disputes, protection of the most fundamental civil and political rights, a functioning education and healthcare system and transportation infrastructure.
Ali Riaz and Subho Basu contend, in Paradise Lost? (2007), that Nepali state has been characterized by banditry throughout its history. But banditry in relation to political parties should be judged in terms of what they do when they run the state. They have provided scant services to the people from whom they have extracted larger gains economically and politically. So the political parties today have this urgent task in front of them: To prove a boon to the people or brave the danger of being perceived as bandits.
mbpoudyal@yahoo.com
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