The strategy of pushing small pouches of paan masala, chewing tobacco and shampoo through neighborhood shops has been a roaring success even in Nepal. From Mechi to Mahakali and Mahottari to Manang, wherever there is a grocery shop, tiny and shiny multicolored packets flutter like flags that contain everything from ready-to-eat noodles, detergent powders and fairness cream to hair massage oil, crunchy snacks and the ubiquitous gutkha tobacco.
Even in the service sector, the idea of affordable packages has caught on. Financial companies have amassed fortunes by collecting small savings. Cellphones can be recharged at the Chiya Pasal for as little as 20 rupees. Convenience stores sell antibiotic capsules over the counter with little or no regard to required dosages. Thin guess-papers and ultra-thin pass-papers have replaced textbooks. Altogether, there is a free run for anyone with an innovative idea to make money. The poor have indeed become willing consumers with little or no guidance or protection.
The idea that enlarging the consumer base for products of multinational companies can ‘eradicate’ poverty is ludicrous at best. However, it has certainly helped marketers of trendy goods discover a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Nobody is interested in marketing iodized salt or cooking oil in one-rupee packets; profit margins on such daily necessities are relatively low. Everyone wants to push goods that hook consumers to fashionable wants where possible payoffs in the future are even bigger than immediate profits.
Maoists were remarkably astute in assessing political implications of micro-size marketing strategies. When availability of goods in the neighborhood grew without commensurate increase in the purchasing power of the poor to buy them, pressure began to build up at the bottom. A possible consumer was told why his neighbor’s shirt was whiter than his own but he was not explained why he could not afford the soap being advertised. Frustrated, he began to hate the system that had reduced his being to that of a mere bystander as the capitalism juggernaut passed him by.
Unlike losers of the competing parliamentary parties, Maoists accepted the outcome of Constituent Assembly elections and exited from the government with grace when they could not control it. All that they need to do now is renounce violence, but if they do so, they will no longer remain Maoists.
Poverty, powerlessness, corruption, highhandedness of government agencies, political entrepreneurship of the vanguard, social evil of untouchability, ethnic disparities, regional imbalance, institutionalized injustice, weak state, foreign interests, etc – causes that created conditions for the eruption of armed insurgency have been analyzed carefully by scholars. However, such conditions were almost common in the large part of the country.Maoist insurgency took off in mid-income districts such as Sindhuli, Gorkha and Kavre with fair-weather road connections rather than in Mugu, Kalikot or Humla. Maoists presented themselves as the release valve of people’s frustrations not just with politics of patronage, but also the market mechanism that exempted sellers from the responsibility of quality, quantity and the price of products being sold in packets. Political entrepreneurs of Maoist insurgency chose places with recent market penetration to test their ideology. The rest is history: The success of their political strategy matched those of the marketing of packaged goods.
Call it forced donation, willing contribution, informal tax or extortion, but whenever a truck of consumables arrive anywhere in the interiors of Nepal, the parallel revenue collection system is activated. When the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) challenged last week that they can even resort to non-payment of taxes, they knew that they were threatening the government. They hardly have any control over loosely organized cells that collect a share of goods sold in the countryside. The micro marketing outlets, masses and the Maoists at the grassroots are networked in such a way that decisions made in Kathmandu cannot disrupt their interdependency.
DISJOINTED RESISTANCE
The anti-Maoist forces have no organized source of funding. Without petty bribery, contribution from contractors, and institutionalized corruption in the development budget of Village Development Committees, none of the anti-Maoist parties would be able to survive in the districts. The Nepali Congress and the CPN (UML) claim that Maoists should transform themselves into a civilian party without realizing the irony of their position. The term civilian not just means being non-military, but also implies that the organization is being run unprofessionally.
The UCPN (Maoists) does have a command and control system resembling a military organization. Had it not been so, it would have been impossible to keep mammoth crowds that besieged Kathmandu for six days under strict discipline. When UML tried protests of much smaller scale in early nineties, almost all footpath railings were uprooted, telephone switchboxes were set afire, stone-pelting crowds broke windowpanes and the police became biggest victims of excesses of protestors.
In 2004, the rally Nepali Congress (NC) affiliates tried to take out to protest the killing of 12 Nepalis in Iraq turned into a rampaging mob necessitating an imposition of curfew because the organizers lost control over protestors within hours of their initial sloganeering. The NC and UML need to become more professional rather than require that Maoists leave the masses to their own devices.
The funding methods for Maoists programs have created a lot of resentment among concerned citizens. Law-abiding, tax-paying and non-political citizens of the country find it astounding that huge rallies can be taken out, people can be sensitized about their rights and then efficient organizations can be built without the assistance of foreign donors, facilitation of international experts and participation of overseas volunteers. Imagine the size of ‘project’ it would have been had these protest programs been handled by consortium of non-government organizations (NGOs) rather than the Maoists!
Even though a contested concept—a political party is non-military by definition—‘civilian party’ is an acceptable description in English. Nagarik Party, which can roughly be translated as ‘citizen’s party,’ is not. Citizens have rights, duties, claims, obligations and responsibilities toward the state, of which political parties are important components. But each citizen is essentially a free person who supports or opposes competing political parties based on issues at hand. The public opinion is strongly in favor of the integration and rehabilitation of Maoist combatants. The issue of democratization of the Nepal Army is linked to it. To support one and keep mum about another is essentially a partisan position, perfectly valid, but not a vote for civilian values in political life.
There are nagarik groups for sure, such as NGOs, civil society, community initiatives and philanthropic groups that work for the social good. However, their participation in politics is constrained by the inability of their members to sacrifice personal goals for the empowerment of the masses.
Some nagariks also join political parties. In any democracy, all political parties are—at least they have to claim to be—for janata (people) who have the power to vote, but little else to influence issues that affect their lives. Marxists advocate the leadership of the vanguard to protect and promote interests of the masses. Stalinists interpreted that logic to mean that the leadership of proletarian party—the Headquarters in newspeak—was supreme. In China, Mao extended it to signify that the Mandate of Heaven decided who was to head the Communist Party rather than its members.
Since of the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal has maintained the balance between adherence to Stalinist-Maoist ideology on the one hand and broad commitment to democratic politics on the other. Unlike losers of the competing parliamentary parties, Maoists accepted the outcome of Constituent Assembly elections and exited from the government with grace when they could not control it. All that they need to do now is renounce violence, but if they do so, they will no longer remain Maoists. It is a difficult decision, but the Maoist leadership has to take the call.
Almost all other political parties seem to have become the playground of the public—informed citizens who know where their interests lie and have no qualms about making any deal with local or international players in Nepali politics. The populace—commoners in the parlance of tax-paying, law-abiding citizens—has nowhere to go. Maoists have been violent and can remain the same. Anti-Maoist parties were merely corrupt, now they are becoming violent as well.
Despised by the market, exploited by the politics and brutalized by violent insurgents, masses at the bottom rung of society are seething with silent rage. Extending the term of Constituent Assembly and making it functional can still control the eminent eruption. Whether to wait for it to explode or direct its energy toward desirable direction of change is a decision that Maoists need to make. The rest will merely react to their initiatives.
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