The resignation of Finance Secretary Rameshwar Khanal has not yet been accepted and he is merely on an extended leave of absence from his post. However, despondency in Nepal runs so deep that the middleclass has already turned a visibly tired bureaucrat into a martyr to the cause of probity in public life. When admirers seek the admired person more earnestly rather than the other way round, it shows that the state is in dire straits and the society has begun to stagnate.
Secretary Khanal may indeed posses every quality being ascribed to him. If it were not for those attributes, it is unlikely that he would have risen to the post he held before he decided to take a break in preparation of calling it quits. He has lived the middleclass dreams of his generation. Born into a Brahman family, he flirted with the politics of Marxist-Leninists during student days, entered civil service through competitive examinations and jumped a grade on merit to reach to the top rung of public administration. His family has every reason to be proud of his achievements.
He worked well with all kinds of government and was known to be equally popular among peers, donors, traders and politicos of all hues. He may have made numerous compromises to survive and thrive in the cutthroat competition of Singh Durbar, where kicking the ladder once it has been used is a norm rather than exception, but few question Khanal’s competence, dedication or energy. By all accounts, he is a talented individual and was prescient enough to realise that mandarins like him would not be able to function freely under plutocratic governments likely to control politics of the country for several years.
Capitalist communists
Despite their Marxist, Leninist and Maoist pretensions, proletarian parties of Nepal are essentially populist fronts with their reigns firmly in the hands of wealthy merchants. After all, communist parties of the country were once created and promoted to fight the socialist agenda of Nepali Congress. With the NC nemesis transformed into a willing collaborator of the capital accepting a secondary role, merchants now want complete control of the state apparatus in their hands.
Bureaucrats, no matter how high or low in hierarchy, are supposed to remain nameless and faceless while their political masters receive bouquets or face brickbats for sins of omission and commission of the government. The media exposure given to the Khanal episode appears to have been wilful in conferring recognisable identities to an unseemly controversy. The publicity seems to have been aimed at dissuading bureaucrats and politicos alike from crossing the path of big money in future.
Khanal has been painted as a fallen hero. Bharat Mohan Adhikari is perceived to be the villain of the piece. Producers and directors of this Brechtian play are the moneybags that have masterfully manipulated Marxists, Leninists and Maoists of all persuasions in the past even as they played around with monarchist and militarist regimes with equal felicity. The takings at the box office would go to those who have scripted the drama involving multi-million loot of the exchequer in the name of VAT-refunds. Apparently, there is some truth in the belief that mercantilists are keenest students of Marxist literature.
The Mammon-Maoist Nexus
Maoists of 1970s in Jhapa called themselves Marxist-Leninists because the proletarian vanguard across the border in Naxalbari could no longer declare freely that Chairman of China was their Chairman too after the Indo-China skirmishes in the Indian Himalayas. These Jhapali acolytes of Bengali Naxalites began their movement by beheading small landholders of eastern Tarai. No bigwig of the establishment was ever targeted by Jhapali communists throughout the years of their violent operations. Most victims of their fury were small and medium farmers eking out a living from their ancestral land. Traders were some of the biggest beneficiaries of distress selling of landholdings in Tarai-Madhesh. The foundation of cosy relationship between the trading community and UML cadres was thus laid during early 1980s, which was further reinforced once the party became a permanent fixture of all coalition governments since mid-nineties.
Quarter of a century later, Maoists replicated the modus operandi of their Marxist-Leninist predecessors in the hills and plains of western Nepal. Feudal exploiters—Maoist-speak for landholders that used any hired hands for cultivation—were some of the first victims of the most violent political campaign in country’s history. Once again, speculators grabbed their land at throwaway prices as farmers fled to towns and cities from the fear of gun-toting youngsters.
The Maoist mayhem continued with raiding of banks, arson at village development committees, ransacking of public schools and destruction of small agriculture development projects. The fallout of intensification of armed conflict was that reigns of rural economy fell from the hands of farmers into the lap of shopkeepers and moneylenders. Maoists kept records of all transactions and traders knew who they owed their newfound prosperity. The mutually advantageous relations formed during the years of insurgency remains intact.
Brutal attacks on isolated police posts were meant to terrorise the masses. From a strategic point of view, weakening the state undermines the very aim of the revolution. Unless insurrectionists are fighting a foreign force, attacks on public servants turn out to be counterproductive. Embattled, embittered and enfeebled officials stamp out a failed rebellion with the vengeance of the scorned. Bureaucrats can also extract their revenge by sabotaging the new regime even when the insurrection is partially successful. No matter who wins the showdown between mandarins and their political masters, moneybags invariably garner the most benefit from all such fracases.
Given the history of their close collaboration, Nepali communists have been biggest champions of capitalism in the country. Trading conglomerates are much more comfortable with Maoists than with their patrons in various political formations headed by former Panchas. National capitalists affiliated to UML are believed to dominate syndicates that monopolize commodities market, manpower agencies, import trade and transport-related enterprises. Small left-wing parties manage to survive by hanging on to the coattails of manipulators of the financial sector.
Maoists realize that the capitalists need them even more than they need their contributions. They have calibrated the amount of pressure to be applied for maximum effect to such a level of accuracy that Maoist labour unions hit the bull’s eye every time they stop work and strike. More than politicos of any other party, Maoists know most intimately that if they were not rolling in money, Nepal’s capitalists would have packed their bags and left the land long ago. These traders are here because return on investment in Nepal is massive despite, or may be because of, the risks involved.
During later years of armed conflict, a section of the superrich of Nepal carted their wealth (Black Money does not exist in Nepali vocabulary) abroad. Many of them found the vicinity of Indian capital convenient—it was distant enough from prying eyes of envious middleclass and yet quite close to exercise direct control over their operations in Kathmandu. Plutocrats preferred privately built gated mansions of Gurgaon in Haryana. Proletarian messiahs were holed up in Soviet-style houses of Noida, Uttar Pradesh. Maoists know the details, and moneybags know that they know and are ready to share if only given blanket amnesty from all possible prosecution. The CPN-UML too merely wants a piece of the action, its leadership realizes the limits of freedom upon forces of the free-market in the contemporary world too well to be more meddlesome.
Money matters
It is not known whether it is gratitude for patronage received in the past or greed of future favors that make the merchant class invite General Rookmangud Katawal, but the old soldier is almost a permanent fixture of commercial celebrations in the capital city. Someone got a new distributorship, agency or representation rights? Gen Katawal would be there with the family and friends of the businessperson. Another tycoon has been made honorary consul of a country most Nepalis cannot locate on the map? Expect the retired general at the felicitation ceremony. With the tenacity of a commando, he never tires of asking the same question to all his hosts: “Do you still contribute to the Maoist kitty?” Meaningful silences of his respondents speak louder than words.
No matter how much noise Nepali Congress makes, it stands to get nothing from fresh negotiation between the merchant class and Maoists. The bureaucracy too will soon fall in line; most of them owe their allegiance to CPN-UML and will no longer rally behind a deviant civil servant. Khanal knows his flock too well to count upon their support.
In the storyline of Life of Galileo, the protagonist insists that his actions had nothing to do with heroism but were merely the result of self-interest. The country needs people like Khanal, it had better not turn them into heroes and throw them at the mercy of plutocratic elite. The drama at the Constituent Assembly is merely a sideshow; the real action is taking place simultaneously at different salons of city merchants. Unfortunately, the hoi polloi can only get episodic glimpses such as that of abrupt departure of Secretary Khanal.
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