From Kathmandu to Janakpur, Dashain is nowhere in the air except at the bus stand or at the ticket counters of different airlines. Unlike in previous years, taxis with proud owners clutching their goats on the back seat are hard to spot. At shopping centers, there are more onlookers than buyers. The festive spirit is absent even among those looking for bargains at roadside outlets.
A shopkeeper near Maisthan in Birgunj explains the reason behind the dispiritedness in a succinct manner: No government, no budget, no money and no action. Apparently, government employees are yet to receive their festive pay packets. Due to the lack of official sanction, suppliers and contractors have not been paid their outstanding dues.
The effect of government withholding payment percolates down to the shop floor in invisible ways. Wage earners have to wait for their employers to receive money from big customers who in turn are waiting for the budget to be passed. The budget, however, cannot be passed unless the caretaker government makes way for an executive body that is answerable and accountable to the national legislature.
Even after resigning, Premier Madhav Kumar Nepal has succeeded in keeping the fate of the country in suspended animation for over three months. Meanwhile, the public anger in the districts of central Tarai has begun to boil once again. The risk of eruptions of uncontrollable of proportions is higher this time. Along with mainstream parties, Madhesh-based political formations too have begun to lose their acceptability and legitimacy. Their complicity in the acts of omissions and commissions of a government perceived to be anti-Madhesh has made most Madheshbadi parties hugely unpopular.
THE IDENTITY IMBROGLIO
There is no doubt that free and fair elections require a dependable database of voters. Photo identity is an established way of ascertaining the eligibility of electors. However, to connect the qualification of a voter with a citizenship certificate appears to be a political decision born out of deep bias.
A farm labor has neither the intention nor the time or money to make the rounds of overtly anti-Madheshi government offices for a piece of paper declaring him what he already is: A Nepali citizen born in his hamlet and most probably destined to die there. However, he is entitled to cast his vote and it is the duty of the government to ensure that his right is not denied due to minor technicalities.
On Saturday, delegates to the ANNFSU general convention got their lunch after five in the afternoon. A political party that cannot manage the affairs of its students’ wing for a few days is at the helms of the country.
The image of the government is also a factor here. The present regime has killed more Madheshis in fake encounters than any other in last few years. Death penalty is permitted in almost every powerful member countries of the UN Security Council; hence, UNHCR terms targeted elimination of unwarranted individuals as ‘extra-judicial killing’. In Nepal, execution is proscribed and all such acts are criminal activities of government officials unless a suspected offender has been shot in self-defence by a police patrol.
Even the election commission does not enjoy the full confidence of the public in Madhesh. Recently, the Supreme Court scrapped the decision of the government that has appointed the officiating Chief of the Election Commission to the post that he holds. Moral positions cannot be based on legality alone and the person concerned is free to exercise any authority that he deems fit. However, decisions that can affect the fate of voters without voice in national affairs are best left to a legitimate government and properly constituted constitutional bodies. It is not for nothing that Upendra Yadav has begun to grumble: The decision of the election commission is creating rumbles in Madheshi politics. Ironically though, suspected fake voters are often the most interested ones in acquiring fancy identity cards even as bona fide ones question the intentions of the caretaker government.
POLITICAL REVERBERATIONS
Unlike threatening noises heard in the streets of Birgunj from meek but militant Madheshi politicos, people in the vicinity of Janakpur have began to experiment with different permutation and combination of political alliances. Though muted, voices have begun to be raised about the coalition that would be necessary if and when democracy is challenged once again in the country.
At a teashop near Parikauli Barracks of Nepal Army, a Gulf-returnee was heard predicting that military rule was only a question of time as nothing else can work in a country where everybody thinks that only he knows how to set things right. He termed the UML-affiliated students’ jamboree in Janakpur on of the most ill-managed affairs in his reckoning. A young radio journalist confirmed the assessment later—his friends from Kathmandu have been put up at the missionary hospital at Lalgarh as sufficient accommodation was not available anywhere nearby.
On Saturday, delegates to the ANNFSU general convention got their lunch after five in the afternoon. A political party that cannot manage the affairs of its students’ wing for a few days is at the helms of the country. It would be unable, and probably unwilling as well, to withstand pressures of authoritarian forces. Leaders in the capital city may harbor illusions about UML, but political activists at the grassroots know that they have to be prepared for the worst.
In an election held for the post of chairperson of the management committee of a community school in Mahottary, a strange coalition of Maoist activists and sympathizers of Nepali Congress ousted the incumbent being supported by almost all Madheshbadi parties and the UML—a mirror image of the caretaker government. The newly elected chairperson insisted that he was merely a Maoist supporter and not its cadre, but avowed to fight along side NC if ever democracy was challenged.
The composition of voters is indicative of the social churning taking place in the rural heartland of central Tarai. The local elite sends its offspring to private schools in Janakpur and Kathmandu. The children of the poorest of the poor have to work to survive and avoid going to school altogether. Most students in community schools are from newly empowered families of Nepali Workers Abroad (NWAs) who toil in the heat of West Asia, Malaysia or Punjab and Haryana. Guardians of such students, and electors of school managing committee for that reason, are their mothers—voters who have suddenly realised the strength of their thumb imprint.
These women electors cannot be bribed with bottles of hooch or a wad of currency notes. They would be writing the fate of future Nepal and they are the ones the Election Commission would end up excluding if the provision of citizenship is strictly enforced in preparing the list of voters.
Politicians, administrators and contractors make money. The labor class in alien lands have to earn every paisa of what they remit back home. They know the value of democracy even as they are forced to slave it out in foreign lands. These absent voters—and their assertive families back home—would have no patience for regimes that turn even the formation of a government into a tragic farce.
cklal@hotmail.com
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