The development malady that Nepal faces today is not an upshot of any one factor or an incident. Rather, it is the outcome of an interaction between multiple factors. One such factor is fatalism, or the belief that things are pre-determined and we lack power to change them. In the book Fatalism and Development: Nepal’s Struggle for Modernization, Dor Bahadur Bista argues that the “deep belief in fatalism has had a devastating effect on the work ethic and achievement motivation, and through these on the Nepali response to development.” Fatalism, coupled with dependency, has forced people to lose sense of human dignity and time. It has also discouraged individualism, self-dependence, and responsibility-seeking behavior. Fatalism has thus made its way to various sectors – to the detriment of the nation’s development”.
Even education has not helped much in the way of encouraging people to go out of their traditionally defined roles.
A significant number of Nepalis attribute their current situation to their fate rather than their actions. This form of belief, which was kick-started a few hundred years ago by the dominant social groups (such as Brahmins, Chhetris, and Newars), continues to pervade amongst the Nepalis quite extensively. The belief system was started and perpetuated by these social groups to preserve their class and caste status. By classifying people into various castes, the groups were able to preserve their desired professions, and maintain their social and economic interests. For example, Brahmins chose to become priests (a profession that barely entailed menial work), Newars went on to become merchants, Chhetris went on to become warriors, and so on. Relatively educated people like myself would like to believe that the caste-based social stratification was meant to serve practical purpose of the time rather than engender and perpetuate discrimination. However, the effect of fatalism is so rampant that one finds it anything but logical.
The effect of fatalism is manifested in various forms. One of its prominent effects, as Bista argues, has been on the concept of time. To some extent, punctuality and timely manners are dictated by social status. As exemplified by Bista, if a person from a lower social caste/class is late for his meeting with a person from a higher social status, he should apologize, and he would be pardoned. The point here is not to say that asking for apology or pardoning others is a bad thing. Instead, it is to underscore the idea that, in the name of maintaining some social status, the importance of time is blurred, and often neglected. The popular term ‘Nepali Time’ (in the sense that it is okay to be half an hour late for a meeting) is a direct outcome of this. Punctuality is rarely appreciated, and procrastination is commonly practiced. It is extremely common to see civil servants turning up late for their work, and that too, on a regular basis. Staying idle and wasting time, of which the westerners are paranoid about, is no big deal for many Nepalis. There is only a tiny portion of the population that views time as a discrete unit; something that needs to be made use of before it runs out. Most people take it for granted, and view it as ever-accessible, free-flowing unit. It is this mindset that has penetrated into our daily lives, and has afflicted the development process.
Even education has not helped much in the way of encouraging people to go out of their traditionally defined roles. Although the literacy rate now is significantly higher than in the past decades, most people are still hesitant to explore things that are outside of their social and class boundaries. Many people do not even have the conviction that they are capable of doing things. The educated elite is not doing much in the direction of helping other people to build confidence, independence, and individualism. Dignity of labor is rarely practiced. As Bista states, “anyone who is educated, and thereby is in a position to identify with the traditional role of the high caste, would never want to work” in jobs that are traditionally associated with lower caste people. Instead of helping to redress this social evil by creating awareness and encouraging dignity of labor, the educated elite is instead helping to perpetuate the notion. It is ironic that education is helping to foster the very evil that it is meant to wipe out.
As a result, people are confined within the circle of similar social status. This has also, in some sense, given rise to the notion of afno manchhe (“a term that is used to refer to one’s own people – people that one can go for help when needed”). This notion has in turn encouraged the problem of exclusion/inclusion, dependency, nepotism, corruption, and other social evils. If someone has his afno manchhe in a position of power, then he automatically expects that the person in power will help him (in getting a job, for example). On the one hand, this has increased dependency and on the other, has augmented the risk of bringing in unqualified people in the decision making process. In addition, it has also exacerbated the problem of exclusion/inclusion. Bringing in more people from a certain social background/class in the decision-making process has tended to exclude the others.
Fatalism has had some severe consequences on the development process of Nepal. By demarcating social boundaries, it has suppressed people’s talents and intellectual growth. By discouraging individualism and independence, it has made people passive and indifferent to the changing times. It is absolutely okay to have faith in a belief. But when the belief turns into a system, and all it does is retard the development process, it becomes necessary to dismantle the system. Although education has not done a particularly miraculous job of addressing the effects of fatalism, it is still the best tool to safely address fatalism, and bail Nepal out of the development malady.
(Writer is a fourth year economics student at Harvard University.)
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