The classic definition of society—the community of people living in a particular region and sharing customs, laws, and organizations—does not take into account the plurality of a multinational state. In that sense of the term, Nepali society is still a work in progress. It is difficult to critique something that has yet to take shape. But the high society refers to the fashionable elite which functions almost independent of the state. Such a section of national population—the upper crust of Nepal—has lost all connections with ground realities of the countryside where over 80 percent of all Nepalis live.
The political economy of the country has remained more or less on the same track since 1960s, with minor tweaks every decade or so, to please whichever benefactor had to be impressed. In the early years of Panchayat Era, prescriptions of American experts set the course of the road to development. It was then the turn of the Japanese and Germans to dominate the discourse in the 1970s.[break]
When the emergence of Thatcher-Reagan economics throttled the flow of aid somewhat, there was bewilderment in Kathmandu for a while. Forced to find its own resources, the Nepali oligarchy turned to massive deforestation and trade in contraband. The1980s were years of carpetbaggers, as illicit trade became the mainstay of an increasingly impoverished country.
From the 1990s, the national economy has remained firmly in the grips of the Bretton Woods sisters and their regional affiliates. Beyond a point, it does not matter who makes the budget in the Ministry of Finance. Other than minor differences in emphasis, everyone from Ram Sharan Mahat, Prakash Chandra Lohani, and Bharat Mohan Adhikari to Baburam Bhattarai had to follow the same script that had been written for aid-dependent countries everywhere in the world.
When the society is detached from its roots and the economy functions more or less independent of political control, it is very difficult to cultivate a culture of cooperation and coexistence. Suppressed rage seems to have become the defining feature of every group and community in Nepal. Those who can, claim their share through threat and intimidation. The rest bear all excesses or leave in a huff. In either case, there is annoyance that they received a raw deal. The silent vehemence festers and degenerates into ferocious resentment.
Welcome to the mock-Hobbesian republic of rant of everyone against everyone. Seeds of rampant antagonism probably existed under the ground ever since the brutal military campaigns of the Gorkhali army. However, it was the Project Modernization of the Panchayat Era that produced degenerates of every class and community in Nepal. Towards the end of the Panchayat, the method was called “Mandalekaran.” The course has not only continued unabated but has actually intensified since the 1990s.
Degenerate classes
The process of lumpenization is difficult to define but easy to experience. When Madhav Kumar Nepal was the premier, it was not uncommon for microbus drivers to defy traffic rules and brazenly drive past red lights. When reprimanded, they would have a question for an answer: What is the meaning of order when someone roundly defeated from two constituencies could become a prime minister?
The authority of the extra-constitutional Interim Election Council is even weaker. Other than an appeal to the compulsions of the TINA (There Is No Alternative) factor, political parties that have taken up the responsibility of facilitating its functioning have no other excuse to raise the level of acceptability of the government. Questions on the legitimacy of the government increase the rate of lumpenization.
But what really causes it?
Lumpenization probably begins when a section of population can make a living without actually doing something economically productive, socially useful, or politically empowering. Easy life for prolonged periods then becomes addictive. They begin to look for quick fixes, which manipulators provide them in the form of passionate slogans such as patriotism, nationalism, defense of religion, cultural renaissance or downright demagoguery over risks to independence and sovereignty. The lumpen of all classes are equally passionate about whatever they have been told is responsible for their miseries. Unwilling and unable to take responsibility of their own actions, the lumpen must have someone handy to blame for everything that goes wrong in their life or that of the country.
Among the lumpen groups of those who have been dispossessed, displaced, or cut off from the socioeconomic class with which they would ordinarily be identified, the lumpenproletariat is perhaps the most widely known.
In The Communist Manifesto (1848), Karl Marx called them the “bribed tools of reactionary intrigue.” By the time of writing The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), the Prophet of Communism had become even more vehement in his criticism: He termed lumpenproletariat as the “refuse of all classes” and the “flotsam of society.” With little or no connection with the process of production, the lumpen are incapable of revolutionary actions and can easily be recruited for political adventurism.
The expression “lumpenbourgeoisie” had been in use since the early twentieth century. Later in the 1970s, Andre Gunder Frank, one of the social historians behind the study of imperialism in Latin America, claimed that he had coined the neologism to describe yet another “refuse of all classes” that operated with impunity in the grey zone between legitimate and illegitimate activities. Self-righteous swagger of having achieved success through grit and hard work, with little or no concern for the legitimacy of their action, is often the defining feature of lumpenbourgeoisie. Of its characteristics, Czech philosopher Karel Kosik speaks in succinct terms: A “militant, openly anti-democratic enclave within a functioning, however half-hearted and thus helpless democracy.”
Lumpenization of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie leaves out the nobility, the aristocracy and the meritocratic elite out of its ambit.
Unfortunately, the upper crust becomes even more parasitical in times of transition and uncertainty. This class drinks whisky costing almost Rs 100,000 per bottle; drives around in SUVs costing over Rs 10 million apiece; figures out loopholes to evade taxes; deposits nest eggs overseas; and then blames everybody else for all the ills of one of the poorest countries on the planet. The lumpenprivileged sounds oxymoronic, but in countries where wealth is grabbed, rather than created through productive enterprises, lumpenization of economic, social and political elite is a hard reality.
Rogue intelligentsia
Official statistics claim that nearly two-thirds of all Nepalis can now read and write, up from the figure of about two percent in the 1950s. The increase in the number of professionals and intelligentsia—physicians, engineers, accountants, lawyers, teachers, journalists, and the like—has not been as impressive, but their size too has gone beyond what is called the critical mass.
However, the quality and quantity of engaged thinkers and creators such as writers, artistes, professors, and plain old inquirers in the mould of Antonio Gramsci’s organic intellectual, has remained stagnant despite a boom in routine activism. In the absence of intellectuals competent and committed to question the status quo, the intelligentsia degenerates into being the instruments of the lumpenprivileged.
The emergence of the lumpenintelligentsia is largely a post-1990 phenomenon. There were professional apologists of the Panchayat regime, to be sure. From their fancy perches at the university or secure recesses in places like the Jaanch Bujh Kendra of the royal palace, they coined phrases such as “Politics for Development’ and “Communication for Development” and kept the authoritarian regime well oiled with jargons of the day.
However, a large body of intelligentsia chose to remain outside of the “Mandalekaran” wave. The odor of authoritarianism is repulsive to most ‘cultured’ minds. The restoration of democracy did away with the necessity of keeping the tattered coats of professional integrity. They were exchanged for designer labels of the market.
Lumpenization of the intelligentsia can be seen during the elections of professional bodies, the language used during their rallies, and in the bitterness between competing groups. Codes of conduct in most professions have become like religious scriptures that one recites with reverence without the slightest intention of observance. At least two generations of Nepali intelligentsia born between 1950 and1990 have either become conformists (“Anyhow, paisa kamau”—Do whatever to amass wealth) or turned into cynics (“Yahan kehi hunewala chhaina”—nothing is going to happen here), which amounts to almost the same thing.
Hope of redemption lies with the post-1990 generation, at least from those who opt to stay put in their crumbling houses or decide to come back home to build it anew to their liking, that escaped the epidemics of Mandalekaran. Young at any age is a description of the spirit; body and mind fall easily for what Rabindranath Tagore described as “Dreary Desert Sand of Dead Habits.”
Lal contributes to The Week with his biweekly column Reflections. He is one of the widely read poliitical analysts in Nepal.
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