That fire of devastation, set in motion by two major earthquakes and hundreds of aftershocks, has engulfed Nepal's 16 districts. More than 8,500 people have lost their lives. The number of deaths may yet increase, as many people remain unaccounted for.Besides, the horrendous quakes have unleashed colossal destruction of property. They have knocked down nearly 60,000 houses, buried millions of tons of food, and killed thousands of cattle. They have also destroyed or damaged thousands of government buildings and hundreds of other public infrastructures—temples, roads, schools, hospitals, etc. Monsoon and hunger lurk ominously.
In the aftermath, women have faced a triple whammy. First, as recent reports suggest, many women died because they were the last ones to rush to an open, safe space when the earth began to shake. More traumatized than men, they have suffered from post-traumatic disorder. Numerous pregnant women, who stumbled in the rush and hurt themselves, lost their fetuses.
Second, in the current situation of shortage of food, health, and education, women have less access to these essentials than men, as happens in a paternalistic society like ours. In a mad scramble for relief material, men, and mainly goons, have prevailed. Third, women living in tents and temporary shelters have become easy prey for sexual predators.
Immediately after the earthquakes, the prime minister must have stopped all ministers from foreign trips and instructed them to obtain and channel support for rescue, recovery and relief. Ministers for their part should have cancelled their foreign junkets and focused on securing and mobilizing support for the victims.
The Speaker must have postponed the meetings of the Constituent Assembly for three months and instructed CA members to go to quake-devastated areas and help in rescue, recovery and relief. CA members themselves should have gone on their own to assist their voters at the time of their greatest need.
Nevertheless, none of these things happened.
Rather, our nonchalant leaders took their eyes off the ball and holed up in Baluwatar, in hotels and in their homes, plotting the next move for personal power and private benefits. Not even the much-awaited new constitution is as important as saving our people's lives, protecting our women's dignity, and preserving our children's innocence at the time of such disaster. Therefore, the Big Four's agreement looks nothing more than a case of Dai ta kale bhai pani kale, kale kale milera khau bhale ("You are dark and I am dark, brother/ So let us collude and eat the rooster together.")
Our leaders' behavior proves it. Ministers and CA members have gone or are going on foreign jaunts and misappropriated resources meant for disaster victims. Their assistants have misused, sold or tried to sell donated relief material. Clearly, Ram Sharan Mahat has become a liability to Prime Minister Sushil Koirala. Neither the government nor the parties have taken action against these crimes.
Barring a few, our elected leaders have no empathy for disaster victims. Their disingenuous words of sympathy are just a veneer to cover their greed and selfishness. Political leaders are a cynical species everywhere, but ours are unparalleled in their cynicism and in profiting from the misery of their voters. A few leaders have been exceptions to this rule, and I salute them.
This cynicism is in full view in their hurry to resolve outstanding issues of constitution and to form a national government just when they should have gone out to help the people; both are not priorities for the country for the next three months. The constitution will not bring food on the table or build a single house for disaster victims. A national government, if we recall the past, would be an incubator of corruption and anarchy where no one is in control.
Since their motivation is the meat of the proverbial rooster, that is what the leaders want. They cherish national government, the first step to dictatorship, so that they could all have their hands in the till and no political party would be left to raise inconvenient questions of collusion and corruption in the Constituent Assembly. They want to enrich themselves and expand their political base by exploiting the misery of quake victims.
The justification for national government is spurious at best. Sure, Sushil Koirala was slow in the beginning in inspiring people to respond to the crisis. But it would also be wrong to single out Koirala; and none of the contenders currently on the prime ministerial menu is any better.
Koirala is in good company of world leaders who have been hauled over the coal in the wake of major disasters. The Japanese prime minister after the tsunami destroyed the Fukushima nuclear power plant; US President George Bush after Hurricane Katrina; and Atal Bihari Vajpayee after the Andhra Pradesh storm. Massive natural disasters are always difficult to handle.
Unfortunately, none of the prime ministerial candidates waiting in the wings is substantively better than Koirala. We are already familiar with the shambolic leadership of Koirala, Sher Bahadur Deuba, Jhala Nath Khanal, Madhav Nepal, Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Baburam Bhattarai. KP Oli is too sick for the demanding job. Let us face it, Koirala, though ineffective, is still the cleanest among them.
Every one of them is afraid of competitors from within their parties. None of them has the political standing within their parties and in the country and the vision to become a transformational leader like Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, Mahathir Mohammad of Malaysia or Nelson Mandela of South Africa.
As a second-generation democrat, I am pained that even a despotic Prime Minister like Juddha Shamsher Rana proved more responsible and pro-people (in the aftermath of the 1934 quake) than the current crop of our leaders. He had announced that anyone misappropriating relief materials could be killed in the presence of five witnesses. I do not condone that kind of murder, but the announcement demonstrates the seriousness of the purpose.
Dark brothers have always used ruse to kill and eat the Nepal rooster. When the fire of devastation is still burning, they should show some decency to forgo their indulgence and sincerely help the suffering people. It looks like the tail of the dog would never straighten even after trying to do so for 12 years.
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