Two events that hogged media headlines last week reminded me of the gravity of the superficiality gripping our national life. The hullabaloo over army recruitment and appointment of new priests at the revered Pashupatinath temple is actually a sad story of our inability to get to the root of problems. It seems as if we don´t have the appetite to deal with a problem with the sincerity that it deserves.
Take the army recruitment row first. It´s a dumb thing for a government to publicly engage in a verbal duel with its own army. If the army brass knowingly disobeyed the government, they should be shacked promptly—civilian control of the country´s armed forces is an elemental character of democracy. However, in case of minor misunderstandings—which are bound to happen now and then, and the more so in a democracy-in-transition—the government should exercise restraint and thrash out differences privately. Absurd as it is, the Defense Minister went to the extent of publicly using the word "terrorism" to describe the army´s recruitment. Public statements by the generals were equally unwelcome and unwarranted.
With the facts emerging lately, we now know for certain that army headquarters had informed the Defense Ministry in writing about the recruitment process on October 16 (Myrepublica.com has already revealed that a letter in this regard was registered at the Defense Ministry on that date). But neither the Defense Minister nor the Prime Minister opposed the army´s decision until one of the PLA commanders stoked the issue publicly. A day after the Defense Minister´s public outburst, another senior Maoist Minister, Krishna Bahadur Mahara, downplayed the row and even said some recruitment was necessary. While the Defense Minister was threatening to sack the army chief, the Prime Minister publicly said the government had no such intentions. It wasn´t just a case of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing. It raises a more fundamental question: How can you be so callous about such a sensitive issue?
Now that the rumpus is over the government has given the green light to the army to complete the recruitment process. Amidst this petty public display of ego, we, as a nation, missed something important. Our poor country has been feeding a 92,000-plus strong army and an additional 34,000 PLA personnel (including disqualified ones). The size should be reduced as soon as possible to at least a pre-insurgency level-- that is about 45,000. In servicing this huge war machine we are doing an injustice to the poor Nepalis, who need assistance to send their children to school and to take their sick and elderly to hospital. Besides the financial loss, the fact that we have kept about 120,000 of our men and women—most of them in their prime—completely idle is also a huge waste of human resources.
The army has argued that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) doesn´t bar it from filling positions that have fallen vacant since the CPA was signed. UNMIN says any new recruitment violates the CPA. But whether or not the CPA allows new recruitment is less relevant here. What is important is, do we need any more people in army uniform? Do we need more PLA? Or should we use every available opportunity to downsize the army and the PLA? The army has argued that it needs new recruitment to keep its daily functions going. But anyone who has seen the army´s vacancy announcement knows that a majority of the new recruits will be combatants. What if the PLA says it also wants to fill the vacancies that have occured in its rank and file after its combatants deserted the camps following completion of the verification?
When the UML and the NC publicly supported new recruitment, did they take into account all these issues or were they in a rush to sweeten up the army top brass?
The way the Pashupati rancor has subsided reflects the same brand of superficiality that we employ in addressing any problem. The Pashupati issue has two dimensions—First, we have foreign priests, and second, and more importantly, they have blocked any effort toward transparency in the past. The Maoists wanted to remove the foreign priests and install new ones of their choice without following due legal process. But perhaps they also wanted the financial mismanagement to continue. What happened in the end? We have failed to address either problems. In democracy, it is not just your intentions that count—as a political leader you also have the responsibility of getting the process right. In ignoring the process issue, the Maoists are only making superficial, even futile, attempts to get things done.
The cost of superficiality is that you waste your time and energy trying to address a problem that you have not understood—or have never sincerely tried to understand.
ameet@myrepublica.com
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