Day One, 22nd November, 2003
The first day began with a brief welcome note from the national co-ordinator Dr. Krishna Hachhethu. This day was divided into three main sessions. The session started at 10 o'clock in the morning as all the participants arrived at the seminar venue on this day. In the first session, two co-ordinators from the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi introduced the assessment process to the participants. They also presented the overall objectives and background of this project. In addition, Krishna Hachhethu made an introduction about the project in Nepal. Anil Bhattarai, the dialogue coordinator in Nepal, presented the key questions on different components that this dialogue was to focus on. After the introductory part of the session was over, the discussions began on the first two components of the assessment project - the promise and design of democracy.
Prof. Peter R deSouza (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi):
“We want to achieve broadly three things:
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We want to get your ideas, reflections and responses on this concept of democracy in South Asia. We do not want to proceed with the body of research before getting responses from dialogue participants. |
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We want to allow different knowledge universes to speak to each other--academic, activist, parties, etc.. and for that dialogue is considered as the most effective method. Therefore, we consider this not just a workshop or seminar that goes on every day. |
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We want ownership of our project to be broad-based among the wide cross-section of the people - parties, activists, civil society, media etc. Therefore, this process is not only about producing a report as a final outcome. The debates prior to the publication of the report and after it - are considered as important outcomes of the project”. |
Suhas Palshikar provided the outline and main points related to the 'qualitative assessment' of the project. [Please see Appendix-1 for the presentation of different components and methodological points of the research]
Session I
Promises and Designs of Democracy
Prof. Lok Raj Baral chaired this session. He started by emphasizing the need to contextualize democracy in Nepal - in the light of experiences especially after the 1990s.The dialogue coordinator, Anil Bhattarai, presented open-ended key questions related to these two components (Promise and Design) of democracy. [Please see Appendix-2 for the details of questions]
Promises
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What were the justifications for the establishment and reestablishment of democracy in the country? |
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What were the promises made regarding the change in economic, social and cultural position of people in the country? |
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Were the promises of the same kind or different? |
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What kinds of changes were envisaged in the realm of the delivery of justice? |
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What were the kind of promises and expectations made regarding the participation of people in institutions? |
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What were the promises and expectations made regarding the rules and the constitution in the country? |
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What were the changes envisaged in the behaviour of the bureaucracy, army, police and other organs of the state towards the people? |
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What kind of promises and expectations existed regarding the redistribution of resources? What kind of specific promises were made regarding the redistribution of land? |
Design
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What kinds of institutions were established to realize the promises made and expectations generated? |
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The Economy (mixed economy, role of the state, private sector, etc..) |
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The Administrative structure |
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The Civil society |
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The Press |
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The Electoral system |
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The Political organizations |
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The Elected bodies (parliament, local bodies) |
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The Monarchy |
While these questions were presented to be the key questions, the participants were requested to reflect on their adequacy. These questions were distributed to the participants so that they could refer back to them when needed.
Krishna Khanal (Political Scientist, Tribhuvan University): “There seems to be one point missing in the concept of assessment proposed as far as the experiences in Nepal are concerned. That point is related to the structure of the polity and the need for its restructuring. We have now come to realize that the understanding about democracy has been very conventional in Nepal and perhaps this is true in most of South Asia as well. Some of us have been re-educated from the experiences of the last thirteen years in Nepal, but this re-education is limited to only a very small section of the enlightened people in this country. Monarchy has been active in our country for a long time. The king is considered as the creator of this kingdom. This is peculiar to Nepal. There are various models in practice in Europe, but we ended up adopting the British model. It could be because of the long experience of colonialism, that we also began to see them as our model. This obviously limited our democratic imagination to representative democracy and we could not move forward to more participatory democracy as is being practised in the Scandanivian countries”.
“This is changing gradually in the recent years. A new discourse of democracy is emerging—and this is perhaps, not limited only to Nepal. So we need to focus on this also. This essentially means looking at the future agenda of restructuring our polity”.
Laxmi Rai (National Women's Commission): “I find this framework somewhat lacking when it comes to addressing the issue of gender. The questions related to women do not seem to have been addressed here but our experiences in the past have clearly shown that the issues related to the marginalized sections of the society have to be addressed if we want to strengthen democracy. We need to pay attention to women’s struggles and their organizations. The need of bringing them in the mainstream is crucial”.
Chaitanya Mishra (Sociologist, Tribhuvan University): “We heard Prof deSouza and Prof. Palshikar present on five major methodological components; the cross sectional survey, elite survey, qualitative assessment, dialogues, and case studies. Through these methods, we will obviously be generating a lot of information but the challenge is to make sense of this information in our specific global, regional, national and local historical context. I think this has to be explicitly stated in the project design itself”.
Navaraj Subedi (United People's Front): “Serious questions have been raised now about the kind of democracy that came into existence following the political change in 1990. Confusions were created from the very beginning in 1990 during the process of drafting of the new constitution. The draft prepared by the constitutional commission was revised by the palace. The provision of referendum on key national questions was not included in the final version. The confusion also remained in the setting up of the national security council. In short, the democracy we introduced in Nepal was basically the representative, liberal democracy with several compromises with the palace. We had thought then that, since there is a wave of democratisation everywhere, the king couldn’t conspire again”.
“Now we are facing the consequences. The liberal democratic framework is torn asunder by the recent actions of the king and we are now being ruled by nominated representatives. About the restructuring of the polity, there are three main proposals at the moment from different political actors in Nepal now:
1. The round table conference of the Maoists
2. The reinstatement of parliament of the main political parties
3. Amendment of the present constitution, common to parties
We have to resolve the fundamental issue of the sovereignty of the people which has not been clearly resolved from 1950 till today. In the whole of South Asia, not many aspirations of the people are fulfilled by the state. There has been concentration of economic power in the hands of a few people. Maybe, we need to innovate our polity —and not be limited to the British model. In fact, we can innovate in such a way that other South Asian countries can also learn from us. At the same time we need to address the questions related to internal democracy of political parties. Several people have been implicated in corruption and now the Commission for the Investigation of the Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has been taking actions against some of them but they still hold power in party hierarchy. The parties themselves should be taking actions against their corrupt leaders”.
Subodh Pyakurel (INSEC, human rights activist): “There is a lot that can be drawn from our eastern philosophy for strengthening our democracy. We know the limitations of representative democracy. Our representatives are elected only by a very small minority of voters. A large section do not vote. The party which gets only around 30 percent of the votes cast gets elected in the parliament. This means that the party is effectively getting less than 20 percent of the adult vote”.
“Politics is the responsibility of the political leaders. Civil society can only be a facilitator. We can put pressure on them. The global human rights committee has emerged now. We can create an international civil solidarity. We can create a parallel parliament. The political parties promise all good things in their manifestos. However, they are far short of actually implementing them. The need is to democratise democracy itself”.
Hari Roka (Political activist and columnist): “The questions related to monarchy are central to the discussion on democracy in Nepal. Is monarchy the real symbol of unity as is generally claimed? Or is it in fact a source of fragmentation and divisions? Is this sustainable to democracy? We are realizing that monarchy itself is the real barrier to democratisation in this country”.
Parshuram Khapung (Rastriya Prajatantra Party): “The parties are controlled by the elite middle class of society. Prof. Krishna Khanal said that we adopted the British Model. Obviously, we were influenced by the British presence during the colonial days. Our elite groups were influenced by their ideas. The indigenous people, women, minorities, dalits were not included in the political process in this country. Perhaps, the results that we see today have their roots in this disenfranchisement. They were promised many things, but these promises were not fulfilled. Gradually this led to social anarchism. National unity is central to strengthening democracy. National unity is possible only if everyone is included in the political process”.
Prem Suwal (Nepal Workers Peasant Party): “If we look at the election manifesto, the country should have progressed forward but this is not the case. For example, only the members of parliament from our party raised the tenancy right issue of the Kamaiyas (bonded labourers). They were declared free, but without any means of survival. So without economic democracy, other democracy is in fact a fictitious democracy. Elections are won with money. Dalits are asking for reservation but they should also learn from the fifty years of reservation in India. It is the same ruling groups who are in power, who are ministers and MPs in India. In America, Bush was elected by the court, not by the people. We need to see the link between the so called democracy and the capitalist system. It is only the parties of the capitalists who run the show. People are increasingly becoming aware about this anomaly. It is only socialism based on equality that can ensure real democracy. In the then Soviet Union, there was socialism, but not after so called democracy, only the rich can fight elections. Inequalities have increased, and people are suffering from even common diseases such as cholera and dysentery. Look at Cuba, on the other hand. There is one doctor for every 200 people. We need to look for this kind of democracy”.
Sanjaya Sherchan (Janajati Activist and Intellectual): “We need to first accept, clearly, that ours is a multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-religious society. For indigenous peoples, the present system is in fact a system of rule by the Brahmins. The constitution has declared the nation as a Hindu kingdom. The so called human rights organizations also do not raise the issues of janajati seriously. The Nepali language is imposed on people speaking their own mother-tongue. If we look at the statistics, we see that a lot of indigenous peoples are involved in various movements, but ultimately it is the brahmins and chettris who dominate. We are facing cultural domination. Hindu temples are constructed in places where other cultures used to have their own worshiping sites. For example, the Chemugonjeng of Mustang was converted into Muktinaath. The question of nationalism is generally invoked to blackmail the sentiment of janajatis. We need to open the questions on our history—the so called history of unification”.
Krishna Prasad Sapkota (Association of the District Development Committees Nepal (ADDCN)): “Some fundamental questions are raised in Nepal today. Are we to accept the supremacy of the parliament or that of the constitution? Are we to go for federal structures, for regional autonomy or for local autonomy? Are we to go for centralized or decentralized polity? We need to address these questions”.
“What kind of society do we envisage? Is it imbued with democratic values or not? Are people going to participate actively or only as voters? What about the internal working of the parties themselves? These are some of the fundamental questions we need to address”.
Kanak Mani Dixit (Editor, Himal South Asian): “Why do we hesitate to raise questions about the monarchy? We need to be raising many questions related to democracy in this country. We need to lay bare everything. The political pluralism is narrowing down in our country. The middle class in Kathmandu is keeping itself mum. It considers whatever is happening with acceptance. We need to be discussing the relevance of participatory democracy. The true revolution can happen only through social mobilization, and not through the gun. In the twelve years, the elites in Kathmandu may have been threatened because the rulers began to come from outside. It could be the reason why the Kathmanduites are silent when the power is concentrated in the hands of the king”.
Lok Raj Baral (Political Scientist, Nepal Centre for Contemporary Studies): “We also have limitations as is seen in the hesitation to discuss certain things—such as the monarchy but this is what influences politics in Nepal the most. Not to discuss this is to address the political issues only very superficially”.
Ganesh B.K (Dalit Human Rights Activist): “Perhaps, democracy meant only becoming prime ministers or ministers. It meant entering the Singh Durbar. We did not concentrate our efforts in eliminating untouchability, oppression against women, ensuring the rights of janajatis, linguistic rights, etc. There has not been any fundamental change in the practice of untouchability in society. In 2003, when dalits tried to enter a temple in western Nepal, they were beaten up. They had done that in the presence of the chief district officer. Many try to take credit for raising the issue of Kamaiyas (bonded labourers). We said that bonded labourers exist in the hills also, in the forms of haliyas and gothalas. This has not yet been addressed”.
“The formation of the National Human Rights Commission also was not representative and inclusive enough. Dalits need reservations. In India, many changes have occurred due to reservations. Why else was it possible for K.R. Narayanan to be the President of India? There are 30,000 dalit doctors”.
“The political parties could not launch social campaigns when not in power. For example, why could the UML not carry the Deuba government’s announcement of land reform as their political campaign? The election results show that the old leaders get elected most of the time. A few leaders control 15-20 MPs and they are decisive in changing the government or reshuffling the cabinets”.
Somat Ghimire (Social Activist, Chitwan): “We need to be clear where the fault lies—in the constitution, or in the implementation of the constitution? Most of the people are excluded from mainstream politics. Democracy is limited to a signboard. This is why people are not participating well in the movement of the five agitating political parties. This movement has to be democratised. We also need to reflect on what kind of priorities were set during the last 12 years. Who decided on them? How much were we concerned about creating an active citizenry? Democracy is not considered beyond a personal estate of the leaders. No institution was exception to this. People were made into ‘consumers’ of democracy. The local issues were marginalized”.
Yadubansha Jha (Social Activist, Janakpur): “Ushering in of democracy did not go well when it came to generating employment. Politics was limited to squabbling for personal power. The political parties did not become internally democratic”.
Ram Das Chaudhary (BASE, Dang): “There were lots of problem in implementing the democratic system. People in the villages are not politically conscious enough. Leaders were not concerned about uplifting their consciousness levels. Only the well to do are politically conscious and they have been able to rule over people. The poor are not represented in our polity”.
Lok Raj Baral (Political Scientist, Nepal Centre for Contemporary Studies): “In Nepal, the monarchy is an independent variable which affects all the other political variables. Monarchy is not under serious questioning. There is dissatisfaction everywhere. Dalits are raising the issue of reservation. We need to address this. There is a clear tendency towards Kathmandu-centrism. The elected MPs started settling in Kathmandu, irrespective of where they were elected from. All this aside, we are trying to reinvent democracy with 13 years of experience in the background. The challenge is about consolidation of democracy and ensuring the sovereignty of people. Parties have not been able to take a stand on fundamental issues. They have a tendency to compromise”.
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