In a country beset with massive poverty the Maoists of Nepal represent mass resentment against economic exclusion. Will Gyanendra be able to address Nepal?s immense problems?

ARAVINDA R DEO

King Gyanendra of Nepal has dismissed the Sher Bahadur Deuba government and taken power into his own hands. This was not an altogether unexpected development, however unwelcome it might be to the democratic forces in Nepal or to the well-wishers of Nepali people in the rest of the world. By whatever name one may call it, it was a royal coup.

In his speech announcing his decision Gyanendra charged Deuba with having failed ??to make necessary arrangements to hold elections by April 2005 and to protect democracy, sovereignty of the people and life and property??. And justified his takeover in ??the larger interest of the people and (for) the protection of sovereignty??. He also accused political parties in Nepal of indulging in factional in-fighting when they should have united ??to protect the country?s democracy, national sovereignty, peoples? life and property??. This is not the first time Deuba has been removed from office by the King; when Gyanendra sacked him on October 4, 2002, he had accused the Prime Minister of having failed to provide effective governance. The difference now is that unlike in 2002 the King has decided to take direct charge of the government as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.



The democratic experiment in Nepal has suffered many a setback. In 1960, King Mahendra dismissed B P Koirala?s government and established a hands-on system of government more suited to ??the genius of my people??. In the words of Rishikesh Shaha, himself a foreign minister under King Mahendra and later a very perceptive analyst of Nepali politics, King Mahendra?s system of governance was ??in practice a means of exploiting, under the garb of tutelary democracy, the age-old Nepali tradition of unquestioned obedience to autocratic authority of any kind??. The three-decade-long experiment of ??partyless democracy?? in fact destroyed whatever little possibility there was for development of a democratic culture in Nepali polity. The Partyless Panchayat system came to a sudden end in the early months of 1990 after an escalating political protest and the sagacious decision by King Birendra to allow the re-establishment of multi-party democracy. A new constitution was enacted and a new hope sprang in many hearts that Nepali polity had got a second chance to evolve into a parliamentary multi-party democracy with a constitutional monarch as head of state, ??acting as a friend, philosopher and guide to the politicians and as a father figure to his people??.

But leaders of almost all political parties squandered away their second chance and the monarch could not resist the temptation of playing parties against each other in the hope that ultimately he could get back the power he had lost to the upsurge of popular will. From 1960 to 1995, a long period by any reckoning, the Nepali ruling elite was more concerned with playing power games than with any serious long-term developmental work. King Mahendra strove to create a sense of Nepali nationalism, not so much on what were positive factors uniting the country but more woven round sovereignty defined as ??standing up against outside pressures??, a political shorthand for India.

A group of extreme left-wingers in the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) had formed a United People?s Front of Nepal (UPFN) and fought elections in 1991, emerging as the third-largest group after the Nepali Congress and CPN. The UPFN split up and two of its leaders?Baburam Bhattarai and Comrade Prachanda?led the group which called itself the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists). This group, manouevred out of the parliamentary mainstream by 1995, decided to take the path of armed revolution. What began in February in 1996 as a series of isolated incidents of violence against petty landlords, greedy shopkeepers and small institutions holding public funds, such as local treasury, post offices and banks, in the western and far western zones of the Kingdom of Nepal has now engulfed more than 75 per cent of districts. Insurgent Maoists (Maobadis) have been successful in blockading access to Kathmandu valley. Their writ appears to run over large areas of the country and the writ of the ??official government?? is shrinking rapidly.

If successive governments in Nepal have been unable to overcome the challenge thrown by the insurgents it is because the self-styled Maobadis appear to offer last hope to the poor and the downtrodden Nepali hill-people, the bulk of whom have been left out of any social or political empowerment and see no prospects of even a modicum of economic progress.

King Gyanendra?s word is therefore likely to carry little credibility with either the Maobadis or even the politically conscious and active elite. The King has said that he will chair his own council of ministers. A system based on an individual?s power is at best fragile given the nature of human existence. An individual can seldom be an effective substitute for a working political institution. It is open to question whether Gyanendra?s successor might enjoy the same credibility. His obsessive reference to protect the country?s sovereignty is totally uncalled for. Challenge to a country?s sovereignty comes from without. The challenge in Nepal today is from within.

Over the last few years there has been some fear, and much concern, among Nepal watchers about whether the country was rapidly becoming a failed state. Their worst fears are likely to come true in the coming months. By ruling the ??traditional?? pro-democracy parties hors de combat, Gyanendra could have driven them to the opposite camp. The Maobadis would have little reason to accommodate the King at an hour when his own support among the bourgeois political parties is being eroded.

Can Gyanendra repeat the ??success?? which his father King Mahendra achieved between 1960 and 1972? And how deep was the success? One might well ask what exactly did Mahendra achieve by way of economic development for his people? Nepal?s unique vast natural resource?water?remained untapped because of unwarranted suspicions about Indian intentions. Nepal was left out of economic modernisation and opted out of building economic infrastructure to generate large-scale employment. Instead Nepal opted to go in for growth in tourism (which in real terms is largely dependent on traffic from India), using liberal Indian trade and transit regimes to engage in ??unauthorised trade in towns bordering India??, and in the process building up an educated class with no prospects of gainful employment inside the country.

It is no longer the 1960s. Nepal?s population today is almost 25 million as against less than 10 million in 1961. At its present rate of growth, Nepal would have a population of 50 million in three decades. A stagnant economy and an increasingly unstable polity cannot but lead to social forces such as represented by the Maobadis. Over the last four decades the quality of governance has declined. Corruption has become endemic and under an autocratic rule it can only get worse?not better. A crumbling polity in Nepal would lead to migration out of Nepal into India. Given the open border between Nepal and India it would be difficult if not impossible to check this efflux out of Nepal. According to an estimate there were five to six million Nepali nationals living and working in India in 1990. It is feared that another half a million to one million Nepali nationals have sought residence in India, generating ethnic problems in some areas. Any new influx into India would have serious consequences for Indian political stability and economic development.

What Nepal?s ruling elite does to its polity (and also economy) can no longer remain an internal matter of that country if its impact is also felt by India. We need to rethink our Nepal policy, moving away from repeating the mantra that we wish Nepal well. We would have to move to a more pro-active policy respecting Nepal?s sovereignty and integrity and assisting it in embarking on a programme of rapid economic development. No other country in the world has as much vested interest in Nepal?s ??success?? as India has: no other country would face an adverse impact on its overall security as much as India would have. We need to have no vested interest in an individual but an institution. But above all we must have a conviction that without genuine democracy there can be no progress and stability in Nepal, and that is what we need to strive for.


The writer is former Indian ambassador to Nepal