My Vision for my Motherland

We need to have a logical approach to solving problems so that the demands of Terai residents as well as the demands of the other ethnic groups are met without destroying the basic structure of the society.

By Khagendra Thapa

According to the 2001 census of Nepal, there are 103 different ethnic groups in Nepal. They speak at least 90 different languages. Some of the ethnic groups are as small as 164 people. Nepal is a country of minorities. The largest minority group is that of Chhetris at 15.80% followed by the Brahmins at 12.74%. Magars constitute the third largest minority group at 7.14%. Realizing the complexities of the make up of the population, Pirthvi Narayan Shah, the founding father of Nepal declared in 1767 AD that Nepal is a garden for people of all races and ethnic groups. In fact, Nepal was well known as a peaceful nation with complete harmony among people of diverse ethnic groups who practiced different culture and spoke different languages.

To give an example as to how people live in the villages of Nepal, let me describe the village in Dhankuta where I was born and raised. To the south of my home there were four Newar families. To the east side there were three Newar families and two Sunar families. To the north side there were six Newar families and six Chhetri families. To the west side there were four Damai Families and Chhetri families. Further in the east side there was a big Limbu village mixed with Brahmins and Chhetris. Further south and south-east there were more Limbus, Chhetris and Brahmins. In the north-west there was a large group of Kami and Magar residents. There was even a Sarki family in the village. All these people lived in complete harmony. There was no presence of any police in the village. Any dispute among the villagers was settled by the village elders without any involvement of the courts. There was only one court in the district headquarters. I am sure it is a typical mountain village in Nepal. It was a self sustained village in that Damais tailored the clothes, Kamis made the tools for agriculture and house hold items out of iron, Sunars made the jewelry and Sarkis made the shoes. The villagers produced just about everything they consumed. When they wanted to eat some produce such as peanuts or mangoes or bananas they went to another village where there was a bazaar held once every two weeks where villagers bartered their produce. For example, those living in the hot areas and cold areas bartered their products.

We have lived in peace and harmony for centuries. After the movement of April 2006 sidelined the monarchy and brought the former insurgents (Maoists) to government, there have been numerous incidents of racial and ethnic group uprising thereby creating tension and conflicts among the various groups. Some groups are demanding cessation from Nepal to establish a separate independent country. All political parties have agreed to at least divide the country into Federal Republic. However, not a single party has any clue as to how to divide the country into different units. Various ethnic groups have demanded Self Governing Units based on ethnic groups. This is not going to work due to the lack of the homogeneity of population settlement. Moreover, Nepal has always been a unitary government. No single part of the country has ever been a self governing unit for the last 240 years, which is a long time. Therefore, when the political parties promised Federal Structure to ethnic groups and Terai residents, they have not realized that they are treading uncharted territories.

At the time when many nations are working together and uniting their efforts such as the European Union, it is impractical and stupid to divide an existing nation to appease a handful of selfish politicians, thugs, and armed terrorists. The division of nation will bring about untold amount of misery and suffering to the people. It will benefit no one. We should learn from what happened when the British left India and the former colony of Britain was divided into India and Pakistan. We need to have a logical approach to solving problems so that the demands of Terai residents as well as the demands of the other ethnic groups are met without destroying the basic structure of the society. The foolish and selfish politicians and administrators living in luxury of Kathmandu do not understand the problems faced by the people in the villages of the Terai, hills and the mountains. Are these fools aware of the fact that a pregnant mother has to carry drinking water for the family two miles up the mountain? Men do not fetch drinking water in Nepal. When I was out in Salyan to survey for water supply, I was both saddened and surprised to note how difficult a life a Magar village had because of lack of drinking water in the vicinity. They had to travel two miles down the steep mountain to fetch water.

It seems that the political parties do not have the interest of the people or the nation in mind. They are all busy in planning to take care of themselves, their relatives and their cadres. Not a single political party has given a program or plans as to how they are going to solve the problems of the people regarding poverty alleviation, eradication of illiteracy, economic development, train workforce to develop the country, health care, education, transportation, maintain racial and ethnic group harmony, and above all protect our territorial integrity and preserve our sovereignty.

Since no political party is willing to give a plan of action, I decided to give mine with a hope that they might decide to copy my plan so that our motherland and our people will benefit.

Our Goals as a Nation

The goals are divided in different aspects. Different goals may require different time limits.

Education and Literacy

1. Every school age child between the ages of 5-16 years should have access to school with books and school supplies.

2. Every Nepali should be able to read and write. For this, we must run a massive literacy campaign. Every literate Nepali must be challenged to help make three fellows illiterate Nepalis read and write within a year. Democracy without the literate citizens becomes a joke just like the one we had from 1990-2002.

3. We must open life skills development centers where we provide training in basic health care, carpentry, plumbing, electrical wiring, masonry work (brick laying), etc. At least one center must be opened in each district.

4. We must emphasize in trained practical hands on education in areas of engineering technologies such as electrical, welding, manufacturing, plastics, surveying, construction, automotive, HVACR as well as nursing, dental hygiene, physical therapy, radiography, respiratory care, sonography, phlebotomy, nuclear medicine, etc.

5. We must emphasize on female education and achieve gender equality by empowering women.

6. We must provide equal opportunity to education to people of all regions and all ethnic groups with special attention given to historically disadvantaged groups.

Health Care

1. No Nepali should die of communicable diseases or due to lack of medication of any kind of diseases.

2. Every village should have a pharmacy and a basic health care provider.

3. Nepal must manufacture its own medications in collaboration with the Pharmaceutical companies. If proper incentives are given, big Pharmaceutical Companies would be willing to shift their Asian headquarter to Nepal because of our weather which is highly conducive to all kinds of herbal plantations and central location.

4. We must have at least one Major Hospital in every zone.

5. We must strive for a steady decrease in child mortality

6. We must increase the awareness of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS

7. We must help improve maternal health.

Fulfilling our Energy Needs

Nepal has one of the largest hydroelectric power generation potential. However, because of the lack of leadership and vision, we do not even have enough energy in the capital city, forget about the villages. To fulfill our energy needs for domestic consumption as well as for transportation and manufacturing, we must aggressively launch hydroelectric power generation programs with intent to fulfill our complete need for energy without having to import any fossil fuels from other countries.

Transportation

1. We must build major electric train service that runs from east end of the country to the west end.

2. There should be north south connections to the major east-west electric train by electric buses as well as ropeways.

3. All other vehicles should be based on electric energy or other alternative energy.

4. All government owned vehicles should be sold and government and corporations should not provide transportation to the employees. If transportation is provided to the government officials it should be a bus which will pick them up in certain locations and drop them off at the end of the day. Even government ministers should not be provided with government vehicles. A poor country like Nepal cannot afford to provide expensive cars to the high ranking officials or ministers.

Economic Development

Nepal must rely on its own resources and stop begging for money and donations from other countries even to pay the salary of its incompetent and idiotic bureaucrats. Nepal must fight for fair trading practice with other countries particularly with its immediate neighbors. One of the areas where Nepal can immediately start benefiting is in exporting bottled water. In addition, it should increase the production of medical herbs for export. Our emphasis must be to encourage farmers to cultivate herbs for export purpose.

Turn Nepal into the Business and Financial Center of Asia

Once Nepal establishes its basic infrastructure, it should actively entice the multinational corporations such as Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Citi Corp, and many others to establish their Asian headquarters in Nepal. Nepal’s central location in Asia, its honest and hard working people and great weather should be very appealing to the Corporations. If we are able to bring political stability, there is no reason why the multinational corporations would not be willing to relocate their headquarters in Nepal. In addition, they will save a lot of money in energy costs since we have wonderful weather requiring less heating and cooling than any other Asian country.

Food and Agriculture

Nepal’s population is increasing both due to natural growth rate of 2.2% and immigration from India. The available cultivable land is only 14% of the total area. Therefore, we must emphasize on increasing agricultural production.

1. We must provide irrigation for agriculture so that the farmers do not have to depend on the rainfall alone. Currently, only miniscule areas of the arable land are irrigated. Increased irrigation will help farmers to produce more food and cash crops.

2. We must use Biotechnology to produce more food. For example, according to Jimmy Carter because of the recent developments the following areas of food production using Biotechnology may help Nepal to produce enough food to feed its population:

Golden Rice enriched with beta carotene and iron that can help combat vitamin-A deficiency, a major cause of blindness among poor people in Nepal. Researchers also are working on "Golden mustard" that will yield cooking oil enriched with vitamin. Mustard oil is widely used in Nepal to prepare food.

New varieties of corn, sorghum, sweet potato, and wheat that are being developed to provide more amino acids such as lysine, an important dietary protein.

Cucurbit crops that resist viruses and increase yields of these important staples for Nepali people.

"Pharma foods" that may help prevent or cure diseases such as cholera and diarrhea, leading causes of infant mortality in Nepal.

New banana varieties resistant to Black Sigatoka that could reduce the need for chemical controls, improve production agronomics, and increase the quality of bananas. These Bananas could also be exported as cash crop.

3. We must make proper use of land for agricultural purposes. Instead of just producing the traditional staple crops such as rice, corn, millet and wheat, Nepali farmers should produce more vegetables and products that cause less soil erosion. The market for such products is readily available in the cities in Nepal as well as in India. For example, farmers in east Nepal already export substantial amount of vegetable to India.

4. Proper land use may prevent both soil erosion and landslides. Both increase the siltation in the rivers thereby causing flooding and river changing its course. River course changes can destroy a lot of arable land. It takes over 400 years to replace the top soil that is being washed away from the hills and mountains of Nepal because of improper land use.

Housing and Shelter

Because of the increase of population and displacement of people from their homes to cities as well as to district headquarters due to the Maoists insurgency, there has been an acute shortage of housing in these areas. In addition, because of increasing loss of forested areas, the poor people are finding it more and more difficult to find basic building material for their shelter.

Our goal should be such that every Nepali family has some kind of a shelter. As much as possible shelters or houses should be built using local resources. For example, using jute sticks, bamboo and mud, Satars, Dhimals, Tharus, and others build beautiful little huts for themselves whereas in the mountains, villagers build good homes using bamboos, stones and clay.

Of course, our politicians and rich businessmen and those who are historically privileged build concrete and brick homes especially in Kathmandu. I do not believe there is a single politician who does not have a nice home in Kathmandu. Some of the highly corrupt ones also own homes in India along with fat bank accounts.

Make Nepal the Play Ground of Asia

Nepal has many historic and religious places such as Lumbini, the birthplace of Lord Buddha and several religious places for both Hindus and the Buddhists. Moreover, as stated above we have great weather as well as natural beauty. In addition, seven of the ten highest mountains including Mount Everest are located in Nepal. The holy city of Kathmandu is not only the home of Lord Pashupatinath but is a great historical place with its majestic pagoda style temples and palaces built in the last seven centuries. Additionally, there also famous Buddhist holy places such as Swoyambhu and Bauddha.

Nepal should make it appealing to tourists not only from countries all over the world but also pay special attention to tourists from both its neighbors China and India. The rising economy of these countries has created a large middle class which can afford to spend money on traveling.

In addition to the existing cultural, religious, and natural beauty, Nepal should add new attractions to entice other kinds of tourists. Nepal must clean up its religious places. Casinos could play an important role in improving the economy of a region or country. For example, look at Nevada in the USA. It has no agricultural land and no industries. Yet it is thriving economically. Right now the great industrial states such as Michigan are in a very poor economic situation where as Nevada is flourishing economically primarily because of its casinos.

Preserving Our Heritage

Nepal has many historical religious places with ancient temples especially in the holy city of Kathmandu. There are also important historical temples and places outside the capital like the beautiful Janaki Mandir in the holy city of Janakpur. The all powerful parliament has declared Nepal a secular state, nevertheless these unruly parliamentarians should not be allowed to destroy our national heritage like the way Taliban destroyed Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. When the Maoists come to power and Comrade Prachanda becomes the first President of Nepal as he promised to Nepali people, I genuinely hope that he will not burn our religious books and burn down our temples.

Maintaining the Harmony and Peace among Communities

Thanks to Maoist comrades, civil society members, NGOs and INGOS, the peaceful coexistence that existed in Nepal for centuries is no longer there. The events of Kapilvastu, Gaur, Nepalganj and the constant ‘chakka jams’ and Nepal bandha are burning examples of what has happened to the otherwise peaceful society. The random murders by members of one ethnic group on other ethnic groups are taking place just about everyday not to mention about the threats of violence and intimidation. As a result, some communities living and working in some parts of the country have been displaced.

In order to maintain and to reestablish the inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic group peaceful coexistence, Nepal needs to form Peace and Reconciliation Committees, comprising of the representatives of all ethnic groups (residing in the area) in each village and communities.

Observe Baisakh 1st as the day of National Unity and Reconciliation

The Muluki Ain (Civil law) declared about forty years ago did away with all kinds of discriminations and untouchability. However, the law was only limited in paper. The successive governments of all political color did nothing to really implement it. Now, it is time for the people to come forward and implement the law and repair the fractured race and ethnic group relations. In order to achieve the peace and tranquility in the society, we must declare Baisakh 1st (The Nepali New Year’s day) as the Day of National Unity and Reconciliation. In order to get rid of the issue of untouchability and discard the feeling of superiority and inferiority by people of different castes, I propose that we hold parties and get together in every village, town and city blocks and have feasts sitting, singing, dancing and enjoying together so that Brahmins, Podes, Sarkis, Damais, Chamars, Kamis, Madhises, Pahades, everyone gets along on the day of Day of National Unity and Reconciliation. We must also welcome people of all religious faiths no matter whether they are Muslims, Christians, Buddhist, or Hindus. There are two issues which bring about division and dissension among people and those are politics and religion. Discussion about these issues must be banned from these parties. Consumption of alcohol must not be allowed in these get together. Political leaders who want to bring political issues and religious leaders who want to talk about religion must not be allowed to participate. However, as long as they are willing to participate without political agenda and religious prejudice, they should be welcome. People themselves should organize these parties (may be pot lucks) without the involvement of the government.

(Thapa is a professor and Vice President of Academic Senate at Ferris State University and can be reached at Khagendra_Thapa@ferris.edu)

couldn't resist opining (woof woofing :P)

It was a self sustained village in that Damais tailored the clothes, Kamis made the tools for agriculture and house hold items out of iron, Sunars made the jewelry and Sarkis made the shoes.

so basically damais should keep on tailoring clothes, kamis should restrict their skills to making tools outta iron only, sunars to jewelry making and sarkis to shoe sewing only huh?...everyone seems happy because they don't know they can explore things beyond that if they want.....'oblivion' and 'awareness' are the words i suppose. poor villagers don't know they can go to colleges if they will. give them freedom of speech and freedom to chose what they want to and then see if they're happy with what they've been doing since ages.

also a couple of things about his development plans don't make perfect sense to me or they sound too ambitious to say the least. the idea of electric train to connect the east-west, north-south boundaries sounds highly ambitious especially with the difficult terrain we have...well unless we build subways but then again show me the money please! we are talking of thousands of megawatts of power plants here. can we imagine the operation/maintenance cost alone?
why don't we simply have black-topped roads instead and keep things simpler hoina? first things first...

nepal lai financial center banaunu parchha bhanne kura chahin munasib ho (being a nepali :P). but then we have to simply change our infrastructure from scratch to make that even remotely possible. we need to have hundreds of flights a day possible via nepali airport. with the large volume of people coming to nepal from across the globe, we gotta have number of good quality hotels with the state of the art technologies, good roads, no dearth of adequate water supply, no load shedding..so on and so forth. hell, we need to have virtually everything right from the word go. 

i know thapa jyu loves nepal and want to see it developed..but in doing so, perhaps he's looking at many things from foresight assuming that the basic infrastructures have already been built . thanks to 250 years regime of royals and 17 years regime of self-proclaimed royals. there's no harm in looking at things from an optimistic POV tara yo ta oohi Prachanda le Nepal lai 5 years ma switzerland banauchhu bhanya jasto bhayena ra let's be more realistic/pracitcal hoina? . it's easy to pen down thoughts on paper

PS BTW, thapa jyu lai saayad prithvi narayan shah ko santati haru baata kehi bishesh aasha bha bhaye chahin beglai kuro hai! 'royals' they are still after all !

LooTe

I read this article and though i feel the vision goes off little beyond the reality of current state of Nepal.Overall if i have to sum up, i give a 'B' to this plan cause it atleast shows desire.Granted it is over ambitious but
it is phase out plan Not that you make Nepal financial center in 5 years or 1000s of planes fly over Nepal's sky in 5 years.

You should appreciate the enthusiasm a normal citizen like Mr.Thapa has shown .Where is such from leaders of ruling party or any party????Also It is way better than any maobadi swiss or singapore making false speech and Hisila yami's stupid plan.Just New Nepal isn't enough!

Just federal republic doesn't suffice the actual need to underprivileged people.Mere political gain
is what parties slogans are .There is no concrete vision and plan behind That.

Divide and rule is the actual reason behind federal structure motive and not the upliftment.

Also the author is not saying kami should remain kami, Damai should remain damai.What he
is showing is the structure of Nepalese society and the harmony there used to be.

How would you kick out all the bahun from Kathamandu valley???Should we make Newari the official
language of Newar state??Now how can limbu claim limbuwan when there is so much population of
newar and chetri in that region??If not so they want do you mean by Newar Rajaya or Limbu rajya.
So in Newar rajay should Nepali be official language?

Now the divide and rule politics have hurt nepal in so many ways that maoist even with full
dictatorship won't be able to resolve.Short term gain has lead to long term damage.Flag burning is just the begining some racial riots were just the tip of an iceberg.More is yet to come .All the parties
following the demands of maoist shows that they are same bunch of not only visionless but also stupid.

ya but then again its easier to say then do

Guys,Don't post those long articles......irritates me....just post link...if some one wanna read ,he will open it...lets post wat u think,wat i think,wat others think......

i don't have anything against his enthusiasm and will to develop nepal. just like of any normal citizen, i respect his love for the country.
all i am trying to point out are two things:

1) his little over-ambitious approach along few lines of his plans..it's important to realize the ground-reality when you sketch a master plan.

2) second thing, while he is entitled to his opinion,i don't quite find any rationale on his sole commentary spitting venom against the political parties alone. if you have missed out, some of his lines clearly indicate that he has soft-corner for prithvi narayan shah's dynasty. on one hand, you see political parties as a bunch of 'fools' (in his own words) and then on the other hand you justify the other regime that veiled the future of nepal by its autocratic games and slow-poisoned the fate of its citizens for 250 freaking years? if you think the ethnic disputes came along only after april 06 (in his reading), then you need to do some reality checking. perhaps need to come out of the history books that sang slogans of praise for the shahs.

that's all :D

This may sound stupid but this is how my perception works.

First organize your relation then your family will get organized and live in harmony. When each and everyone take care of family relations then society will get strong. When society will get strong then culture,tradition will get strong. It will bring unity and finally nation. This will never happen as our GODS are not capable of doing so how can we human do it. At least we can reach 40 percent of it. lets try. Lets look upon ourself first. Honestly, how many of you have good relation with your families including uncle,aunts and cousins. How many of you have not talked with your parents for last 2 months. How many of you here has send money back home in last one year? How many of you have actually thought of coming home but haven't? how many of us are so blinded with money and career that we have sacrificed our loved ones? Just a honest question.
I feel pity for those who cut their trees in their  own garden and goes to water plant in others garden.

We need to let our younger generation know that its good to speculate and its to good to gamble. In fact, we should encourage them.

We will NEVER be an industrialized nation. We don't have enough natural resources to boast of. Agricultural goods we produce, which is what our majority of people do, are not even enough to sustain ourselves, let alone export them. So, if we just keep doing what we are doing, we will forever remain an impovershed country.

That's why we need to embrace the culture of speculation and gambling. High risk--high gain. Of course, there is potential to high losses too. But as a nation that is already close to the pit, how worse can we be if you sustain few other losses. So, upside is definitely far more enticing. Not much to  lose but a LOT to gain.

Our politicians keep dreming of turning around our economy comparable to that of Switzerland. Yes, Switzerland is a mountainous and landlocked country that was never invaded by foreign powers, notably during European wars. Nepal is also a mountainous and landlocked country that was also never invaded by foreign powers, most notably during the expansion of the British empire. Our leaders think that since we and Swiss have so much in common, it should not be any difficult for us to be the "Switzerland of the East."

While Swiss kids were inculcated with the art of speculation and gambling, we were discouraged, sometimes even punished when found speculating. Swiss took high risks, therefore they are prosperous; that's why they have UBS, Credit Suisse--major investment banks. Of course, they didn't just bet randomly.

My point: forget about doing this and that. Teach your kids how to speculate--how to trade. Unlike in the past where you had to be rich to be more rich, the playing field has been levelled now--thanks to internet.