Baburam Bhattarai pointed to a bouquet in his study and said: “People who never looked at us before are coming here to give me flowers.†Flanked by portraits of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, the chief ideologue of the Maoists spoke to Nepali Times on Tuesday about sleepless nights, his party’s economic agenda and about whether he’d been offered the prime ministership.
Nepali Times: How does it feel to arrive here after the long journey from a village in Gorkha?
Baburam Bhattarai:
There is a deep sense of responsibility, and that comes from the fact
that I was born in an ordinary village family, my mother can’t read or
write, my father is a farmer. As a child I used to tend livestock and
help in the farm, and when I went to high school I had to carry water
and cook for myself. From that to be able to go to a good school and be
educated, and to have that contrast in one lifetime is fascinating in a
way. But now we have been brought to this position where we have to try
to resolve issues of national importance, there are enormous
aspirations, there is lots to do but we have very little time and
resources. It makes us somewhat anxious, thinking about whether we can
do it or not. There are sleepless nights, getting up at three in the
morning and not being able to go back to sleep.
But luckily we have a lot of experience, we engaged in open
politics, then we went underground for ten years then we engaged in an
armed struggle. This gives us the capacity to deal with challenges, and
personally I have always been very committed and that is why I think we
can handle the challenges before us.
Did you ever have a sense of destiny? That this is where you wanted to go.
No, I didn’t. You were born and raised here in the city, but as a child
in my village there was no way I could imagine I would ever end up
where I am now. Even the background of (my wife) Hisilaji is different,
and when we take our daughter to my home village she is surprised at
the conditions there. If I hadn’t had the chance to have the schooling
I did, I am sure I would still be there.
I used to get very emotional back then when I saw the poverty, discrimination and disparities all around me in the village. And what was I going to do about it, those feelings did touch me at an early age. But what are the ways to deal with it, how can these problems be solved, I started thinking about those things in my college days when I finished architecture and started working on my PhD in JNU where I analysed the problems from a Marxist perspective.
Marx said there is always a combination of necessity and chance. I
had a realization about the social conditions of my community, the
poverty. I knew that the feudal monarchy had to be ended. But I never
knew how it was going to happen, how we were going to go about it, who
would come to the forefront to lead it.
This week when the first results started coming in, weren’t you surprised?
Not so much. You are all in the media, you do political analysis, I
have the feeling you may have been a bit out of touch with the reality
in the countryside. The ground had shifted in the past 10 years of
conflict. The marginalized and deprived women, janjatis and Dalits were
really suffering, and city-based people couldn’t really understand how
bad things were. There was all this about how the Maoists were
spreading terror and fear, but we understood what was happening in the
hinterland. We used to go back and forth from Gorkha and Rolpa.
We were convinced the people wanted change, and we knew they would let us lead them. We knew we’d be the largest party, but we didn’t know exactly how many seats we would win. That is why we were surprised that everyone, including the media doubted us. The middle class and the city elite were shocked by the result because they’d never understood what was happening in the villages.
Everyone got it wrong. We have been meeting members of the diplomatic community this past week, and they have told us that there was intelligence failure. But we are people who fought a war, for us getting things wrong by a minute or by a metre was a question of life or death, so we had told our cadre to carry out a very concrete analysis for the elections.
The really oppressed groups like the Tamangs and Tharus voted for us
in large numbers. In the Tamang belt we have won 24 of the 27 seats and
in the Tharuwan, of the 22 seats we have won 20. Of the 24 women who
have won, 20 are Maoist women. But even the traditionally-vacillating
urban middle class, the 20-30 percent, who make up their minds at the
last moment came over to our side.
Was the price the Nepali people had to pay in terms of lives lost and destruction, was the revolution worthwhile?
We are still in a revolution. The elections were part of our
revolution. It’s not just an armed struggle that is a revolution.
Revolution means a radical rapid change in the socio-economic
structure, that can happen through violent or non-violent means. At
some point in a revolution, violent means need to be adopted. This
election was part of the revolution to end the feudal monarchy. If we
hadn’t waged the People’s War to weaken the state and empower the
masses, the conditions would not have been created for the elections
alone to achieve the goal.
So, it’s not true that we abandoned the bullet to come to the
ballot. We used both the bullet and the ballot in this revolution. You
couldn’t win with only bullets, and you couldn’t win with only the
ballot. Nepal’s revolution has been completed in this unique manner.
After a ten year war, 15,000 killed, don’t you think these elections were like coming back to square one?
No. If you don’t mind, that is where you are wrong. This was a
constituent assembly election. Earlier elections were parliamentary
elections granted by a king. There was no structural change,
sovereignty was not with the people. This time we are drafting a new
constitution. And it wasn’t possible without an armed struggle.
There are reports of widespread threats and intimidation by your cadre during the election camapaign?
It is possible that happened in some places. But it would not be
possible to do it from Jhapa to Kanchanpur and from villages to the
cities. The main factor is that the people wanted change, and they
wanted relative change and to give a chance to a new party.
When are you going to turn your attention to the economy?
Our goal is economic development. For an economic revolution to
succeed, we have to complete this political revolution by writing a new
constitution. There is of course the need to provide immediate relief.
There are the victims of the war, those affected by inflation,
corruption those things needs to be addressed urgently. But the
foundations also need to be laid for structural changes required for an
economic transformation.
Can these things be achieved in two years? How will you deal with inflation?
Unless you pay attention to the structural reforms in the economy,
superficial interventions won’t help. You can give subsidies and get
over the immediate problem, but we also have to address the roots of
the crisis which is that a subsistence agricultural economy on which
two-thirds of our population depends. That will not lead to economic
development. There has to be a total transformation of the economy.
Second, we need massive job creation for which we need investment in
hydropower, tourism and its optimum utilization. This will lay the
foundation for longterm economic development.
Your election manifesto also talks about land reform. What kind of land reform are you talking about?
The simple universal principle of land-reform is land to the tiller. In
mountains, the owners are also tillers but in the tarai there is a lot
of absentee landlordism and productivity is low. There has to be
redistribution and modernization of the methods of cultivation.
But Mao’s collectivization and the kolkhozes of the Soviet Union which
led to famines and were a disaster. Can we afford to experiment?
There has been some exaggeration here. In China and Russia there may
have been some problems, but in other Third World countries it worked.
And if the Chinese and the Russians hadn’t totally dismantled the
feudal structures, they wouldn’t have achieved the growth that they
have today.
When we say we want to end feudalism, we don’t mean we want to end
private ownership. Our economic development is in our language
bourgeoise democratic revolution, in other words, collectivization,
socialisation and nationalisation is not our current agenda. All we
mean to say is that for a weak and backward economy like ours the state
must play a facilitating and regulatory role. Without monetary and tax
policies foreign interests may be more dominant, so the state has to
protect the domestic private sector and the free market.
Yet, the business community is not yet comfortable with the Maoist win
mainly because of their experience over the past two years. Do you have
words of assurance for them?
We would like to assure everyone that once the Maoists come (into
government) the investment climate will be even more favourable. There
shouldn’t be any unnecessary misunderstanding about that. The rumours
in the press about our intention are wrong, there are reports of
capital flight, but this shouldn’t happen. And the other aspect is that
once there is political stability, the investment climate will be even
better. Our other agenda is economic development and for this we want
to mobilise domestic resources and capital, and also welcome private
foreign direct investment. The only thing we ask is to be allowed to
define our national priorities.
We want to fully assure international investors already in Nepal
that we welcome them here, and we will work to make the investment
climate even better than it is now. Just watch, the labour-mangement
climate will improve in our time in office. What happened in the past
two years with the unions happened during a transition phase, but the
business sector also hasn’t identified the other factors that are
cauing them losses.
What do you mean by national industrial capitalism?
Local development is important. Every state wants to give priority or
protection to its own industry. Otherwise why have a state? When we
allow foreign direct investment we will give priority to those who have
a local partnership. That way the national entrepreneurial class will
also develop and the national economy will benefit.
How about the hydropower deals that have already been agreed on?
The ones that have been signed needn’t have been done in a hush-hush
manner, after all we were in an interim period and we could agreed on
it collectively. By agreeing to these projects a day before we returned
to government has aroused suspicions. But we understand that big hydro
projects are not possible without foreign investment. The deals could
have been negotiated in a more open manner. If there has been major
irregularities, we need to investigate them, correct the
decision-making process but we don’t want to discourage investors by
shutting down projects.
The time has come to deliver on the promises. There are very high expectations.
That is true, but the bigger challenge is to maintain national unity.
Let’s have political competition, but for the next 10-15 years let’s
cooperate, let’s agree on a common minimum program. That will bring
political stability, allow us to make optimum use of our domestic
resources and bring in investment and make progress in the elimination
of absolute poverty. If we can achieve these things in a fairly short
timeframe, it will give the people patience and lay the groundwork for
further development.
Our main worry now is the culture of disunity that results in
political instability. All the parties must work together until the new
constitution is written. The parties shouldn’t react emotionally and
say they’ll leave the government.
Have you been offered the prime ministership?
(Laughs) Can’t say now. We have been advocating a presidential system,
but need to make provision for that, and then we will divide up our
work among us depending on who is more capable of completing the task
at hand. As we say, it is everyone according to their need and their
capacity. Because of my interest in development planning, maybe my work
will be in that field.
Everything is reaching a crisis point. There are big expectations and hope, people need to see immediate changes?
The first thing we want to stop is corruption and leakage. That itself
will bring big relief to the people. Like Marx said, if everyone lived
in huts people are satisfied. It is when someone builds a village among
the hovels that there is expectation. We have to meet basic needs of
people first, that is our priority. Our economic agenda has growth with
employment. Like our plans for infrastructure development, this creates
immediate jobs and also gets things built.We have to take advantage of
the fact that we are located between China and India. These two
countries are the next two superpowers and we are in the middle. In the
past we were seen as a buffer state, now we can be a vibrant bridge
between them and benefit from the comparative advantage. For this we
need infrastructure development and connectivity on both sides. For
this we have the labour and for capital we can raise the money from the
wasted investment in unproductive sectors. For large-scale investment
we will have to rely on outside investors and for that we can use the
BOOT model.
Your
party has served in government in the interim period. You understand it
from within, which aspects of it would you like to change?
One thing is that there is no coordination between ministries. Everyone
is doing their own thing, that just won’t do. They should be operating
according to the state’s main policies and coordinate activities.
Secondly, the bureaucracy is lethargic and corruption-ridden. Unless
that is changed the ministries won’t be effective. A lot of ministries
overlap, and we need to restructure them.
Your own subject is urban planning. How are you going to control this unplanned centralized growth in Kathmandu?
You see on this map the various federal units, we need to spread out
the economic activity so jobs are available outside Kathmandu. The fast
track highway (to Hetauda) will shift the population out, and we have
to plan the growth of Kathmandu properly with zooming and the outer
ring road. No where in the world is urban growth as unplanned as it is
here.
With all these problems, do you think the other parties just gave up and said let the Maoists handle it?
(Laughs). Maybe. Maybe they think let’s see how the Maoists do it. The cynical ones would probably say it.