Tag Archives: Nepal

Jun 13 2013

Village and Urban Culture in Nepal

I recently (September 2011) learned what happens if there’s a fatal accident on your property in Kathmandu.  It’s what would happen in a rural village.

A boy hired to apply concrete facing on a house fell from the second floor and was killed.  The boy’s father knew the homeowner did nothing that contributed to the accident, but in Nepali culture he must provide compensation because the boy would have supported his parents in their old age.  Because the father has a good heart and knows the homeowner does not have much money, he requested only about two years’ wages compensation, which the homeowner had to borrow and is now working to repay.

After I wrote about Truck Drivers’ Insurance in Nepal I was asked how big is the fine for killing someone and how much for injuring them.  The fatality fine is too large relative to what a driver can earn.  That’s why they join the insurance club.  There isn’t a fixed fine for causing injury.  The problem for the driver is he becomes responsible for paying the victim’s medical costs and compensation for loss of earnings, etc., which gets complicated and unpredictable.   If nobody observes the injury he simply drives off.  If he may be caught it’s better for him to get the definite outcome, the fine for a fatality.  Vehicular homicide is always considered an accident.

Another comment was: “The drivers must feel somehow insulated from reality up in the cab or how could they back up and run over someone on purpose.  Perhaps to the Ranas other people are just animals.”   The Ranas ran Nepal for more than a century before the king regained control in 1951.  They set the example for how to drive because they were the only ones who could have motorized vehicles. They established that killing someone in this way deserves only a fine.

The Ranas used tax-gatherers to collect half or more of the peasant farmers’ annual production.  They rarely saw anyone other than their entourage and they did act as if the rest of the population were animals.  You do not treat an animal standing on the road with any courtesy, not in a hierarchical society, anyway.  The Ranas’ vehicles were driven by their resentful and/or prideful servants who would have treated the “animals” not with indifference but contempt.

Nepal still has a highly status-conscious culture.  The Ranas established a caste system that encompassed not just them and other Hindus, not even just tribal folks who were not Hindu, but also foreigners.  There was a hierarchy of tribes as well as the traditional Hindu caste hierarchy.  This aspect of Nepali culture has changed less than I imagined.  I did not at first realize there is a hierarchy because we relatively very wealthy Westerners are treated as high caste.

I also misunderstood Kathmandu Valley culture because the village culture I saw first on mountain treks is more egalitarian.  The Ranas had little influence there because there was little for them in that harsh environment.   The majority of people in the Valley now are fairly recent arrivals.  If they can get a motorbike, they are suddenly more powerful.  They’ve acquired what the Ranas had, the ability to intimidate.   Add these dark cultural legacies to the very low level of common sense among Nepalis, G says, and you have the explanation of Kathmandu traffic.

G went to a driving school when he got a motorbike.  The owner said he need not take lessons, for Nrs 3,000 (a little over $40, an average monthly wage) he would get G a license.  G said he wanted to take lessons and pass the test.  The owner said he might fail and would have to wait six months before he could take it again.  G persisted and passed.

Another question prompted by “Truck Driver’s Insurance” was about the overall legal system, which used to be controlled by the king, then by parliament.  I’ve seen no discussion of an independent judiciary under the new Constitution.  The politicians want to remain safe from prosecution for corruption unlike in India, which is also famously corrupt, where a very strong independent judiciary was inherited from the Brits.  India’s Telecom Minister is in jail for corruption right now, his boss the Minister of the Interior is under indictment, and the Prime Minister may also be indicted.

A villager we talked with yesterday said:  “We don’t need democracy, what we need is for criminals to be punished.”  That’s a common theme.  We keep hearing complaints about the breakdown of law and order.  Westerners are safe so long as they remain in the tourist areas during daylight because there will be severe retribution for messing with them.  Nepalis, however, are not safe from each other anywhere after dark and business people are not safe period.  Three men were arrested yesterday for demanding protection money from more than 50 business owners in Kathmandu.

Village style social pressure for good behavior has not yet been replaced in Kathmandu by an urban rule of law.  The distressing results illustrate why urban societies need an effective central government.

Jun 8 2013

Nepal’s Election and the Kamlharis

Nepal has been without an elected government since May 27 of last year.  You’ve been eager, I’m sure, for an update on the election of the new Constituent Assembly (CA) promised for this June 21st.  The election will not be this month.  November is now the aspiration, but there has been some progress.

Political parties have been registering to participate in the election, 139 of them, 76 of which did not exist at the time of the 2008 CA election.  The breakaway Maoist faction has not registered because they say no election is possible under the current circumstances.  Most of the new parties are regional and ethnicity based.  Those getting 1% or more of the total vote will get seats in the CA based on proportional representation.

In the 2008 CA election, 84 parties applied, of which 74 were registered, 54 took part in the election and 25 were elected to the CA.  Most of the parties will again get no seats but the new CA will again be made up of representatives from of many different parties so it will again be hard to avoid stalemate.  One big issue delaying this election is wrangling over the 1% rule.

While the politicians wrangle, protesters stage strikes.  There’s plenty to protest about.  An issue I became aware of only because of strikes is the Kamlhari system of female bonded domestic workers.  Former Kamlharis with the “Struggle Committee for Abolishment of Kamlhari Tradition” recently imposed strikes in 22 districts after police broke up their peaceful demonstrations in Kathmandu and a district administration office.  Schools, shops and other businesses were shut and roads were blocked.

Kamlhari is part of a bonded labor system established millennia ago and institutionalized in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Nepal’s government defines bonded labor as: “a person working in the fields for a land owner, looking after his animals and doing other agricultural works in landlords’ fields and in his household, bound by loans from the landowner”.  You become bonded if you cannot repay a loan.  The system was abolished in 1926, again in 1990 and yet again in 2000 but it continues to exist.

There was an influx of people from the hills to southern Nepal after malaria there was eradicated.  The locals had no records of land they were cultivating.  The more worldly-wise newcomers registered it in their own names and the locals suddenly had landlords demanding rent for what they’d always considered their own.  The only option for many of them was to borrow the money, loans they could in many cases not repay because the land provided only enough for subsistence.

All political parties say they are against the system but even now there are leaders of the traditional ones, almost all of whom are high caste and relatively wealthy, who benefit from bonded laborers.  Thrice-abolished Kamlhari continues to decline but the system is deeply rooted in feudal history like so many aspects of Nepali culture.

Because malaria kept British India out, Nepal was thoroughly isolated until little over half a century ago.  Because geography makes travel in Nepal hard even now, communities are isolated from each other.  Urbanization, cellphones and the internet are motivating change but government is also necessary.  Dictators come to power fast and can change things fast.  Democracy is established slowly because society must change, and democracy must become somewhat established before it can start to deliver benefits.

Nepal’s politicians must learn how to govern and voters must learn how to get good representation (I wish we were setting a better example).  Constant strikes and protests are making daily life even harder for Nepalis but they are an essential part of the process.

Jun 3 2013

Earthquakes, Jewels and Zombies

Last night’s earthquake (September 2011) was the strongest in Nepal since 1934.   The epicenter between eastern Nepal and Sikkim was 6.8 on the Richter scale.  I barely felt it.

As G and I came out of a tea shop into light rain, I felt momentarily as if I was a little drunk.  The ground felt a little bit unstable but it passed so quickly it didn’t really register.  A little later, the street filled with people clapping, shouting and cheerfully jostling all across the road.  Was there a huge wedding?   Surely it couldn’t be part of today’s ceremonial offerings to continue getting blessings from their tools by those who work with metal even though that now includes taxi drivers, kitchen workers and many others?  G asked.  There had been an earthquake and people thought there could be another one.

This morning’s newspaper says there was almost no physical damage but more than 60 people were hurt jumping out of buildings and three were killed when the very old brick wall round the British Embassy collapsed.  This was not the “massive earthquake” D’s teacher said is necessary (but far from sufficient) for Kathmandu to get a better than third world road, water supply, sewer, electrical grid and other infrastructure.

G and I walked today in another area where it’s likely no Westerner ever went before.  There’s no temple or historical site, just very poor villages that you get to via an hour-long walk through the “jungle”.

We stopped at a tea shop where locals gather.  The proprietor was excited to find an American in his shop.  He said: “America is the richest country in the world”  then proposed to sell me a jewel that he took from a naga, a snake deity that lives in rivers.  They produce one jewel from their body during their incalculably long life.  They use it to hunt for food at night because it casts intense light 21 feet in every direction.  You can keep it if you can take such a jewel when the naga is not looking, the man tells G, but if the naga sees you, it will bite and you will die instantly.  It will not be after one minute or one second, it will be instantaneous.  That’s why such jewels are so rare.

The man said he would show it to me if I would like to buy it but it would cost eighty thousand million rupees.  That’s a little over one billion dollars.  G said I did not have so much money in my pocket today.  The man said in that case he could not show us the jewel.  G told him he had read about these jewels but never imagined he would have the good fortune to meet someone who possessed one.  The tea the man’s wife prepared was exceptionally tasty but it had no magical properties as far as I can tell.

On the way back G said when he was studying philosophy and reading Socrates “and it was the time when I must decide who I am, I realized I am a citizen of the world”.  He also realized he could not say he is a devotee of any religion.  His wife, however, is Hindu.  She knows that while not everyone is Hindu, those who are not are either Muslim or Christian and since her husband is not Muslim or Christian, he must be Hindu.  That means he must do what a Hindu man should do.

Yesterday was a day when all Hindu men must get their hair cut.  G forgot.  Last night Mrs G was very concerned because she believes dead men will now start to follow him around.   G does not want her to be distressed, so he will get his hair cut this evening.  She is afraid that will not be effective because today is the wrong day.  G says she will relax after a couple of days when she sees no dead men following him .

Jun 2 2013

Observations from Kathmandu

First observations from Kathmandu, September 2011:  “I typed this into Notepad for when I could get wifi access.  Extreme lack of electricity really is a problem.  The official explanation for 18 hours a day of load shedding made no sense.  Now I’m amazed at my naivete.  There’s a 200% customs duty on imports which means an imported generator brings twice its value to the government, i.e., the politicians.  Also, since they have a monopoly on fuel imports, they make money on every liter of generator fuel.  The politicians have powerful incentives to minimize the supply of electricity, therefore they do.

The Kathmandu real estate bubble has deflated because banks are not lending.  Everyone imagines lower land prices to be a temporary problem but Nepal’s economy depends on tourism, which is much lower this season, and remittances from family overseas.  There is almost no industry and none of the infrastructure, physical or cultural, that industry requires. There’s no fundamental reason for Kathmandu to be a large city.  It became the center because it’s at the crossroad for China/India trade.  Not much of that these days.  Villagers moved here en masse when the Maoist guerrillas made rural life too dangerous.  Now they don’t want to go back to village life.  They survive for now in what feels like the pre-recession US economy, i.e., one not based on anything real.

G. and I continue to talk about small scale businesses we could try to kickstart so villagers in the hills around Kathmandu could support themselves but we no longer believe it makes sense.  It just goes against our nature to give up.  The bright spot we found yesterday is villagers in the hills above Buddhanalikantha do not need to sell their land.  They are doing quite well selling illegal home-brew down in the city.   Because the rainy season isn’t quite over, it’s very humid.  Hill walking is pretty tiring in these conditions so we often stop for tea which provides opportunities for chatting, a double benefit.

Many of the few tourists this year have always-on iPad-type devices but the internet is usually off for lack of electricity.  It’s a dramatic illustration of the need for infrastructure and why the libertarian ideal is not viable.”

Some questions in response: “The corruption answer makes sense but I’m still surprised.  I suppose not having an immediate assumption of corruption is part of growing up in a culture where corruption is supposedly policed.  From your descriptions of Nepali politics it doesn’t seem like it’s possible for Nepal to succeed; do you think there’d be a way to arrange things so there was more benefit in their politicians doing what was good for the people they supposedly represent?  Something where the politicians could still benefit (they’d have to, or they’d never go for the policy changes.)

If Kathmandu has no real reason to be a city, and can’t seem to support being a city, does it follow that it will eventually have to stop being a city, or will there being a dense collection of people mean enough jobs that people will be able to stay?”

My response to the questions: “I haven’t yet figured out a system of carrots to incent politicians to do what is good for the people.  The stick, however, is a vigorous and independent judiciary determined to stamp out corruption, which Nepal does not have.  Politicians need to fear consequences of abusing their position.

I also haven’t yet figured out Kathmandu’s future.  D.’s social studies teacher told the class it would take another massive earthquake to make sufficient change possible.  He is almost certainly correct.  I don’t see how else it would be possible to establish the infrastructure necessary for a viable city.”

May 5 2013

Barbarous Legislation, Dysfunctional Governments and What to Do

Truck Driver’s Insurance in Nepal explains why a Nepali truck driver who injures someone goes on to kill them.  Sasi Kala commented: “This is one of the most barbaric insurances I’ve ever known” and asked: “Can we do something to change this madness?”  That led me to answer a bigger question; why should Americans be interested?

In 2006 when the civil war ended, the monarchy fell and several long visits had given me a sense of Nepal’s economic situation, I thought: “I have decades of experience in enterprise strategy as a consultant and executive, I studied it at Harvard Business School, I should be able to see a strategy for Nepal”.   I wasn’t expecting it to be helpful but if I came up with something compelling I’d presumably have tried to get it heard.  What happened is, I realized I was trying to answer the wrong question.  It’s not just that there’s so little to build on in Nepal, it now has neither government nor leader.

Distressingly little has changed in the months since I last posted about Nepal’s political situation, or even in the seven years since 2006.  The “movers and shakers who never move and rarely shake” continue only to fulminate.  The Constituent Assembly elected to draft a new Constitution within two years that failed to finish in four still has not been replaced so there is still no progress on the Constitution, and no government or leader.

An alliance of 33 parties is protesting against a proposed election to be held in November.  They say they will not participate.  Party leaders who say they will participate are resisting setting an election date until they have their alliances nailed down.  The caretaker government headed by the Chief Justice is not empowered to do anything, which suits the politicians all too well.  Meanwhile, daily life gets steadily worse for most everyone else.

The truck driver’s insurance is just one manifestation of a much greater madness.  There’s little we can do until that’s healed.  We can’t expedite the election to complete the Constitution, or its drafting, or the eventual election of a government.  All we can do in the meantime is, if we have contacts there, help them understand what should be in the new Constitution and what legislation the new government should establish.  That’s worth doing.

The existing truck driver insurance seems normal to Nepalis because it’s always been that way.   Justice always has been subordinate to the Executive in Nepal so its government officials always have been above the law and that, too, seems normal.  We’ve lived over two centuries with the Constitution of a secular republic and a democratically elected government, so we can more easily see some things Nepalis should change.

But what if we have no contacts in Nepal?  Why should we be interested in Nepalis’ situation, anyway?  Because it illustrates where we’re heading.

Nepal has dramatically inadequate infrastructure of every kind because it has no government.  That’s a fundamental problem.  If there’s no electricity 14 hours a day, there can be no wealth-producing enterprises with jobs for educated people.  Fully a quarter of Nepal’s GDP is money sent home by Nepalis doing manual work overseas.  “What’s the point of educating our children if there are no jobs for them?” one of my Nepali friends asks: “They’ll either leave us behind or make another war.”

Because the US government used to be effective, we have electricity, road and rail networks, school systems and the other services necessary for a strong society.  It’s easy to start a business here and grow it quickly to any size.  But our infrastructure that makes such things possible is now, day by day and year by year growing weaker.  Why?  Because our government no longer invests effectively for the future of our economy and society.

Why do we behave as if that’s OK?  Because the results are accumulating at a pace we don’t notice.  It’s like not changing the oil in a truck.  The wise trucker does that and other maintenance and at the appropriate time gets a new and better truck.  He doesn’t just drive the one he inherited into the ground.  Like Nepalis, we’re accustomed to what our government is failing to do.

We say government should get out of the way of business.  Nepal shows business is impossible without government.  It’s not just that you can’t operate a business without electricity and you can’t access markets if there’s no railroad or highways.  It’s not even worth trying if there’s no legal protection.  Over the last few years I’ve explored with Nepali friends half a dozen business ideas that could have produced worthwhile products, profits and employment.  They’d all be easy to do here.  Not one is viable there.  There’s so much missing and what is present is undependable.

I like business.  I had fun and satisfaction doing it for forty years.  But I have no experience in government and little understanding of how it works.  That’s a problem.  We all have biases about how much of what kinds of things government should do.  Bias is unavoidable but ignorance is not.  We all should form not just opinions but educated and actionable ideas about government, test them against ones that don’t match our biases, think them through, then work to get them established.

The goal of my original blog and this one was at first just to help me identify and define what would be better and worse.  That is necessary but it no longer feels sufficient.  We must stop our government and future from getting worse, and have our government do what it must for a better future.

Mar 13 2013

An “Election Government” for Nepal

Nepal has been without an elected government since May 27 last year.  Its politicians have been fighting ever since about who should lead the interim government necessary so there can be an election.

The four major parties have at last reached an agreement.  They want an “election government” led not by a politician but by Chief Justice Regmi.  Leaders of the UCPN (Maoist), Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and Madhesi Front just signed an 11-point political agreement to form an “interim electoral council” made up of 11 former civil servants.  This is because the NC and the UML would not agree to elections under the UCPN (Maoist) Baburam Bhattarai-led government.  President Ram Baran Yadav approved the agreement and has administered the oath of office to Regmi and two ministers.

The election of a new Constituent Assembly to complete drafting Nepal’s new Constitution will, they say, be held by June 21st.  But the “interim electoral council” will get a second term to December 15th, 2013 if it fails to hold the elections due to ‘any technical or untoward situation’.

Twenty two smaller parties represented in the dissolved Constituent Assembly, including the CPN-Maoist that recently split off from the UCPN(Maoist), rejected the idea and said they will launch protests.  The new Prime Minister should be from within the parties, they say.  Of course, it should not be Baburam Bhatterai the acting Prime Minister since last May 27.

The interim Cabinet will be responsible for holding the elections and overseeing day-to-day administration but will make no decision that could have a long-term impact.

Should we be optimistic?  Why not?  But we should also keep in mind that, ‘this is Nepal, so anything can happen”.  Or nothing can continue to happen.

Jan 25 2013

“If You Really Want to End Suffering,

it’s very simple,” Shugen Sensei told us at the start of our week of Zen Buddhist meditation: “Stop creating it.”  I’ll come back to that in a moment.  Just notice he did not say it’s easy.

Thinking why I blog reminded me of what Steve Jobs said is the secret to product development “Start somewhere”.  Just starting has always been my path.  Only later, sometimes much later, if what I started still feels worth doing, do I try to understand why.  The urge to figure out the why of Himalayan exploration, Buddhist practice, economic and governance research and blogging has now arrived.   To my surprise, it centers on ending suffering.

It all started ten years ago in the Himalayan mountains.  It wasn’t my idea to go there and I had no specific objective.  What happened was I found myself among people who appeared to be living with dignity, not aggressively, not hurriedly, and happily without the nice things we take for granted.  Could it be true?  Did they have a recipe my society might learn from?  So I kept going back.

I began to wonder if Buddhism was part of the recipe.   When we visited Buddhist temples our crew always lit lamps and prostrated.  But later, when we visited Hindu temples and the dwelling places of animist spirits, they showed reverence there, too.  I’d done some Buddhist reading by that time and was trying to meditate.  That’s why I went to the Zen monastery.

By the end of the first day I was pretty sure I’d made a mistake.  It was so hard to do nothing, sit completely still, just notice my thoughts, make no judgments, not reject or follow them.   By the end of the day I was exhausted although I’d “done” nothing.  I fell instantly asleep.  In the morning I thought, “I’ll see how it goes until breakfast”.   After breakfast I thought, “I’ll see if I can hang on ’til lunch”.  At day’s end I thought, “Maybe day three will be better“.   It was worse.  Day four was a little better, though, and so it went.  I’d suffered a lot by the end of the week but I’d also had glimpses of the truth of what Shugen Sensei told us at the start.  I was bringing my suffering onto myself.  That felt worth knowing.

Before I could go to the Himalayas I’d forced myself to retire.  It was hard because from then on, investments would have to support us.  With more time to worry, I realized my ignorance of how the economy works meant I had little confidence we’d made good investments.  So, when I wasn’t in the Himalayas I studied investment and economic theory.  The Great Recession arrived just as I was starting to feel I had the theories sufficiently clear.

Now I had to understand why our economy collapsed.  I studied governance and saw some parallels with the paralysis of government in Nepal.  That’s when I started blogging.  The US economy is embedded in the global economy.  There are so many moving parts in the system.  I had to start recording facts and analyses to get a holistic picture.  Charts and writing are my best tools for thinking and I hoped for critical feedback.

It’s only recently that I began to sense all these activities are related and they all start where Shugen Sensei was pointing.  They’re all aimed at happiness and stopping the creation of suffering.

The historical Buddha taught that we will only become truly happy when we work to end the suffering of others.  It must be so because we are not separate from others.  If they are unhappy we will also be made unhappy.  Communities were small two and a half thousand years ago.  People made each other happier or not with face to face interactions.   Today we also interact via nation-state and global systems that impact both us and future generations.  That’s why I care about governance.

Jan 18 2013

Why Nepal?

A happy-making and thought-provoking side-effect of this blog is it’s re-establishing friendships from long ago.  One such friend recently wrote: “I’ve been reading your blogs trying to understand your fascination with Nepal”.  I’ve tried many times to understand that, too.

First it was the mountains.  But why was I susceptible to their allure?  My mom once worked as nanny for an Italian noble family and vacationed in Switzerland.  By the time I knew her, her life was utterly different.  She never spoke about the past and kept almost nothing.  One thing she did keep was a Swiss mountain scene that she put on my bedroom wall.  Maybe it fascinated me because it was so mysteriously different.  I never asked about it but it had a lasting impact.  I still have that picture.

Fall 2010 867

So, when an opportunity presented itself, I went to the mountains in Nepal.  They were even more beautiful than I’d imagined.  The light is strong and always changing, so the mountains’ appearance is different from moment to moment.  The effort required to climb and descend triggers bliss-producing endorphins.  And it’s peaceful in a way we rarely experience, no TV, radio, cellphones, internet or chatter, just the undistracted opportunity to notice.   One thing I noticed was how differently the mountain people behaved.  I saw no aggression.  They were respectful both of place and people, often playful, and seemed happy though they had barely enough to survive.  And like the mountains, the people, too, tended to be beautiful.

Fall 2010 818

Back home in the USA I studied the history of Nepal, trying to understand what shaped its culture, and found it has many different cultures.  It’s similar in the mountains to the culture of neighboring Tibet.  In the southern lowlands where there is no geographical boundary with neighboring India, the culture is Indian.  In the middle hills and Kathmandu Valley are diverse blends of the two.  Why are those cultures different?  I studied the history of India and Tibet, which led me to the history of Tibet’s neighbor, China, and I began to see the underlying force of geography on history and therefore culture.

Back in Nepal again, and its neighbors Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan, I began to realize these people who fascinated me were not so very different from me.  Can you tell the difference?

Fall 2010 955

And that led me to Buddhism.  The great majority of people in Nepal’s mountains are animist, respectful of place because there must be spirits everywhere.  How else to account for what happens?  Those with questioning minds and some education retain that foundational belief while practicing Buddhism.  It offers an established discipline for respectful practice.  It is also, as the most intelligent, thoughtful and educated Buddhist scholars say, a logical and practical guide to happiness in a universe we don’t control.  It’s much more apparent up in the mountains that while we can learn to control our mind, we cannot control the universe in which we exist.

Fall 2010 972

I never imagined we could control the universe.  I did hope to learn how to increase happiness and kindness for me and everyone I meet.  It seems not quite so difficult to work on that learning among beautiful mountains and beautiful people even though, or maybe even in part because, they are so much at risk of natural disaster and so bedeviled by centuries of corrupt administration and selfish government.

Jan 5 2013

Where am I? Boudha Stupa

A deep question to which I offer a prosaic answer: I’m circumambulating Boudha stupa.  I wrote about circumambulation at here.  Where is Boudha and what’s a stupa?

Stupa is Sanskrit for “a knot or tuft of hair”.  In ancient Hindu texts it signifies “tree trunk” because mounds of dirt around a tree were tombs for kings and heroes.  Later, it came to mean a pyramidal or dome-like monument containing relics of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni  (563-478 BC) or other revered figures.  Buddha Shakyamuni is often depicted as having a topknot that symbolizes his attainment of enlightenment.

Boudha stupa is one of the world’s largest.  It is on the ancient trade route from Tibet and was probably built in the 14th century when Buddhists fled from Mughal invasions of northern India.  It is said to entomb the remains of Kāśyapa Buddha, the third of the five Buddhas of the present ‘Fortunate Aeon’ and the last of six Buddhas prior to the historical Buddha.  Kāśyapa was born in India to Brahmin parents (i.e., Hindu priestly caste) and is said to have been over 30 feet tall, perhaps accounting for Boudha stupa’s great size.  It is now a pilgrimage destination for both Buddhists and Hindus.

Here’s how it looked when it was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site:

Boudha Stupa 1979

Just over a century earlier, Rana Prime Minister Jung Bahadur invited Taipo Shing, a Buddhist who had come on pilgrimage from Szechuan in China and settled in Boudha, to interpret in peace negotiations after war with China.  He was made head man of Boudha and granted the income from extensive farmland as a reward for his services, married the daughter of one of Jung Bahadur’s concubines and was entitled the First Chini Lama.  His successors grew wealthy and powerful (they were consuls of the Dalai Lamas to the Kingdom of Nepal) until the Ranas fell.  Land reform in 1961 following restitution of the monarchy stripped the stupa of much of its supporting lands.

The influx of refugees from Tibet starting in the 1950s brought new wealth to the area.  The stupa is now surrounded by more than fifty Tibetan monasteries, which are themselves surrounded by housing for the enormously increased Kathmandu population.

Boudha Stupa 1970s and 2010

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution started by Mao Tsetung in 1965 to destroy: “old thinking, old culture, old habits and old customs” led to the destruction of over 6,000 monasteries in Tibet and more than one in six Tibetans starved to death or was killed.  Some Tibetans say their protector deity was reborn as Chairman Mao to force them from a familiar world where they could no longer progress spiritually.  Those who died and what was destroyed were, they believe, necessary casualties of spiritual progress; they were dispersed to grow again and make their wisdom available to all.

Regret for the loss of Boudha’s peaceful surroundings is in any case a mistake.  Better to truly accept that everything is changing in every moment.  The thought may arise in our mind that increased availability and popularity of Tibetan Buddhism’s beneficial teachings is good but ideally we will just notice our thoughts and feel no need to make judgments about them.  As a wise man said: “If you have one foot in the past and one in the future, you’ll only hurt your crotch”.

Dec 21 2012

A Tale of Two Constitutions

Nepal’s political morass has not changed in the months I was gone.  Progress is stymied by too many squabbling children in politician bodies crying “mine, mine, mine”.  How did it get this way?  Does history of the US Constitution offer guidance?

A transitory coalition of the other 5 leading parties recently announced they would no longer attend public meetings where Maoist Prime Minister Baburam Bhatterai or anyone else in his unappointed government is present.  The parties are united in wanting his government to fall, at odds on what should happen next.  The government is unappointed in the sense that there was no provision for what would happen if the Constituent Assembly (CA)  failed to draft the new Constitution.

When the CA was dissolved in May four years after its two year term began, Prime Minister Baburam said (a) we need an election to establish a body that will do what the CA failed to do, (b) we need a government in the interim, and (c) the existing government should stay in place to hold elections asap.  The second largest party, the Nepali Congress (NC), said that’s OK but Baburam must resign in favor of an NC leader.  Baburam said that’s no good because the President, who had the authority to disband the CA, is a member of the NC.  There would be too much risk the NC would hang on to power until they thought they could win an election.  If we want to make a change, he said, we should choose a coalition government for the interim.

It’s not clear how a coalition government would differ from what’s already in place nor how the politicians could ever agree who would make up the Cabinet.  The NC can’t even agree which of them would replace Baburam in the impossible event anyone else agreed to that.  Meanwhile the smaller parties make transitory alliances to promote specific agenda items that cannot be implemented in the current situation, anyway.

The leader of a party that recently split off from the Maoists published a 90 point demand.  One third of these demands relate to India, including that Indian vehicles must be banned from Nepal, Hindi movies must not be shown and Hindi music must not be broadcast.  The leader said his party would begin enforcing the demands nationwide and immediately.  Like other such initiatives, even the ones that makes sense, that soon fizzled out.

Having failed to accomplish what they were elected to do, the politicians fear they will not be reelected.  The one thing they can agree on is it’s best to keep delaying a new election.  It’s not clear how those not in the Cabinet are getting paid but it’s never clear how money flows in this society.  Transparency International reports that Nepal is the only South Asian nation whose Corruption Perception Index has worsened in the last seven years.  To get a government-financed contract, contractors must pay 50% of the project budget to politicians and civil servants who could block it.  Only 20% to 30% of the budget is spent on the goods or services provided.  They are inevitably of poor quality.

For some, the argument over the number of States in Nepal is philosophical; broader representation (more States) vs strengthening Nepal as a nation (fewer States).  For others, it’s personal.  Tribal leaders allegedly fighting for their people but wanting access to the money trough, “Nationalists” wanting to preserve the Hindu establishment’s lock on power, the breakaway party motivated by anti-Indian prejudice and seeing high caste Nepali Hindus as “really Indian”.

How did it get this way?  A regional prince who conquered his neighbors and unified the territory paid his generals with rent they could collect from newly conquered land.  After further conquests were halted by British India and imperial China the monarchy was pushed aside by the Rana family and, under new ownership, Nepal continued to be operated as a private family tax farm.  No industry developed because Nepal has no coal, oil or useful minerals and its geography makes transport very hard.  Subsistence farming was supplemented by petty trading.  One third to half the total economic output went to the center as rent.  Many men left to be soldiers in the British Indian army. When the Ranas fell 60 years ago the monarchy was restored.  Foreign aid began to arrive but much was siphoned off by the elite.  Almost the only government Nepal had ever had that was for the people was in villages with a good head man.  No surprise that apart from tourist services there are still few alternatives to getting a position to extort bribes, getting property to rent, or working abroad.

How important is a new Constitution for Nepal?  A nation’s Constitution is much like a business strategy; every business should have one and it should not be a bad one but several good ones could be successful.  A well executed good strategy will always beat a less well executed better strategy.  So Nepal’s politicians just need to choose one of the good ones, apply it diligently, and adjust as conditions change.  To illustrate, let’s take a quick look at the US Constitution that was established with equally high hopes and, as it happens, around the time Nepal first became a nation.

The US Constitution reached its current form in three stages.  First, the structure and purpose of government was articulated: (A) three branches of central government to make, enforce, and interpret the law, (B) the roles and powers of  central and local governments, and (C) what the national government would provide the people, namely justice, civil peace, common defense, things of general welfare they could not provide themselves, and freedom.  It was adopted in 1787 by a Constitutional Convention, ratified by conventions in eleven states and  went into effect in 1789.  Next, ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights were proposed in Congress and came into effect in 1791 after approval by three-fourths of the States.  It had been too hard to agree everything at once.  In the third stage, the Constitution undergoes periodic clarification and/or amendment.  It refers, for example, to “the people” but the rights it asserts for them were understood for very many years to apply only to white men.  Rights for American Indians, African Americans, women and others were adopted much later.

The US Constitution does not specify the nation’s borders, or the borders between States.  US territory greatly expanded after the Constitution was adopted and some State boundaries changed.  The Constitution is not explicit about whether States could secede and form a new nation.  The 1860s Civil War aka War of Northern Aggression established that the southern States would not be allowed to do that.  The great ongoing debate, however, is about the third element of the Constitution, the social contract, what the central government should provide to the people and how it should do so.

How have the first three Amendments, presumably considered to be the most important, stood the test of time?

The first amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  This may be the most important principal in the entire Constitution.  The devil, however, is in the details.  How much freedom, for example, should there be about speech on behalf of political candidates?  My freedom is abridged if my campaign contributions are limited but if there’s no limit, I can in effect silence you.  Estimated  contributions for the most recent US election range up to $6B.  Because US politicians now need so much money to get elected they must depend on a wealthy few to whom they must deliver correspondingly big favors.  So a side effect of the Constitutional right to freedom is, at this time, a corrupt central government.

The second amendment says: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”.  The intent of that tortured phraseology, at a time when only single shot firearms existed, was to prevent the central government from tyrannizing the States and, by implication, its citizens.  There was no need then to define what kinds of Arms the people could bear.  The federal government now has nuclear arms, however, and killer drones.  Does this Amendment mean the States and “the people” also have the right to them?  Nobody I know believes that but many Americans support the right to bear assault weapons (I’ll say more about that in a future post).  Some even imagine they must have assault weapons to defend against central government attack. 

The third amendment says:  “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law”.  Although this Amendment has long been entirely irrelevant it continues to be enshrined as part of the Constitution.

What conclusions should Nepali politicians draw from this and other nations’ Constitutions and from the above examples, (1) a profoundly important right that also has a deeply corrupting effect, (2) an important safeguard when the Constitution was established that is now ineffective against that risk and creates unanticipated new dangers, and (3) a provision that became completely irrelevant ?

First, since several structures of national government have proven to be effective, Nepal’s politicians should just choose one and start governing.  Second, they should not imagine that even the most finely crafted Constitution will guarantee what the people get from their government.  Third, some Constitutional provisions will need significant update when conditions change and not all will remain relevant, anyway.  Above all, what is important is good governance.  The time for that is now.