A national crisis

Sushma Joshi

“Subsidized food turning Mugu fields barren.” This rather astonishing news was reported by the Kathmandu Post on June 15. The article quoted District Agricultural Officials who stated that Nepal Food Corporation (NFC) and World Food Programme (WFP) rice had increased dependency, and that people have lost interest in cultivating their land in favor of standing in line all day to get a 10 kg rice ration. According to one official, subsidized rice rations made people so dependent they've stopped growing crops.

Of course, one cannot really understand the situation without visiting the district. I have yet to visit Mugu. But what I found in my trip from Nepalgunj to Surkhet to Humla is that the worst drought in 40 years -- four months without rain from December to March —has been followed by a delayed monsoon, which was supposed to start on June 15. This has affected food crops on a massive level. The rice seedlings which some farmers chose to sprout have dried. For the surviving seedlings, the growing season is cut by crucial weeks, meaning the rice crop won't be as big.

Farmers all over Nepal, including in districts where rice is subsidized, have turned up to plant their seeds. They have planted their precious seed stock on an act of faith — mainly, continuing a farming tradition dependent on rain-fed agriculture.

But winter drought, delayed and rain-deficient monsoon, and drying water sources have hit farmers with a triple whammy. “It's a convergence of factors beyond their control,” says Richard Ragan, WFP country director in Nepal. And this is just this year's bad news. Many districts have been hit with droughts and floods that have affected their seed, food stock and assets for the last four to five years.

There are 26-30 million people in Nepal. Sixty-six percent farm for a living. We are looking at a food crisis of national proportions if the monsoon is further delayed. Look out the window. Do you see the rain?

Chaya Shahi, 20, of Humla, shows us her wheat harvest. They recovered the seed. Behind the seed is the food that is supposed to feed the family for three months. The small pile, says Chaya grimly, will feed them for a week. Dhanbahadur, her husband, speaks in the hushed voice of a frightened man, and with good reason. He shows us how high the maize is supposed to be by mid-June — six or seven feet tall, loaded with green cobs. The drought has left the plant in the dust, barely a feet high.

Farmers need quick and immediate assistance with irrigation, water harvesting systems, drought resistant crops, seeds, alternative cash crops, and stocks of food to pull them through the upcoming months. Where is our government? What is it going to do? Even if the government immediately jumped in to make agriculture (instead of squabbling) the top priority, even if it started putting in massive investment in small-scale, sustainable irrigation, the situation would still be bad.

It's easy to blame farmers for laziness. It's easy to blame WFP. District officials disgruntled with the food distribution policy of WFP — all food goes to poor areas outside of the district, and not to district HQ — are not likely to say happy things about it. Interestingly, WFP was not acting unilaterally, but has designed its programs acting on the Ministry of Agriculture's request. After an assessment of food needs, the Ministry requested WFP to provide food for the gap months when food stock was low. It is clear, however, that government officials are not clearly informed about the real situation of the food crisis in the country.

In Srinagar, a small Humla VDC, people have been harvesting everything from grains to beans to vegetables to herbal oils to cotton ever since they can remember. Recently, they stopped planting cotton. The reason was not subsidized rice — it was lack of water. The hills around Srinagar, where I found myself, were severely deforested. Their one water source had dried. The food shortage is now compounded with water scarcity. “We roasted and ate our rice a few weeks ago because there was no water to cook it with,” said a staff member from the Himalayan Conservation and Development Association. Men, women and children walked up and down the path, carrying polythene pipes which they planned to lay down to tap a second source miles away. But the idea that the groundwater needs to be recharged was missing. To reforest Srinagar will take at least a decade. Meanwhile, the population keeps rising.

Srinagar is a microcosm of our planet as it faces global climate change — a captive and growing population caught inside a small landlocked space, slowly running out of water and food. Isn't it our humanitarian duty to provide food until the people can take a breath and figure out a way to manage the crisis?

It's not like people haven't looked for solutions. There are success stories, even in Humla. In Srinagar VDC, one village planted a thousand apple trees. Despite hail, the trees are still loaded with fruit. Last year, the trees were so loaded one of them fell over because it couldn't stand its own weight. If there was a road to Srinagar, the farmers would be rich from their apple crops.

Three rosy-cheeked children pick and eat the barely ripe fruit, despite their fathers' warnings. There may be no market and the crops may rot from overproduction, but one good thing has come out of it — apples have added micro-nutrients and vitamins to the village's diet. WFP provided 40 days of rice so 27 people can construct an apple storage unit — the idea is to store the apples in a cool space so they can be available after the harvest season is over.

Nobody's denying white rice doesn't satisfy all the nutritional needs of people used to harvesting a dozen crops. But will people show up to build irrigation canals and roads and apple storage facilities and fish ponds, which is what the WFP provides the rice for, for the same equivalent of barley or millet? White rice has status in Nepal, even if it lacks nutritional depth. The food habits of people have changed. “It's like a crow eating a bug,” says a journalist from Jumla, talking about foxtailed barley. “I've become used to rice.” (Note: I myself am a white-rice critic — but my “white rice imperialism” article died when I saw the reality of what people face in mountain districts with acute food shortage.)

In Humla, people say they will show up to work for any grain. Humla inhabitants spent six to eight months in India, engaging in seasonal labour to supplement their income. Now, with the meager harvest, they are looking at 10 to 12 months. With subsidized rice to tide them over, the men had time to return to the village and implement alternative income strategies, like the apple, banana and citrus farms now in full bloom. But people cannot survive on fruits alone. The tragedy of our mountain districts is that they would be the most productive — were roads and markets to reach the remote VDCs.

For people in Humla, cash itself does not guarantee access to food. Food and goods may be too expensive (the Rs.80 packet of salt being a case in point, or the Rs.112 soap that goes for Rs.10 in Nepalgunj), or the markets inaccessible.

It is not just remote mountain districts that are hit. In Nepalgunj, a visit to Nava Kiran, an organization that works with another marginalized group, people who are HIV positive, confirms what we already know. “The biggest problem of HIV positive people is that they live hand to mouth,” says Mahesh Gyawali, volunteer. “People don't die of HIV. They die of poverty.”

Almost all of Nepal — even Kathmandu's spoilt elites — are hit with rising food prices, low food stocks and a meager or non-existent harvest. This has already led to a food crisis in pockets of Nepal and will continue to do so in the coming months. In such a scenario, our strategy should be to unite strongly against hunger, especially for those most poor and marginalized who will have to face the brunt of this brutal harvest. Indulging in the blame game hurts only the poor.

The government must expand the quantity and types of food it subsidizes and distributes to districts with food shortages, so that people can regather and recoup for a new strategy of agriculture, irrigation and water management more in tune with changing climate conditions.

Will tiding over people for the lean months between harvests cause dependency? For all people in Humla, the answer is clear. Over and over, we hear the same thing. “If you don't provide rice, we will die,” they say simply.

As we enter late June with the worst winter drought behind us, and a meager and late monsoon staring us in the face, the Nepali government must join hands with international organizations at all levels to advocate strongly for its own people. The food crisis must be elevated to a red alert, and multilaterals must be pulled in to explore multiple solutions. We cannot leave the farmers to solve this by themselves.

The role of India
On the Nepal-India border in Rupediya, I observe a policeman flick his baton and poke a man in his testicles. The Nepali man, towing a bicycle, holds a polythene bag of rice. He stands humbly, holding his bag up, realizing any reaction will only lead to more abuse. The rice, five kilos at the most, hints at the desperation with which the man has gotten on his bicycle and cycled kilometers in the heat and braved the border guards to save a few rupees.

But the Indian border guard doesn't care. He is there to ensure that the Indian Government's policy — only five kilos of sugar and rice, and no more for individual consumption — is observed. The Indian government has put this policy in place in order to safeguard its own dwindling supplies of food. For the border guard, there is a measure of sadistic boredom and enjoyment in torturing this man who can't fight back, and who can't even afford a few rupees as a bribe.

The torture the poor face to get food by the borders doesn't end there. As they enter Nepal, they are checked again and again by Nepali guards, who too seem to have set up their own arbitrary system to extort a few rupees off those who are forced to go back and forth across the border to feed their families. As one man in Humla said: “We would come back after working months and they would steal it all at the border. Both Indians and Nepalis get together to rip us off.”

There is little evidence the Indian government is trying to appropriate land in Nepal. But it is surely guilty of international treaty violations by restricting food access to a landlocked nation. The dialogue between India and Nepal should shift from the baseless accusations that India is trying to move the border markers (it is not), and more towards how India can become more sensitive to its neighbours as climate changes and people face acute food crisis. How can India ensure that the food import-export policy remains humane? How can it ensure that the poorest people in neighboring countries don't die from artificial food shortages?

As we buy cloth in Rupediya, I ask the cloth merchant accusingly: “How come your border guards are torturing your customers?” He explains to me he can do nothing, the government has set up restrictions on food export (but not, interestingly, on cloth), and it is the duty of the guards to ensure this policy if followed. “Well, tell your government that your customers are going to die if you don't allow food to enter Nepal,” I say. For the first time, the merchant, wrapped up in his own daily routine, gives me a startled look. The idea that the Nepalis are not just consumers of grain but also buyers of other Indian goods, and that having all your customers face food shortage would affect his business had just struck him. When will this strike the government of India?

We need an international dialogue, involving more partners than India, about how a small landlocked nation can survive the global food crisis. What do international treaties say? What's the moral and ethical responsibility of countries like India which form a natural barricade, restricting access of movement and food? What are the moral responsibilities of global leaders and international organizations in such a situation? More importantly, what should a neighbor do?
Posted on: 2009-06-26 20:49:05 (Server Time)

Fishing Stories

Sushma Joshi
The transformation of a barren strip of unused land to a hundred fish ponds teeming with fish may not just transform the lives of a hundred families

Give a man a fish, and he will eat for the day. Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime. I first saw this adage as a child in the office of World Neighbours, one of the first INGOs to come to Nepal. World Neighbours rented our house as their office, co-incidentally. The sign left me open-mouthed — the idea of teaching a person a skill that would give them a livelihood was alien to my entrepreneurship-deprived childhood. I remember the moment vividly, if only because Tom Arens, the World Neighbours representative and one of people to support the whole NGO movement in its early stages, seemed to be laughing at me silently. No doubt the idea of a Kathmandu child steeped in the grim tradition of Brahminical education and hereditary jagir being exposed to the idea of entrepreneurship was a chuckle-worthy one.

In Nepalgunj, I saw the early vision of World Neighbours being brought to full-fledged life as again — open-mouthed — I witnessed a hundred fish ponds dug out in a few barren hectares 12 kilometres from Tribhuwan Chowk. The 100 is not hyperbole (hyperbole is a crime people often accuse me of), but a literal number. The fish ponds, each 20 by 20 by 2 meters long, are laid out next to each other in what appears to be a rather tiny plot of land. “This used to be barren land, used only for toilets,” says Prativa Rijal Limbu, one of the Education for Income Generation staff who shows me around the site. “Now there are a 100 fish ponds.” The Education for Income Generation in Nepal Program, funded by USAID, is implementing the ponds with support from the World Food Program (WFP).

The hundred fish ponds were dug by 700 laborers. They worked 40 days to finish the ponds. Each worker received four kilograms of rice per day through the auspices of the WFP's food for work program. The ponds, built on leased land, is owned by 100 individuals. The owners were decided collectively by two communities who chose the most vulnerable and marginalized people within their community to receive this benefit. The owners who've showed up to tell us about the program are mostly Dalits — Chamar, Cori, Khatik, Parsi, BK. They all look overworked and undernourished. As landless laborers, they spend their days seeking wage labour when the WFP's food supplement ends. With ongoing strikes and bandas disrupting daily work and wages, and blocking access to markets, they often skip meals and eat irregularly to cope with the ongoing insecurity. Soaring food prices have made even basic staples like lentils out of range for people who survive on a day-to-day basis, let alone more expensive sources of protein like meat.

But hope is at hand. In just a few months, each owner will have a fish pond teeming with new fish. Wells will soon bore ground water, which will fill the ponds. By July, the ponds will be filled with “fingerlings” — recently hatched grass carp, silver carp and one other kind, all three carefully chosen so they are mixed and matched to eat both the grass and vegetation that grows on the surface of the water, along with the bugs at the bottom. Because the fishery owners lack refrigeration, the fish experts attached to the project have timed it so the fingerlings are introduced in a controlled, week by week fashion, so they don't all mature at the same time, thereby avoiding a fish-glut on the market at the same time. The fish will get fat just in time for Dashain's big festival rush. The ponds will give the owners an extra 25,000 rupees a year — a crucial cushion to provide everything from children's education to healthcare to start-up funds for new businesses.

Nepalgunj, which the ever-popular Candy of Traveler's Lodge Hotel candidly terms a “black hole where entrepreneurship doesn't exist”, may soon be seeing a shift in the way it views itself. Rather than being dependent on India — currently truckloads of fish make their way across the border from India to fulfill Nepalgunj's local fish demands — the city may soon see itself providing its own fresh fish to its people. The 100 fish ponds may actually only fulfill a tiny segment of demand. Another 100 fish ponds are already constructed in Bardiya, and 200 more are planned in conjunction with WFP in the upcoming months.

What is startling about the project is not just the scale of it. This may be the first time a hundred fish ponds were built together on the same plot of land. While the intensified productive use of the five hectares is already impressive, what is reconfigured is the land equation. I often wonder why the Tarai, the fecund breadbasket of Nepal, seems to teem with undernourished people. Why does the land itself look barren in places? The answer is simple — much of the land in the Tarai is owned by absentee landlords who live in Kathmandu or some other big city and have no interest or intention to cultivate the land. They hold on to it because it's prestigious to own land, but since they don't depend upon it, they do not use it to its full productive capacity. Consequently, people who have farmed the land for generation but who may only be sharecroppers or even bonded laborers, get sub-par yields from the land.

The fish-ponds are brilliant in that they solve two of Nepal's most pressing issues. Landless people end up having access to land through a leasing system — currently they pay Rs.500 per fishpond to the landlords each year for five years. And after five years? “Five years is a long time,” says Bhanumati Gupta. “We can buy our own land after five years.” Even to dream of this possibility is a shift in land relationships in Nepal. Entrepreneurship and the resulting income fulfills the revolutionary vision of land ownership for landless people without having to resort to the easy and violent methods of land seizure from private owners. The free market, and entrepreneurship, will soon equalize those who are productive from those who are not.

And secondly, the ponds provide a livelihood that does not just feed people for a day, but for an entire lifetime. The proud owners, both men and women, who currently suffer not just from the ongoing high food prices but also the politically unstable regime which makes it difficult to get food on a day to day basis, may soon have a source of food and income that will feed not just themselves, but their entire families.

The transformation of a barren strip of unused land to a hundred fish ponds teeming with fish may not just transform the lives of a hundred families. It will also transform the markets of Nepalgunj and the buying habits of Nepalis who realize that fresh produce grown in Nepal is better than week-old fish laid on ice and trucked across the border from India. And more than that, it may transform the economy of Nepal, which sees itself only as a barren and unproductive country but doesn't realize the potential it has to take its marginalized communities and its unused land and multiply it a hundred times for the economic benefit of the whole nation.
(Sushma Joshi wrote “The End of the World.” It's a book of short stories. Pick it up in your local bookstore. Next time you see her, pretend you've read it.)

Posted on: 2009-06-19 20:14:49 (Server Time)

Milk and rice

Sushma Joshi

I am the youngest of seven cousins. When we were little, we used to play lukamari, or hide-and-seek, games in the garden. My eldest cousin sister, taking pity on me, would allow me to be a dudh-bhat (milk and rice) during our games. A dudh-bhat is someone too young to play the game adequately, but the older children allow this young one to tag along and never be “outed” from the game because they might cry if made to leave. So this means you are endlessly in the game, even when in reality you should really be out. Of course, being the youngest means you may always retain the status of a dudh-bhat even when you do grow up. In Nepal, as we know all too well, the hierarchy of age allows the young some privileges, along with the old.

It appears to me Madhav Kumar, even though he's lost the game twice in two elections, is being allowed to be the dudh-bhat by his wiser and more tolerant elders. He is allowed to be in the game endlessly even though in reality he should really be out. Now this would be all very well and good if the game was just hide-and-seek. The problem is, this is a much bigger game. And what happens when the dudh-bhat suddenly finds himself leading the game? Well, strange things start to happen. People start to bomb churches, realizing that the rules of secularism and tolerance no longer apply. People start to parade women naked around Ratna Park right in the middle of the capital, because they realize that the rules of fundamental rights no longer apply. The Indian security forces start to loot and rape and drive away Nepalis, because they realize the rules of international treaties and sovereignty no longer apply.

Wanting to treat your youngest and dearest with special affection is a common instinct. The problem with our national game is that the leaders seem to have forgotten that it's a bigger issue than hurting Madhav Kumar's feelings. This is a game to set democratic rules, and democratic precedents for a nation bigger than one individual or one party. If you come out after a long drawn out elections and you say that really who should lead the country is a two time loser, than you're basically saying that the whole exercise was a mockery, just a game played by children which didn't really mean anything very much. If the leaders themselves don't play by the rules, you are allowing the rest of the 26 million to say: f*** it, if they don't follow the rules, we don't have to do it too.

The Maoists were clearly riling up a lot of people trying to grab more power than their fair share. At the same time, they were also not being given the support they needed to make decisions adequately and on time. Now we're back to Square One or Mangalman as we say in Nepal. It's back to Girija trying to push Sujata as foreign minister and forgetting that he'd pledged not to go along with hereditary monarchy principles. Its back to the small-minded confusion of UML-NC nexus trying to work out who should be Prime Minister next since everybody, it appears, must take a hasty turn to sit on that chair at least once.

The worst fallout of all this, as I see it, is that Katawal comes out a clear winner in all the confusion. Sitting at a café, I was rather surprised to hear somebody who I thought held rather different political opinions say: Of course I support Katawal! I don't want Nepal to be taken over by India! Rather than discussing ways in which the security forces of Nepal should be made more accountable and modern, rather than discussing ways in which the transitional justice mechanisms should be implemented to deal with the hundreds of disappearances and extrajudicial deaths, the discourse has now shifted to how the Nepal Army is going to save Nepal from what is surely inevitable -- the takeover of Nepal by India which happens as Madhav Kumar and company happily buzz around Kathmandu in their motorcade breathing a sigh of relief that they made that historic position at least once.

The problem with Nepal, as well all know, that our sense of national responsibility is less than our sense of personal responsibility. How many amongst us would give up the prime minister's chair if the choice was between us becoming prime minister, or the choice of supporting a more difficult man who may, at least, steer the country towards a clear definite path? The sad thing is that Madhav Kumar is doing nothing more or less than what many other Nepalis would do.

As Nepalis, we hate to hurt anyone's feelings. But the problem with not hurting Madhav Kumar's is that we hurt the democratic and ethical sentiments of 26 million Nepalis. From my conversations, I know that many civil society people cannot get over their outrage. As one artist told me-Nepalis have drowned in a ladle. Apparently this evocative phrase catches the smallness of what has just happened in our nation-state.

Now while that sense of national responsibility to an ideal larger than one puny human being is being instilled in the next generation, can we please reinstitute new rules? How about starting with saying that someone who loses the election twice cannot be made Prime Minister? Now that he's taken his turn and is happy, can we let Mr. Kumar go and bring onboard somebody who at least received some votes?
(Sushma Joshi's book "End of the World" is available in Quixote's Cove, Vajra, Mandala, Educational Book House and other bookstores)

Posted on: 2009-06-05 20:42:47 (Server Time)

LESSONS FROM ORANGES

Sushma Joshi, Kathmandu Post, 5/22/09
One longterm expatriate, who'd recently read an op-ed in the papers advocating the chopping down of trees along the roads, complained to me: butchery is in Nepal's genes

Two friends of mine took me on a midnight jaunt through Valencia, Spain, last winter. What stunned me was not just the rows of beautiful houses in the old city, and the rush of water from the fountains, but the rows and rows of orange trees that bloomed white flowers in the moonlight. "Do people eat these fruits?" I asked. The trees, which lined the main thoroughfares, were studded with big orange fruit. "No, I think they're just for decoration," my friend answered with a laugh.

Sevilla, known as the City of Oranges, was even more heavily covered with orange trees than Valencia. No doubt the city was inspired by Arab architecture and gardens, vestiges of which still remain in the form of the Alcazar, where the romantic and ancient gardens were filled with orange trees that dripped with fruit. One of these, Patio de Los Naranjos, is known for having hundreds of orange trees. This patio was once part of the old mosque, where the worshippers washed their hands and feet in the fountains before prayer.

Imagine all of Pokhara's roads being lined with hundreds of fruit trees with fat oranges and pomelos that are planted by the municipality and are only for decoration (the people being too satiated with cheap fruit to think about jumping on the branches to vandalize these state products) and you get the idea.

In Sevilla, I bent down next to the historic square and removed some seeds from a squelched specimen. The seeds, still slippery, slid through my fingers as I wiped them reverently and put them inside my bag. My thought was to replant these seeds back in Kathmandu. The seeds sunk instantly into the vast and bottomless depths of my luggage (although I did find at the bottom of my suitcase a souvenir of Sevilla -- a one euro calendar with pages and pages of glossy images of the crying Madonna, and a dried out pine branch shoved into my hands by a rather ominous gypsy), but I still wonder where the seeds vanished to.

Of course, indigenous fruit would no doubt work just as well if we had the foresight and common sense to plant these in our rather hospitable climate. But as one longterm expatriate, who'd recently read an op-ed in the papers advocating the chopping down of trees along the roads, complained to me: butchery is in Nepal's genes. His point being that a people capable of chopping buffaloes, then people, then houses, now trees, ran along the same continuum, and how would we ever change our mindset to one of preservation and conservation, rather than destruction?

On a recent trip to Dhankuta, I was pleasantly surprised to see besides the usual concrete monstrosities (somebody stop these architects who are mindlessly running across the country and putting up the same monstrosities by the millions) a few examples of indigenous architecture that seems to have escaped the butchery. One was an elegant Limbu home that rose out of the hillside and struck the eye with its beautiful proportions and colors. The other was the old bazaar, still dominated by Newars and filled with small shops whitewashed in lime and with small wooden benches and patios in the front. Dhankuta still retained a whiff of the charm of the old bazaar.

It takes me a minute to walk off the bus before a young woman offers help and directions, another one tells me to go to Hotel Parichaya, where the motherly woman who owns it tells me that of course I can have a room, and before long I am walking through town and having conversations along with a young friend who appears to know everybody in town. Dhankuta reveals its multicultural and tolerant nature pretty quickly-- an evening walk up and down the hillsides reveals a tightly knit community who, despite the rising ethnic politicization, seemed to know and care about each other's welfare.

There is a particular charm to small Nepali towns that now seems to exist only within the pages of old Insight Guides, but Dhankuta thankfully seems to have retained most of it. And Dhankuta, like Valencia, also plants orange groves along with ginger, masala, and other herbal products. The price of ginger has skyrocketed -- with China being a prime buyer. There is a hairloss shampoo made from ginger and made in China that is now widely marketed in Nepal, people inform me. Dhankuta, it appears, has the potential to be a prosperous old town that, if it pays attention to cultural heritage and preservation, could draw a substantial number of internal tourists to its orange groves.

The Malaysians, who use Nepalis as cheap labor, appear to have caught onto the power of preserving heritage along with its interlinked power to draw tourists. An American friend of mine recently returned from Malaysia and showed me photographs of tea-houses in tea-estates in Penang. The old houses were beautifully preserved, and the tea-houses, newly built with simple indigenous bamboo and wood, appeared completely replicable in Nepal. This man, a longterm Kathmandu resident, says he's decided to move to Penang because life is better there. "The Nepalis could so easily make a few tea-houses in Ilam. But there's nothing there, not even a place to sit and taste the tea," he complained. Can we see this as an opportunity for some enterprising entrepreneurs and not just yet another thing that doesn't exist in Nepal?

"Let's plant some avocado trees in Pashupati," I recently floated this idea to a few people. "If you do that, the monkeys will eat them," was the response. Now that's an interesting thought. Does it make more sense to plant avocado trees (and protect them enough as saplings and prevent the monkeys from pulling them up) in the hope that in fifteen years time there will be a tree loaded with fruit that monkeys could eat, and which would provide them the nutrition that would cure them of their current sickly status? Or should we just say that it's a worthless project and just let it go?

Is it the same with the fruit trees? Can we say that Nepal is too poor to have orange and persimmon trees line its streets, where the people will jump on the branches like monkeys and eat everything? Or can we imagine a future where perhaps in about fifteen years time, which is how long it takes certain fruit trees to mature, people in Kathmandu and Pokhara may have enough civic sense and enough nutrition that we could also imagine our streets to be lined with trees which would be loaded with fruit and left alone -- a sign of the prosperity of our economy, and not a validation of our poverty?
(Sushma Joshi is the writer of "End of the World" which is available in Quixote's Cove, Vajra and Educational Book House.)

Posted on: 2009-05-22 18:29:27 (Server Time)

OVERCOMING ODDS

Sushma Joshi
Republica, May 19, 2009

“Oh, you’re going to see Jhamak?” says the older man as we sit drinking tea in a tea house in Dhankuta Bazzar in the early morning chill. “I’m her uncle.” Jhammakkumari Ghimire, the writer who’s triumphed despite her disability, is apparently known by this androgynous name, I soon figure out.

Then he proceeds, in those causal but fortuitous coincidences that take place in Nepal all the time, to tell me about how Jhamak became the writer that she did. “Her parents bought her little sister a book. And Jhamak turned round and round in a rage for two days. She can’t talk, you see. So finally her father figured out, after a day or two, what was bothering her. And he said: would you like a book as well? And then she tapped her foot with joy. That’s how she talks, with her foot.” Jhamak, says her uncle, was always expressive. Once she drew him a rabbit that looked like it could run. He took her to Kathmandu once. Carried her down there. Once down, the poets and the literary people surrounded her. “It was like I was the one who couldn’t speak,” he remarks.

As we walk up the pine forest, her friend Elina Himbang tells me that Jhamak recently had a birthday party, and all the journalists came. We walk up a steep terraced field, and Jhamak’s mother tells that we should have taken the pathway, they have now built one. One of Jhamak’s younger sister is going to school. The second one is in the field, planting. In a giant pot, pumpkin rinds boil, food for the cows. We duck into a small doorway on the ground-floor and there is Jhamak, on the bed with the white bedspread. She smiles. The first thing you notice about Jhamak is her joi di vivre. “Namaste, Jhamak,” we say. Elina points out to me, in case I missed it, that Jhamak is answering—her two feet are placed in a neat namaste. She grabs a notebook and starts to write with her feet, and soon we are immersed in conversation.

“Why are you calling her Alina?” she corrects me, when I mispronounce her friend’s name. “She’ll find a hundred mistakes in your writing,” Elina laughs to me, when I sign the book and fumble with my raswas and dirghas. “Jhamak, you are getting thin,” Elina voices her concern. “Well, I’m a human being. Sometimes I gain weight, sometimes I lose it,” retorts Jhamak, writing quickly with her feet. Sometimes people who don’t know her misunderstand her, they go back saying this woman is quite arrogant from her replies, laughs Elina on our way back.

The one thing you notice about Jhamak is how little her disability seems to have disabled her. She cannot speak, but she is more expressive than many people with functioning vocal cords. Her answers are sharp and funny ,always to the point. She cannot walk, but she has traveled farther than many people from her own community who are tied to the rhythms of planting and reaping, a farming, agricultural life that would have been her heritage had she been born whole. Instead, she was born unable to move, tied to her bed—and that by itself had made it possible for her to be a writer. On the desk, I see a black and white photograph of a youthful, beautiful Parijat. It is no co-incidence that both of these women were disabled in some form. After all, how else would women find the time needed away from incessant and daily chores to devote to writing? Disability, in the case of these two women, had actually come as a blessing in disguise, freeing them up from women’s work and allowing them to fully concentrate on the passion of their lives--literature. All around her are piled books, books about the history of Ilam, books written by Nepali writers, contemporary, classics. In the desk I see a computer. Alina tells me that Jhamak not only folds her own quilts and makes her own bed, she also uses the computer with her feet.

In the book “Outliers”, by Malcolm Gladwell, the writer talks about how genius is not an accident. We are the products of our history and backgrounds. And sometimes, the very discriminations that we face in our lives will enable us to reach success in a way a privileged life wouldn’t. Gladwell uses the examples of the Jewish lawyers of New York, born around 1930s, who got a good public education but who were discriminated by all the WASP dominated firms. They set up their own low level firms which started to do aggressive corporate work that other firms wouldn’t touch—and when the boom for corporate takeovers happened in the 1970s, Jewish lawyers had honed their skills for a few decades and were ready to take on work nobody else could do. The Jewish lawyers, concludes Gladwell, were successful not despite their discriminated background—but because of it.

In Nepal, our people face more odds than people from other countries. And yet, as elsewhere, we find people in Nepal who’ve overcome those barriers to become successes in their own chosen fields. Jhamak, whispers her friends, now takes care of her family with the earnings of her writings. Poor girl, they used to leave her in a basket, now she takes care of them all, sigh her neighbors. Now that’s one remarkable story for a Nepali Brahmin woman, born in the hills with apparently insurmountable odds. And yet she triumphed. Jhamak, it appears to me, is not a genius so extraordinary nobody else can replicate her feat. She was a woman of her time and place, who had the luck to have a supportive father who understood her desire to read a book, and supportive family members who were able to take care of her daily needs so she could focus on her writing. Dhankuta, with its laid-back multicultural tolerance and liberal air, provided the rest. Now if only we could see this, and ensure that other people with disabilities could also have the same quality of life that she has had.

A KOSI OF THE MIND

Sushma Joshi, Kathmandu Post

Perhaps the answer lies in the conversation my travel partner is having with a man he's just met in the airplane. "The man was run down right here. The truck backed into him and killed him even though he was only injured slightly," says the old man. "Yes, it's that law," says my friend. "It's cheaper to run down somebody in an accident than pay compensation for their medical expenses." Herein, I think, lies the clue to Nepal's poverty. In Nepal, it is cheaper to run down a human being dead than follow the course of universal humane behavior and treat somebody who's been injured through a manmade accident.
And the accidents here are many. The most tragic accident, of course, is that done to the Dalit community. Fifty lakh live in Nepal, and eighty percent of them are landless. Rather than pick them up and heal the historical injury, Nepal prefers to run them down, putting the state machinery in reverse and backing the heavy vehicle of official bureaucracy into them till they lie down and die.

Of the thousands who lost their homes under the bleached-bone white sand of the Koshi barrage, another man-made accident in which the man tampered and reversed the course of nature, the most vulnerable are still to be housed and fed. Many are of Dalit communities. "Saptari is the district with the most number of Dalits in Nepal," Bhola Paswan tells me. Bhola, a grassroot journalist who reports on Madeshi Dalit issues, lives in Kanchanpur, close to the epicenter of the flood. His diary is full of poignant stories which never make it out of the local level.
The population census of 2001 says Saptari had 1 lakh 25 thousand Dalits. And yet, despite the population density (or perhaps because of it), Saptari's Dalits remain oppressed.
Consider the case of a Dom family who live in Kamalpur VDC, Bhola tells me. The family of 8 lived in a village which burnt down in its entirety during Holi. Everybody else rebuilt -- but the Doms, considered the lowest of castes, were not allowed. The reason? The Doms had a house in the very outskirts of the village, but as the population rose and the village expanded, they ended up at the center, too close to school teachers and party cadres. This, sadly, was the reason for their eviction. The village tolerated them on the margins but they couldn't imagine them at the center.
Despite repeated visits to the police station, Bhola Paswan says, the police are reluctant to press a caste discrimination case. They are willing to do a "kut-pit mudda" -- physical assault case, but will not touch the word "caste discrimination." Although the government is supposed to represent victims of caste discrimination against the victimizer, these cases are rarely filed. "I debated with the inspector for an hour and a half," he says. "Is this my job? There's nobody to speak for Dalits, so we journalists end up doing it."
Bhola recounts another story that reeks of injustice. Khattar Sarvariya, a Dalit man, has been working as a peon at the VDC office of Kanchanpur for over thirty years. He had a stroke that left him paralyzed three years ago. His wife got his Rs.2200 job in his stead. Other peons who joined after him were accepted as permanent employees, while he, despite his seniority, was considered "asthaiyi" (temporary), and is ineligible to claim any compensation. The irony doesn't just come from the fact that he has served tea for thirty-four years to political party members who come to the VDC to debate which just social service cause should be eligible for the VDC funds.
It also comes from the fact that the land on which the VDC office stands was given up by Khattar's father-in-law, who was cajoled and intimidated by the Panchayat regime to donate the land with promises of new land elsewhere. New land never materialized. Today Khattar continues to work as a peon on the same land that should have been his, unable to get compensation to redeem not just his historical seizure of property but also his three decade service to democracy. "Do the political parties who drink out of the tea of his hands think about the oppression of his case?" asks Bhola.
Bhola says his family life has suffered due to his incessant service to the public. His mother almost died when he was on recent tour to Kathmandu, which made him realize how much he'd prioritized societal responsibility over family ones. "Today," says Bhola, "I take better care of my mother. I stop by her house in the afternoon and check to make sure she's taken her medication." He has worked from seven am to seven pm most days for the last seven years. Stringers at the grassroots level are often paid Rs.100 per news item that may have taken a day or so to collect -- and at times friends at the district level may run the news without informing the grassroots that their stories have already aired or been printed, thereby depriving them of even that tiny honorarium. For many years, he worked as a stringer and the money he received barely covered his phone, fax, motorcycle and other expenses. The Rs.2000 given to him by an NGO gave him just enough to keep going. "Grassroot journalists fill the newspapers, but we are paid less than day laborers," he says. Today, he is a desk reporter for Naya Patrika and makes a modest salary.
Bhola's stories have won awards -- the Sancharika Samuha women's journalist group gave him their annual award for his story of a woman who was made to leave the country and exit the border to India after being severely beaten up by 150 men in a Panchayat style meeting. The woman's crime? Abandoned by her husband (who was Indian and lived across the border), she had returned home to Nepal to her natal village. A single woman must be a woman of low moral character, went the prevailing judgment -- leading 150 brave Nepali men to beat a single woman until she ended up at the hospital.
Despite unceasing service to the public, Bhola and others face the challenges of many of Nepal's journalists -- low pay, lack of respect, threats to physical safety.
Journalists are not just news gatherers but informal justice providers, and often the only sole advocates, for marginalized groups and people. A happy medium, I think, may be to support grassroots folks who provide critical social justice investigations state benefits -- make them employees of the Dalit and Women commission, and let them write articles as part of their work. My friend argues this is wrong -- I am looking at a humongously unwieldy bureaucracy that would drive Prachanda crazy were he still at the helm. Meanwhile, the Working Journalist Act is still to be implemented, and many young men and women like Bhola continue to act as advocate, social action volunteers and investigators combined for a pittance (although a few others have entered the conference circuit and make more than their fair share for rather sloppy and sometimes plagarized work). Perhaps the INGOs may think of a happy medium in which committed journalists can continue to write news but also be paid a working salary.
In Saptari, Bhola is on his way to visit the Dom family. Soon, he will advocate for other Dalit families who have no other people to advocate for them at the local level.
As we trundle back past the barren-white Sahara of the Kosi disaster, I see the first patches of green sprouting on the white sand. Surely if we can overcome this terrible flood with Biblical undertones, we can overcome the manmade disaster of caste discrimination? Nepal has been declared a caste free zone multiple times by multiple governments, and yet when it comes to action many of the 50 lakh Nepali Dalit citizens who do Nepal's most productive work -- tailoring, leatherwork, iron casting, sanitation, music -- remain injured through a manmade disaster. Isn't it time to offer compensation?


(Sushma Joshi's book "End of the World" is available in Mandala, Vajra, Pilgrims, United and other bookstores.)



Posted on: 2009-05-16 01:51:04

Securing the Nation

Kathmandu Post, 4/28/09
Sushma Joshi
The idea of an interlinked world whose security rests on each other is clearly a new idea for most

The United States government recently put out a call for help to the most unlikely group -- computer hackers. Hackers, normally hounded for their ability to enter computer systems, were now recruited for one reason -- cyberattacks on government networks were occurring persistently, but the government was not prepared to deal with all these attacks. Hence the hackers, who could “think like the bad guy” but also had a sense of ethics, would help to create security systems that will protect valuable national information, including data on the stock market, taxes, airline flight system, and nuclear launch codes. The US had no plans for a digital disaster, David Powner, director of technology issues for the Government Accountability Office, told Congress last month, according to an AP report. The US government promptly promised $60 million to raise the number of cyberexperts from 80 to 250 by 2011.

The US has the foresight to move forward with this hole in their security and patch it instantly because their government has an extremely strong policy on national security which deals with both external and internal threats. You might think that each country in the world has a national security policy akin to the USA. So one would have thought. Imagine his surprise when advocate Govinda Bandi, who is giving feedback to the new Constituent Assembly's group on national security, went to do some research and found out that Nepal had none!

This is what he found -- the antiquated Rastriya Surakshya Parishad forms all the security policies, but it works only with questions regarding the Army. Unlike other countries, we have no comprehensive National Security Council, made up of security experts from all sectors, and which can address security issues that range not just from external military threats (the traditional model) but also address internal social harmony as well as human and environmental security.

India's NSC is supported by a 22 member security board, and the advisory board is comprised of people from outside the government, drawn from various fields such as foreign affairs, external security, defence, economics, science and technology, internal security and the armed forces.

Besides the missing NSC, Nepal also lacks a good intelligence gathering agency. We have plenty of ISI and RAW and CIA professionals wandering around the country but no members of a professional Nepal Central Intelligence Agency. Indeed, say observers, the Nepal Guptachar Bibhag kept better track of the whereabouts of political leaders in the Panchayat times than the agency keeps track of big name security threats today.

“Why did the forestry administration ride the biggest Pajeros? What's the reason?” Asks Govinda Sharma Bandi to a group of young journalists at a lecture which I recently attended. The group of young Nepali faces look back at him blankly.

“Because our jungles are full of precious herbs?” ventures a journalist.

“No! Who's giving the money? Scandinavia. Okay, good. What do you think is their motivation?” Nobody knows.

“As the world warms, the glaciers are starting to melt. Soon there are countries in Europe that will be underwater. European countries are thinking of their national security longterm -- they see global climate change as affecting the security of all their citizens. They are giving money to preserve Nepali forests so that their people in their own country will be safe from harm. See that?”

The idea of an interlinked world whose security rests on each other is clearly a new idea for most. We tend to think of national security in terms of keeping our borders clearly demarcated from India and China, but that's about the extent of Nepal's traditional security policy. Clearly, the time had come to think of new things.

Nepal's comprehensive security policy will not only have to deal with internal natural disasters -- think Kosi barrage breakage and the human misery that has come out of it, leading to the blockades of key highways and the disruption of civil and political life -- but also the prospect of ethnic and minority conflicts.

Nepal's traditional security challenges -- India's expansionist moves, armed revolts in the Tarai, a potential reoccurrence of Maoist armed conflict, militant armed youth wings of political parties, and the law and order breakdown, must now be understood through new human security challenges, like persistent violence against women, environmental degradation, global warming, etc.

“Our challenge is internal, not external,” says Mr. Bandi. “Our biggest internal security threat is a society based on discrimination. The new Security Council must not only address floods and famines, but also issues of language, ethnicity and minority rights.” What is not known and identified can't be addressed. Therefore, says Mr. Bandi, the state must make every attempt to identify social discrimination as a security challenge which can lead to large scale violence if left unchecked. Think Gujarat.

Closer to home, think Kalli Kumari BK. Accused of witchcraft and fed human excreta, the case exploded when neighbouring villages started to take for and against stances. Kalli Kumari, an impoverished Dalit woman living in a Tamang village, was accused and tortured by a Tamang woman -- rather strangely, the perpetrator was the local school's headmistress. “Don't do this. It's wrong to feed human feces to another human being,” her grandmother reportedly implored her granddaughter, but the headmistress went ahead with her witchhunt anyways. (What does this tell us about the troubling discrepancy between traditional values and the modern educational system?) The perpetrator is at large, but the Tamang village soon found itself at war with a Brahmin/Chettri neighbouring village that supported Kalli Kumari. According to journalists who visited the site, security forces have been stationed to fend off intra-village violence.

In “Nepal's National Security Agency: Critical Issues Facing the CA”, Madhukar SJB Rana, former finance minister and professor of South Asian Institute of Management, writes:

In attempting to define 'national security' we must learn from Japan, who in the mid-1950's developed the visionary concept of 'comprehensive security' to grapple with the trauma, humiliation and horror of the loss of national sovereignty to the Americans and the psychological sufferings from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki stranded without any natural resources -- other than human resources. So they defined 'national security' in the broader, more comprehensive concept of 'human security'.

Fundamentally, the Japanese doctrine of human security rests on the premise that for national security there must not only be 'military security' to defend the nation from outside threats but also 'human security' to 'defend' nations from inside threats as national stability depends on each individual having sufficient food security, employment security, social security (education, health and old age pension), energy security, information security (access to transport and communications). We might now add 'water security', 'environmental security' and 'pandemic health security' ( HIV AIDS, TB, bird flu ) to the Japanese definition to bring it up to date in its comprehensiveness.

Lets hope the chain of command squabble between the Army and the government will be resolved soon, civilian control of the Army will become institutionalized, and there will be a progressive and harmonious relationship between the Army, police, armed forces and any newly formed NSC to solve Nepal's most pressing internal security challenges.

The United Federation of Nepal

Sushma Joshi
What does the United States of America have in common with St. Kitts (68 square miles wide), a small island in the Eastern Caribbean? Both countries, it appears, follow the federal system. Despite the naysayers who have been saying federalism won't work for Nepal due to its small size and multicultural and multiethnic nature, there is evidence that multicultural countries perform quite well within a federal system. The United States is federated. So is Switzerland, another European country that Nepalis often use as a model of what Nepal should be like. So is India, the world's biggest democracy. None of them are falling apart at the seams, as we are. So why do Nepalis fear the idea of federalism?

After listening to a lecture by advocate Dinesh Tripathi, it appears to me that people are afraid of federalism because they don't quite understand what it is or how it's going to work out. Federalism is not the country splitting off into various ethnic states, as it may appear from current events. Federalism is also not just decentralization, which was practiced in Nepal before and is shown to have failed. In decentralization, the center can withdraw the power, whereas in federated states the power is inherent in the Constitution. Federalism is the actual devolution of power to the local level, which would allow those areas the right to self-government.

“Conflict,” says Mr. Tripathi, “is caused by the inability to recognize diversity. Conflict cannot be solved by bullets, but by developing a democracy which is “of the people, for the people, by the people”” (Original quote from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln and not Mr. Tripathi.) Periodic elections is not enough, this just leads to a “procedural democracy.” The solution, it appears, is to achieve a substantive democracy by devolving the power from a centralized and unitarian government, as we have at present, to active local self-rule. Federalism is a contract between people and the state, and will be based on voluntary will.

Current models floated by Maoists envision 11 states, with many of them based on ethnic lines. Neighbouring India has been more prudent, splitting its states along the basis of geography (Madhya Pradhesh, Uttar Pradesh), language (Tamilnadu, West Bengal), and ethnicity (Gujarat, Andhra Pradhesh) and combinations of above. In Nepal, we need to take into natural resources and level of development as well when we federate the country.

Setting up a federal system should be mapped out by not just the demands of the grassroots (surely we cannot have one federated state for each 100 languages and 58 ethnicities) but a federalism board composed of linguists, anthropologists, demographers, geographers, lawyers and other professionals with the expertise and stakes in creating a functioning nation-state, goes the common consensus. It is encouraging the government has finally decided to start a Commission on restructuring, according to news reports.

People fear that large chunks of Nepal are just going to float off into the ether, or possibly into India. Others fear Balkanization -- dozens of little states quarreling and killing each other. This shouldn't be the case if we do our homework carefully, and teach and learn on how a federated system will function. In particular, the need to protect minority rights within a federal state would have to be made very clear. A strong Bill of Rights would ensure that anybody can live inside any state with equal political rights, and that minorities will be protected even if they happen to be inside a state based on ethnic lines.

The Constitution, of course, remains the supreme law of the land. The beauty of federalism is that absolute power is checked by different levels of government. The executive, the legislative and the judiciary would be found at all three levels of central, provincial and local levels. The provinces and the center would share power and both will not dominate.

The central government would deal with national security and defense, immigration, currency, foreign relations, custom taxes, and other national level issues. Most other functions would be devolved to the provincial and local government, effectively ending Kathmandu hegemony.

Brahmin, Chettri and Dalits, whose population is scattered all over Nepal and who do not have a majority in any geographical area, could be the “Superglue” to hold the population together. Even the states which advocate division along ethnic lines do not have more than thirty percent majority of their ethnic groups --Nepal is an inexhaustibly multicultural country. According to Subash Darnal of Jagaran Media, 50 lakh Dalits are scattered across the country, and he envisions a model in which an extra-territorial federal state, with two elected Dalit representatives (one male, one female) from each state, would protect the rights and represent the concerns of the Dalit population at the central level.

In the USA, the world's oldest federated country, each state has its own court system. Although the USA has the busiest litigation industry in the world, the national Supreme Court of the USA only sees around 70 cases per year -- a remarkable testimony to the efficiency of provincial and local courts. Localizing courts in this manner would end the present crisis of access to justice, in which overwhelmed appellate courts try to take on too many cases and end up delivering justice to very few.

The federal system can only function when there's respect for law, and that may be the biggest challenge in Nepal. All parties, from central to the local, must obey the law, especially the Constitution which has the final authority.

There have historically been two models of federalism -- the first in which smaller states have come together to form a union, otherwise known as “coming together” federalism. The second model, in which a state about to fall apart adopts federalism, is known as “holding together” federalism. Nepal needs to hold together -- and perhaps federalism may be the best solution for how to go about doing this.

Federalism, Nepal's biggest challenge, may also be its biggest opportunity. The key is to keep an open mind and gather as much consensus on this issues as possible before the window of opportunity closes. Nepal's federated form will probably have some states based on ethnicity (the irrepressible Limbuwan who've already welcomed their neighbours from the neighbouring country of Nepal and who need to understand the rules of federalism -- ie; secession is out of the question, and self-rule comes with the obligation to protect the Constitutional rights of all citizens) while others will be based on geography and language, or combinations. Karnali's natural resources will flow to Nepalgunj, and Nepalgunj have custom duties from the border that will be redistributed by the center to Karnali, balancing out unequal resources. All things considered, federalism might create a wealthier, more equitable country -- and might not be so bad for Nepal after all.
Posted on: 2009-04-17 20:15:11 (Server Time)

START AT HOME

By Sushma Joshi
It is sad that Nepal is unable, when it comes to its own internal borders, to recognize the vulnerability and concerns of other victims

The government of Nepal has no doubt signed every piece of legislation and international law there is in existence to fight trafficking. All the big political leaders have at one point or another pledged to help end trafficking. Activist networks and institutions receive millions of dollars in the name of anti-trafficking. And yet, when it comes to practice, we fail shamefully.
The case is illustrated starkly by 72 Somalis who have been stranded in Nepal by traffickers who promised to take them to Naples, Italy, and who brought them to Nepal instead. They have been in Nepal for five years. And yet the Nepali government insists they are “illegal immigrants”, and requires them to pay an exit visa for overstaying their visit. At $6 a day, some of these folks owe more than $6000-$7000 to the Nepali government. They are now stuck in limbo in no-man's land.
“We are not educated,” says Rooble Jama of Mogadishu.
“We don't have money,” says Hanad Aralle, from the same city, and also 27 years old.


Sounds familiar? With dozens of similar cases of Nepalis stranded in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Oman on similar grounds, you would think the Nepali government would have more empathy with people who may find themselves within the borders of another country through no fault or desire of their own. In Qatar, unknown numbers of Nepalis wait to leave, ticket and passport in hand, but are unable to do so because employers refuse to release them through an official document known as a “khruj.” Sadly, like the absurd requirement in Qatar, Nepal has held an exorbitant exit fee over the heads of Somalis, all of who fled conflict and a dangerous country, and won't let them go.
The Somalis, from the Parawani minority group, were oppressed by the Hawiye majority group. Rooble says his father was killed, his thriving shoe business destroyed, his shoe-shop seized, and he was forced to leave Mogadishu. “Nobody can live in Mogadishu now,” he says. “You are in danger all the time,” adds Mahad Abdullah Hasan, also 27. The group of 72 includes three disabled people, including two whose legs were shot by bullets. There are fifteen women, and thirty-five children.
“We have three choices. We can stay here, and integrate. We can go back home. Or we can resettle in a third country,” says Mahad. Clearly, the first two is not an option. But given the choice, they would rather go back home. “It's better to stay in Somalia. We can't work here, we are not educated, we are illegal. We'd rather die in Somalia than die here.” But even to return to Somalia, the group would have to pay an exorbitant exit fee. And for these refugees of conflict, that's simply not possible.
UNHCR recognizes them as refugees, and gives them a meager living allowance. The Rs. 4250 given to each man hardly covers basic needs. Children get an additional Rs. 1850. The Somalis live in groups of 5 or 6 to share expenses. Life in Nepal is not easy. They cannot work because the Nepali government views them as illegal, and they are afraid they might get imprisoned. And their color marks them out, unlike Pakistani or Burmese refugees who can pass as Nepali citizens. “We are not like them. They can work here, they look like Nepalis. We have a problem. When they see our color, they think we are smugglers. They won't rent to us. Kalo manchay hundaina, they say,” says Mahad.
UNHCR helped to get 52 visas from the American embassy for urban refugees. But only those who could pay the exit fee were allowed to leave by the Nepali authorities, so some people couldn't leave, even when they'd received an American refugee visa. Since this fiasco, UNHCR has suspended all negotiations for further resettlement with the embassy.
“The government says: Go back, we will discuss with UNHCR. UNHCR says nothing will happen till the government lifts the illegal immigrant tag. They point to each other. We are dying between them,” says Jama.
The frustration of being caught in this situation has finally brought the Somalis to their own public protest. Camped out outside UNHCR, the men are sleeping out under a roof of blue tarpaulin, and vow they won't stop till their case is resolved. On April 7, they plan to demonstrate outside the Home Ministry. If nothing happens in two weeks time, they will go on a hunger strike, including the women and children.
It's not as if the Home Ministry doesn't know about them. In 2008, they went and talked to the spokesperson of the Home Ministry, who assured them their case would be resolved. But nothing happened. Since then, the group has talked to other people, including the Madeshi Janaadhikar Forum. But five years have passed, and nothing has happened.
Surely the Nepali government understands that its obligations to end trafficking go both ways? Surely if it wants its own nationals to be released from inside borders in which they may unwittingly find themselves, it is required to do the same for other nationals?
The Somalis, it is clear, are not illegal immigrants. They have no desire to live in Nepal long-term, preferring to return to a homeland in which they could face death rather than remain here. In that case, surely it's the obligation of the Nepali state to waive the visa fees (these people didn't come here as tourists, after all) and give them permission to leave? If the Nepali government is afraid the country is going to get swamped with refugees -- which is hardly likely, looking at the state of our economy -- perhaps they could lift the tag “illegal immigrant” and instead apply “victim of trafficking” to this vulnerable group? Since UNHCR already recognizes them as refugees, this would mean the government effectively releases them from their current state of desperation and imprisonment, and they would be free to follow third country resettlement options.
“We are not getting any solutions. We don't know anything. We have no idea,” says Mahad in frustration. “We are in prison,” adds Rooble. These words echo the state of mind of the prisoners who must have found themselves in Bhairavnath Battalion, located only a block away.
It is sad that Nepal, which has made such an international uproar about trafficking of its own people stranded in far-off lands, is unable, when it comes to its own internal borders, to recognize the vulnerability and concerns of other victims. It is hypocritical of us as a nation-state to expect trafficking to end till we deal with the victims in our own land. The Nepali government must deal with this promptly if it is to retain its credibility when negotiating with other countries over its own stranded nationals.

sushma@alumni.brown.edu
www.sushma.blogspot.com

Posted on: 2009-04-04 00:23:23
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Waiting for rain

Sushma Joshi
In about forty years time, the monsoon may be the only source of water for much of the Indian subcontinent's one billion plus people

“Are you eating meat again?” says my nephew to me disapprovingly each time he sees me eating fish or chicken. “Don't do that. You'll get bird flu.” My nephew is five years old. He is brought up by parents who are both vegetarians. His mother is pretty cool about childrearing -- she decided that he should make his own choice about meat or no meat, and that forcing children to follow a certain path would certainly lead to them doing the exact opposite. So the upshot is that besides a few brief episodes of rebellion when my nephew was in his terrible twos, when he stuffed his face with chicken at wedding feasts and embarrassed his parents, he seems to have accepted, voluntarily, the lifestyle of a committed vegetarian.

After opening a FAO website in which they talk about how many liters of water is needed to produce one hamburger (2400 liters, as opposed to 25 liters for one potato), I realised maybe my nephew may know more than I do. Sometime in the past, I had lived in an environmentally sensitive co-operative house during college in the USA. The people who lived there were religious about not eating meat, and some so were extreme they would even make their own vegan chewing gum. So for a few years I was an enforced vegetarian, coming to learn that a vegetarian had less of an impact upon this fragile earth. Cattle require more water than plants to grow. For a few years, I was not only healthier but had a lighter footprint upon the earth.

This winter, Kathmandu, besides its usual shortage of drinking water, had zero rainfall over four months. That winter rain was crucial to plant winter crops. Without rain, how will the farmers grow their wheat and barley? Friends of mine disagree with me about my perception of global warming. I'm being overanxious and overly dramatic, they think. When I say that we may have to move to agriculture that requires less water, they accuse me of being bourgeois and restricting water access to the poorest of the poor. But even the bourgeoisie have no control over rainfall and cannot really turn rain on and off like KUKL -- and without rainfall, how can the farmers grow water intensive crops?

Our collective longing for rain the past few weeks was evident. Facebook was full of profile messages of people longing for and waiting for rain. We knew the planet was warming but we didn't know it would hit us this fast.

Scientists have already predicted that the melting of Himalayan glaciers, which act as fridges to keep water frozen till the spring, will impact river flows during springtime. In about forty years time, the monsoon may be the only source of water for much of the Indian subcontinent's one billion plus people. The dramas of those predictions are already coming true for many people who depend on rivers and rainfall to irrigate their crops.

For diehard traditionalists, the lack of water has provided the perfect platform to prove their own theories. During a recent conversation, one man told me that three factors -- the collapse of the Machindranath chariot, the enraged Indra Jatra committee who turned the Kumari chariot in the counterclockwise direction, and the nine days of missed pooja at Pashupatinath were all responsible for the dry winter we've had so far. Therefore, he opined, we really need the monarchy back. Not only that, he said, but the lack of basic necessities like water and electricity was something that people couldn't do without, but freedom of speech and the media could be dispensed with. So therefore, he said, he was willing to take his pick of an autocracy which provided basic necessities over freedom of speech, and he challenged me to prove that people wouldn't make this choice. Also, he said, without guarantee of private property rights and a stable middle class, democracy couldn't really flourish. Benin has democracy but Singapore doesn't, but which country would you pick to live in, he challenged me.

I really had no answer to all this except to say that basic necessities and freedom of speech were not mutually exclusive or opposing categories, and could co-exist together. But his point, of course, is well taken. As environmental conditions get more extreme and people start to face more and more shortages of basic needs, how will this affect our political landscape? Will we move towards a more autocratic regime that may be able to guarantee at least some modicum of basic needs like water and electricity? And if so, how can we guarantee that the present urgent need to institute a democratic system goes hand in hand with leaders who recognize the need for, and are capable of delivering on, basic services?

But the government is not the only one we can turn to as we face the challenge of a hotter planet. As the planet warms, we as citizens of democratic countries must think more and more about what we can do about water shortage, and our own responsibilities and obligations to a broader world.

Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as climate change, writes in the Harvard Business blog that many key water intensive industries, including “technology, beverage, food, electric power/energy, apparel biotechnology/pharmaceuticals, forest products and mining,” will be affected by water shortages. She recommends that companies start to measure their water footprint, and to elevate water as a governance priority for executives and board members.

Companies, like households, can do a lot to minimize their water footprints. In particular, it may be time for us to start selling those Pajeros and putting the money back into water harvesting tanks which store rainwater from the monsoon for the dry winter months. Hotels, schools and other businesses that use water intensively should, by regulation, have to have a water harvesting tank built for their own water needs. I'm sure all the apartment buildings of Kathmandu will protest when their budget for elegant Italian bathroom tiles goes down but maybe they don't really want elegant Italian tiled bathrooms with no water, do they? Perhaps in the long run the tank may make sense.

As for my nephew, he's already designed a house that has six solar panels (one for computer, one for lights, one for water pump, one for tv, and one for hot water), a natural gas mechanism that lights the cooking stove, a solar car which runs on solar batteries, a windmill to generate electricity, a scarecrow to scare away naughty crows, and a fan to keep away ghosts. Oh, I forgot to mention the scary mask for keeping away big bad ghosts. Needless to say, the last three are his favorites.

“Do you know that by the time you are my age, there will be no more petrol and much less water?” I ask him. “I know!” he answers, jumping up and down at his ecologically sound model. If a five year old can understand this, how come we have so much trouble?
sushma@alumni.brown.edu

Posted on: 2009-03-27 19:58:01 (Server Time)

You are now Madheshis

Sushma Joshi
Of all the groups who have blocked our highways, the Tharus are one group who need to be heard more than anybody

Blocking highways has become the de facto way to exhibit political protest. Everyone gets up in arms about this; perhaps we have no one to blame but our political leaders who started this method of guerilla warfare to bring attention to their presence and issues. Highways appear to be easily blocked in Nepal. More importantly, disrupted highway traffic garners immediate attention. Did I hear somebody say something about putting highway blockers in prison? Now that would be a good way to start civilising Nepali methods of protest (next should be a one year prison term for those who burn toxic tires, and who release carcinogens in the air, pollute densely populated areas, and contribute to global warming.)

But wait -- don't just put these highway blockers into prison yet. Because of all the groups who have blocked our highways, the Tharus are one group who need to be heard more than anybody. Dispossessed by both Pahadis and Madheshis, it is no surprise that the Tharus are not taking kindly to being lumped in with the uber term of Madheshi. An indigenous group (or groups) of people with their own languages, ethnic identity, history, cultures, and a sense of being an integrated political unit shouldn't have to suffer the indignity of being lumped into a group which may have seized their lands, put them at the bottom end of a foreign caste hierarchy, tied them in debt bondage, and delegitimized their political identity by seeing them as simple pawns of a larger political game.

The Muluki Ain of 1854 put the Tharus at the lowest rungs of Hindu untouchability. And the groups who identify as Madheshi, along with the Pahadi, were able to take advantage of this by appropriating lands that the Tharus had traditionally cultivated because the Tharus didn't have a concept of private property or land ownership. The next step was to tie them in debt bondage through loans and then using labor as repayment through a chain that spanned generations. King Mahendra's highway and malaria eradication brought a further wave of Pahadi migrants to the Tarai, dispossessing the Tharus further.

Till 2000, many Tharus from Western Nepal were indentured labourers or Kamaiyas to both Madheshi and Pahadi families. The government declared them free on 17 July 2000 -- unfortunately the rehabilitation of former Kamaiya was done in a dismal pace and the land and citizenship cards promised to them never materialized in many cases, forcing families to return to former employers.

One corollary of the way the Nepali state has always marginalised Tharus manifested in a recent historical moment. During a research project conducted via the UN, I was part of a team that documented a systematic disappearances campaign from one Tharu village. The army officer in charge was well-known in that area and he would pick up and disappear Tharu farmers and locals with no apparent cause whatsoever. The Tharu people picked up had no affiliation with political parties and were not politically involved, leading observers to conclude that rather than following orders to politically repress opponents, the army officer may simply have been exercising his impunity.

In another case we documented, a Tharu widow had been accused of gaubadh -- killing a cow, which is a punishable offense in Nepali law. The neighbour's bull had died and he accused her of witchcraft and cow-murder. Interestingly, the woman had just converted to Christianity, which may have been a reason for the neighbourly dispute. The neighbour filed a case against her with the intent to seize her land, but he was thwarted when both the courts and the Maoists gave a verdict in her favor. Despite winning the case, however, it was clear that she faced an extreme amount of ostracization based on both her ethnicity, religion as well as widowed status. It would require not just a win at the appellate court but an entire overhaul of the Nepali Constitution to make her feel part of the community.

The Tharus make up 6 to 7 percent of the Nepali population -- a not insignificant number. With 26 major subgroups (with Dangaura Tharu, Rana Tharu, Chitwan Tharu, and Katharia being the four largest) and different dialects, the Tharus may not be as integrated as they seem, and putting aside 6 percent for Tharus in all governmental and administrative positions may be difficult to implement. What is possible to implement is their demand that they be considered a separate ethnic group, a position that is not difficult to understand.

What is clear is that the Tharu andolan is a legitimate andolan of indigenous people (not just a plot of the UML to destabilize the Madheshi movement and make inroads in the Tarai), one of many which we will see as grievances and demands of minority groups rise to the surface. How the Nepali government deals with the Tharus will be a test case of how the Nepali state will deal with its indigenous groups. It will also be a test of how we go about a federated Nepal.

Police harassment against Tharus has been on the rise since their agitation. Going house to house to beat up Tharus, unfortunately, is no different from the army officer who went around disappearing people with impunity.

What the Tharu andolan has also brought to the attention of Nepalis is that these ordinances being passed are by-passing democratic discussion and process. The government passed an ordinance on inclusivity, which should have been a progressive act, but it did it without telling the Tharus they were now Madheshis. Now that's a definite no-no. Having a 600 member CA Assembly makes no sense if all important decisions, from disappearances to inclusivity, is being decided through a small clique of decision-makers. After all, the whole point of democracy is to make governance open to the public.
Posted on: 2009-03-13 20:08:18 (Server Time)

SELLING OUT TO CHINA

Sushma Joshi
The Kathmandu Post, 02/27/2009
I laughed out loud when I read this news story: China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage lodged a protest when the auction house Christie sold two bronze sculptures—the head of a rat and a rabbit—at US$36 million.

According to an AP report: “"Christie's obstinately went on with the auction of the Summer Palace relics, going against the spirit of relevant international conventions and the international common understanding that cultural relics should be returned to their country of origin," the administration said in a statement.”

China, which has flouted every law in the international lawbooks, from human rights to environment, from labor standards to media freedom, from ethical standards of treatment of prisoners to copyright, is now evoking international law to shame Western pirates! Isn’t that ironic? But now we know. Even China, it appears, is willing to quote international law when expedient.

China gets furious when Yves St. Laurent makes a pile of cash selling stolen Chinese art—but China doesn’t get upset when it makes a pile of cash pirating Western art. All the Mona Lisa on tea-trays—shouldn’t China be paying a royalty to Bill Gates for that? I heard he owns the rights to that image.

Our own Maoists seem to have learnt this pick-and-choose method of following laws from our neighbour: one day they cite international human rights laws, the next day they apologize for beating up or killing people. Even a child knows the limitations of “sorry”—sorry is okay for scrawling on walls with crayons or breaking a glass. “Sorry” is not adequate for assault or murder. (And while we are on the topic of terminology, lets get clear on “martyr”—a martyr is someone who voluntarily sacrifices his/ her life or freedom to further a cause or belief. A person murdered by criminals, or one who loses his life in a road accident caused by inadequate traffic and road maintenance management, cannot be termed a martyr.)

Chinese Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Hu Zhengyue flew in to Nepal, shook hands with Prachanda, offered a 400 MW electricity project in Jajarkot, told him to keep the Tibetans under control, then flew off again. How insulting! Does the minister think Nepalis are so easily bought? The least he could have done is offered us a couple of new highways, a solar power manufacturing factory, and at least a 1000 MW electricity plant. And if the Chinese are so filthy rich, why don’t they just throw in a solar powered car for each of Nepal’s 30 million citizens? And add a special pirated DVD containing the oeuvre of Chinese cinema for each? Now we’re talking.

There is a lot of buzz around the new relationship with China—a new version of the 1950 treaty, and special economic processing zones that China may invest in. But do we really want to follow that model of creating incredibly repressive work environments in which people are locked in and forced to work for hours to create more and more cheap clothing for the Western world? Is this really the way forward for Nepal? Does Nepal always have to follow China, or can David lead Goliath?

The Tibetans living in Nepal are Nepali citizens, whether the 1991 Constitution recognizes them as such or not. Those who came in 1959 have lived here for around fifty years, and know more about Nepal’s history than many living Nepali youth. Those who were born here, despite Nepal’s unwillingness to recognize them, are Nepali nationals, born and raised here, speaking the language and knowing no other country. Tibetans have enriched Nepal’s cultural and religious landscapes, strengthened our economy and trade, influenced our arts, revived our architecture, sung our songs and made our films. They are our citizens and have as much right to be in Nepal and to enjoy the rights of every Nepali citizen—including the right to free assembly and protest.

The Nepali state forces Tibetans to face humiliation in their lives—making it difficult for them to travel, buy property, or access basic services which require proof of citizenship. Despite all this, Tibetans have thrived in Nepal, and some have settled down roots. For many, though, Nepal remains a hostile country and unfortunately migration from Tibetan communities are on the rise, as with other communities in Nepal. If we are to make this a hospitable country, the new Nepali Constitution must give Tibetans legal recognition as naturalized citizens, as other democratic countries do. And it must give them equal rights to those of all other ethnic and religious groups. We can’t undo China’s stupidity in decimating and applying genocidal policies to one of its most potent cultural groups. What we can do is embrace our own, and perhaps, through that, show them the way.

There was a joke that circulated in Nepal during the Eighties. When it rained in Russia, the joke went, the Communists in Nepal would open up their umbrellas. Let it not be said that when repression starts in China, the Nepali Maoists follow suit. The Nepali politicians are accountable to their own constituency of 30 million Nepali citizens, which include Tibetans-- not to China. And this means that our government should be thinking about ways in which to include Tibetan communities into the Nepali nation—not about how to repress their freedom of speech.

But it is not just Nepali citizens who will be watching what happens on March 10th, the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan people's peaceful uprising in Lhasa, but also the world. Let it not be said that our country, which has pledged to follow democratic norms, got swayed by a paltry bribe.

Nepal to China: no deal with Tibet till you give us a factory that makes cheap, pirated versions of Summer Palace rat and rabbit heads that we can sell to the international market. Then maybe we’ll help you to hang Yves St. Laurent.

garden photos, courtsey of Sebastian

New photo, this time with glasses!

and here's me with my chasma...

Art solutions

Sushma Joshi Sunday February 15, 2009
Source : THE KATHMANDU POST
A group of young schoolchildren sat on the floor and listened to their teacher, who stood in front of a painting by Gaugain, explaining the difference between the West and other cultures. I was in the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid. I watched with amazement as the group of five year olds listened to their teacher with complete attention. The teacher, looking about, chose a child to ask a question, and the forest of eager hands said there was more than one child who wanted to answer. A day ago, I'd watched a similar group of children listen to their teacher tell them about a gigantic painting of a long-dead royal family at the Prado Museum. The reverence with which the children sat in front of the paintings was palpable.

For a Nepali visitor in Spain, the question inevitably rises -- how can the citizens of these countries imagine a world in which the traffic always flows smoothly, electricity and water is available to all, and education is plentiful, while ours struggles with dysfunctional systems which can't provide these basic necessities? To me, the answer is not just that we suffer from poverty (we don't, we have some of the most plentiful natural and human resources in the world) but because we suffer from a lack of creativity. And creativity, and the philosophical basis of humanism which sees basic necessities as rights of all citizens, of course, is a learnt concept. Unless we teach our children these concepts, they don't manifest in our daily lives.

Art of course is not just the frivolous creations to be bought by rich people. Art also reflects and shapes the nation. There is a famous series by Goya which depicts industry, commerce, agriculture and poetry -- the building blocks of a nation. In the three major museums of Madrid, the Prado, the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen Bornemisza, I saw lines of people lining up to see the works that lie there. And the Spanish leave nobody out --from major to minor artists, they are all there, waiting for people to see again and recapitulate hundreds of years of history.

I often hear the boast that Nepal has many “living museums.” Unfortunately, this doesn't mean we take our children there and explain to them the history and significance of these places, or teach them how to continue the crafts and arts which made these living museums possible in the first place. “We shouldn't be proud of ourselves because of what our ancestors did four hundred years ago,” an eminent artist said to me recently. Why not, I inquired. “Because we haven't anything to show for ourselves at the present,” he responded. And in truth, I have to say that the work that came out of this country a few hundred years ago far excels the work being produced in Nepal at the current time.

And for a country of twenty-six million people, we have yet to build ourselves a museum of contemporary art. Of course we have plenty of private citizens who own not just paintings, but also sculpture, pottery, negatives of photographs, old film and other works which would fill more than one museum. Even if the Chitrakars did a spring clean of their attics, no doubt Kathmandu would have a world class museum, I joked to a Chitrakar friend. And I have no doubt our most well-known artists, as well as emerging ones, would not hesitate to donate their works were such an institution to coalesce into existence.

Of course, donations of private collections must be done on a voluntary manner, but until Nepal starts to work on trust in institutions, we may not yet get our MOMA. A museum of modern art, which would teach students from all across Nepal about the country's many artistic heritages, would have to created by a team of impeccable character and trustworthy credentials, and in the current environment of insecurity and distrust, this appears to be a few years away.

But a museum of modern art wouldn't just be profitable to artists, art curators, and art management people alike. It would also, I firmly believe, create a generation of children who'd learn about how to think their way out of problems in innovative ways. Art education, which is mandatory in many countries, doesn't unfortunately exist in but a very few private schools in Nepal. And even that is piecemeal, and attached to the understanding that the arts are dispensable and secondary.

But all this may be changing. Last Tuesday, a friend of mine handed me a ticket to a school play staged by Alok Vidhyashram, a private school. The play was in the Nepal Academy Hall, and cost Rs.200 -- a rather excessive price for a school play, and wasn't the venue rather large, I thought. Imagine my surprise when I went there to find the hall fully packed. Not only was the crowd attentive, but the play was staged with professional costumes, sets and children who acted with cool self confidence and absolute command of their lines. I quickly revised my opinion of school plays -- indeed, the theatre director (who I heard later had been imported from India) had used his assets to the maximum, using the entire school as his cast, and filling up the stage with every theatre director's dream -- a stage full of adorable, natural actors. The play, a reenactment of the Ramayana, was in English, and the Nepali speaking parents had trouble following the script -- the only irony. But indeed, when the subcontinent stages the Ramayana in a babble of tongues, it didn't appear to be out of place to hear the children speak a thousand year old myth in a modern tongue. The school, with a maximum investment of Rs.800 per child, which the parents happily paid up, had managed to instill the best ethics of art -- creativity, discipline, teamwork, and self-confidence -- with a single play.

Theatres, art, film, literature -- all of these are integrally tied, and all of these should be taught in our schools not as something separate from the curriculum but as part of it. And this in-school education should be supplemented with visits to institutions like museums which give children not just a sense of their nation's history, but also pride in their own achievements and heritages, as well as a sense of possibility about their own abilities to create such works. Only then can a country like Nepal, whose most precious resource is its people, will be able to think its way out of its current mess.

The house of Garcia Lorca

Sushma Joshi
Our inability and our reluctance to preserve and share the spares of the great writers and poets and artists of Nepal gives the impression that we have less than we do

I'll be honest with you. The only reason I heard about Spanish poet Frederico Garcia Lorca is because a favorite song of mine is inspired by him. ¨Take this waltz, ¨ by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, I learnt, was based on Garcia Lorca´s poetry. Singer-songwriter Cohen spent twelve or thirteen tours writings out the lyrics after reading a Lorca poem. Not only did Cohen write songs inspired by Lorca, he even named his daughter after him.

Who was this Lorca who had inspired a man whose songs draw reverent crowds in college campuses all over North America? Cohen is an iconoclast -- an intellectual who does several things at once, and all with perfect grace. He writes novels and poetry, he composes songs, he plays music, and he sings. After touring the house of Garcia Lorca, I understood why Cohen had been inspired. For like Cohen, his spiritual guru Lorca was also a Renaissance man, an artist who drew, wrote poetry and plays, and who directed theatre. Unlike many contemporary artists, who are often boxed into one genre or another, these folks were free to move from one media to another, understanding that there are no boundaries for expression, and for an artist all forms of creation is fair game. Lorca was also lucky -- unlike many artists who do many things and are condemned for it in times and places that don't understand them, he was born in a place and time in which a poet could also paint, and a painter could also write poetry. Granada in the twenties was a hotbed of creative activity, and it was clear Lorca was at the center of it.

I am determined to see Lorca´s summer home in Granada. But each time I go, it is closed. A group of feral cats congregate outside, being fed by a kind young man who explains to me that the house is only open at specific times, and I should return at the right time. The next morning, I get up early and walk there. And this time, it's open. ¨You're lucky,¨ the museum assistant told me, as I showed up early morning to see the house. ¨This house is meant to be seen in the sunlight.¨ And sure enough the sun poured in through the windows, highlighting the simple living room which still contains the original furniture when the Garcia Lorca family had used it as a summer home. Paintings done by obscure artists hung on the walls. Who is the artist, I ask. Oh, a friend of the family, the assistant dismisses. Not important. And yet, despite his obscure status, the painter had inspired the young Lorca.

I see a small framed painting in a corner which has many signatures. The drawing, explains the museum assistant, has been done by Lorca for a fellow artist, and everybody else has signed it. This sign of a vibrant artistic community which drew upon and thrived upon each others creative work reminded me again that art is a communal activity, and there is no person who is not inspired by his context.

Upstairs, where the parents' bedroom used to be, I see small notebook pages with his magical, playful and spare drawings. Lorca´s special signature, in which he plays with the letters of his own name, interweaving it with weeping suns, vines and faces in profile, is now found everywhere, from fridge magnets to t-shirts. The figures have something about the naive folk art about them, but also the sense of play with profiles which would inspire another Spanish born genius, Picasso.

Lorca´s bedroom is small and simple -- there is a small iron frame bed with a picture of a Mary above it. There is a big desk and above it is the poster of his theatre troupe. On the walls are paintings done by local artists. ¨This is it?¨ I say. The museum assistant smiles at my astonishment. ¨This is it.¨ The window looks out into the green trees which provided the restful atmosphere so important to an artist's creativity. Most of Lorca´s plays were written on this same desk.

After reading Lorca´s poems in the hills of Southern Spain, I saw a spectacular dream in which thousands of birds took flight into the sunset. Either there is something in the olive oil, or else there is some magic element in Southern Spain that heightens the emotions to extremes, making joy and sorrow feel so much more intense than at other places. Perhaps it is the background of Arabic history which spins poetry from stone and water in the background -- the Alhambra, an old palace left by Moorish kings, is an ever present reminder that Spain is a mixed place, where the sounds of Arabic music still resounds in the voices of children humming songs.

Lorca was one of the first people to popularize the then dying art of flamenco by holding a public competition in Granada. A photograph of his sister, dressed up in the flamenco outfit, hangs in one corner. Now, flamenco enjoys a popular revival on international stages and in theatre halls. Lorca also believed that classical theatre should be enjoyed by all people, and to this end he took touring troupes which performed radically modern interpretations of classical plays to rural areas of Spain. This work was funded by the Second Republic's Ministry of Education.

On 19th August, 1936, Garcia Lorca was shot by the Nationalists, who had started a mass campaign to eliminate all supporters of the Republic. Some believe his sexuality -- Lorca was homosexual -- may have played a part in his killing. In a remarkable instance of clairvoyance, Lorca wrote: "Then I realised I had been murdered They looked for me in cafes, cemeteries and churches .... but they did not find me. They never found me? No. They never found me."

Walking through the house of Lorca reminded me again how important it is to preserve the physical spaces where artists lived and worked. In Vermont, I had walked through the home of another poet, Robert Frost. Frost´s ¨Stopping by woods on a snowy evening¨ was a poem I had to memorize as a child. Walking through his small cabin in the woods, seeing the old books on his bookshelves, seeing the kitchen with the sugar cans with the Sixties label still on it, and the markings on the bulky fridge, all of that was a truly incomparable experience. It was clear to all of us impressionable writer types walking through the cabin that the ghost of Robert Frost watched us as we walked through his bedroom. In the kitchen, I lifted up the telephone and said: "hello?" And was that a raspy breath I heard down the telephone? Later that evening, we sat in a circle and one woman produced a recording of Frost's voice. The sixty second recording brought home again how art lives on, even when the artist dies.

It is not that Nepal doesn't have great writers or artists in its history. No, it seems more that our inability, and our reluctance, to preserve and share the spares of the great writers and poets and artists of Nepal is what gives the impression that we have less than we do. Witness, for instance, the solid sculpture of Bhanubhakta Acharya which graces the Chaurastha plaza in Darjeeling. As a Nepali, I felt proud to see the image --unfortunately, I have to cross the border to India to see it.

A while back, I met a woman who shared with me a plan to restore and renovate Balkrishna Sama´s home, and make it financially viable as a cultural institution. It appears to me that we need more of these ventures and initiatives, not just from individuals but also the government which should put aside politics in a major campaign to preserve and revive cultural and artistic endeavours. The French and the Spanish keep all their artwork and their entire heritage, whichever end of the political spectrum the works were inspired by. It's about time we started to do the same.
Posted on: 2009-01-30 19:16:06 (Server Time)