Views of a Nepali Economist

Mobile Phones and Scooters: Liberators of Nepali Women

In our Nepali society, responsibility of upholding the social and moral prestige of a family lies with the female members of the family. Anything they do or do not do is viewed with the “prestige” lens. In order to ensure that they kept our family prestige intact, our culture has been restricting their mobility for ages. Sometimes, this restriction is imposed directly by not allowing females to get an access to education or to a job. While at other times, the restriction is imposed by setting a certain time by which they should be back at home in the evening. These are mostly done on the pretense of keeping them safe from the ill elements in the neighborhood or the society in general. However, it has always been more about keeping the family prestige intact and less about safety.

In instances when female members have been granted some mobility rights, it has usually been done by sending a male member of the household as a protective guard or escort. However, in the last few years, restriction of access to social spaces such as restaurants or clubs for females has been reducing in Nepal. Girls are no longer bound by social mores to stay at home while the boys are out having fun. The contributors to this greater liberation of Nepali women and girls are the mobile phone and the scooter.

Mobile phones were introduced late into Nepal. However, after their introduction, they have changed the way we communicate with one another. Despite its criticism as a nuisance toy, it has reduced the communication gap that existed between people. From learning about latest news to latest fashion, mobile phones are very handy. As a society we have come to value the impact of mobile phones in staying in touch with family, friends and relatives. It is no secret that mobile phones have helped a whole generation of Nepali youths to improve their social relations. This is especially true for females since they have had limited opportunities for continued interactions with others on a daily basis in the past.

I have performed a cross-country analysis of over a hundred countries with a host of indicators to identify what factors, more so than others, could be the potential reasons for increased usage of mobile phones. Results showed that literacy rate and median age are very significant in that regard. It is safe to say that these hold true for Nepal as well. As our population becomes more educated and literate each passing year, we are more likely to embrace new technologies. Add to that the fact that current median age of a Nepali is around 21 years old, and the increased usage of mobile phones in Nepal becomes all the more significant. It has changed the way and extent to which our youths, especially females who before mobile phones had limited access to information and other people, communicate whether the communication is about movies, dates or jobs. It has helped in liberating Nepali women out of the information gap.

Nepal’s economy has also been growing for years despite various hiccups. However, domestic employment situation has not improved much in the past decade because of which more and more Nepalis have left for jobs overseas in the last decade. The foreign workers phenomenon dominates the current Nepali economic discussions, and has resulted in billions of dollars of remittance inflow into Nepal. The latest census also showed that significant proportion of Nepali households have a member working overseas and sending remittance income home. What this has done is provided an increased purchasing power in the hands of family members. A common result has been that, in the remittance recipient families, males have been buying motorcycles and females have been buying scooters in droves.

If mobile phones lifted the information barriers that females in Nepal faced, scooters have lifted the mobility barrier. A scooter is not simply a means of mobility but signifies equality and liberty that greater economic growth and purchasing power brings. Who is to say that women cannot ride motorbikes? However, overwhelming preference for scooters by Nepali women and girls is not only a choice but a symbol of freedom that they display. They no longer have to depend on a male member of the household to help them get somewhere in their motorbikes. Now, Nepali women can decide on their own where they want to go and when. The scooter is not simply a means of mobility for them like motorbikes is for men, but a symbol of freedom from the shackles of our various societal dogmas, rules and pretenses of safety that they were made to live up with.

Mobile phones and scooters have liberated Nepali women. They still have to be back home by a certain time in the evening, but their mobile phones and scooters have provided greater access to information and greater physical mobility than what they had before. Ever increasing use of these two by Nepali women symbolizes their yearning for liberation more so than anything else. They still have a long way to go, but the mobile phones and scooters have provided them a great start.

Our current political struggle to unite over how the country should be run, who should run it, and how long they should run it belie the otherwise rarely accepted fact that, as a people, Nepalis are pretty solidly united. Besides the purpose with which such unity occurs, there are often unintended consequences, the likes of which we saw during the anti-Hrithik Roshan incident years ago when a handful of Nepalis died in Nepal over something that the actor said which has yet to be proven to this day. However, in recent years, the unity that we have showcased as people have mostly been for the purpose of good, except in our political sphere where we don’t seem to agree on anything.

One of the first clear strength of Nepali unity was seen when Prashant Tamang participated in Indian Idol. Not only the Nepalis in Nepal were united to make sure that Prashant won that contest, but Nepalis of Jackson Heights in New York City had installed money collection booths, the collections of which would be sent to Nepal to support the SMS voting for Prashant from Nepal. Last year, Nepalis in droves voted for Soumya Rai and Om Chhetri—two kids of Nepali origin—in the Dance India Dance competition. As a result, Soumya came fourth, and Om came second in the competition. This solidarity and unity in supporting these candidates was seen not only in Nepalis in Nepal but also in people of Nepali origin in India.

And, now, twice in the past three years, two Nepalis have won the CNN Hero contest—Anuradha Koirala in 2010 and Pushpa Basnet in 2012. So, what do these wins of Nepalis in cyberspace and TVspace tell us about ourselves? Did Nepali support for Prashant have anything to do with us wanting to shed our “bahadur” tag in India? Did our support to Om and Soumya have anything to do with trying to prove to the billion plus Indians that Nepali kids were as good as, if not better than, the other Indian kids? Was our support for Anuradha and Pushpa, and their eventual wins, our way of telling the world that we matter?

There is no doubt that the people that nominated and campaigned for the likes of Anuradha and Pushpa are young and tech savvy. In addition, this crowd is idealistic and holds dear the democratic value of participation. There is also an understanding among these “voters” that online and SMS voting are democratic and fair. So, they invest significant efforts due to the belief of existence of these notions of fairness and democracy in those competitions.

The same cannot be said of the ground level election process in Nepal which, in a way, is also a competition between different participants. Constituents from two different constituencies voted against Madhav Kumar Nepal because they decided he wasn’t fit to be a member of the parliament. Mr Nepal lost from both of those constituencies. He ended up becoming the prime minister. It has to be noted that he did so through a legitimate process and no rules of the land were broken. However, making him a PM despite losing from two different places was a slap in the faces and logic of those constituents who thought he wasn’t fit to become an MP, let alone the PM.

We should not be expected to keep supporting a democratic process that gives us a PM out of a two-time loser. We cannot be expected to keep believing in democracy when the version practiced here is different from the other western versions of democracy that we grow up watching, reading and idolizing. We are interested and invested in online voting because we feel they more aptly reflect our ideology of a fair democratic process.

I keep hearing and reading about people and politicians complaining about apathy of our youths towards politics and the political process. They are apathetic because they see the reality where constituents and their wishes are made fun of afterwards. We participate in online polls and voting in support of candidates like Anuradha and Pushpa because they are “apolitical”, and because the online voting processes and results are more democratic than our “real” elections.