Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Foreign Aid politics
The following opinion piece was published in Republica on July 28, 2015. The direct link to Republica is here.
Aid Politics
by: Mukesh Khanal
Nepal's story as a foreign aid recipient started in 1947 with the United States "recognizing" Nepal as a country, and then establishing diplomatic relations in 1948. The Agreement for Technical Assistance that the two signed in January 1951 established the US as Nepal's first bilateral donor, and American aid started flowing into Nepal. Other donor nations slowly followed suit.
The start of American aid flow to Nepal had more to do with geopolitics than a sudden outpouring of benevolence from the American people. Japan's involvement in the Second World War had just ended with an unconditional surrender to the US, as a result of which Americans were now present in Asia. In the meantime, China had started to show signs of a rise in communism, which the Americans did not like. America wanted to ensure that China's neighbors did not fall prey to communism, too. Also, Chinese aggression had been building in Tibet, an independent nation since 1912. Therefore, recognizing the existence of Nepal and dangling the aid carrot got the Americans the closest vantage point to watch Chinese activities in Tibet.
American concern about Tibet was valid. Nepal-US diplomatic relation was only nine-month-old when China annexed Tibet. American interests in Chinese activities in Tibet intensified, and were at their highest during 1962-1965. During that period, American foreign aid to Nepal was also at its highest. In the 1970s and 80s, it started to dawn on everyone that Tibet was now firmly under Chinese control, and the hope of Tibet again becoming an independent nation-state vanished. Along with that disappearing hope, America's aid to Nepal also fell rapidly. Even today, after over half a century, Tibetan geopolitics continues to be a significant factor in Nepal's foreign aid narrative. While the story started with Americans interested in freeing Tibet from China's clutches, it continues today with the Chinese interested in curbing pro-Tibet activities in Nepal.
The main thrust of this long introduction is that Nepal's story as a foreign aid recipient did not arise out of need for such aid. It was forced upon us by foreign geopolitics with which we had little interest. Half a century later, the situation remains the same. However, in this period, we grew accustomed to our role as a recipient of handouts, so much so that our annual national budgets are financed with foreign aid. For a nation which likes to profess pride in an un-colonized history and sovereignty, our continued acceptance of ever increasing foreign aid is blight on our self-identity.
Unfortunately, we no longer attempt to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. In every national tragedy—be it the high rates of poverty or illiteracy or national disasters like the recent earthquakes—and every unbalanced annual budget, we look for handouts. As a result, only a few among us today is positive about a self-sufficient future. Our leaders keep promising to transform the country into Switzerland. But we know deep inside that a country that needs handouts to finance its budget has no hope of becoming anything close to Switzerland. Foreign aid has ruined our psyche.
Foreign aid has also turned Nepal into a lab for experiments. European states, which themselves took hundreds of years to reconcile ethnic differences and identities, funded and provided legitimacy to fringe ethnic actors and groups in Nepal after the Madhesh movement. They wished to change the ethnic dialogue in a year, a process for which they themselves took half a millennium. Some of their experiments in Nepal backfired. For example, the DFID had to distance itself from extreme ethnic actors and groups, whom it had supported in the past, when they started to undermine the peace process. Countries that are not secular themselves, and whose head of state still touch the Bible to take oath, have poured millions into lobbying for a secular Nepal.
Current dialogues taking place all across Nepal—asking for suggestions on improvements in the new constitution—clearly indicate that Nepalis overwhelmingly want the country to remain a Hindu state, yet with the freedom of religious expressions for anyone and everyone. You know, as in most western democracies. However, the countries that provide us handouts fail to realize that the decision should be ours. Instead, we have the British ambassador going around giving interviews and demanding that the new Nepali constitution grant a right to religious conversion. The ambassador fails to realize that Nepalis have always had that right. I don't know of a single instance when the Nepali state has not allowed one of its citizens to convert to another religion. I haven't read all Nepali laws. Maybe the right is not explicitly stated, which could have made the British ambassador concerned. However, not all rights are always explicitly stated. The British ambassador should know better. After all, England has no constitution, yet people's rights are protected there.
We also have the Indian ambassador asking Nepali ministers to "explain" themselves every time they make a statement on Madhesh or Madheshi leadership. We have the Chinese embassy fuming at Nepali authorities every time there is a peaceful demonstration by Tibetan refugees in Nepal. It is lost on the Chinese that Nepal is a democracy, and a democracy provides the right to peaceful demonstration to everyone—citizens and refugees—living within its boundaries. Last but not the least, we have European ambassadors holding clandestine meetings with secessionists like CK Raut despite the knowledge that he was charged of sedition.
Our failure to challenge such transgressions of foreign governments has sadly become de riguer in modern Nepal. Because doing so could hurt our ability to finance our next year's annual budget. We were doing fine as a people and a country before the Americans decided to "recognize" that we existed. Then, foreign aid was forced upon us without our asking. We didn't need it back then. Do we need it today? Is foreign aid a cure or a disease? Is foreign aid eroding our sovereignty and turning us into subservient recipients? Maybe it is time we start asking those hard questions.
The start of American aid flow to Nepal had more to do with geopolitics than a sudden outpouring of benevolence from the American people. Japan's involvement in the Second World War had just ended with an unconditional surrender to the US, as a result of which Americans were now present in Asia. In the meantime, China had started to show signs of a rise in communism, which the Americans did not like. America wanted to ensure that China's neighbors did not fall prey to communism, too. Also, Chinese aggression had been building in Tibet, an independent nation since 1912. Therefore, recognizing the existence of Nepal and dangling the aid carrot got the Americans the closest vantage point to watch Chinese activities in Tibet.
American concern about Tibet was valid. Nepal-US diplomatic relation was only nine-month-old when China annexed Tibet. American interests in Chinese activities in Tibet intensified, and were at their highest during 1962-1965. During that period, American foreign aid to Nepal was also at its highest. In the 1970s and 80s, it started to dawn on everyone that Tibet was now firmly under Chinese control, and the hope of Tibet again becoming an independent nation-state vanished. Along with that disappearing hope, America's aid to Nepal also fell rapidly. Even today, after over half a century, Tibetan geopolitics continues to be a significant factor in Nepal's foreign aid narrative. While the story started with Americans interested in freeing Tibet from China's clutches, it continues today with the Chinese interested in curbing pro-Tibet activities in Nepal.
The main thrust of this long introduction is that Nepal's story as a foreign aid recipient did not arise out of need for such aid. It was forced upon us by foreign geopolitics with which we had little interest. Half a century later, the situation remains the same. However, in this period, we grew accustomed to our role as a recipient of handouts, so much so that our annual national budgets are financed with foreign aid. For a nation which likes to profess pride in an un-colonized history and sovereignty, our continued acceptance of ever increasing foreign aid is blight on our self-identity.
Unfortunately, we no longer attempt to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. In every national tragedy—be it the high rates of poverty or illiteracy or national disasters like the recent earthquakes—and every unbalanced annual budget, we look for handouts. As a result, only a few among us today is positive about a self-sufficient future. Our leaders keep promising to transform the country into Switzerland. But we know deep inside that a country that needs handouts to finance its budget has no hope of becoming anything close to Switzerland. Foreign aid has ruined our psyche.
Foreign aid has also turned Nepal into a lab for experiments. European states, which themselves took hundreds of years to reconcile ethnic differences and identities, funded and provided legitimacy to fringe ethnic actors and groups in Nepal after the Madhesh movement. They wished to change the ethnic dialogue in a year, a process for which they themselves took half a millennium. Some of their experiments in Nepal backfired. For example, the DFID had to distance itself from extreme ethnic actors and groups, whom it had supported in the past, when they started to undermine the peace process. Countries that are not secular themselves, and whose head of state still touch the Bible to take oath, have poured millions into lobbying for a secular Nepal.
Current dialogues taking place all across Nepal—asking for suggestions on improvements in the new constitution—clearly indicate that Nepalis overwhelmingly want the country to remain a Hindu state, yet with the freedom of religious expressions for anyone and everyone. You know, as in most western democracies. However, the countries that provide us handouts fail to realize that the decision should be ours. Instead, we have the British ambassador going around giving interviews and demanding that the new Nepali constitution grant a right to religious conversion. The ambassador fails to realize that Nepalis have always had that right. I don't know of a single instance when the Nepali state has not allowed one of its citizens to convert to another religion. I haven't read all Nepali laws. Maybe the right is not explicitly stated, which could have made the British ambassador concerned. However, not all rights are always explicitly stated. The British ambassador should know better. After all, England has no constitution, yet people's rights are protected there.
We also have the Indian ambassador asking Nepali ministers to "explain" themselves every time they make a statement on Madhesh or Madheshi leadership. We have the Chinese embassy fuming at Nepali authorities every time there is a peaceful demonstration by Tibetan refugees in Nepal. It is lost on the Chinese that Nepal is a democracy, and a democracy provides the right to peaceful demonstration to everyone—citizens and refugees—living within its boundaries. Last but not the least, we have European ambassadors holding clandestine meetings with secessionists like CK Raut despite the knowledge that he was charged of sedition.
Our failure to challenge such transgressions of foreign governments has sadly become de riguer in modern Nepal. Because doing so could hurt our ability to finance our next year's annual budget. We were doing fine as a people and a country before the Americans decided to "recognize" that we existed. Then, foreign aid was forced upon us without our asking. We didn't need it back then. Do we need it today? Is foreign aid a cure or a disease? Is foreign aid eroding our sovereignty and turning us into subservient recipients? Maybe it is time we start asking those hard questions.
Labels: foreign aid, sovereignty
Thursday, July 23, 2015
(Un)civil service
The opinion piece below was published on July 18 in Republica. The direct link to Republica is here.
Uncivil Service
by: Mukesh Khanal
Last December, I was shopping in a grocery store in Calgary, Canada. An employee at the store, whose job was to talk to random shoppers inside the store and ask them to sign up for the store's credit card, approached me to see if I would sign up. I made an excuse and politely declined his offer. He looked at me for a few more seconds, and asked, "Nepali ho?"
He said his family owned a hugely popular restaurant in Kathmandu. His wife had applied for a Canadian PR, and he had to come to Canada because his wife was adamant. He said he wanted to go back to Kathmandu, even if his wife stayed in Canada. He would make occasional visits to Calgary, he said, to see his wife. I haven't seen him again in the store. I believe he is back in Kathmandu running his business.
The majority of Nepalis who come to Canada are not as well-off as the person I met in the store. Most who arrive through the Canadian government's PR program are "lecturers" who taught in Nepali universities and colleges. They have at least a Master's degree in their fields, while many also have PhDs. So they are highly qualified individuals in Nepal. The Canadian government invited them with hopes that they would fulfill the lecturer shortage in Canada. The expectation was that if they could not find work as a lecturer, they would train for proper accreditation and at least teach in high schools.
The reality is different. Most who arrive in Canada have years of lecturing experience in Nepal, and those experiences are honored here by Canadian colleges as well. However, they fail to meet the language requirements here due to poor English communication skills. As a result, most end up in menial jobs, such as security guards or warehouse workers. When I write this, I am not belittling those jobs. I am simply stating the fact that Nepalis here work in occupations that are different than the ones that the Canadian government brought them here for.
Even a menial job in Canada pays very well. If you have a stable job, banks lend you money to buy a house worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Canada has an excellent education system, and schooling is free. When the children go to college, they get education loans from the government, a portion of which is waived after they complete their education. Healthcare (check-ups, doctor's visits, lab tests, etc.) is free and medicines are cheap through employer-provided health insurance. The environment is clean, public services are excellent, roads don't have potholes, tap water is drinkable, and there is no load-shedding. You can buy a used car with a month's salary, a gigantic flat-screen TV with two-weeks' salary, and petrol is cheaper than what it is in Nepal.
Therefore, there are many advantages when people move from Nepal to Canada, or to Australia or the US. And, nobody has the right to tell these people they cannot leave Nepal. A search for better life is why our ancestors moved from the savannahs of Africa to other parts of the world. Some of us ended up in Nepal. Moving from Nepal to other parts of the world does not make one a traitor. It is simply a continuation of the journey that our ancestors took seeking greener pastures.
However, Nepali migration is posing public policy problems. Civil servants continue to hold jobs back in Nepal while they live and work overseas. This has caused a backlash in Nepal, and rightly so. They earn a living overseas while also collecting salaries in Nepal. That is unethical. I know a few who have simply taken an unpaid extended leave from their jobs in Nepal. That is fine, if you intend to test the water overseas and wish to return soon if you find the overseas conditions difficult.
But I know of many Nepalis here who are on unpaid leaves back home, but they work full-time in Canada, have bought homes here, and appear to have happily settled permanently here with no intention of ever returning to their old jobs back in Nepal. Yet they refuse to vacate their posts back home. Some have only a year or two left until their 'retirement' in Nepal, and are simply counting down the days, hoping that Lal Babu Pandit does not succeed until they retire. Their hope is to collect Nepali pension, too.
Recently, I have read opinion pieces in Nepali publications from people who feel there is nothing wrong in a Nepali civil servant holding a foreign PR. They argue that Nepali civil servants will work in Nepal until they retire, and then use their PR to go to Canada, US or Australia to spend their post-retirement lives. People who make these arguments are missing an important piece of information. A PR is not something that you get once and retain forever. For example, a Canadian PR is valid for five years. It becomes invalid if you do not live in Canada for at least two years out of those five years. It means, if I have a Canadian PR and I am a current Nepali civil servant, I have to leave my job in Nepal for at least two years to come and live in Canada so that my PR is renewed for another five-year period. The rules are similar for an American or Australian PR.
The point is, if you have a PR from these countries, you have to leave your job in Nepal for a few years to go and live in those countries to renew your PR; which means you are leaving your posts in Nepal during those years. Whether you still get paid in Nepal or you are on an unpaid leave, you will be occupying important civil service posts in Nepal without actually working. That is a disservice to the Nepali state and its people.
We don't have a lot of respect for our politicians. That is why when somebody like Lal Babu comes along and shakes the establishment, it feels like a breath of fresh air. That is why we are genuinely surprised when we get somebody like Tek Bahadur Gurung, who refuses to back down in confrontation with foreign governments and wealthy manpower agents. If Lal Babu's claim of 10,000 civil servants with foreign PRs is correct, it means 10,000 civil servants in Nepal go missing for a few years regularly in order to renew their PR. That is not acceptable for a country that struggles to provide employment opportunities to hundreds of thousands of educated youths. Civil servants should not be absent from their posts for years, or curtail job opportunities for other Nepalis who remain in Nepal, or continue to collect salaries in two different countries at the same time. Doing so is unethical.
We do not begrudge them of their PRs. But they should stop being disgraceful and do the right thing.
Labels: civil service, emigration, Lal Babu Pandit, PR, Tek Bahadur Gurung
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