Are we civilised yet?

Sushma Joshi
Kathmandu Post

NOV 28 - In a gathering at my Kathmandu house where we incidentally sat around and ate buffalo momo dumplings, I said, “I wonder what psychological trauma the people around Gadhimai feel through all the pain of the sacrificed animals!” My logic, that somehow the violence inflicted on the animals must reflect on the humans, and that somehow this would lead to more violence, was smartly counteracted by a learned friend (he asked me not to use his name but identify him, tongue-in-cheek, as “learned friend”) who said, “But think about their beliefs. This is a deeply engrained tradition of animal sacrifice that goes back hundreds of years. They believe that the sacrifice brings them good luck, and you can’t beat that.”

The talk then moved to gruesome descriptions of animal sacrifice in Aacham where men make 500 cuts on an animal before slaughtering it, and another event in which people get the bulls drunk before leading them to a blood-soaked death fight in Bhaktapur. “The people are at fault for the violence, not the bulls!” said one listener indignantly, when we were trying to figure out, in our ayla-muddled states, whether the bulls or the humans were more cruel.

For the urban elite in Kathmandu, who get their meat from butcher shops where the slaughtering is safely hidden out of sight, the 15,000 slaughtered buffaloes was cause for an outcry. And so too for the people in Europe and the U.S.A. But as my friend explained to me, the deep workings of human belief may make these sacrifices less of a terrible animal massacre and more of a profound moment of connection with the universe for the participants of this festival.

If the debate is about how civilized we are, then the debate comes down to animal rights versus human rights, said my learned friend. The rights to follow traditional faith-based practice is enshrined in the Constitution. If we are saying that Muslims and Christians should be allowed to follow their own faiths, and so should the indigenous groups, surely the deeply engrained ancient practice of animal sacrifice, which goes back a very long way, should also be respected. People come to make promises to the goddess and use other animals and plants — rats and coconuts — as part of this faith-based practice. This is not just a random slaughter, but a massive show of faith.

In Kathmandu last year, the Newars rioted when the government stopped funding the 108 animals needed for a sacrifice. The government had to give in and fund them to stop the public unrest. Surely, if the state recognizes sacrifice in this matter, it should do so also in this new matter?

And besides, said my learned friend (you see, he should really be writing this op-ed, not me), the Dalit groups, spurred by NGOs, did an andolan at the last sacrifice, in which they said Dalits would no longer pick up the meat associated with the sacrifice since this was demeaning. This year, after a private company had been contracted to pick up the meat at a fee of Rs. 5,100,000 (around US$ 65,000) and had hired 700 workers to get this done, the Dalit groups stopped the company, saying it was their traditional right to collect the meat. Surely, asks my learned friend, this kind of political machination has to stop, and people living in a democratic country must allow private companies to fulfil a business contract.

Besides the local intricacies of what goes on at Gadhimai (frankly I don’t know a whole lot about this event, and would hesitate to write about this issue if it weren’t for the way it is being promoted as the biggest animal slaughter of all times in the international news), there is the international response. I am being asked my opinion on this by French news outlets and Swedish radio stations, and my response is: Ugh… I got a degree in anthropology, and I would have to study this event a bit more in depth before I can make a comment.

Of course, culture doesn’t excuse everything. But for those of us jaded by the hidden stories of slaughterhouses of the U.S.A. and Europe, where animals are stunned with electric stun guns and killed in much larger masses everyday, the Gadhimai sacrifice can appear to be just a tiny blip of self-righteous protest from the Western world. How many Gadhimai-like sacrifices happen every single day on cattle farms across the meat-eating Western world? Nepal, incidentally, has a poor population for whom meat remains a luxury — for many of those doing the sacrifice, this may be the only meat they will eat throughout the entire year. So there is just a tiny bit of hypocrisy associated with those who protest this event — if only because the global footprint of meat consumption is so much more gigantic on the Western world.

Gadhimai brings to surface what happens every single day on cattle farms across the planet. People sacrifice gigantic numbers of animals everyday, especially for those populations that eat meat more than twice a day. The only difference in this is that we see the crudeness with which animals are killed in this event. I, an aspiring vegetarian, almost support sacrifices for this reason — because it provides a crude mirror for the world to see what exactly goes into their plates when they eat some dumplings.



(The author is trying hard to eat less meat)

DECENTERING AND RECENTERING

SUSHMA JOSHI
Kathmandu Post
November 19: When I was in college, our American campus was abuzz with students talking about “deccentering” power. This decentering happened to all sorts of power centers, from white men to Europe to English Literature. White men, who as everybody knows are the center of the world, were a particular target: bright undergraduates would try to pull apart their Eurocentric patriarchal hegemony all the time with glee. Other times, they decentered language, or decentered meaning, or decentered other Grand Narratives of this nature. My primary emotion about all this decentering was that it was a thrilling process initially, but then as the years wore on and people went on deconstructing these structures but not providing an alternative, things started to feel a bit destabilized. I started, in other words, to feel like I had lost my moorings. If everything from the slippery meaning of words to the shape of thought was up for grabs, then what exactly could I believe in?

Coming back to Nepal after a month in the rather stable island of Bali, I can’t help feeling Nepal’s political scene is undergoing a similar process. Like a gang of college students, our political leaders have taken up the task of decentering power with a zeal. The problem is that they are not providing alternatives. Its okay to deconstruct old feudal structures like the Army and the bureaucracy, but its not okay to leave it all hanging in the middle without an alternative, like an unfinished piece of bad art. So lets get rid of everything old and musty, everything from the statues that used to adorn the corners of Ratna Park to the old five zones and 14 districts. Now what?

The question that occurs to me also is that can there be a functioning nation-state without a strong and stable core? Can Nepal exist in its profoundly decentered state, where we can afford to have 600 CA members—even India with one billion people has less people in Parliament than us--who represent all ethnicities impartially? Or will all this end and we’ll all have to get on one day with business—going back to governing a country of multiple ethnicities in which not all groups will get representation and parity at all governmental offices, where Tharus may dominate in one area and Madhesis will dominate in another, where choices will have to be made and where health posts will have to be manned and hospitals run and food depots brought back to functioning order? Army generals may have to decide to swear an oath to the people and the country rather than to an individual who heads a party or a monarchial system? That one day, we may all have to go back to swearing allegiance to some ideal larger than a party or an ethnic identity or a position in the government?

Nationalism has a bad rap in places like Nepal, where anything associated with the old system raises hackles. But can a nation-state exist if people don’t participate and repeat exercises which form the sense of national identity? I can hear the children singing the national anthem even now, but that’s about all I can see happening on the Nepali national pride front. You go to India and you know you’re in India—because the people themselves are reminding you every few moments where you are. Bollywood repeats the motif. So do their non-resident Indians. So do their writers, filmmakers, artists. So do their businesspeople and their politicians and their diplomats. Our diplomats get posted to New York as UN ambassadors and the next thing you know they’ve gotten a Green Card and migrated to Queens. Or maybe New Jersey.

I was in Humla a few months back, and the area was reeling from a series of bad winter droughts and a low-rainfall monsoon. The people, who’d planted apples in the hopes of selling it to urban markets, had seen their hopes dashed as none of the commercial carriers or governmental agencies had helped them carry their produce to market. The trees were loaded with fruit but everything else was in short supply. The cost of salt and soap was astronomical. In this environment, one man from Humla said, “We should have joined either China or India. At least they looked out for their people. Our leaders will not do anything for us. We can expect nothing from these people.”

When I came back and told some folks back in Kathmandu, they were shocked. “I hope you won’t write that in the papers,” they said. Then why am I writing it? Why am I writing the fact that the sense of disillusionment with the political process is so profound, especially with the poorest of the poor, that they would prefer to choose another nation-state, one which exudes a greater sense of coherence?

One Nepali migrant in Bombay told me he had gone each year to Mumbai for work for a decade, but he’d never once stopped in Kathmandu. That city, he said, was not on his way. His village and Bombay were his two worlds. For many Nepalis like this man, the nation-states of India and China may already provide direct benefits—in the form of decades of employment, remittances, cheap goods, and produces—than Nepal itself. For this reason, Nepal has to try extra hard to justify its existence as a nation-state. But where is that justification? Where are the Gandhis and Nehrus of Nepal who’d make us see, “yes, this is our country, and we need to work towards its well-being by putting its interest above everything else”?

In Bali, I was amused to see how people came there to “center” themselves. “Decentering”, it appeared, was an undergraduate phenomena, just as “centering” was a post-graduate one. Unlike college ten years ago, the discourse now was on mind and body connection. The act of “centering” oneself would bring the focus on the greater unity between not just mind and body, but the human being with the larger universe.

After decentering comes recentering. Nepal will remain an endless football of competing donor interests unless we get a group of people who believe in “centering” their individual selves towards the national interest. We have to create a center that’s not an all devouring, rapacious center, but one which looks out for the larger interest, as other centers of other nation-states have done. This centering process can go further—just as the mind and body are connected, we need to see the political process connected to the people. Otherwise, through default and necessity, through the simple faith that people put in those who take care of them, we might end up losing our self to either side of our big neighbours. Unless some visionaries with greater stakes take up leadership roles, we may end up dead as—forgive the pun—a cold yam.

BALINESE INSPIRATIONS

SUSHMA JOSHI
Kathmandu Post


October 13-I am sitting under the full moon outside the Puri Saraswoti temple in Ubud, Bali. Behind the red doors of the performance stage is the temple of Saraswoti, the gracious patron of arts and music whose presence can be felt everywhere on this island. In front me sits Arjuna in full regalia and meditation. He (actually a she dressed as a he) is about to be distracted from his focused sitting by a boar, which has been sent by the Lord Shiva to shake him out of his deep meditation. The boar shakes poor Arjuna around, and even tries to grab his sword out of his sheath in the back—to no avail. The prince awakes and shoots the boar dead, and that ugly character staggers off the stage howling.



I try to think about why the Balinese would choose this particular moment in the Mahabharata to immortalize through their song, dance and music. Surely, you think, there are a hundred other scenes more worthy of performance? What about Krishna’s immortal speech to Arjuna, given at his deepest moment of crisis? What about the fish that was shot dead through the eye? Surely that could have been shown to better effect? There is not a whisper of Krishna in this performance, however. “Krishna, I don’t like Krishna,” says the owner of the hotel where I am staying. “Everybody pray to Krishna. Pray, pray. But nobody work. If nobody work, how can we make money? So no Krishna.” This seems a simple yet effective critique of the spiritual culture that puts itself above the material world.



Later that evening, sitting under the frangipani tree and looking at the one bow that rests on the stairs, I wonder again about the adoration of Arjuna. Arjuna, the archer who always met his target. He indeed is the hero of this play, and Shiva, when he appears, is masked and wearing a furry outfit, more like a clownish version of the yeti than the grandmaster of the universe. Shiva’s only action on stage is to hand the magic bow to Arjuna, after which he departs, making funny sounds.



This, then, appears to me the difference between the Balinese Hindus and the Nepali Hindus. The Balinese are people who appreciate the fine arts, and whose homes, steps, and gardens all show the effects of this appreciation. Saraswoti’s presence is everywhere, and so is Arjuna, with his razor-sharp focus and unerring sight. Krishna, meanwhile, is nowhere to be seen, Ganesh graces doorways but is not worshipped, and Shiva is a mere furry character in a rather elaborate play.



The Balinese culture, it appears to me, is rather similar to those that existed in the Kathmandu Valley not so long ago. They too have rather beautiful architecture and people who can make fabulous sculptures of stone and wood. They too have potters who make amazing characters out of clay, musicians who play elaborate orchestras, and weavers who make colorful cloth. The only difference is that they’ve taken all of these arts and actively promoted them in daily life, making them visible in every inch of space that any tourist might walk though. The gardens of hotels are decorated with statues and sculptures that seem identical to those that graced the age-old temples. This, then, appeared to be the difference—that the Balinese had taken their arts and put them in their hearts and homes. Think about every hotel in Thamel being decorated with Thimi pottery and Patan brassware and stone sculptures and Kathmandu contemporary art, and you get the picture of what Kathmandu would be like if it followed Bali.



But unfortunately we’ve decided tacky plastic arts from China is more important and more interesting than what our artisans make in our own backyards. No wonder then that the sense of richness which pervades the very air of Bali is being choked in the smog of Kathmandu. We’ve embraced the worst of the new but have retained none of the best of the old. And this, in itself, forces us into a spiral where the tourists who come don’t want to spend money and that, by itself, leaves little money to invest on the arts and architecture of Nepal itself.



.Kathmandu doesn’t have to be a grimy, awful concrete jungle. It can still embrace its good weather and promote greenery and gardens with every home. The city can encourage citizens to build gardens and plant trees, and promote these values as civilized values rather than encouraging people to design bloated buildings that take up every inch of space inside a compound. Kathmandu city can encourage its artisans and promote its arts officially, making venues in which locals can also purchase these art products, making them not just the objects of wealthy, discerning foreigners. Kathmandu city can clean up its streets (the Balinese must have a magic, invisible sweepers who keep their city spotless in every single corner) and invite visitors in who would gladly pay money to see this city turn from what it is starting to become now—an awful congested heartland of garish concrete—to an oasis of aesthetic values and an artistic heartland.



Unfortunately, Kathmandu city doesn’t even have a mayor. We have a choice now, to bring the city back on track. Perhaps if the government is non-existent, its up to private citizens to take this initiative. Its really not that difficult. And it can be easy as planting a tree, or planting a fern. It can be easy as planning your house so that there’s space for a little garden.

THE FOREIGN HAND

SUSHMA JOSHI
Kathmandu Post

20 September: As a student in the USA, I became used to meeting with Nepalis “sponsored” by American friends. These folks, usually from remote villages, harbored a complex mixture of emotions—sadness at their lot in life, gratitude at their friends (and sometimes a sense of entitlement), hidden annoyance at the often unsubtle ways in which their poverty was pointed out to them, anger at perceived derision of their culture, friction over longterm relationships in which the balance of economic equality never got any better. There were moves to become independent, and sudden cut-offs of relationships that resumed again after long periods of time. Amongst all this, there were lifelong commitments that mirrored family relationships--some more spectacularly dysfunctional than others.

The sense of getting a free ride from rich Americans would almost inevitably give way to a sense of responsibility as people realized, after a year or two in New York, that their rich sponsors did not have unlimited pockets but were actually hardworking, middle class Americans with bills to pay.

What struck me about these relationships was the way in which people put complete faith in their sponsors. They had no doubt their friends would provide education or healthcare, or whatever else their friends were offering at that point (perhaps a yearly visa which allowed them to work on a garden in upstate New York, perhaps a chance to migrate to Switzerland and work in a Swiss chalet during the season.) What also struck me was the suspicion with which they often viewed middle class, professional Nepalis from the cities. Clearly, middle class Nepalis did not care for their welfare or concerns. Given a choice, they would take the Americans over the rich Nepalis any day.

Over and over, whether these folks needed a citizenship certificate filed or a child registered in a school, I would hear them say: “the government officials won’t listen to us. We are poor people from the villages. They will listen to Kathmandu people, but they won’t listen to us.” And each time they said this, the Americans would hear them and say: “How can this situation get better?” The Americans were interested in solving this situation. The Nepalis were not.

This, it seems, is the crux of the matter. Why are the “foreign hands” so powerful in Nepal? Is it because they have the money and can dictate the terms of the work to be done in Nepal? Or is it because they simply care more about the people—and this caring by itself gives them a legitimacy that no money can buy? Are they, in other words, more responsible to the constituency of Nepali citizens, designing everything from old age security pensions to compensation for war victims, than the city-dwelling, backsliding representatives of the people?

Who cares about solving hunger in Nepal? Who’s thinking about ways to bring drinking water to all of the population? Who jumps fastest when there’s an epidemic? Who provides relief materials when there’s a flood? Is it the Nepali government officials on the frontlines, or do we see again the foreign hand?

Our politicians have a field day blaming everything on the foreign hand. No doubt that hand is so large its shadow can be seen everywhere. But why, you may ask, is it like this? Is it simply the money? If that were so, why wouldn’t the biggest donors have the biggest footprints? But often its less of the big money and more of the heart that seems to aggravate the politicians and the Kathmandu elite. World Food Program gives food to poor people? Lets blame it for the diahorea epidemic. Spanish people adopt street children? Lets blame them for trafficking. You can extend the analogy further--Indian government gives money for road building? Lets blame it for imperialism. American government gives money to spread democratic dialogue? Lets blame it for anarchy.

One reason donors are so powerful is that they actually listen to grievances. So there’s domestic violence? Instead of saying, “This is how it is in Nepal. Husbands beat wives. Its our culture,” some donor is likely to slap down a hundred thousand dollars to build a home for abused women. And why would that abused woman want to go to a politician who told her, “go home, this is how it is in our culture?” Surely her true representative is the people who actually listened to her grievance? Is that, after all, what politicians are supposed to do—make policy, bring laws into existence, change the culture?

No doubt the foreign hands themselves are divided. There may be more than one outfit operating from the same country. One could give, the other could take away. Noone can say these arms of foreign governments are united or share a common vision or purpose. Lets leave that aside for the moment. What appears more pertinent that every failure of our politicians seem to have an easy answer in foreign meddling. But there is no easy answer about why the foreigners still need to meddle in issues as essential as food, water, electricity, health and education. Surely that’s the work of the Nepali government, its officials and political representatives who claim to represent their constituency? Surely they should be thinking about providing these essential services, instead of waiting, with equal rancor and hope, that some other nation will feed their people?

Until and unless the political spectrum starts to work for the people they claim to represent (instead of wasting time trying to grab power through useless shufflings of one political clique after another), than the power will continue to reside in the foreign hand. Power doesn’t just lie in money. It also lies in the faith that people put in institutions and individuals. It is earned from hard work, and it comes from the investment one has shown over the years. Unfortunately, the balance of power earned by the dreaded foreign hand versus the rickety Nepali hand is very pronounced indeed.

CATS, DOGS AND GORILLAS

Sushma Joshi

September 6: This morning, I heard a series of frantic mewing coming from tree foliage twenty feet up in the air. I walked under the thick bouganville, but couldn’t locate the plaintive meows. Then I saw it—a black and tan kitten caught midway in the fork of a straight and bare tree trunk. Its okay, get down now, I said. Motivational speaking, funnily, works on freaked out kittens caught on branches as well as it does on California’s residents. The kitten, heeding my Chicken Soup for The Soul talk, grasped the smooth branch with two paws and slithered down. Halfway down, it balked. Just a few feet now, I intoned in my best Deepak Chopra voice. Then it was down.

At first, it didn’t want to come close and hid underneath the car. As I walked towards my garden, it followed me. Now it was miaowing plaintively. Ah, hungry cat. Maybe it would be useful in keeping the garden rats, spectacularly big and destroyers of my bamboos, at bay. I went into my kitchen and cut a piece of cheese. The tiny kitten struggled with the solid food. Just as it was swallowing the last piece, my dog, wagging his tail, pleased as punch, bounded into the garden. Before I could respond, it had chased the cat up a wall. Stop! I yelled. The dog, abashed, skulked back. The kitten, trapped in a high place, cried with woe. I chased out the dog and locked the garden gate, threatening him with dire reprisals if he dared to attack. As this was going on, our second dog bounded up and started fighting with the first. The two clueless canines annoyed the hell out of me. If you two make me lose my newfound feline, I’m going to be really mad, I threatened them. The dogs looked at me and wagged their tails. Their job, to protect their food dishes, was their primary concern. No kitten was gonna lick up their protein tidbids.

Half an hour later, the kitten was happily washing its face by me with its furry tongue. He soon commenced to rub himself along my legs, convinced he’d found a champion. Before I knew it, he was snuggling in my arms. I looked at it in resignation. Not another animal to feed! My plans to turn him into a sleek, rat-eating predator, it seems, was to be subverted by his plans—to be a picturesque couch-potato feline napping in the garden and frequently entering the kitchen to eat goodies.

All this reminded me of an irate Westerner I met at last week’s conference on global climate change. “At least with the Maoists there was a sense that something was going on? But now? Nothing!” He looked at me with weary disgust. No doubt donors, happy to have coaxed the cat of revolution to get down the trees and come to the garden, may have been preoccupied, as I was, in keeping the two fat but useless old dogs at bay till the kitten was fed a few slices of cheese. And they too, like me, must have been worried when the cat started to get too comfy, within the space of too short a time, and the grooming and the snuggling took precedence over the rat-hunting. And Nepal has many rats to kill—everything from food insecurity to water shortage, from bad education to terrible health delivery.

Have we lost our cat, a potential predator against the rats that are gnawing away at this country, to a pack of goofy dogs? As preparation heats up for the Copenhagen conference, and countries all over South Asia prepare their own strategy to deal with climate change and its impacts, Nepal’s own appears woefully inadequate. The Bangladeshi team leader talked powerfully about how the Copenhagen event would come, and Copenhagen would go, but how working together before and after was more important. The Bangladesh government has already allocated 125 millions by itself to climate change initiatives. He talked about how being proactive and taking actions independent of Western countries was important.

The Maldives delegation made even more sense. Amongst all the people talking about who’s to blame for climate change, they were refreshingly sensible. “I don’t like the blame game,” said the Honorable Minister from the Maldives. “Western countries shouldn’t pay because of what they did in the past, but of what they are capable of contributing to the present crisis. This is not about negotiation, since what we are talking about is non-negotiable.” Maldives will be the first nation to vanish under the sea if sea-levels continue to rise in the face of rising global temperatures. Three hundred thousand people will be displaced, and will have to migrate (although the Maldivians say staunchly they will stay and find a solution, even if they have to live on boats.) Perhaps because of this, they seem to know too well that stances which try to create a few more decades of fossil-fuel usage is suicidal madness for the entire planet.

For the team who negotiated the Kathmandu declaration on climate change, India’s attitude was (to quote one observer), like “a 400 pound gorilla that held all the bananas.” The Indian bureaucrat sent by the government lost no opportunity to remind everyone from the young parliamentarians to the whole audience that whatever was being discussed did not have Indian government sanction. Said the gorilla spotter, “Global climate change is taking central stage. India has lost a great opportunity to be a world leader on this topic.” For the irate Westerner, the question is even more simple. “Green technologies are profitable,” he says. “They make more money with green technologies than with oil. Why on earth would they not want to take the lead?” Eeer… cause they are gorillas?

No doubt the political zoo would be able to adapt both goofy dogs, skittish kittens, and 400 pound gorillas, but will the planet be able to take the drama much longer?

In my own garden, I pick up my purring kitten. I’ll introduce it to the dog, I think. As the dog peeps in, the kitten turns into a retractable claw machine, and before I know it the animal has bounded up a tree, leaving bloody scratches on my arm. My plans to control rats through my newfound feline, it seems, will have to remain in hiatus.

SHOOTING CLIMATE CHANGE

SUSHMA JOSHI

When Basanta Thapa of the Himal Association called me up and asked me if I’d like to be one of the jury members of the UK Nepal Climate Change Competition, it sounded easy. “We’ve received three films,” he said. “About seven have registered to send more.” We estimated at the most about two dozen films, each three minutes long, that we’d watch in one sitting.

When I rushed in at 9:15am at the judging venue, and said: “I hear we now have 70 submissions!”, Basanta Dai said to me: “Its now 124!” The numbers were incredible, if only because a few years ago one could count the number of filmmakers on the fingers of two hands. As we sat down to watch the first film, I got a tingle in my scalp from the excitement. There were 124 filmmakers in Nepal who were not just interested in climate change issues but who had actually gotten it together to submit films? This, indeed, ws good news for Nepal. This explosion of filmmaking had come not just from access to cheap technology but also to the notion that film was a difficult, expensive and high endeavour available only to the priviledged few. Film had, finally, become a democratic medium for expression.

I remember 1998 when I put in a proposal to make a film about water through IRC Netherlands, and was a lonely 26 year old female filmmaker in what appeared to be a rather set and stable world of senior, male filmmakers. My proposal was accepted over the others—and I think I was never quite forgiven for this by my competitors. Admittedly, one reason why the producer chose me was the incredibly low budget I sent in. I guess that undercutting the market price in 1998 was just a hint of times to come, when expensive beta and film would give way to a wave of cheap technology that would allow any youngster with an innovative idea, a camcorder and some familiarity with an editing program to express their views to the world.

The 124 films span the spectrum, from professionally shot documentaries to amateur films shot with low budget technology. Styles vary from plain didactic teacherly model of father and mother instructing children, to what appears to be montages of National Geographic footage, to Powerpoint presentations with music, to Kollywood melodramas, to serious documentaries, to stylized dramas, to hiphop videos. The blue globe appears to be a favorite starting motif, with it appearing in over thirty percent of the films! The subtitles (a requirement of the competition was that the films be subtitled in English) are often surreal. Some of the films have nothing to do with the theme—one submission was about the dangers of swine flu (appropriately mistitled “swan flue.”) One filmmaker subtitled his films in what appeared to be Bhanubhakta style poetry lyrics.

As the day goes by and the images of the planet heading towards an apocalyptic course piles on top of each other, we find ourselves laughing at moments of light relief. Because of course, underneath the dramas of stories of floods, and glacier lake melts, and food shortages, and carbon emission, is the ever-present thought that we may be heading towards a climactic point of no return. So it is a relief to see films which provide solutions, and which tell us how we may be able to get out of this mess—everything from caps on automobile and industrial pollution, to the termination of chemicals that cause global warming, to changes in lifestyle.

What is clear is that the three winning films will not be the end of the story. The story of climate change continues throughout all the other films, the top 10 and even the top 20, and perhaps all 124 films, which string together to tell a story much larger, more profound and more richer than anything that can be seen and understood within 10 minutes. The hope, of course, is that the filmmakers from all backgrounds will continue to tell their stories even after the global climate change conference, where the films will be screened, is over.

The lesson from being in the jury is clear. There is a great desire to tell their stories in a new generation of Nepali storytellers. This desire and wish should be nurtured and mentored by international organizations, the Nepal Film Board, but also schools and universities who should add film courses to their traditional curriculum so that young people can learn to tell their stories in creative ways that are just seeming to be possible now. And perhaps, through these creative acts, the linkages to lifestyle changes—less consumerism, choosing more sustainable energy options, using less disposable goods—will appear clearer.



Sushma Joshi is a writer and filmmaker. Read more about her documentary WATER here: www.sansarmedia.blogspot.com

A Happy Mistake

Sushma Joshi
09/8/14
I became a hippie by mistake. A few days before my 19th birthday, a man approached me in the co-operative house where I used to live in Providence, New York, and asked: “Would you like to follow the Grateful Dead?” “Yes!” I answered, having not the slightest clue what or who the Grateful Dead were. “Do you know what you’re getting into?” My friend Naomi, who was accompanying me on this venture, asked me. “No,” I said. “But my brother used to listen to the Grateful Dead. They have covers with skulls holding roses between

their teeth.”

And that was the way I ended up wounding my way across the U.S. in a rattling Volkswagen van, cutting a straight path from Ohio to Kentucky to Illinois to Berkeley to Eugene, Oregon in a gypsy caravan with four hippies, singing and dancing along with one of the most alternative bands on the planet. Never mind that by this time (this was 1992), the Grateful Dead were more mainstream than Bon Jovi. Who cared about their record sales when you could stand outside Deer Creek with bare feet waving two fingers up in

the air chanting “Give me a miracle, give me a miracle!” and avoiding the Christian missionaries who brought you the miracle of Jesus Christ instead of the longed for free ticket, and before long some longhaired dude would finally sneak up at the last moment, convinced of your dedication, and slip a free ticket between your fingers? (To be fair to Jesus, I did get down on my knees and ask him to appear, as commanded by miracle workers. Get up, Sush, said Naomi in disgust. To my disappointment, he never did show up.)

The strange caravan got stranger as we entered the heartland—a Mormon with two wives joined us and tried to convince Naomi to be his third wife (never mind that she was a Jew) and also split a gigantic vat of chocolate and hallucinogenic mushrooms all over our tiny vehicle, leaving Roberto, our Puerto Rican owner of the van, fuming as all of us got down on our knees and wiped up the brown sludge in a scene reminiscent of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.

But this was not the only trippy scene in the trip—before long the Mormon had vanished and we had to go searching for him in the middle of the Kansas night, and men with guns tightened their lips as we entered their stores, letting us know that despite all the love and light, four hippies of cow-loving ethnicities were not welcome in the deep heart of Biblical America.

Kansas was inhospitable, but Factory Rob in Kentucky made up for this by taking us on a snappy ride around town telling us racy tales about how he shot off the legs of some dudes who’d come to steal his radio in his beat-up car. More unintentional hospitality followed—a gigantic man somewhere near Colorado took a fancy to me and took us to his basement and insisted we carry back with us jars and jars of fresh salmon and boysenberry jam. Somewhere amongst all this somebody slipped me a sip of Kind Bud (with about 100 times the THC content of regular ganja) and I found myself staring at the Grateful Dead with tears streaming down my face, half of me saying devoutly: Brother Jerry! While the other side of me thought: these hippies! Drug users!

Then we were in Colorado with Naomi’s cousins watching blue jays and street performers in Boulder’s main street. And then somehow we found ourselves trudging up to the Berkeley campus trying to squat in their co-operative house, where the hippies would surely appreciate our green, organic, peace and love presence. After all, we’d spent a year in the Milhaus co-op, a house filled with water beds and old videotapes of the musical Hair, where you could often find people making out under the kitchen table. We were ready for Berkeley. So we thought.

I’ll spare you all the details except to mention that we did make it up to Eugene, Oregon, another holy grail of the hippie trail, and met up with some serious folks who were sabotaging the machinery of those woodsmen who came to cut down the ancient forests. Greedy corporate culture was being sabotaged under our eyes, and a

very serious business this was,

sabotage—complete with more mushrooms usage.

A few more trips followed which would take a book to write about—a trip to New Orleans to meet up with another hippie friend who’d dropped out from college and was involved in a lifestyle so alternative the Presbetarians we were living with finally had to kick us out (I have artwork that documents these crucial scenes), and then daring all I took the Greyhound bus for 52 hours all the way from New York to Santa Fe, arriving delirious and completely devoid of baggage, which had been lost somewhere along the fifteen or so bus changes I had made along the way.

Forgot to mention the trip in which I took the Juneau ferry from Alaska to Seattle sleeping outside in the deck with tough little street kids who took me under their wing and assured me they’d protect me with their pocket knives before the Jehovah’s Witness (Aka God’s Kayak Man) took me home for the night, where I met his nine children and perky wife and for whose



hospitality and pickup van ride I was very grateful.

America was a trip. But I wouldn’t have the same stories to tell if it were not for the people who came before me—Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, all the beat poets and the writers who paved the way and smashed through the pretty 1950s with something more naked and more truthful than a house with a flagpole, a wife and two kids, and a dog in the backyard.

This was America riding the wave of the tsunami of the hippie 1970s, that alternative world of peace and love which refuted war and which spilled across the border of nations, bringing music and drugs and love all the way to the shores of faraway Nepal, and whose traces we can still see in the small jazz-houses and ganja brownie stores on the now non-

existent Freak Street.

Woodstock, that festival of music which started it all, was also a mistake. The organiser who put the music festival heavily underestimated the numbers of people who would show up. Before he knew it, the crowd had swelled, and swelled, and swelled-with highways blocked for miles and miles and miles around as people, disgusted with the war against Vietnam and longing for a new and freer way to express themselves, all trudged through the fields of upstate New York to reach that place where people like Ravi Shankar and Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell all redefined music, and with it, the culture of America.

This was the start of the 60s and all that came with it—and the mistake that allowed me to make my own mistakes. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Posted on: 2009-08-14 22:35:43 (Server Time)

Darjeeling dreams

Sushma Joshi
Kathmandu Post, 2009/07/31

Long before it became fashionable in Kathmandu to discuss ways to eradicate caste, class and ethnic boundaries and discrimination, there was one Nepali space where this was already taking place. The hill station of Darjeeling, where the British went to cool off, has retained an institutional legacy of colonialism that even the staunchest post-colonialist would have a hard time criticising. This legacy comes in the form of British-style boarding schools which teach children not just the time-honoured stiff upper lip regarding hardships, but also an absolute levelling of all social hierarchies.

These schools have literally transformed thousands upon thousands of Nepali students into intelligent, efficient and law-abiding citizens. Ever wondered why some institutions in Nepal function so well, despite the crazy culture of malingering and corruption? The secret is probably a Darjeeling (or “Darj” for short) alum. I’d guarantee there’s a high likelihood of discovering a Darj alum behind the scene of a school, hotel and business that seem to show sign of genuine meritocracy, entrepreneurship and ethical leadership.

I spent four years, between the ages of 8 to 12, in Dowhill School, Kurseong. Kurseong is a pretty little town in the district of Darjeeling. I was fortunate enough to get this chance for two reasons. One, because my mother fought for it despite my grandparents’ opposition (“why spend so much money on a girl’s education?”). And two, because a kindly headmistress in Guheswori Primary School in Kathmandu advocated on my behalf and told my parents that their daughter was bright and she would ask her sister, also a headmistress, to give me a scholarship in Kurseong. So I was a scholarship child even at that early age. I slept in a dormitory with children from all over India and Nepal. The girl who slept on my left was a Lepcha, and the girl on my right was a Brahmin. My best friend was from a Dalit caste (although I didn’t know this since it was never discussed, till three decades later.) We never knew what caste or class or ethnicity we were. I was aware of my gender, though—my parents had chosen to put my brother in an expensive private school known as Mt. Hermon School (he wasn’t a scholarship student in a government school, that was for sure), and I was always reminded of the gap between him and me. Just in case I were to get any uppity ideas, my parents promptly removed me from Darjeeling and brought me back to Kathmandu on the day my brother graduated from high school.

So that is why reading The Dark Mermaid was a bittersweet experience for me. On the one hand, I loved the fable of the dark girl from a poor family who is able to escape her background and her roots and go—where else?—but the fabled Mt. Hermon School, where she is able to exhibit her swimming skills and wow the entire school as a star athlete. On the other hand, I couldn’t help being jarred, here and there, by the unreality of the story. For instance, how do Mr. and Mrs. Nepali of Birgunj manage to put a girl in that expensive school despite barely being able to meet their household expenses? The father assures his daughter he will manage—but he never tells us how.

This push and pull of the book is tangible. I really want to believe that all caste, gender, class and skin colour boundaries can be eradicated through the simple miracle of boarding school—after all, haven’t those of us who suffered though boarding school all experienced that salvation of equality in one form or another? On the other hand, how many Nepali people can actualise their dream to put their daughter in these institutions, and how many Birgunj girls actually make it out to Mt. Hermon and become swimming champions?

The swimming champion plot, a rip-roaring, Quiddich competition type ride, hit a personal nerve. The act of swimming, for me, has always stood for my gender inequality. My brother was a swimming champion in Mt. Hermon School (we have photographs to prove it) but I never learnt to swim because there were no swimming lessons in my government school.

In The Dark Mermaid, however, Dowhill School appears on equal terms, all real-world inequalities eradicated, and the girls there compete freely and win freely along with Mt. Hermon in the swimming competition. In an email exchange, the author admitted to me his book is fiction and he’s taken liberty with the truth, and this graceful reworking of inequality reminded me how much of children’s fiction works because it does both—it is both a reflection of social reality, as well as a reworking of it.

To sum up—The Dark Mermaid is a fantastic book, one that is sorely needed in Nepal. I found the writing to be clear, accessible and wonderfully easy to read. My autobiographical musings is more adult quibbling than anything else. The book is sure to provide Nepali students with a book that they can identify with and claim as their own. I hope that Amar Shrestha, as well as other writers like him, will continue to write these books for students in Nepal and that this is just the beginning of a long series of works for children. Let’s hope this book gets picked up by schools around Nepal so that it encourages more writers to pick up the pen and start writing out new worlds for Nepali children.

Economic yo-yo

By Sushma Joshi

A charming little vegetable bazaar sets up at evening at the public plaza near my home. Candles twinkle in the dusk, temple bells rings, and clusters of children gather as the vendors set up piles of colourful vegetables and fruits for sale. One of the vendors has claimed me for his own, and insists I buy watermelons and mangoes even on days when I don't need them. To humour him, I oblige. I found out, however, the last few days, the prices get crazier. One day it's Rs.60 for mangoes. The next day is Rs.85. The day after it was Rs.110. Then Rs. 170. I feel guilty as I pick up my plastic bag with the mangoes. Other customers clustering around me give a baffled look of surprise when quoted the going price, then walk off in disappointment.

This wild seesaw of prices (an almost unheard of swing of 40% within one day) is just the tip of the economic iceberg that is sinking Nepal's Titanic attempts to rebuild the country. With no regulatory mechanisms to keep prices stable, citizens can barely budget for their daily expenses.

Can you wonder then that crime is high? How can a humble office worker or a taxi-driver making Rs.10,000 a month feed a wife and two children on that money, especially when the price of everything from rice to oil to salt keeps yo-yoing day by day?

Economic instability is just a reflection of the political instability. In the Sarbajanik Sunwai program on Kantipur, I watched with the other people of Nepal as three experts battled out what was wrong with the budget. Bishwambar Pyakuryal, the economist, said the budget was enormously inflated. This kind of budget would reduce the value of money. He evoked the image of Eastern European countries where people came out with piles of paper money whose value had become worthless.

The Maoist spokesperson denounced the budget and said the Maoist party had refused to accept it. Despite their tolerance for violence from their youth wings, I have to say the Maoists appear the most convincing actors on the political stage — and the people acknowledged this with bursts of applause.

The CPN-UML candidate, dressed flamboyantly in a Jawarharlal waistcoat, spent the entire time berating the Maoists instead of explaining how the troublesome budget would tide 26 million Nepalis out of rising food prices and monsoon-deficit non-harvest in the coming months. In fact, he did not mention a single concrete issue — no water, no food, no electricity, no education, no healthcare, no road. He also couldn't really counteract his opponent's claim that in fact a substantial portion of money had been divided and distributed between political cadres.

This of course is what happens on the political stage. In another small stage in central Kathmandu, I was invited to attend a Yuwa Bhela (a youth gathering) and to think about the ways in which young people could make a difference to Nepal. Anil Chitrakar was the chief speaker. “Do you know who ruled Italy when Michaelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel?” he asked. We all shook our heads. “The answer is…” Mr. Chitrakar looked around, and then said: “The answer is: who cares?” Would Italy really have become the wild whirlpool of creative arts and cultures if it had spent all its time thinking about who the rulers were and what they were doing? Mr. Chitrakar's point — we spend way too much time thinking about inept leaders, instead of focusing on getting things done. Of course, one cannot ignore politics. But in the thralldom that holds Nepalis captive as we watch a very badly scripted play with terrible actors (even our political leaders are not professionals and don't really know what to do) we forget our own roles.

Of course, our quality of life is dependent on what political leaders do or don't do. Water is political. So is electricity. So are roads. And while we surely can't forget or ignore politics and must be aware of what is going on, how can we balance our obsession of watching what is akin to daily soap opera with a bad script and instead channel our energies into creating new young leaders? How do we leave traditional party politics behind and groom a new generation of youth leaders with an ethical mindset and priorities? As we raise these questions, I see that the Madhesi youth group leader, who's sitting with us on the same table and giving us an exquisite speech that is a close copy of party rhetoric, is being ignored by his tablemates. The two — an USA returned entrepreneur and a USA returned journalist — have leant behind him to continue their own interesting conversation as the youth leader forges onward with his cliché-ridden speech. As I watch this scene, it occurs to me that what is missing is the linkage between these two groups. How can the young people who have left the country and acquired new and globalised skills see it in their benefit to pass them onto the future political leaders of the country so that twenty or thirty years down the line, we won't have to bemoan that politics is business as usual?

As I mull this, Mr. Chitrakar has already shared with us how challenges could become opportunities. “There are going to be 20 million Chinese tourists entering via the train in Kodari in 2020. Do you know how many Nepali entrepreneurs are ready to provide Chinese-speaking tour-guides? Now what about the Chinese — do you know how many Nepali speaking tour guides they are already starting to hire and plan for?” China, that behemoth of forward looking thinking, is surely ahead of us in that game. This is a striking example of how we never plan for the future but only for the hand-to-mouth present. But as Mr. Chitrakar points out, there are plenty of opportunities in Nepal, if only we are willing to see it and take it for what it is.

One of the greatest challenges — and opportunities — for the new generation might be global warming. Girija only cares about the weather (will it rain or will it be sunny? is the extent of his concern), but the future generation must care about the climate, as one young journalist explained to me. As the planet's temperature rises, young people must ask themselves how they can adapt, independent of party rhetoric and what did or did not happen in Kathmandu's political circles. A recent visit to Nepalgunj brought home this point to me. A Chidimar village watched helplessly as their water sources dried up, their jungles vanished and they were pushed to the edge of mass migration, but a few kilometers down the road a settlement seemed to be thriving. They'd taken herbs like mint, chamomile and citronella and with the help of national and international agencies, started to extract herbal oils. Before long, their income had quadrupled --one liter of oil sold for Rs.33,000 ($500). Half the plants, found in the jungle, were wild. The forest, preserved, ensured a cool flow of water irrigated their maize fields when other land dried up. And the hot weather had even been a boon — instead of 4 liters, the heat had thickened the oil and now they got 8 liters from the same plot. Alcoholism and seasonal migration had stopped, and people exuded a sense of well-being and economic security.

If they had waited for the political leaders to solve their problems, would they have reached this level? Surely not. Waiting wouldn't have done them or their children, now in good boarding schools, any good. But maybe out of this experience will come more leaders who can see not just their own benefits but the benefits of others. For the farmer who's done so well with this new venture, his purpose is very clear. “There's so much demand for these oils we hope the government will help spread the farming techniques and provide seeds to other farmers in other parts of Nepal so they too can benefit,” he says simply. I look at him and realize he's totally sincere. He sees a whole country blooming with herbal flower gardens. Now when farmers like these enter local politics, maybe then we will see a real new class of politicians.

In the meantime, can the current actors stop their confused running around in chia-pan and bhetghat sets, and instead of fighting about “consensus” and “harmony” (neither consensus nor harmony will feed the people, people) focus on putting a price regulatory board in order? You can always ask the big bad foreign hands for help in case you're too busy fighting about consensus.

(Sushma Joshi is the writer of
“End of the World,” available in Pilgrims, Mandala, etc. She posts to www.sushma.blogspot.com

Regression

Sushma Joshi
Kathmandu Post, 2009-07-19

During the Jana Andolan time, we heard a lot about “regression.” Regression, as far as I understood, stood for “going back to a darker time and place.” With the establishment of the republic and the Constituent Assembly (CA), we haven't heard that word with such frequency. Admittedly, the peace process still has to come to a “logical end” through the fabled use of “civilian supremacy” but the more we head towards the second year of the CA, the more it appears that the end is far from logical and the civilians, instead of reigning supreme, are now suffering from having a carpet they never knew they had — a regressive carpet of feudal but still functioning bureaucracy — whisked out from under them. They are on the floor and bawling, but who's there to hear?

For instance, the fabled feudal bureaucracy of the Panchayat actually had gotten it together to do that most basic of therapies — oral rehydration therapy for those suffering from diarrhoea.

From the eighties to the beginning of the twenty first century, Nepal had carefully build up a gigantic campaign around oral rehydration therapy — salt, sugar, water — so people no longer needed to die from what is actually a fairly elementary disease. People, this is not rocket science. This is boiling a bit of water and putting salt and sugar and applying it to a person before they dehydrate enough to die. Now how horrible can the conditions be that in Jajarkot and associated districts people are dying by the hundreds of something Europe got rid of centuries ago? Why on earth is Nepal now facing a diarrhoea epidemic with fatalities in the hundreds? Knowing the mid-west, I'd hazard a guess that even salt and sugar may not be as easily available as we think it should be. And boiling water — that requires firewood. And most of all, it requires clean water. Want to guess how many of those who died had all of these four things in place?

This may be a good time to apply the word “regression” but since the Loktantriks have reserved this word exclusively to refer to evil feudals of Panchayat era, maybe this won't really work. The problem is that the evil feudals are soon going to look like heroes at this rate, if the government doesn't get into the act fast and provide at least that basic of services. If nothing else (no food, no water, no education, no employment) at least the Nepali people could always rely on Jeevan Jal, right? Now, apparently, no more. We've become so advanced the government has shut down the only Jeevan Jal factory.

The INGOs (no state presence has been witnessed, apparently) who made it out to Jajarkot to provide services are scrambling to buy up the last remaining oral rehydration salts commercially from pharmacies. Wasn't there a regressive age in which this stuff was distributed for free?
Is it possible to reverse development gains? Don't we think that certain things we could take for granted were fights already won? Hadn't we graduated to worrying about a non-existent pandemic of avian flu and stopped thinking about life threatening diseases like TB and malaria? The lesson to be learnt from Jajarkot is one we have always known — that no matter how representative the hype of government, the biggest chunk of cash is always reserved for the rich (how many Tamiflax in Kathmandu, as opposed to packs of Nava Jeevan, available? Want to bet?), and the poor will always be at risk and vulnerable from every tiny environmental factor.

With climate change, water shortages are on the rise. People don't have drinking water and sanitation in many places in Nepal. In Humla, we witnessed a grandmother take a newborn baby and wipe its ass with a sharp stone. “Don't do that,” we called out, upset. The woman just ignored us and continued to do her work. Later we realized the obvious — there was no water to be had. And apparently, even the shrubs around the overpopulated village had dried out so even a leaf couldn't be used to clean the baby.

Has the political stalemate reversed development gains that no matter how small had still made a significant difference in people's lives since the seventies and eighties? Can things get worse instead of better? In areas outside Kathmandu, state presence can feel thin if not non-existent, in much the same way as during the conflict. When the state bureaucracy is not really present, and the main body of government is missing, how can the pills the donors pop be effective? These saline dribs and drabs of donor funding which build a road here and a health post there, talk about uterine prolapse in one village and income generation in another — how useful is it for Nepal in the long run? More to the point, will it last? Or will we see the thriving income generating, gender empowered, community forestry wielding group of one area suddenly fall to the wayside when the project “phases out”?

It's not just outside Kathmandu that the state is missing. Anybody who watched the budget speech a few days ago will wonder where those highly paid 601 CA members were when the budget speech was going on. The room was empty. Where are the people representing the people? Surely they were not in Jajarkot taking care of the sick.

What other state institution like Jeevan Jal is about to collapse or be taken over by political interests? Everything from shoe factories to cement factories, from airlines to Jeevan Jal has shut down. These, despite talk to the contrary, were not evil Panchayati institutions. These were functioning state institutions that were providing a service, however basic, to the people of Nepal. This we know for a documented fact. What do we have in its place except empty rhetoric? Which way are we regressing?

Will work for food

Sushma Joshi
With the rising population, many communities in Nepal are on the edge of a major drinking water crisis

“Do you know who the current Prime Minister is?” we ask. The people of the Chidimar village eye the team of journalists scornfully and reply: “We don't know. Last time we checked it was Girija. Maybe now it's Fatteh Singh Tharu.”

They are being facetious. News media is too widespread these days for people not to know who is currently prime minister. But their answer, given with the shrug of indifference, underlies how the majority of Nepal's people feel very removed from the daily activities of the tiny handful who purport to rule the country.

The majority of Nepal's 26 millions have more important matters to think about. For instance, food and water. For a Chidimar community who live close to Nepalgunj, their main concern is water security. A project came in and installed 6 hand-pumps for 18 households. Now, only two work. The rest have dried up. This is a story heard with frequent and agonizing frequency all over the country. Communities who had water taps and handpumps installed within the last decade are now seeing a soaring ratio of dried out water taps.

Even more worrying than the dried out taps are the drying sources. A tap may dry out through a cut pipe, or water diversion into another household or community. But a dried out water source often signals that dreaded Nepali disease – chronic deforestation, absolute illiteracy about the need to maintain and recharge aquifiers, and a downplaying of traditional knowledge regarding alternative water harvesting, storage and management. Traditional methods like wells, which have served water-poor countries for millennia, were disregarded for the more sophisticated modern hand-pumps – leading to water being taken out, but never being put in.

With the rising population, many communities in Nepal are on the edge of a major drinking water crisis. But instead of solving the crisis in a more environmental friendly way which includes local water harvesting as well as forest conservation, the NGOs and government insist on their own wisdom – seek another source, further away, put polythene pipes, tap water. This robotic method neither questions itself to its own efficacy, nor wonders about how long this time this money-intensive method will serve the water needs of its users.

“We used to have springs before,” says Hasnu Chidimar, 70. “But after installing hand-pumps, they got forgotten.” The second source of their water is now 400 meters away, and many women have to go there to collect water.

Is the water shortage due to deforestation and the resulting aridity that comes when aquifers are not recharged? “There used to be jungles from here to Kohalpur,” says the old man. “Now they're all gone.”

For Radha Chidimar, 40, feeding and educating her children are her primary concerns. With three children, and a husband who works and makes Rs.100 per day, food is always a struggle. In her small and bare hut, I see the remains of the morning meal. We don't ask what they have eaten, although we do ask how much food costs – Rice is Rs.25/kg, Lentils Rs.100/kg. The villagers also eat vegetables – potatoes, tomatoes and gourds, which are grown easily in the fertile Tarai lands.

During strikes and bandhs, husband Maiko Chidimar (40) still finds casual work in bricklaying or yard work. But their income remains less than $50 per month. Despite the cash crunch, Maiko forbids his wife to go out and work since women only make a pittance compared to men. “I'll let you go and work on the day you make the same money as me,” he replies. “I don't want you breaking your back for Rs.10 per day.”

The most urgent need, says Maiko, is employment and agriculture. Would they be willing to take the 12 bigha of land in front of their village, now arid land owned by the local school, and use it to build an income generating activity like fishponds? “Of course,” they all reply. “We want it.”

It's not like the Chidimar, traditionally bird-trappers who made very little income, don't have access to credit. The local savings and credit group already has 2 lakhs in its account. So why is it not being used? “We don't dare take it because we don't know if we can pay it back,” Radha says simply.

For Hasnu Chidimar, 70, who comes and goes in politics matters little. His primary concern is his old age stipend, which arrived for three months, then stalled. When, he wants to know, will they restart the stipend? “There's money for the poor. The netas take it. Only when people like us rise, will something happen for people.”

As for the drought: “We don't care if there is no rain,” says Hasnu. “We'll leave and go to another country. We gave votes, we made kings. We got nothing in return. We will migrate to another place where we can grow something.”

Of course, this cocky statement of disregard for nationality doesn't really provide the easy, hoped-for solution. With global climate change affecting all countries with its own devastating specificity, Hasnu's plans for migration may not really provide him with the easy alternative he seeks. Television provides an all too heartbreaking reality check --drought in Manipur, migration of camelherders from Rajasthan to some wetter area till rains soak their own lands. The loss of bird species, which the Chidimar used to trap and sell, have already given them a clue that biodiversity is getting lost – and makes it easier for them to understand how water, trees and birds are inextricably linked.

More than migration, the answer may lie in planting trees and reviving dead forests, and in doing what our ancestors have done for centuries – digging deep wells which act both as water storage units during the rain-rich monsoon, and as irrigation and drinking water sources during the dry winter months. One day, the Chidimar, like urban dwellers, may have to think about concrete water harvesting tanks for each house. For now, wells may be a stopgap measure. Of course, wells by themselves are not the answer, but may be one potential solution, if somehow monsoon water could be stored inside it after it's taken off tin roofs and routed through those fabulous polythene pipes straight into the wells.

Hasnu listens to me attentively as I tell him water shortage is a global crisis, and would he be willing to dig a well for his community?

“Of course we can dig a well,” he answers readily. They used to have gaddas, 15 meters deep and 30 haat wide, before. This traditional water storage fell into disuse with the introduction of handpumps. “If somebody gave us rice to eat, we'd do it. Otherwise we'd have to go out to work to feed ourselves.” The fifteen crucial days it would take to dig the well is dependent on one simple fact – without food, people who live hand to mouth can't spare the time and labour that it would require to ensure the water security of their village.
(Joshi is the author of the "End of the World." You can find the book at Vajra, Mandala, Quixote's Cove, Pilgrims, United and other bookstores.)

Sushma Joshi

sansarmagazine@gmail.com
Posted on: 2009-07-10 20:30:33 (Server Time)

R.I.P

Sushma Joshi
“Is there any other person whose death would evoke the same global response in this century?” wondered a well known journalism professor in his Twitter posting. The answer seems to be no. Michael Jackson, love child of the American Eighties and its fantabulous excesses, is probably going to be it.

My mother's still convinced he died of cancer. When I asked her, “Do you know this singer called Michael Jackson?” she was irritated. “Yes,” she said, then burst out: “Why did that nice black man have to go and turn himself white? All those chemicals! His skin turned white, his nose fell off, and then he died of cancer.”

I said he couldn't sleep for four days before his death, and he'd asked for strong sleep medication, and that he'd been found the day of his death on the floor with his stomach full of prescription drugs and he probably died of overmedication. My mother was adamant. “I saw it on TV. He died of cancer.” (I have my own theory. Apparently Michael called some nurse up and said he felt very hot on one side of the body, very cold on the other. That's called a Kundalini rising in tantric talk, but lets not get into that in case people start to think you're one major kook.)

Well, Michael tried his best. Nobody can deny he tried his best, and he's not to blame for all of the world's problems. But at times you can't help staring at that chalk-white face and wondering: what happened? How did the glowing boy of the seventies turn into this sinister cyborg of a man? What was it about that particularly American commercial version of fame that led him down that path of reconstruction and deconstruction?

If the 1980s was the American decade, with Reagan, the Cold War, big cars, and MTV as its symbols, then Michael Jackson was probably its ambassador. Or perhaps even its king. He hopped across the Iron Curtain and made love to the Russians. He won the hearts of everybody from prisoners in Filipino jails to Saudi sheiks. And the more outrageous he became, the more people seemed to love him.

But the love ended, as the hysteric, infatuated kind always does, on a bad note. Before long, Jackson was being reviled for sleeping with boys who he claimed were like his children. People didn't believe him. Lawsuits started to pile up. Accusations followed, and before long he was in deep debt.

Kind of like America is right now. Crashing from the great heights of excess, America struggles to regain its posture, regain balance, get back on the dance floor. America has its own Neverlands to deal with — Madoff, mortgage companies, banks with shifty histories. Jackson style transactions in finance emerge, and people shake their heads, one big crash after another, trying to figure out who did what.

Like Jackson's Rwandan nanny, who pumped his stomach many times to clear it of the toxic drugs, Obama now struggles to pump the American economy off its toxic investments. Will he be successful? Can he cut through the accumulated decades of bad policies and investments to make way for a new beginning? Will America stop its addictions to petrochemicals and start living a healthier lifestyle? Will it embrace its multicultural histories and stop pretending its all white? Will the curtain rise again?

MJ had a truly global appeal (as does America.) I was sitting at the Organic Garden Café the day of his death when the music system turned on and Thriller came on air. All of a sudden, I heard a sudden volley of twittering behind me, and turned around to see — two caged parrots, previously silent, which'd now joined into the chorus. Don't ask me. Just try it. Bring some caged parrots and see what they do when you turn on “Thriller.”

The whole planet responded to the death of this singer who has come to be emblematic of America. Now can America return the favor and think of the planet in return? “Betraying the planet,” said economist Paul Krugman of the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. Although it was passed, 212 American political representatives rejected this bill. America refuses to believe it's excesses, it's petrochemical addictions, it's oil wars, has anything to do with the hurt the planet is facing. Millions of people are (or will soon) face hunger as the climate tips towards an irreversible point of no return. But does America want to pump its stomach free of oil and stop the cancer? No, it doesn't. It would rather die.

It may be no co-incidence that the song that made MJ most global was “We are the world.” The song was written in a day or so by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. The concert was held to raise funds to alleviate famine in Africa. MJ was concerned about famine. The most globalised man on the planet, who was living a life of wealth beyond people's wildest dreams, was concerned about hunger. Is this a paradox?

Oddly, it's not. And like the singer, his country too has always had this side. America's excesses have surely sickened it, but now we wait for it to get back on the stage to sing and dance, not just about its own glory and wealth, but also about the planet which has made it possible. Can the self-absorption be turned around for a few crucial years, and we ask the smartest, the most innovative, the most inventive, and the richest people to pause on their path to deconstruction and think about how they are part of this interconnected world? Or will we have to bid it goodbye like MJ, with three letters: R.I.P?
(Joshi is a writer. Her book “End of the World” is available in Quixote's Cove, Vajra, Mandala, and other bookstores)

sansarmagazine@gmail.com
Posted on: 2009-07-03 21:44:04 (Server Time)

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)

The Flexible Border

Sushma Joshi

Accusations that the Indian security forces have been causing havoc by raping Nepali women and forcing them away from their land by moving the border markers has made front page news in recent days. So is Koilabas another Susta? I was interested to read a report prepared by a mixed group of seventeen civil society members, including eight journalists, two policemen, one INSEC representative, and government officials who went to the border to investigate. Interestingly, there were no women on the team -- and perhaps some conclusions, especially about rape, may have been radically different had a few women been included in the team.
The Dang border, says the report, is about an 8-9 hour walk from the highway through small paths across rivers, jungles and hills. There are 22 crossing points in Dang in about 82km of border -- and each border crossing point is about a two hour walk away from each other. Only Khangra and Koilabas have police stations on the Nepali side -- the rest don't even have a police post.

Koilabas, 60km away from district headquarters Ghorahi, is linked by a gravel and an unpaved road but in the monsoon this road becomes unpassable. For the past 15 days, this road has been unusable, forcing people to walk for four hours to the border.

Since many of the displaced came from Khangra and Adbaruwa, the team went and discussed with them and found out that the Landless Struggle Committee, having promised the people land closer to the highway, had asked 2-3 people from each family to join the group and move away from the border.
In a village close to Khangra, the investigation team saw the Indian side digging an irrigation ditch, an activity that did not honour the 10 gajja of no man's land territory.

Now the interesting conclusion -- all the border markers were old, and in need of repair. One had been washed away by a flood and had yet to be reinstated. The 10 gajja of no-man's land wasn't honoured. But there was no sign that the Indian security forces seized the land around them.
What the report seems to conclude, rather, is that it's not the encroachment from the Indian side, but the neglect from the Nepali side, that seems to be the problem. There was no police post on the Nepali side, while the Indian side had its SSB police force in place. And herein lies the gist of the matter -- there were no roads, no health posts, no veterinary services, no schools, no post offices, no telecom offices, no electricity -- for the Nepali citizens living in this area.

Even the land meant for a police post in Khangra had been seized by locals who had put in a foundation for a private home. There was no seeds, fertilizers, or any other agricultural supplies necessary for farming to reach this remote border point.

The Nepali government had failed to ensure government presence on the border. There were no land registration offices which could show that land was measured and registered when bought and sold. Hunger was endemic because there was no good provision for year around food supply. There was no baazzar on the Nepal side, so the locals had to depend on the bazzar on the Indian side, which was a four hour walk through the jungle.

There is conflicting testimony about the Indian border security force, with some saying they restricted their access to the bazzar, and others saying there were no restrictions. Some said the SSB restricted locals from purchasing more than seven kilos of food. The border police force also insist on the custom tax, ask to see citizenship papers (which most Nepali on this side of the border lack), and they also try to confiscate animals meant for sale. But others also claim the border force allows them up to 50 kilos of food, cement, sugar, fertilizers and other essentials without restrictions. Perhaps the answer to this lies less in foreign policy and India-Nepal relations but in how well each Nepali is able to establish a rapport with each Indian security guard.

Now the question of rape. Interestingly, the paragraph on rape is almost a case study on how not to investigate cases of rape. Here is a verbatim translation: "On asking locals about sexual harassment and abductions of women at the border, the team were told that such incidents took place in the past but in the present such incidents do not occur and there has been no cases filed in the police about such cases."

Now as every activist (male or female) working in rape knows, going up to a potential victim and saying to them: by the way, have you heard of any rape cases around this area? is rarely a good way to get accurate information. Victims often suffer from psychological and physical trauma of the incidents. They are not willing to confide to a fly-by-night team that yes, indeed, the border security force raped them -- especially since there is no police protection and no guarantee of safety that any protection will be accorded to them after the investigation team leaves.

If the Nepali government is really serious about investigating accusations of rape by the Indian border force, it will get together a diplomatic team in Nepal who will fly to New Delhi, get hold of the Indian Government's Ministry of Women Affairs and form an investigative team that will include high level Indian police officers like Kiran Bedi, and prosecutors who have worked to put rapists in prison. This team will then spend two to three weeks talking to Nepali (and Indian) women at the border, and conclude by dismissing key offenders and implementing strong sexual harassment laws in the Indian border security force. And while we are are it, we should do the same for the Nepali security forces as well.

The two countries must also provide safe homes and counseling centers for women facing sexual violence on the border area, since borders seem particularly prone to incidents of violence against women.

According to advocate Govinda Bandi Sharma, there is no legal solution to encroachment. Somebody has filed a lawsuit in the Nepali Supreme Court but one cannot really take the Indian Embassy to Nepali court because they enjoy diplomatic immunity. "The only solution is a diplomatic one," says Sharma.

The way forward is constant pressure and vigilance from civil society to document and investigate actual incidents. Nepali civil society groups must also make linkages with Indian ones and keep them informed about actual incidents so Indian journalists, lawyers and citizen groups are updated on these situations and can raise it within their own legal system.

The Nepali government must also get its dysfunctional foreign ministry in order, and engage in diplomatic talks with the Indian side. One good way may be to informally engage former ambassadors to India, who already have the experience of dealing with their Indian counterparts, to broaden the discussion and keep it in the public eye.

Instead of blaming India for all its problems, the Nepali government must get off its lazy and dysfunctional ass and immediately provide essential services at the border, including citizenship certificates for its nationals, land registration offices, and border monitoring guards.
And all of this, of course, must be constantly monitored by civil society to ensure the Nepali government removes its ostrich head from the quicksand of political bickering and actually does something for its citizens.

(Sushma Joshi has a BA in International Relations from Brown University)