THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

When Prachanda’s channel ABC kept referring to the “dhandali” in this elections, including the fact the political representatives of various parties were not allowed to accompany the ballot boxes to the locations where they were stored, I suggested that this in fact may not be a fiction of the losing party’s imagination, but a concrete reality. It appeared strange to me none of the RPP factions, none of the ethnic parties, none of the Madhesh parties won in any significant way in this election, especially in light of the disillusionment the majority of the people felt with the big parties. The Maoists’s loss was understandable—but what about all the others?  A relative of mine   got very irritated with me at this point, and said that sleigh-of-hand of any kind was impossible. It was an internationally observed elections, he said. The Army accompanied the ballot boxes to the counting stations. Any deception was simply impossible. I asked if representatives of the ...

For those of us who've been following Monsanto, this will come as a news item of interest. Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, has just dumped its Monsanto shares--all $17.5 million of it. And for those of you who followed my Tweets, there was one Tweet I wrote in 2011 in which I predicted the end of Monsanto would happen in November 2013. Go dig that up, folks! Here's more below from the Motley Fool (oddly, I read websites that give advice on stocks and shares. I've been subscribed to the Motley Fool, off and on, for about 15 years now. Oddly, since I don't hold any stocks or shares.) ___________________________________________________ This excerpt taken from the Motley Fool, a website that gives advice on investing. Bridgewater Associates is the largest hedge fund in the world when it comes to assets under management. Founded by Ray Dalio in 1975, the fund's status as world's largest tells us two things: First, it has do...

I asked an elderly gentleman from Kapilvastu who comes to do repairs in our house whether he’d voted. He said he did, for the Nepali Congress.   Then I asked him if his family voted. “Hah, hah,” he said. “But in our family we vote chutta-chuttai.”  I looked at him, puzzled, unsure what he meant. His studied nonchalance told me he was revealing something of import.  “Afno-afnai. I vote for the Nepali Congress. My wife votes for the Cow-Kamal Thapa, RPP faction.” He said this with a studied nonchalance that made me realize that this separate voting between his wife and him it was sort of a big deal. Almost with the tone of voice people would use when saying: “yes, we eat separately. Chuttai chuttai.” In communities where people vote in big blocs, a husband and a wife voting separately is clearly a big deal. Decisions, from economic to political, in households are made jointly, and the woman follows the man’s lead. So to have the wife vote for some o...

SUSHMA JOSHI A young woman from Nuwakot from where the Nepali Congress just won the elections tells me this. First, that theirs was a Maoist area, where the Maoist won with an overwhelming margin in the last elections. This time too, they should have won—and there were strong Maoist candidates there, particularly those associated with the Vaidya faction, who would have won again, had they run. But this time, the Maoists lost.   First, she said, the Vaidya faction, while ruled this area, called for people to vote for parties other than the Maoists.   There were community meetings, she said, and people decided to vote for Prakash Chandra Lohani, an old term politician from the same area, and his plough sign instead.   Then the second reason was the confusion created by the bifurcation of the Maoists, and the way they weren’t able to create a strong institution that could withstand the split. And third, people were upset about the whole issue of ethnic federalis...

I just watched Rajan KC of the Nepali Congress party get decorated with sindoor as he accepted his win. "Prachanda cannot say it was a free and fair elections last night, then claim its unfair the next morning," he said. "I lost against Prachanda from this same area six years ago, and I accepted my defeat then. In a Loktantrik system, he has to accept his defeat." NTV, it appeared, was as confused as Prachanda about the loss. As it called in the winner, it ran a brief biographical profile of the winning candidate. And just by mistake, it happened to run Prachanda's biographical film--it is as if the technical staff behind the scenes just couldn't believe Prachanda had lost the election. In all fairness, I would say Prachanda’s claim deserves a thought. If most elections in the past have had unfair things happen—Maoists strong-arming people to vote for them, ballot boxes   vanishing at night,   booths being captured, why wouldn’t similar things happe...

Fifty percent of the one crore, twenty-one lakh voters registered in Nepal had already voted by the time I sat down to drink some tea in front of the television this afternoon. But I could keenly feel the sense of disenfranchisement of the 2/3 of Nepali citizens who did not get to vote, for various reasons. A woman in the neighbourhood, from Okhaldhunga, marveled at the card in my hand, and wanted to know how I’d gotten to vote. She said even her landlady and her daughter, who owned a house in Kathmandu, hadn’t managed to get the proper documents, despite great effort. “How do people vote? How did you manage?” She asked, clearly puzzled a young woman had somehow managed to cast her vote. In her view, the voting process was restricted to elders and those with more power. I showed her my voter registration card which I had received yesterday from the Elections Office officials, and who’d told me to keep it carefully since it could be used later as the primary identity ca...