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I was born in the backyard of our mud-house, at one o’clock in the night while my mother hung on to the wooden beams supporting the thatched roof. She had already borne the labor pain for two days and had stepped out in the dark, unable to bear it anymore. My father wasn’t home. And they were both 19. 

When they heard the sound of a baby crying, my grandparents came out, lit an oil lamp and came to look for the baby and the mother. They lifted me up and were happy to find that I was a boy. They rejoiced.

My mother told the story of her life in a TEDx talk in Kathmandu last week. She is 58 now, and I am 39. I listened to the journey she has been through, told very matter-of-factly, without any filters. Sitting there in the audience in that hall along with more than hundred other people, and watching her share the story of her life, was deeply moving.

Fifty years ago, at a remote village in Syangja district in western Nepal, when my mother started going to school, people weren’t happy. “They used to say if you educate girls, they will get spoiled— they will elope. But my father didn’t listen to them and sent me to school,” she said. “Our relatives kept trying to stop me from getting educated. They weren’t happy that a girl was being educated. When I turned 13, I stopped going to school. Staying home and helping my mother made everyone happy, it made my mother happy as well.”

She was married at 17, and I was born when my parents were 19. Women in the house, especially the daughters-in-law, had to work really hard. My mother would wake up any time before 3.30 am, and finish the Dhiki Jato work before dawn. And during the daylight hours, they had to work in the fields or fetch firewood from the jungles. Obviously, I was neglected.

“When my son was 18 months, he was only 6 kg in weight,” my mother’s story continued. “We took him to a Jhakri [shaman] for treatment. One day, on our way back from the jhakri, he started vomiting badly and almost stopped breathing. I nearly fainted. My husband said to me that if he is ours, he will survive. If God hasn’t sent him to be ours, we can’t do anything about it.”

Also read: Opinion | Alternative politics: Is there still hope?

I was saved, not from the interventions of God, but because someone in the family took me to the Mission Hospital in Tansen, Palpa. The doctor understood that I was severely malnourished and advised my parents to feed me eggs and bananas. And I survived.

My mother raised three children, with the support of my father’s job in the Indian Army.

But over the years, I have seen my mother make a place for herself in social leadership, the organic way. In a social set-up dominated by men, she teamed up with some of them to start a cooperative in the village that helps women farmers financially. And three years ago, we came up with the idea of ‘Himali: Made by Mothers’–to create employment for women in the villages.

“All my life, I have struggled without education and without a job. I haven’t rested even for a single day, but as a housewife and farmer, I haven’t earned money. I have faced many such moments when I felt I wish I had an earning of my own.” She said, “I know that I would have raised my children in a better way if I could myself earn. Through Himali, we want to give that power and freedom to mothers in the villages, like me.”

The story of my mother’s struggle is not uncommon. Poverty and lack of education is the setting. The struggles that most women faced in our part of the world were severe. Just surviving a child birth was a miracle.

Watching my 58-year-old mother who had to drop out of the school in grade three 45 years ago confidently walk on to the stage and talk to a hall-full of audience was an immensely moving experience. The audience were in tears.

Back from the event, in the village where she still lives a rigorous farming life, she has moved on already, apparently unaware of the contrast I see in the opportunities that she lost because of where she was born. The place of birth of an individual shouldn’t decide the fate of a life so much. 

I can’t get this feeling out of my mind. It is not just. And we must rebel, in our own ways.

After the failure of the first Constituent Assembly to deliver a constitution despite numerous extensions, the youth had come together to form a pressure group which later took the shape of a political movement. This was in 2012, and it was an exciting time.

The Arab Spring Movement had just taken place, and hash-tagging in social media was considered real activism with the hope of lighting up revolutions. Youths gathered around the trending slogans, mostly in social media, but also in street activism. This brought in an era of optimism and the idea of alternative politics in Nepal was born. And the rise to power in Delhi of Arvind Kejriwal, an outsider in politics through the Aam Aadmi Party, coincided with this development in Nepal.

This added fuel to the fire, and we were giddy with hope. In the first local elections after the promulgation of the constitution, Ranju Darshana, a 21-year-old undergrad student, had received almost 24,000 votes as a mayoral candidate for Kathmandu from a party formed from this movement. Ranju’s candidacy appealed to the youth and also addressed the near absence of women in political leadership.

I have been a hardline supporter of the need for an alternative political force in Nepal since the beginning. The major political parties are structured into rigid patriarchal organizations controlled by ‘upper caste’ old men where meritocracy isn't welcome. The idea of alternative politics was thus based on a simple premise: Nepal’s major political parties have morphed into feudal machines that are incapable of putting qualified people in power.

Also read: Opinion | Hard lessons of history 

But the skeptics believe that emergence of a strong new political party in Nepal is almost impossible. They argue that Nepal’s terrain does not allow for mass proliferation of a new force as easily as it happened in Delhi. And almost a decade after its conception, the idea of alternative politics is in grave danger, proving the skeptics right, but not only for the same reason. 

One of the founder leaders of the movement, Ujwal Thapa, who later transitioned into a political party by the name Bibeksheel Nepali Dal, unfortunately succumbed to Covid-19 a few months back. And the enormity of the leadership vacuum that Thapa’s demise has created is now slowly unfolding.

The party Thapa had founded was united with the one founded by Rabindra Mishra, who had jumped into the bandwagon of alternative politics after completing a pensionable career as a journalist in the BBC. Renamed Bibeksheel Sajha after the reunion, the party has officially taken a right turn endorsing the ‘personal opinion’ document of Mishra that is sympathetic to monarchy, wants to abolish federalism and urges a referendum on secularism.

Mishra refuses to accept that he has steered the youth-centered alternative political movement on a rightist path. In fact, in puerile and naive attempts to justify his ‘majoritarian’ political stunt, he questions the right of others to call anyone a rightist or leftist. Arguing like a child, he has even advocated for justice to the kings.

There is no doubt that frustrations from the continuous bickering of the mainstream politicians, and the communist government’s inability to deliver stability despite its huge majority, has made many people question the new political developments. And in the age of instant gratification derived by social media, there are enough people nostalgic about the ‘royal rule’. It has also not helped that the political party led by Prachanda, the harbinger of most of the progressive agendas in the past few decades, is also the most undemocratic in its internal functioning.

Also read: Opinion | Systemic dysfunction 

But Mishra’s misreading of the signs and his recent political steps have put the idea of alternative politics in danger. The core constituency of such a force, the educated progressive youth who have sustained this force till now through support and contributions, has disassociated itself completely. And personally, I have come across many such youths now supporting the building of alternative forces within major political parties.

“Our political parties are like elephants, they maneuver slowly,” says Shankar Tiwari, a young political commentator who has been elected a general convention representative from Nepali Congress. “Our political set up formed a progressive constitution first and are now restructuring the internal party functioning guided by the constitution.” 

Some among the foreign educated youths also believed that the rulers our political parties produce are ‘stupid’ by default. But that is a naive underestimation of political conflicts Nepal has gone through and the tough journey our political parties have undertaken.

I believe our major political parties have failed to attract capable youths largely because of lack of internal democracy and zero tolerance for dissent. So, while the elephants are learning to dance, Mishra is showing signs of building a similar feudal structure and a desire to curb dissent. The so-called alternative movement is on an irrevocable path to demise.  

Unlike those who chose to leave Nepal and can comfortably be pessimistic at the expense of those who either opted to or were forced to stay back, we have to look for the silver linings. And the early signs are good. The post-covid bounce back is finally in the air. 

As a successful manifestation of collective human strength triumphing over complex global challenges, the vaccination drive is showing signs of success the world over, giving us enough reasons for optimism. Bookings across the spectrum in tourism look good, export is picking up and young people are starting businesses. The comparative advantages we have are being talked about, again.

However the situation isn’t all hunky dory. Without spoiling the party, let’s try to see what we have failed to learn, honestly. 

As I am writing this today, in a peak tourist season, we are facing a nationwide strike called by the communist party led by Netra Bikram Chand, once a powerful second rung leader in the insurgent mother Maoist party. Such atrocious politics never lets the dark memory of past decades fade. 

In 2019, I was the race director of an international mountain bike challenge called ‘Waling 100’ that we had organized with the help of Nepal Tourism Board and the local government of Waling municipality. It was the first MTB event conceptualized, designed, planned and executed by a Nepali team that had international aspirations. We wanted to establish it as one of the toughest one-day MTB marathons in the world. 

As we released the race descriptions, we caught the attention of the MTB enthusiasts worldwide, and had some international registrations too. But just a month before the event, the same underground group led by Chand carried out bomb blasts in Kathmandu. Four people died, and many were injured. Nepal, just recovering from the earthquake, was made to look like a battlefield again. Travel advisories against visiting Nepal were issued and obviously, our bookings were cancelled. We were forced to postpone the event by a month, and even then ended up with only two of the 18 registered international participants turning up.

Also read: Opinion | Unfree minds

Last few decades have been hell for us. The insurgency, the instability of the transition, the earthquake and the blockade have all piled up deep consequences in our society, politics and economy. Our politicians have botched up so much that groups drunk in nostalgia of a ‘heroic royal rule’ have started organizing themselves, seeing a political future in that undercurrent. 

The frustrations and the lack of expectations from our leaders have no limits. And, add to that the unapologetically gross display of power by the now super-rich communist gang led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, ‘the fierce one’, and we have given up any hope of better politics for a long-long time.

Violent politics, impractical labor laws coupled with malpractices by the private sector have produced many case studies of failure in Nepal. A blooming carpet industry that had become a source of employment for many people, especially the women, was brought to a grinding halt. ‘Insatiably bargaining labor unions backed by the political parties’ is noted as the main reason by one businessman, who had closed his factory and switched to real estate decades ago. 

Recently, labor issues also forced the high-end adventure-gear brand Sherpa to shift most of its production base from Nepal to Vietnam. And the shared economy based start-ups like Tootle and Pathao have also been hit by the failure of the lawmakers to catch up to the developments in the technological field.

At a time when the hospitality sector has hooked up a lot of investments both from the domestic as well as international circles, we must remember how the industry was destroyed in the past. The Fulbari Resort of Pokhara, a beautiful luxury property, has become a case study of how the labor union backed by the Maoists destroyed the flag-bearer of an industry, killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Similarly, unethical practices by the operators to cash in on medical insurance during high-altitude trips have harmed our credibility and it will take years to recover. 

Bouncing back isn't as easy as it sounds in fancy five-star conferences. And if we neglect the lessons that history taught us at great cost, we will have to pay with sweat and blood, again.  

Let me share a recent personal dilemma with you. I came across an online course on Public Policy Analysis offered by the London School of Economics and Political Science, and I was immediately sold on it. But this 10-week course is priced a hard-to-afford $3,000. With some quick calculations, I figured I could afford to spend around $500 at the moment and I have initiated a fundraising for the rest of the amount through my social media profile.

This has, expectedly, raised some strong reactions both in support and against the idea. I have strong reasons for doing this.

As a columnist, I am aware of the standard of our public discourse. It is awful. But I don't blame my own creed for the same. I don't want to embarass myself and my publishers by putting the amount here, but the remuneration is such a negligible amount that one can hardly justify any effort on research for the columns. And there is no way for us columnists to take loans to upgrade our analytical skills and pay back through what the papers pay us. But upskilling ourselves is an absolute necessity.

The public intellectual ecosystem in Nepal has survived on a flawed balance. Higher education abroad is very costly, almost unthinkable without a scholarship even for the well-to-do families, and higher education in the country is completely untrustworthy. Research work and dissertations that are mandatory for degree courses are openly available on sale at university campuses. 

Ideally, our institutions, like the media houses we write for, should support such efforts. But that's beyond the scope at the moment. Most media houses hardly pay for opinion columns and editors think they are doing a favor to the writers by publishing their pieces. Therefore, scholarships have become a political tool for the powerful external players in Nepal to maintain their hold over the opinion makers. 

So, I have three strong reasons for initiating this crowdfunding for myself. First, I am convinced that upgrading my skills on Public Policy Analysis has become an absolute necessity. I became a writer by passion. I write in English as well as Nepali, and my effort has been to bring forward the perspective from the grassroots. I am based in rural Nepal and have engaged myself in some micro-entrepreneurships and social projects in my hometown. 

Also read: Opinion | Systemic dysfunction

In a nutshell, I experience a completely different Nepal than what is projected in the discourse by Kathmandu-based armchair analysts. My effort is to convey to the larger world what I experience on a day to day basis in my villages. But I am not a trained policy analyst, and I find my own insights overly influenced by personal grievances and anecdotal impressions. Therefore, I felt skills to analyse policy related matters through structured framework based processes would add value to my writing. 

Second, I want to bring forward the fact that in countries like Nepal quality higher education is unaffordable even for the relatively well-off citizens, and what is affordable is absolute rubbish. Politics has ruined Tribhuvan University. Professors are taken on a quota basis in accordance with their affiliation to the political parties and this is directly reflected in the quality of higher education. It has become common to reward plagiarists and corrupt academicians with powerful positions. As a result, these institutions have become a mess and have lost all credibility. I don't have an iota of trust that our universities will provide knowledge and skills worth the time spent gaining the degree.

Third, and the most important reason I think I am justified in initiating this fundraising, is that I promise to initiate an online course on Public Discourse and  Public Policy Analysis along with some friends, and have vowed to run it for free for 20 participants. Learning from a credible institution like the LSE is a personal dream for me, but creating affordable learning opportunities for many more, here in Nepal, is an even more important need of the hour.

My endeavor has sparked interesting reactions on both ends. While many have committed to funding the initiative, appreciating my desire to learn, many others have ridiculed the approach. I may have a different opinion about it later in hindsight, but at the moment, I find it absolutely necessary to raise these issues.

Democracy thrives on public discourse. And if our opinion makers are not independent, we are nurturing a servile ecosystem based on a self-destructing fallacy in the name of public intellectualism.

Nepal has long been surviving on the edge, miraculously saving itself from falling off the precipice of a failed nation. As one sits to ponder over the developments in the country, one can’t miss how we have become a perfect test case for what theorists describe as countries with failing institutions. 

Some years back, Lokman Singh Karki, the chief of the anti-corruption body, had almost brought all the powers to their knees. Appointed by political consensus as the head of the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority, Karki slowly started to concentrate power around him. 

It is widely accepted that our institutions are inherently corrupt, and thus, if scrutinised properly, it is difficult for any officer to come out clean. This fact has created a general perception that such anti-corruption bodies are to be managed through illegal means and not confronted. This mass fear among all government bodies made the head of ‘Akhtiyar’ extremely powerful. One officer then working in the same office testified that Karki had created a power gang of close relatives and confidantes, and through them he terrorized all major power centres in the country. 

The same officer relates an incident when Karki once called the then IGP to his office at 9 in the morning for a meeting, and kept him waiting outside till 5pm, and then left his office without meeting the Chief of Police. All this while LSK was making fun of the head cop who was being beamed on his CCTV screen. Such sadistic behaviour is possible only in a country with no institutional accountability. Nepal merits one of the top positions in that category. 

Also read: Race to stupidity

Recently, former Indian Ambassador to Nepal, Ranjit Rae, has revealed in his book that not only have Nepal’s political leaders been inviting the embassy in Kathmandu to micromanage internal matters, members of other institutions have also been continuously involving the embassy in undue interference. He writes that while in office in Kathmandu, he was consulted by the Home Minister regarding the appointment of the new chief of police. And, unsurprisingly, he says all four prospective candidates lined up in his office to convince him of their willingness to work in close cooperation with their Indian counterparts.

A small incident in the complex geopolitical juxtaposition, this shameful but not surprising revelation has shown that Nepal, as a nation, has a very fragile institutional framework to support statecraft in this difficult time and terrain. And our political leaders, in their penchant for continuous uncertainty, have made it worse.

After the LSK nightmare, the country recently faced a disastrous dismantling of a strong political arrangement led by Prachanda and Oli, the ‘communist’ leaders giving slogans for a communist unity. As the country is in desperate need of stability, the cloud wisdom of people favored their promise for stability and the united coalition got a nearly two-thirds majority. But in three years, the powerful government became a symbol of the greatest failure in Nepal’s political history. 

This failure opened the door for the judiciary to also get involved in brinkmanship and power brokering, as recent news headlines suggest. These developments point to yet another era of utter failure, and the aspirations of Nepal’s youth to see a state that supports a level playing field and encourages investments in new technologies and skills, making the ecosystem more conducive to economic growth, is far from sight.

Also read: Kathmandu: City of Garbage

To aptly theorize such a shameful dysfunction, we refer to “Why Nations Fail” published in 2012, Co-authored by the M.I.T. economist Daron Acemoglu and the Harvard political scientist James A. Robinson again and again. The book’s main argument is that countries thrive when they develop “inclusive” political and economic institutions, and they fail when those institutions become “extractive” and concentrate power and opportunity in the hands of a few.

“Sustained economic growth requires innovation,” the authors write, “and innovation cannot be decoupled from creative destruction, which replaces the old with the new in the economic realm and also destabilizes established power relations in politics.”

“Inclusive economic institutions, are in turn supported by, and support, inclusive political institutions,” which “distribute political power widely in a pluralistic manner and are able to achieve some amount of political centralization so as to establish law and order, the foundations of secure property rights, and an inclusive market economy.” Conversely, extractive political institutions that concentrate power in the hands of a few reinforce extractive economic institutions to hold power.

The lesson of history is that you can’t get your economics right if you don’t get your politics right. And, the youth of this country should brace up for this long struggle to set things right, right at the grassroots. Nation-building has to be approached brick by brick, an institution at a time. 

We Nepalis have always dreamt of being ruled by visionary leaders assisted by disciplined and competent governance machinery. But what we got is the exact opposite. We have become a nation ruled by conflict mongering, criminal-minded and incompetent politicians who are assisted as enthusiastically in ruining the nation by the inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy. Political instability and an endless transition has made things worse.

To put things in perspective, let me begin with a comparison that came as a shocking eye-opener. Next to the small farmhouse that I am about to launch in my hometown, at a beautiful bhanjyang in the serene village named Chisapani in Waling Municipality, in Syangja district, a community school is being renovated. I spotted the contractor working on the project procuring the best quality tiles and granite slabs at the local hardware store, and some eager enquiries revealed shocking details.

The budget for the school’s toilet block is more than my total budget for the farmhouse. It is more surprising because the primary school has only 26 enrolled students. This seems an atrocious waste of scarce resources that could have been used on other important infrastructures like libraries and books. Such an absurd spending pattern has become a norm across the social sector and in government projects.

Much of this rampage of inflated expenditure in projects is caused by corrupt intent, and an ineffective monitoring and evaluation mechanism. But some sociological and political factors also need exploring while looking for deeper reasons. 

Let me share another example. I work in agriculture, and I am striving hard to initiate evidence-based and data-driven practices in small-scale farming. But at the local level, there are many government bodies one has to coordinate with to get benefits from different schemes targeted at farmers, or even simply to get some data about agriculture.

At the municipality level, the technical agriculture branches of the municipality work under the office of the Municipal Executive, which comprises elected and nominated local representatives. There is hardly any coordination between the district, province, federal and these municipal agencies.

Previously, the government had been providing agricultural extension services through various agriculture service centers and livestock service centers directly controlled by the ministry. But with the rolling out of federalism, the District Agriculture Offices have been closed. 

The government of Nepal had launched a plan to establish Community Agriculture Extension Service Centers (CAESC) under the  Agriculture Development Strategy, a 20-year strategic plan to guide the overall agricultural development of Nepal before the promulgation of the new constitution. It has now been redesigned to suit the federal structure. The Decentralized Science, Technology and Education Flagship program of ADS has a vision of establishment of CAESC in each VDC. But, in practice, things haven't shaped out as planned.

According to a study carried out by the Global Sustainable Research and Development Center, the CAESC’s established in Sindhuli and Rautahat districts have not been implemented effectively. The infrastructure is now used by rural municipality/municipality for their office purposes. As a result, we have dozens of government agencies in the district with no coordination with each other. When I strive to base our decisions on some reliable data about agricultural production, it seems like mission impossible.

Our politics, for the past three decades, has thrived on conflict mongering. As a result, our politicians have hardly any experience on governance. The result of the past four years, at different levels of our government, proves their ineptitude to prioritize correctly. While the federal government was incapacitated with the battle of egos of main leaders, the provincial and local governments have initiated some really laughable projects.

The country has a plethora of stupid projects as the mayors seem to be in a race to win the title of the stupidest politician. One municipality had cut down a healthy tree in a road-crossing to erect a concrete statue of a fruit, and many others have spent crores of rupees on view towers, concrete statues of animals, vegetables and even liquor bottles. One municipality recently spent more than Rs 2 million in building statues of cauliflowers and potatoes. That amount could have been utilized in establishing a research and advisory center to help farmers. 

Combined with this senseless anarchy led by our criminal-minded rulers, who are amply assisted by an inefficient governance structure, we as a society are also playing our part. Let's face it: unless we stop being tolerant of inefficient practices and unless we start ridiculing corruption in our family gossip, our children will face such endless injustice again and again.

It's high time we forced our government to spend the taxpayer money more efficiently.

It sounds harsh but it’s the sad truth: the heaps of waste troubling Kathmanduites demonstrate ultimate lack of responsibility, not of the municipal authorities but of the citizenry itself. Kitchen waste has to be managed by the household. It should be the bottom line of a civilized and hygienic urban living. Period.

Kathmandu still behaves like a captured city. The city’s locals—the Newa people and the other communities that came along with the Gorkha rulers during the unification—are the so-called ‘raithane’ Kathmanduites. But the major chunk of the population living in the city is comprised of those who have migrated from outside, either temporarily or permanently. Many of them live in rented rooms, often students and young boys and girls sharing a single room with improvised kitchen facilities.

This situation has made the city an equivalent of a large slum, or at best, a disorganized concrete settlement. It has little of what a modern city should have. Unrestricted construction activities and municipal solid waste production have made the city unlivable, and the volume of single-use plastics, rising for decades, has also soared since the start of the pandemic.

The recycling business in Nepal is dependent on small-scale disorganized Indian collectors. Recently, there have been some creative attempts by some social entrepreneurs to tackle the issue, but kitchen waste is left completely at the mercy of the households or the municipal collection system. And that has been a cause of continuous trouble.

As a result, the best some youngsters with activist streak could think about after heaps of garbage piled up in Kathmandu was to throw waste-filled polybags in front of the mayor’s office. But there’s hardly been an attempt from the citizenry to think of other ways to clean up this mess.

Kitchen waste is easily manageable, and can even become a source of income. Some examples shared as success stories by the UN Environment Program could give us a great way out of this mess.

A few years ago, roadsides and canals filled with stinking garbage were threatening Indian coastal city Alappuzha’s status as a tourist destination as well as exposing residents and visitors alike to clouds of flies and disease-spreading mosquitoes. Protests by local residents had led to the closure of the city’s main landfill site in 2014.

Since then, the city in the eastern state of Kerala—dubbed “the Venice of the East” for its network of backwaters and coastal lagoons where tourists can rent houseboats—has addressed the problem by introducing a decentralized waste management system. This separates biodegradable waste at ward level, treats it in small composting plants, and provides many of its 174,000 residents with biogas for cooking.

Another example is Ljubljana in Slovenia. As the first European capital to aim for zero waste, Ljubljana is reaping multiple benefits from its commitment to cutting-edge waste management. While some countries have opted for incineration to control landfill, the Slovenian city has chosen to maximize recycling and reduction.

After more than a decade of improvement and education, Ljubljana has one of the highest rates for the separate collection and recycling of waste in Europe—over 60 percent. That performance helped it secure the European Commission’s Green Capital award in 2016. It has also banned cars from its center, revived its parks, and helped Slovenia become a sustainable tourist destination.

A key step has been to collect separated waste directly from people’s homes. Biodegradable and recyclable waste is collected more frequently, encouraging people to separate diligently to prevent it from piling up (and beginning to smell). The city is also running information campaigns to promote reduction, re-use and responsible consumption to curb the amount of stuff people throw away. Reducing food waste is a particular target.

The results are impressive: the quantity of recovered materials rose from 16 kg per person in 2004 to 145 kg in 2014; the amount sent to landfills fell 59 percent; total waste decreased by 15 percent. The average monthly waste management cost was less than 8 euros per household in 2014—the lowest in the country.

It is high time we start thinking about waste differently in Kathmandu. The key to success is the willingness of households to separate their waste before it is collected. This demands years of awareness-raising including public meetings and door-to-door visits across the city. Knee-jerk reactions and blame shifting activism will not give us a permanent solution.

Throwing plastic bags full of your rotten tomatoes in front of the mayor won't help. We must help our municipalities. The money spent to open more sites to burn or bury rubbish, or to deal with non-recyclable plastic food containers, milk jugs and yogurt cups could go toward building new libraries or hospitals or parks—this new approach is a potential game changer.

“While doing my PhD in the US, I was convinced that I will return to Nepal after working for a year or two here. But it's been three years since I completed my doctorate, and the long thought about ‘homecoming’ is nowhere in sight!” Medani Sangroula, a postdoc research associate at MIT, wrote on social media this week. The main reason for his change of mind, he writes, is the education prospects for his children.

Sangroula is a perfect example of the ‘well-intentioned and self-exiled’ Nepalis who have got access to a ‘better’ life in developed countries through their education. Now associated with one of the best institutions in the world, he has all the right to think about his personal ambition and progress. Most of his education was done in Nepal and now, he is hesitant to return because of the lack of matching education facilities for his offsprings in his home country.

From this perspective, the decision is a no-brainer. “I am pleasantly surprised by the science paper of my son who studies in grade 3. School education in the US is free, while in comparison, good quality education is not affordable in Kathmandu’’, he writes, obviously referring to the poor government schools and some of the costliest private schools of the valley. Combine this with the country’s poor health infrastructure and returning to the country becomes unthinkable for many Nepalis.

It's an open secret that our education system, combined with the health system, have become the most lucrative business for the politically connected influential ‘mafias’, and unethical business practices are common. Marred by corruption and irresponsibility, people don't trust the government-run hospitals and educational institutes on quality either. But a major contributor for this decay is also brain drain. And Like all things, politics is at the center of this vicious circle.

Political turmoil, long uncertainty and the natural preference of our society to work abroad--the lahure culture--have caused mass migration of both skilled and unskilled Nepalis. As of today, a third of our working population is estimated to be outside the country.

Remittances contribute almost 40 percent of the GDP, and they have saved the economy from crashing, but unproductive use of capital, barrening of arable land, lack of focus in production, and completely derooting of the traditional farming system based in a family set-up have caused us to import almost everything that we consume. The fiscal deficit is at a dangerous level.

The biggest impact of this mass exodus is on our politics. The long overdue revolution to purify politics through a youth intervention has not gained any momentum as the youths are mostly away. But most ironically, the hesitance of qualified people like Sangroula to return to Nepal also contributes to the poor state of our educational institutions.

Despite this gloomy picture, some committed education leaders are trying to make an impact at the grassroots, both at community and private schools. Gyan Pande, a teacher of the Mirmi Basic School in Kaligandaki Rural Municipality in Syangja district, is one such champion. His struggles in the school for the past 15 years have given great results: school activities are mostly run by independent and motivated students and school teams excel in almost all district level competitions. The students also produce their own weekly radio program that is aired across many FM stations. 

Another example of an individual with proven commitment to changing the status-quo for the better, in the private sector, is Pratibha Dangol, the founder of Kamane School in Hetauda municipality. Dangol has focussed on experiential learning principles and worked hard to educate parents to accept her progressive ideas of using the community as a curriculum. Happily accepted by the local community, she now has plans to build her school as a base to create a research and training center for experiential learning methods in pedagogy for other teachers too. 

In Kathmandu, Sauriya Khanal, the founder of Prasiddha Model School, is fighting hard to establish an educational institution founded on the principles of excellence and affordability. After returning from the UK, she invested her savings and also some ancestral assets to build a school on progressive ideas. Now she is trying to raise funds for a residential school that “provides a combination of high quality international education with Nepali Values, with botany at its heart and moral education as its soul”.

I have brought in these examples in my column with a clear aim: to bring to light the efforts of many such individual champions who are putting their best foot forward to make it a better country, despite all the hurdles. The criminal-minded dark forces are well connected and their nexus will be unbreakable unless, like the late Ujwal Thapa used to say, we make a syndicate of the ‘good people’. 

Those who are working hard to make your home better are crying for help--the least you can do is support them.