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After almost one-and-a-half years of the breaking out of Covid-19 pandemic, 20.7 percent of the world population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Altogether 2.4 billion doses have been administered globally, and 33.1 million are now administered a day. This seems a promising state of affairs until one tries to dig for details.

Only 0.8 percent of people in low-income countries have gotten at least one dose till date. This bleak scenario, as The Economist put it in a recent article, is not just an economic blunder but a ‘moral failure’ of the West.

Under the scrutiny of real-politick skepticism, questions of morality are the privilege of the strong. From the standpoint of a nation labelled as poor, and thus backward, mired in political and social struggles yet bubbling with a young population waiting for their turn to get exposed to the world, the current state of affairs is a cruel display of cumulative injustice compounded over centuries.

In Nepal, during this one-and-a-half years, we have seen a series of unfortunate events. When the pandemic was spreading its deadly wings across the world, and when early sufferers like Italy, the US and the UK were in panic mode, we were in delusion. Our prime minister was busy preaching sermons in the parliament on how the cold breeze of the Himalayas would cause the virus to mellow down. 

Such an attitude made the government lazy in its preparation to deal with the pandemic. As the power struggle in the ruling party ripened, to the horror of all, huge mass protests and rallies were organised by both sides. In hindsight, now, the apparent stupidity of our political leaders, and the ignorance of our people, seems to be an even graver injustice than the global inequality. 

As the pandemic peaked in India, we overtook our neighbour in the rate of rise of daily infections. And by mid-May, we had a higher percentage of deaths in proportion to population than India. Our hospitals ran out of beds, many private hospitals refused to take in patients with fever symptoms, and those with treatment facilities available were taking an exorbitant amount in advance for every patient. 

That we have a poor nationwide health infrastructure is no secret but it has been ignored by all our governments till date. The long wars activists like Dr Govind KC have waged against the criminal-political nexus that controls the hospitals and medical institutes has got a new validity now. Extremely unregulated medical business has made the medical infrastructure and education a source of easy money for what is now known as the ‘Medical Mafia’. In this grim scenario, people are left to fend for themselves.

The situation we are in is a result of many injustices, and will be a cause of further injustice for future generations. Unfortunately, this sad state of affairs is prevalent in all sectors. As the Western world is setting forth on a path to recovery, after fully vaccinating its population by this year’s end, it is also venturing out into a new war for geo-political dominance over China while we, along with other low-income nations, are living in the fear of death under irresponsible governments.

Have we learnt enough lessons from this? Whose responsibility is it to fight against these injustices? Who will sort things out for Nepalis?  

Will we, a nation with one of the youngest populations in the world with a median age of 24, learn and move swiftly to bring about a change in the political system that can make use of the window of opportunity this demographic dividend is creating? Will we learn from the repeated failures of our leaders to look after the interests of our nation and people and opt for an alternative? Under the present political system, established by the criminal-political nexus to secure their interests and maintain their unjust control over state resources, this seems a far cry.

These are the grave questions that our privileged youth, the ones who have access to education and a voice of their own, should ponder today. If our educated youths continue to be lured by better lifestyles and comfortable life in the West, there will be no one to shoulder the responsibility for curing the injustice. It is a time the youth unite to form an avant-garde force that sets an example.

In my previous column “Decoding Chinese signals in Nepal” (June 3-9), I had argued that China is sending us a signal and we need to decode it to understand its intent in Nepal. Probably sensing that we are a bit slow in understanding it’s real intent, China has sent us yet another signal that even a five-year-old has no difficulty understanding. By providing the ruling CPN-UML with health equipment and 100,000 N-95 masks—nothing significant in terms of real help, but a highly symbolic gesture nonetheless—it is clearly telling us that it wants to start anew with KP Oli.

There are two reasons for China's change of heart. First, the less important one. China clearly understood that it is not yet ready to challenge and or upset India’s traditional role in Nepal. It has rightly calculated that Oli is here to stay for some time and it is futile to back those opposing him. And despite Oli trying to distance himself from China by not uttering the Belt and Road Initiative even once while talking about the India-led BBIN and BIMSTEC and the American MCC in his speech to the nation on May 28, China sending the symbolic “relief” to the UML a week later is a clear expression of an end of its political (mis-) adventure in Nepal.

And now the more important reason for repeated signals, and that has nothing to do with Nepal.

While some of our analysts never tire of repeating that Nepal is quite important for China to thwart any US or Indian designs on China by using Nepal (and only God knows what they mean by that), I too have been repeating that it’s not the case. Nepal was and is just a bargaining chip for China and it would use us to either amend its relations or to resolve its outstanding issues with India, which again has nothing to do with Nepal. To achieve that objective, it brilliantly hoodwinked us into believing that it had replaced India as a major player in Nepal. To be frank, China viewed us a pawn to be sacrificed in the grand chessboard of international politics all along, but “we” interpreted the Chinese “involvement” as it acknowledging us as an important neighbor for its security. As expected, there were a zillion misplaced and mistakenly argued pieces on Nepal’s geopolitical importance and what not by our “scholars”.

While they are still arguing Nepal is important for China, President Xi Jinping on May 31 clearly signalled a change in China's foreign policy. According to China’s national news agency, Xinhua—and as quoted by all major global media outlets—President Xi remarked “it is necessary to make friends, unite and win over the majority, and constantly expand the circle of friends [when it comes to] international public opinion.”

Many scholars have interpreted this as China acknowledging the spectacular failure of its assertive “wolf-warrior diplomacy” and as a proactive measure to minimize the damage to its international reputation following the US President Joe Biden’s orders to his intelligence community to find out the origin of the coronavirus within three months. China is certain that the US intelligence report will blame it for the pandemic and it needs friends to speak on its behalf. Assertiveness is not going to win it friends and influence the global public opinion, hence the volte-face.

While those interpreting it this way are mostly focused on Western powers, as a South Asian, I see it as China trying to mend its relations with India as well. India is a neighbor and a regional power and India’s silence on or dismissal of the US intelligence report would mean a lot to China. After all, India is the world's largest democracy and India’s opinions do matter in today’s world. And what credibility would the US report have if China’s neighbor and the West’s favorite India does not endorse it?

Therefore, China’s willingness to work with Oli is a clear signal to India, more than a signal to Nepal. And it is not the first time China has used Nepal to send a signal to India. It happened during Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 Nepal visit as well. According to Professor Ezra Vogel, Deng “not only avoided criticizing India, but also composed his message in Nepal in a way that might well appeal to India: China would assist all nations in the region trying to pursue an independent policy. Deng was paving the way for improved relations with India, which he hoped might help pull it away from the Soviet Union” (Deng Xiaoping and the transformation of China by Ezra Vogel).

Therefore, China’s support (absence of opposition equals support) to Oli is a brilliant way to let India know that it can have its way in Nepal, and China has no plans whatsoever to challenge its influence and authority here. Or to put it in a slightly politically incorrect way, China is using or sacrificing or trading Nepal to buy India's silence or opposition to what it views as a US-led effort to chastise it for the spread of coronavirus. In our scholars’ parlance, China is playing the “Nepal card” in its relations with India. There goes our “importance for China”.

Social media platforms are extremely alluring. You join one and a Pandora’s box is opened for you. The more you explore, the more you get into the quagmire. If you have a smartphone, chances are, 80 percent of your application space is taken up by social media apps and games. For a very long time, I have refused to join one social media app i.e TikTok. Previously known as Musical.ly, it was purchased by BetaDance Technology Co. in 2017 and rebranded as TikTok in 2018 with the purpose of monopolizing the video social. In TikTok you can post short form videos (15-60 second) basically used for infotainment (Information + Entertainment).

Resisting the app was easy-peasy until the first pandemic lockdown. I exhausted myself by watching a lot of movies/series, knit till my neck started swearing back at me, and cooked-posted on social media until my friends started disowning me for not inviting them. TikTok came as my last resort to survive in the lockdown. It started off with scout-outing the app for people I know and I ended up using that app for hours.

I found that videos are bombarded at you, one after another, from all across the world. The algorithm makes sure you get similar kinds of videos, on the basis of your search and the videos you have watched (To understand how the algorithm works a documentary named Social Dilemma on Netflix is highly recommended).

On average I was spending 3-4 hours a day watching videos. I accept it, it is highly entertaining and a great time-pass. It is a collection of amazing dance videos, DIY hacks, comedy skits, transition videos, singing, product reviews, etc., etc. It is a big pool of what you want to watch. As the videos are only upto 60 seconds, there is not a moment to get bored.

One thing that stole my heart is the active participation of the queer community who are using TikTok to showcase their talents. Some of them are using it to come out and some for awareness on LGBTQIA++ issues.

But like other social media, TikTok is not free from trolls or cyber bullies. Using fake handles or even from their personal handles people are cyber bullying. In the name of “commenting” people are getting away with body shaming, homophobia, racism and sexism. As most of the users do not know the technicality of how to handle such things, you block them. Another option is to make one more video and call them out. This is a never ending loop and it is high time people start educating themselves on the ethics of social media.

I always had a strong reservation about giving electronic gadgets to children. Last year, due to the pandemic and lockdown, when the schools in Nepal went online, my concern about exposure of unsupervised children online grew to an alarming level. A lot of parents had to give their latest cellphone to the kids; some went further by buying a new one, just so that the kids could have uninterrupted classes. But with a smart phone in their hands, we are exposing them to the realm of the cyber world.

Even in TikTok I see a lot of accounts made by children or young adults without adult supervision. There were few videos where young kids were dancing to an English song whose meaning was extremely explicit and sexual. Even for me to see young adults dance to such songs is pretty alarming but for a cyber predator, it is a box of cheesecake. This is the content they look for. Such contents are downloaded and passed on to adult sites.

It is frightening to see parents or adults post videos of their children to get attention and klout. Allowing young girls to twerk (not realizing what exactly it is) to Munni Badnam or Sheela ki Jawani or some explicit hip hop song online is to expose them to not only cyber predators but also to the pedophile community.

It is important to understand the pros and cons of the social media that we are using everyday. Last week, a compromising Clubhouse voice recording of a young girl was shared on TikTok. It was a “mere” dare in one of the rooms, recorded by a listener and uploaded on TikTok. It is high time we give the right values to our children regarding social media. One thing is for sure: we cannot stop this development and dependency but what we can do is make sure our kids know the difference between what to post and what not to.

These things should be taught at home and in school. Adults need to take out time to educate themselves about the risks of content posting on cyberspace. The Internet is humongous and addictive and it can hold unlimited information forever: once on the internet, always on the internet. This is not something to be taken lightly.

Nepal’s constitution offers a flawed concept of democracy. The current constitutional crisis is, in part, an exhibition of those flaws.

In this five-part series, I explore the elements that make our constitution inherently frail, and call on civilians to build a truly apolitical (or non-political) movement to save it. This constitution may be flawed but it is our only and last hope.

Part I: Stable governance             

Our constitution makes the incorrect assumption that stable governance requires stable political authority. (A regime that retains the same prime minister, or key political leadership, over a long period would be an example of such stable authority.)

Clause 100(4) states that a “motion of no confidence shall not be tabled [against the prime minister] until the first two years after the appointment of the prime minister and until another one year after the date of failure of the motion of no confidence.”

Ask yourself: why should the prime minister’s immunity against a motion of no-confidence be limited to two years, or to a year after the failure of a previous no-confidence motion? Why should it not extend to five years instead? Because five years would make the prime minister and, by extension, the entire executive branch of the government, immune from sanction by the parliament for a long time. But if five years is too long for such immunity why should two years or even a year be acceptable?

The idea that the prime minister is immune from parliamentary sanction even for a moment—let alone a year or two—is contrary to the premise of a democratic parliamentary system in the first place. The prime minister must always, repeat always, be within the sanction of the parliament. And if that means frequent changes of the prime minister because parliamentarians are always conniving and plotting, then so be it.  

The motivation for the clause perhaps stems from the desire to avoid past experiences, where infighting within and among political parties led to frequent government changes.

The drafters of Nepal’s constitution appear to have retained this dim view of parliamentarians as self-interested politicians who wouldn’t hesitate to bring spurious no-confidence motions to satisfy their own political ambitions even if that meant inviting political instability. They perhaps saw the clause limiting when a no-confidence motion could be tabled as a way to limit self-interested, politically motivated behavior. But it is this approach, the reliance on rules, rather than principles, that makes our constitution inherently unstable.

To achieve stable governance, our constitution relies on pre-established rules for governing behavior, for instance in getting parliamentarians to act in a certain way. Unfortunately, rules can always be gamed. There will also be a strategy that may be within the rules but contrary to the underlying principles from which those rules were developed.

Principles are the underlying philosophy of the system. Rules are merely the instruments through which those principles are to be achieved. Principles endure, though they may be interpreted differently over time. But rules must continually change and adapt to stay ahead of players who will always be devising strategies to game the system. A constitution that relies primarily on rules to keep the system stable is immediately irrelevant.  

The current constitutional crisis around the decisions of the prime minister, council of ministers and the president results from this problematic emphasis on rules. The Supreme Court is now being asked to interpret whether the prime minister, council of ministers and president followed constitutional rules in dissolving the parliament and calling fresh elections.

The court’s previous ruling reinstating parliament was similarly a judgment about the violation of rules, not a statement about whether the actions were in keeping with the principles of parliamentary democracy as described in the constitution.  

To save our constitution, we must return to the core principles of a parliamentary democracy as enshrined in the constitution without worrying too much about the rules for how the parliament functions. That’s for parliamentarians to sort out, so long as the core principles are honored.

One way to do this is by changing our assumption on stability. Stable governance is the result of ‘institutional stability’ not ‘political stability’. Institutional stability would allow governance to continue no matter who the prime minister is or how many times parliamentarians vote for or against the prime minister.

Only a truly non-partisan a-political civilian movement can bring about this shift to institutional stability and help reinforce our crumbling, frail constitution.

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