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How has Nepal preserved its independence for over 250 years despite its precarious geopolitical positioning? Multiple factors may be at play, their importance ranked in line with your political persuasion and understanding of international relations. Traditionally, one such factor was the ability of Nepali rulers to maintain a delicate balance between India and China. Whenever Nepal felt threatened by India (or by British India), it sought Chinese support to protect its sovereignty, and vice versa. When, at the end of the 1940s, Kathmandu felt this balance was proving untenable, it looked to Western powers for help.

In this process, after the British (1816), in 1947 the US became only the second country to establish diplomatic relations with Nepal, followed by France (1949) and the Russian federation (1956). The US was also the second country to recognize Nepal as a sovereign entity, again after the British. The latter-day Rana rulers realized their rule in Nepal could be prolonged only with a third-country support. It was also the only way to ensure Nepal’s continued independence between India and China, both of which sought to consolidate their territories around the time of Indian independence in 1947.

Rulers of a country precariously sandwiched, not just between two growing powers but between two civilizations, have to, perforce, be flexible in their foreign dealings. Fixed notions and ideologies are of little use for Nepali rulers who need to be perpetually on their toes. Yet we now have a communist government that exhibits a clear bias in favor of its ideological cousin to the north. 

Perhaps no other government in Nepal’s democratic history has as keenly felt the need to diversify away from India. And rightly so. Overreliance on one power is fraught with danger. This applies as much to our relations with India as with China. The 2015-16 blockade created an enormous mass in favor of closer ties with China to balance India. KP Oli-led communist coalition rode to power by cashing on this optics. 

Yet the hard logic of geography—and the cultural and socio-economic similarities it entails—inextricably twines the future of Nepal and India, for better or worse. The goal should thus be to reduce our overreliance on India rather than trying to search for its alternative as our ‘special’ partner. 

Our government issues a statement in favor of China’s crackdown on Hong Kong; our foreign minister is busy rebutting ‘hoaxes’ around the BRI in hit tweets. But when was the last time Nepal issued a statement that was even remotely pro-India? Better, why can’t we be neutral? 

That is not the only problem. Most of the NCP leaders seem to believe that Nepal can do without all other powers bar China. Take the current ruckus over the MCC compact. I have myself been highly skeptical of the MCC process and its murky relations to the ‘military’ Indo-Pacific Strategy. As much as I hesitate to unconditionally support the compact, I am in its favor as good relations with the US are in Nepal’s interest. This is also because the compact is vague enough to be interpreted in our favor.

Ideology cannot come in the way of national interest. India and China are on the brink of an all-out war. What if we are asked to take sides by India (because of the Gurkha regiments) or by China (Oli government’s unconditional backer)? Who will we then ask to get us out of this impossible predicament? Who are our friends besides our two neighbors whose voice counts on the international stage? 

Our future lies not in our confinement within Indian or Chinese spheres but in embodying the spirit of diversification that the Oli government claims—unjustifiably till date—as its central foreign policy plank. 

Fifty-four African nations have called on UN Human Rights Council to have an urgent debate on police brutality and racially inspired human rights violations. The letter asks for the debate to be held next week.

The militarization of the police and imprisonment of African-Americans go back to slavery. White supremacy—the notion of white culture being supreme over others—is part of the hegemonic cultural narrative of the US. This narrative has enabled militarized violence over minority groups, including Native Americans and Latinos.

Black Lives Matter has opened the door. The UN should now open an extended investigation into America’s crimes against humanity. Since the end of the Second World War, the deep state and military-industrial complex of the US has terrorized the globe. From Afghanistan to Iraq, Cambodia to Laos, the same logic of white supremacy and economic and technological domination has led to the deaths of millions. Cuba, Iran and North Korea suffer and starve under the US economic sanctions.

America has been implicated in the conflicts in the Gulf, the Middle East and Africa, with mercenary troops and friendly nations acting as fronts for proxy wars.

Agencies such as the CIA have carried out assassinations and torture. But the CIA is a known institution. More sinister are the covert agencies whose purposes are unknown, conducting scientific experiments with no ethical guidelines.

Scientists are already capable of wiring up people’s brains to computers, with the purpose of downloading thoughts. If mobilized against opponents, this technology would bring about perpetual slavery through mind-control. This is a violation of bodily integrity that even the slaveholders of the 18^th century could not have imagined. And yet Elon Musk’s Neuralink is a reality, celebrated as a tech “innovation” that will change the world. The inherent fascistic nature of the tech-industrial complex has done little to harm him or other tech magnates. Tesla’s stocks continue to rise exponentially behind smoke and mirrors of Wall Street. We are made to think of this as a social good, not the acme of the fascist panopticon.

In April 2015, the Large Hadron Collider, based in CERN, Geneva, “accelerated protons to the fastest speed ever attained on Earth,” Symmetry Magazine reported. Superconducting magnets were involved, 6.5 TeV of energy was generated. At the same time, a powerful quake shook Nepal, killing 10,000, injuring 22,000 (me amongst them), and making 400,000 homeless. America contributed $531 million to the Large Hadron Collider project. Around 1,700 American scientists worked on the LHC research, more than any other nation’s, says CERN’s website. These two events are connected. This is not a matter to be dismissed as “conspiracy theory,” although that strategy has worked brilliantly in the past. Now the time has come for careful legal investigation through the auspices of international institutions. 

All these crimes against humanity were enabled by the propaganda of the US as a human rights defender, a fierce supporter of democracy, and a beacon of freedom. None of this is true. Democratic regimes were removed via coups and brutal military dictatorships put in their places, as in Latin America. The true purpose was to remove indigenous people from their land and have that land be taken over by multinational corporations of America.

America has used China’s state violence against Uighurs to protest the dangers of Chinese fascism. While chilling, it doesn’t compare to what America is doing. One million Uyghurs are incarcerated in Xinjiang re-education camps. “In 2014, African Americans constituted 2.3 million, or 34 percent, of the total 6.8 million correctional population,” says the NAACP’s criminal justice fact sheet.

With Black Lives Matter mass protests, the world has spoken: the racialized violence of the American state must end.

African-Americans face the possibility of being choked, electro-shocked or killed as they go about their lives. A white policeman can kill a black man or woman, in their own homes or while going about their daily business, at any time.

We have no idea how many times this same kind of impunity has played out internationally, in deserts of Afghanistan and darkened streets of Iraq with no cameras present. How many people have the Americans killed, covertly and overtly, with technology as yet un-explicated in law books? How many people has it driven to suicide?

America’s narrative of its own ethical goodness has silenced all opposition. An institution as aware of international law as the UN sees no legal doorway to the crimes against humanity committed by the American troops, agents and covert institutions over 75 years. Now the time has come to take apart that myth. The UN must work together to put every single war crimes criminal before the long arm of the law. It is time for the trial of the century to start.

Dennis Adonis in his article Digital Disruption: Cause and Effect defines digital disruption in commerce “as a radical break from the existing processes in an industry due to new internet-enabled business models that are shaking up established industry structures”. Pretty much the same applies to the education industry. The education industry of Nepal is at an accelerated pace of digital disruption, and teachers are mentally unprepared to adopt digital technologies in the teaching-learning process. Schools, colleges, and universities are undecided on whether to adopt a new digital platform to serve students, or wait for a new normal to resume traditional teaching methods. 

During this lockdown, I took 50 online classes for nearly 200 MBA students. I also spent 10 hours training 32 graduate-level teachers, and another 10 hours training 150 secondary level teachers to use Virtual Learning Management Systems and techniques, which are a must for fruitful online interaction with students. I am also a daily witness of my son’s online classes. On this basis, I can say that we are close to adopting a fully digital, or a hybrid model that includes both digital as well as traditional ways.

Digital disruption has changed the administration, as IT is now an integral part of government-funded agencies as well as public and private firms. What kind of changes it will bring to the education industry, is still an open question. The first challenge for education institutions is to prepare for academic operations and support to be provided to students. The second challenge is deciding the digital content to be delivered, and the third, to strategize what to do and what not to. 

As the government has encouraged the use of FM radios, televisions, internet, and other internet-based technologies to engage students, the industry is in a dilemma about the most effective method. There has been no research in this regard. Whatever the means, the challenge for us is to deliver knowledge and skills to students through our patchy internet connectivity and scant resources for online classes. How feasible are online classes in our context, is still a big question.

Are we ready to use innovative technologies and new models to transform our education system? If yes, it is not possible in isolation. Interdependence to transform resources into results, with the ultimate goal of revenue maximization or cost-cutting, is a must among schools and colleges. They must come together to sort out technical tasks to automate functions in digital teaching-learning practices. But the bitter truth is that Nepal lags in digital disruption due to high levels of dependency on foreign applications and service providers. 

It is high time to start believing that learning management systems can be designed, developed, and implemented on our own. For that we need to be capable of implementing and maintaining critical infrastructures and responding to attacks from intruders. A recent attack on websites of our schools and colleges by an India-based company puts a question mark over our preparedness. Also, hacking of private and public sites and information systems are common. 

In the education sector, most service providers specialize in integrating software from global vendors to existing IT infrastructure, for example, Google Classroom, Moodle, Zoom, Microsoft Team, etc. Rarely is a software made in Nepal and made by Nepalis in line with the country's needs. At some point, this kind of dependence is going to be costly for Nepal. Neither is the government focused on open source nor on its own proprietary systems. Software companies are not encouraged on this either. Private consultancies draft new policies and guidelines for clients and assist them in training their staff. The government has no role in this whatsoever. 

There is a need for a paradigm shift in our education system, with IT as its integral part. Skill-based certification courses will be in high demand in the near future. Yet the Ministry of Education continues to make important subjects like mathematics and computer optional. There are many training institutes, software companies, universities, and colleges offering IT courses in Nepal. But is there a mismatch between the content and the competence of trainers and learners and the requirements of the firms. 

The instructors must consider a few things while taking online courses. Start with a few topics and cover them in depth. Cover three topics instead of five, don’t compare online class with traditional class, and keep calibrating your expectations based on student feedback. 

Teachers must be flexible as the same teaching plan and course activities may not work everywhere. A class size of 45 at most is ideal to maintain intimacy with students. Body language is important, so make sure to ask your students to turn on their cameras or the energy level of the class will soon flag. Before starting online class, establish clear norms. 

There is no harm in asking your students to be professionally attired, to keep their phones way, to resist from responding to emails, chats, and social media communication. If we don’t know our students in terms of their academic records, social backgrounds, personal experiences, and hobbies, the probability of failure is high. Encouraging students to share screens increases interactivity, while asking them to summarize content makes them alert and active. But the teaching techniques depend not just on instructor capabilities but also on the type of learning management system adopted.

Before adopting any application software, consider its cost of capital by factoring in the increasing cost of upgrades, licensing, and security maintenance. The education industry has to bear the costs of software, hardware, training, and change management and, most significantly, of reengineering the teaching-learning process. We are rapidly digitizing but failing to develop human and knowledge capital. Is this not a collective responsibility of the government, intellectuals, universities, and colleges to prepare for digital disruption in education systems? The government lacks a clear roadmap on this. Yet this is by no means just government business. 

The author is an engineer and a Senior Assistant Professor and Program Head for BCIS program at Apex College, Mid-Baneshwor, Kathmandu 

How do you respond to the child on the street in New Road who is begging for money? What do you do when he clings to your legs, drags himself, and embarrasses you until you offer money? This is a situation familiar to us. We know many children on the street use cigarette, alcohol or sniff dendrite. If we give them money, they might use it on these harmful substances. So by giving money, we might be doing more harm than good to these children.

But we are charitable and want to help. Also, it is embarrassing when a child clings to your feet and so many people are making faces at you. When I find myself in such a situation, I ask the child what they need the money for and almost unfailingly, they respond ‘for food’. And I offer to buy them food instead of giving money. Some appreciate the gesture and accept food, while some curse me and leave. I accept the curses believing that I did the right thing by preventing my charity from doing harm to this child.

“Charity is a tricky thing. I don’t always know when to offer it and when not,” my wife says. Many others have shared similar confusion. In this opinion piece, I discuss the tricky issue of charity with my current view, and while doing so I also present my earlier views.

Growing up, I had learnt from my parents to be kind and charitable to the poor and needy. Although I don’t recall the reasons they gave me, I believe they were based on the idea of daan leading to punya. And I used to give money to people on the streets who appeared needy and were seeking help. But this changed when I joined Social Work education. I now came across a view where charity wasn’t encouraged.

This view laid out that giving money to the poor encourages begging and makes them depend on others for a living. So I stopped giving money to those on the streets, although I found it difficult to say no to their requests. My training in social work taught me that giving skills, instead of money, was the right thing to do to help the poor. This was in accordance with the perspective that focuses on empowering the marginalized and the vulnerable by providing skills so that they can take care of themselves. The most commonly used example in professional social work is that if you give fish to a hungry person, they will survive for a day but if you teach them how to fish, they will survive every day of their lives. This was what I believed in then.

Relevant in the discussion about ‘to give or not to give charity to the poor’ is the individual vs structural view of poverty. The individual view contends that people are poor because of their laziness or unwillingness to work, whereas the second view highlights that people are poor because of structural issues, for example the socio-economic arrangements. The individual view blames the person for their poverty and thus discourages charity whereas the structural view holds the larger system accountable for the poverty of an individual. After being exposed to this individual vs structural view on poverty, I resumed giving to people in need but with a newer understanding of poverty and charity.

My understanding of charity expanded from giving money to the poor to providing support to the needy and poor including materials, skills, and networks. This understanding corresponds to the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s definition of charity as “generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering”. My understanding of the poor as helpless and needy expanded to view them as victims of the larger socio-economic system, which needs to be changed in order to address the root causes of poverty. I learnt that each of us can intervene or contribute to bring about change in the system to lift people up from poverty. What we can do depends on where we are and what we are capable of.

There can be various levels and natures of interventions to address poverty, namely, micro, meso, and macro. At a micro level, an individual can help poor people by providing them with basic necessities of life or with skill development. At meso level, too, groups of individuals and organizations can extend similar help. And at the macro level, governments (local, states and central) can provide welfare to the poor through cash transfers, unemployment allowances, subsidized housing, skills development opportunities, employment generation, affirmative action, to name a few.

No matter where we are in the level of intervention, providing charity should be a thoughtful act of helping the poor or needy and not merely an expression of compassion or a daan. Charity should not be limited to acts carried out to feel good but aimed at empowering the poor and needy so that they are not dependent on charitable individuals and organizations. And acts of charity must bring no further harm to those helped.