Indo-Nepal ties: Work in progress
What PM KP Oli did on the evening of August 20 was unprecedented. He hastily summoned an all-party meeting to discuss ways to preserve the post-2006 political gains. In the meeting, he pointed out how the new federal republic was facing a great threat from the far left (Biplob and company) as well as the far right (the ex-monarch and the parties supporting monarchy’s revival.) The meeting was called a day before Indian Minister for External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was scheduled to arrive in the Nepali capital for the fifth meeting of the India-Nepal Joint Commission. And two days before PM Oli was to go to Singapore on an extended medical leave. As many analysts have pointed out, the timing of the all-party meeting was no coincidence.
In this reading, the prime minister seems worried that at least some parts of the Indian establishment are back to using their old bag of tricks in Nepal. Just like India had at one point leveraged the presence of the warring Maoists on its soil to extract concessions from Kathmandu, it is giving shelter to Biplob Maoists in case it needs to put the ‘pro-China’ Oli on notice. Likewise, the saffron-clad government of Narendra Modi wants to see the revival of the Hindu state, perhaps even the monarchy.
But why would India try to undermine a system that it itself carefully cultivated starting with the drafting of the 12-point New Delhi agreement in 2005? For one, the political establishment behind that agreement comprised the more secular-minded Indian National Congress and Indian communists, and definitely not the BJP. With the BJP government in India looking to undo everything associated with the INC, perhaps it is attempting a ‘course correction’ in Nepal as well. Perhaps when Pradeep Giri, who has always been close to the Indians, talks about the possibility of Nepal’s absorption into India a la Sikkim, he was really on to something.
Or perhaps all these are idle speculations among Nepalis long used to spinning conspiracy theories about Indian ‘grand designs’. Correlation, after all, is not causation. Maybe PM Oli, who will likely need another kidney transplant, was worried that he may not have much time on his hands, and just wanted to warn his political brethren about Nepali extremist groups and the threats they pose while he still could.
Yet it is easy to make out that not everything between Nepal and India is hunky-dory. In Nepal for the Joint Commission meeting, Jaishankar was non-committal about the most important issue for Nepalis: Modi’s refusal to accept the joint EPG report. There could also be no substantial progress on any of the pending issues, from Mahakali to the postal highway. Just the fact that it took this long for a high-level Indian official to come to Nepal speaks volumes about the state of Nepal-India ties. Maybe the Indians wanted firmer support from Nepal on J&K, which they didn’t get. Maybe Nepal, whose government is routinely painted as China-leaning in New Delhi, cannot be easily trusted. Or maybe something more sinister is afoot. Whatever the case, the post-blockade rapprochement between Kathmandu and New Delhi is still very much a work in progress
Endangered species
There are nine categories of endangerment from ‘extinct’ to ‘not evaluated’. The latter meaning there is no concern of endangerment. While this species is not yet on the ‘endangered’ list it appears to be very much on the ‘vulnerable’ list. We might ask ourselves when this species moved from being of no concern to being ‘vulnerable’. A quick Google check is quite an eye opener; for it all started in 2017 with a nine-year-old American boy!
Milo Cress, nine, started the campaign against… plastic straws! Since then many large companies and even major cities have banned this invasive species. July 2018 saw Seattle banning plastic straws and in January of this year Washington DC followed suit. With McDonalds, Starbucks and some airlines phasing plastic straws out, could its days be numbered?
More than a year ago I also took a stand and started requesting cafes not to give me a plastic straw. I brought from the UK packets of metal straws which I handed out to friends. At that time there were very few cafes in Kathmandu doing away with the multi-coloured, attractive, yet non-essential, plastic tubes. Since we like-minded friends all drink in Curilo Café, the waitress there was very quick to pick up on this and started offering the plastic straw alongside, not inside, drinks. You could then decline if you wanted to.
As far as I know Soma Café was the first to ban plastic straws altogether. Since then more and more cafes and restaurants around town are using paper or metal straws. This week I bought a drink from KFC and they provided a very clumsy paper straw. But paper nevertheless. Mankind has been using straws since around 3,000 BC. In Nepal tongba has always been served with bamboo straws; I have yet to see it served with a plastic straw. So maybe the habit of using natural straws just needs to be reinstated.
I guess we have all seen the video of the rescued sea turtle that had a plastic straw pulled from its nose. I think that, along with numerous videos of islands of plastic floating on the world’s oceans, has really brought home how effective humankind has become at destroying the planet. But with no ocean in Nepal, and with fires containing plastic burning pretty much 24/7 around town, why have we in Kathmandu simultaneously and without collusion decided to send the plastic straw into extinction?
It’s a question I don’t have the answer to. I know for me, I have reduced my use of plastic bags considerably but do still accept some. They, terrible as they are, have a reusable purpose as a garbage collector, a wet swimsuit bag, or container for potentially leaky items. But the plastic straw has no value whatsoever when its three minute life span is complete. Yet some people, children in particular, do like the excitement of drawing a drink up through a tube. If you think back, wasn’t it only on special occasions you got a straw in your drink? Definitely a ‘good time’ apparatus!
Enter, or should I say, re-enter the paper straw! Paper straws have been around a long time but they used to instantly turn soggy. Or were chewed up by young kids within moments. But today the paper straw has becoming stronger and more viral!
Naturally, banning of plastic straws is not going to save the planet or reduce the ocean’s plastic islands. It is only the tip of the iceberg. But, since it seems mainly the younger generations that are killing off this species, maybe the plastic straw is the gateway to more personal, then community, then country-wide restrictions on single-use plastics. Let’s hope this vulnerable species continues its journey to endangerment then ultimately to extinction!
The tiger’s destiny
A friend of mine who used to work for ICIMOD said to me: “You should write an op-ed about how we always respond to disasters when they occur, but we never plan for them proactively. An earthquake cannot be predicted, but floods happen yearly. Why don’t we have policies and implementation to stop this? The government is ready with relief materials and helicopter rescues. But they have no policies or implementation to prevent disasters.” Why, indeed? Is it that the political elites know that disasters are profitable moments to bring in generous amounts of state funding and international aid? Commentators have talked about the “Bihar Flood Mafia,” who thrive on this mismanagement of the rivers and who look forward to the yearly flood of funds that follows the inundation and breakage of barricades. Writer P. Sainath explored this disaster capitalism more in his book ‘Everyone Loves a Good Drought’.
We know the Tarai is a flood-plain which floods annually. Himalayan rivers, swollen from the Asar-Shravan rains, burst their bounds and spread over the land, bringing with them disaster as well as the rich alluvial bounty of the monsoon. Before the Sixties, the rush of this water was held back by the Char-Kosay Jhadi, the jungles which lay on the border between India and Nepal. Like Shiva’s locks which held back the mighty Ganga as she burst forth her bounds, the tangled roots of the jungle held back the water, absorbed it, and controlled the volume.
With DDT came the end of mosquitoes and malaria. People started to move down to the Tarai in droves, decimating the jungles. With the forests went the tigers. As the big cats disappeared, so did a cascade of species that lived inside dense jungles.
Recently it was World Tiger Day. Someone who goes by the moniker “Amulya Sir” tweeted a photograph of King Tribhuwan by a dead tiger, and asked the question (I am paraphrasing his words): “Do you know why the tigers were more protected then, despite the hunting?” Then he answered his own question: “Because the habitat of the tiger was not fragmented as it is now.” The Tarai was a long impenetrable corridor teeming with trees and wildlife where tigers thrived, alongside an ecological treasure-house of other species. Jungles absorbed the river’s overflow, acting as a natural checkdam and barrage for the villages of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. With the end of the jungles came the end of the tigers, but it was also the beginning of the misery of humans who saw their settlements washed away each year, with no Shiva locks to hold back raging torrents.
Is the answer then the slow revival of jungles as they once existed in this vast East-West corridor of the Nepal Tarai? If people find life untenable in these areas due to annual “habitat loss,” perhaps the way forward could be to re-stitch together the land into one long wildlife corridor. Ostensibly we would be saving the tiger, but it would also provide a natural barricade for human settlements downstream. The government would have to provide compensation and resettle those who have to move into safe areas.
Loktantra has brought with it disasters we had not foreseen— bulldozers breaking down peepal trees and resting places (chautari), guthi temples and lands being absorbed by profiteers, even the land underneath the Prime Minister’s office itself being stolen and sold. If everything is for sale, what will remain in thirty years’ time for those who come after us? If the land on which rice grows is decimated by concrete apartment buildings, what will we eat when there is another food shortage or an Indian blockade? While we have the political freedom to speak out now, is the environmental destruction so great that life itself may become untenable in a few decades?
Saving the tiger seems like a poor cause to champion when Nepal is rift apart by human trafficking and slavery of migrant laborers in the Gulf. And yet as I look at the map and saw a proposed railway would lead straight from the Chinese border to Surkhet, close to our last remaining wildlife reserves, I cannot help but wonder if the tiger’s destiny is tied with our own. If we allow this railway, opening the flood of wildlife traffickers and poachers that are sure to follow, what will be left?
If the last remaining tiger is killed for his penis or his bones (supposed to have aphrodisiac properties and coveted by patriarchal Chinese men who most likely never experienced the intense bonding between a male and a female that comes with love and respect between partners), then what kind of Nepal will we be left with?
Loktantra has viewed everything—agricultural land, guthi temples, migrant workers, Lok Sewa appointments, road contracts, drinking water, public transport, airports and airlines— as commodities to be exploited for capitalist gain. Nothing is seen as national resources to be stewarded and preserved for future generations. There is little socialism and even less democratic thinking in our leaders as they sit at throne-like coffee tables and receive supplicants like mafia Godfathers, while dispensing largesse. Needless to say, such a system cannot in the long run be in charge of stewarding a nation-state, which requires self-sacrifice and long-term vision.
Comrades to enemies
Continued from the previous column…
In the early days of their corporation, both the CPC and the KMT were sincere. Mao Zedong, for example, was secretary of the central bureau of the CPC and acting head of the KMT’s central propaganda department. In order to build a strong revolutionary army, the KMT established the Whampoa military academy in 1924 with the help of the CPC. Zhou Enlai, the newly returned leader of the European branch of the CPC, served as a political instructor in Whampoa, teaching a course in political economy. As the political basis for opposing imperialism and warlordism was the same, members of the CPC and the KMT called each other comrades.
The cooperation between the CPC and the KMT created a great revolutionary power. In 1925, the revolutionary government of Guangzhou defeated the warlords of Guangdong province, making Guangdong the new base of revolutionary forces. In 1926, the 100,000 revolutionary troops led by the KMT and CPC began a war to eliminate warlords in the north. Starting from southern China, they liberated large areas of central and northern China in nine months. In 1927, the revolutionary army took over the concession of the British colonists in Hubei province. In this process, the CPC mobilized the masses to provide logistics to the revolutionary army. The underground organization of CPC also organized labor unions in warlord-ruled areas to launch labor movements in support of the revolutionary army.
But the seed of instability had sprouted years earlier. Sun Yat-sen died of liver cancer in Beijing in March 1925. After his death, infighting started in the KMT. The increasingly close relationship between the CPC and the left wing of the KMT aroused the resentment of the KMT’s right wing. At the same time, ideological differences between the CPC and the KMT began to emerge.
The KMT was a bourgeois party, representing the interests of the urban bourgeoisie and the rural landlords. Although the KMT and the CPC shared the same political desire to drive away imperialist forces and warlords, the communist party still needed to safeguard the interests of the working class in the cities and carry out land ownership reform in the countryside. As a result, the gap between the KMT and the CPC widened.
Between April and July 1927, the KMT rightists, represented by Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei, launched two sudden campaigns to kill communists. Within a few months, tens of thousands of communist party members and pro-communist revolutionaries were killed or persecuted. The cooperation between the KMT and the CPC broke down completely.
The bloody slaughter taught the communists that they must have a revolutionary army of their own. On 1 August, 1927, Zhou Enlai launched an uprising in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province. On August 7, the central committee of CPC held an emergency meeting, at which Mao proposed that “the power to rule comes from guns”. On 9 September, 1927, Mao led the workers’ and peasants’ uprising in border areas of Hunan and Jiangxi provinces. On September 29, Mao established the leadership of the CPC over the army. On October 27, his troops arrived at Jing Gang mountain, creating the first revolutionary base under the CPC leadership. After that, in January 1928, Zhu De (later commander-in-chief of the People’s Liberation Army) launched a peasant uprising in southern Hunan province. In April 1928, the troops of southern Hunan uprising and Nanchang uprising arrived at the Jing Gang mountain base.
From October 1927 to January 1930, Mao wrote three articles—“Why can China’s red regime exist?”, “Struggle in Jing gang mountain” and “A single spark can start a prairie fire”—marking the starting of the theory of the revolutionary road. The goal was for the countryside to encircle the city.
Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-shek gradually gained the upper hand in the internal struggles of the KMT. Zhang Zuolin, the leader of China’s most powerful military warlord, was assassinated by the Japanese in June 1928 after rejecting Japanese demands to expand their colonial interests in northeast China. Zhang Xueliang, Zhang Zuolin’s son, was extremely angry and at the end of 1928 he declared northeast China subordinate to the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. From then on, Chiang Kai-shek ostensibly completed the reunification of China.
The CPC and the KMT (which later went on to rule Taiwan) completed their journey from being comrades to enemies.
