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As locusts descended on Gurgaon, India, I watched videos online and realized the area noted for its technological sophistication and prowess looked like an ecological desert. The blue-glassed skyscrapers, asphalted treeless roads, barren streetscapes so different from green rural landscapes of India struck me with their ecological unsoundness. While touted as a “Smart City,” filled with smart people using and selling smart tech, what was most obvious was how helpless the people were in warding off this natural disaster. They had no ducks, no sparrows, no wasps, no schoolchildren picking locusts off the ground to sell to the local government for Rs 25, even. They did not even have soil they could apply with nitrogen fertilizer, another deterrent to locusts.

Yet we’ve been forced to think this way of living is the acme of perfection, one we should all emulate and aspire to. Bill Gates raised $9 billion to create a vaccine for Covid 19. Why did all the nations of the world eagerly handover their health budgets to this tech marketer, instead of banding together to create an international consortium of researchers from universities around the world which they could depend on to deliver for the public good? Why did they believe that the richest man in the world, with many pharmaceutical investments, was the right man for the job? 

The trendy term STEM seamlessly fuses science with technology. Science, which has always meant gathering of knowledge through observation, and conclusions based on rational correlations, doesn’t require a techie twin to become science. With the STEM worldview, however, we have started to assume that all of our knowledge depends not on long and thoughtful observation, but on technological machines which define the contemporary scientific encounter. If there’s no machine to contextualize the phenomena, surely it cannot be science!

A few days ago, I had to call a fridge repairman to refill my fridge with hydrocarbon gas. As he stood there among the copper tubes and wires, cutting and fusing things with his blowtorch, filling my kitchen with toxic gases, it occurred to me that this was a futile, convoluted exercise. Who came up with this idea of creating this giant machinery held together with wires, tubes and gases, simply so that people could keep their food cold for a day or two? We were willing to blow a hole through the ozone for this enterprise and kill all of life in the process. What leap of logic made us think that this invention (designed by men who’d never tried to clean a plastic ice-cube tray, for one) had to be in everyone’s kitchen?

The ventilator, which fills people up with oxygen, operates on a similar premise: the body is a big complicated machine, one we must refill with gas when it runs out of it. It is no surprise that the dials with which a fridge repairman fills up a gas chamber is similar to the dials which regulate oxygen in a ventilator. This mechanistic view is a Western way of looking at the body. X-ray, ultrasound and other imaging devices peer into the body to understand its workings. The body is to be repaired by being cut, drilled, blowtorched by chemicals and radiation. We glorify the technology behind these procedures. We are told these apparatuses are the height of scientific thinking, not a rather crude way to approach the complex workings of a body with an unknowable mind.

A recent discussion I got into Twitter with a young woman illustrates this point. A young baby was left tragically deformed by doctors at Grande Hospital after they used suctions to mechanically pull water from his brain. Babies in Nepal are traditionally massaged with mustard oil to avoid this very problem of inflammation and water collecting in the brain. Fenugreek is a known anti-inflammatory agent. The Tamang woman who shaped my nephew’s head did it beautifully. I had sat and watched the way she patted the baby’s head into shape.

Knowing I was straying into sensitive territory, but pushed by the thought of the young child, I made the point that the tragic latrogenic distortion of Rihan’s head could be corrected by age-old traditional mustard oil massage, because the two halves of the skull would not fuse till he was three. There was still time to reshape it through the gentle, expressive molding skills of the masseuses who know so well how to improve upon nature’s work. A young woman responded to me in this manner:

“i dont even want to argue w you. pls refrain from peddling pseudoscience on everything under the sun.”

Why do we believe that “science” is somehow wedded to this mechanistic view of the high-tech world, and anything else which does not involve technological apparatuses, Big Pharma, transnational corporations, or Western Latin phrases, is not science? Why has technology become our touchstone of scientific knowledge, not rational and patient observation? Why did we just hand over $9 billion to a tech guy to cure ourselves, when that work should be done by an international consortium of researchers coming from Third World countries where the coronavirus hasn’t spread, and whose traditional science and knowledge have already provided the cure? 

“I inform my wife about important decisions I take for the family. But if I know something is right or good, I decide. I don’t feel the need to discuss every matter with her,” said an educated young person while discussing decision-making in his household. His response represents a common belief in our households—the belief that the household in-charge can unilaterally decide. For most households in our cultural context, that person happens to be an elderly male figure.

There are multiple problems with such a model of decision-making. First, by merely informing our wives, mothers and daughters about our decisions, we are taking away their agencies. In doing so, we reiterate that the decision-maker knows better and can decide on the lives of the others. Second, such a model of decision-making involves a risk of nurturing a passivity that brings more harm than good in the long run, for both the active decision maker and the passive follower.

For the most part of their shared lives, parents take decisions for their children. But as these children grow up, the same parents may expect their sons and daughters to make decisions on their own. And if there is a hesitation or inability to decide, parents may even express their frustration. Another example is that we ask our daughters and sisters to keep away from men outside the family all their lives but then want them to decide on marriage soon after they have met someone, even briefly.

In our education system, educational engagements for children at school are highly structured—the government provides a curriculum; the school chooses textbooks, extra- and co-curricular activities; the teachers set up exams and discussions without involving children. But, as soon as the students pass grade 10 they are expected to decide what to study for their 10+2, or bachelors. Such examples display the ambiguity embedded in our decision-making.  

It is wrong to expect someone to decide without equipping them with necessary social, cultural and psychological tools. How can someone who is not even encouraged to decide on seemingly simple things like choosing a dress, a meal, a magazine, or a movie take significant decisions like which discipline to study, what career to pursue, or which country to live in?

Those who decide for others commonly argue that they have benevolence at heart and more knowledge and experience at hand. But are prior knowledge and experience prerequisites or adequate for good decisions? Where then do qualities like creativity and novelty fit? How often do we reflect on the consequences of our earlier decisions on ourselves and on others? What have been the repercussions of the decisions our elders/parents/bosses/spouses have made on our behalf without including us? We find that there are hardly any right or wrong decisions; there are only right and wrong ways of decision-making.

The ‘right to self-determination’ principle, popular in social work, asks practitioners to allow the client to make decisions on their own. This principle is built on the belief that ‘only the wearer knows where the show pinches’. The practitioners treat clients as ‘experts by experience’ and facilitate the client’s understanding of their context, strengths and limitations. Practitioners offer help in the process but never decide for clients or merely inform them. Social work practitioners believe that clients strengthen their agencies and become empowered by practicing their right to self-determination.

We firmly believe that the ‘right to self-determination’ should be integrated in our everyday decision-making including families, offices, and bureaucratic apparatuses. We propose engaging people of all ages, including children, unfailingly in the decisions that matter to them. Children, particularly, should not be treated as individuals without agency and merely be informed, but be actively engaged in matters that affect their lives. Engagement in decision-making in one area empowers them to decide in other areas too.

However, some individuals and groups like people with mental challenges, young children, and the marginalized might need support in decision-making. This support should be extended by laying out the contexts and the consequences of the decision-making rather than deciding on their behalf.

The best decisions come from sharing and engagement instead of unilateral assumptions and patronization. So let’s not forget to engage people who have a stake. And haven’t we agreed over generations that two heads are better than one anyway?

Going through the Indian press over the past few weeks, it would appear Nepali Prime Minister KP Oli has no bigger friend than Xi Jinping and no bigger foe than Narendra Modi. But it is Modi that Oli looks up to. The similarities between them are uncanny. Both committed themselves to politics early, with seemingly little regard for personal life; and now, both are without progeny. Both like to project themselves as self-assured, not reliant on others for decisions big and small, which goes naturally with their illiberal impulses. Both have aced majoritarian politics, largely by vilifying the minorities and appealing to the majority’s baser instincts. 

Xi presides over a top-down one-party system that offers few if any useful lessons for Nepali or Indian politicians, who must, perforce, heed public opinion. But there are ‘democratic’ ways to persuade people. Oli and Modi are masters at whipping up nationalism by demonizing a particular pesky neighbor and using the resulting anger to cement their hold on power. Oli returned as prime minister with an overwhelming majority on the back of his dogged stand against India during the 2015-16 blockade. Modi, for his part, rode home to victory in the 2019 general elections on Pakistan-bound bombers. 

Both seem adept at cartographic mischief as well. At the end of 2019, with the Indian economy growing at its slowest in six years, Modi changed the national charter to claim all of Jammu & Kashmir (which is partly responsible for the ongoing India-China tensions). This year, after an uproar in Nepal over Indian defense minister’s inauguration of a road in Lipulekh, Oli too amended the constitution to expand the Nepali map. Separately, pre-pandemic, another way the two prime ministers tried to resurrect their flagging domestic images was by going on self-promoting foreign trips. 

Oli, like Modi, is aware that voters are emotional beings. They might vilify Oli for his failure to control corona, to stop corruption, and to lead the country towards prosperity. Yet Oli knows the anti-India nationalism card, played at the right time, will wash most of his sins away: Which upstanding Nepali will oppose measures to stop the big brother’s land grabs in Nepal?

Modi has a similar modus operandi. Before the last general elections, he bombed Pakistan. On the eve of the next one, he might once again successfully project himself as a stout defender of Indian territories—perhaps against China this time. Again, thanks largely to his hard line on Pakistan, in the latest CVoter’s State of the Nation survey, Modi enjoys 65 percent personal approval, with nearly 60 percent people reporting satisfaction with his government. 

But unlike Modi, Oli is losing grip on his own party. His efforts to project himself as China’s most trusted man in Nepal, and hence high in the estimation of the nationalist Nepalis, are now being hijacked by Pushpa Kamal Dahal. To prove his loyalty, the former Maoist supremo has emerged as the most vocal critic of the American MCC compact, even as Oli seems to be in its support, much to Chinese consternation. 

Due to the many pressures he faces at home, it will be hard for Oli to budge on the new map. Modi too will hold fast on to the changed J&K map. All the more strange that there is no love lost between them.

The sanctity of the Nepal’s constitution has been breached.

The cracks in our young democracy became visible as the country prepares to stand up to India. It is in such times of national stress that the safeguards of democracy are truly tested.

Nepal’s democracy failed the test. Great danger lies ahead.  

Lack of accountability

In mid-May, Nepalis woke to discover that India had unilaterally built a road in Lipulekh, an area that Nepal claims as its own. Nepal has publicly disputed India’s claim to this area and is on record seeking a resolution through dialogue. This border dispute has been a sensitive issue for many years, high on the radar of our government.

There are many things that the government could have done as India was building the road. It could have drawn public and media attention to the transgression as it was underway. It could have protested more visibly and forcefully. It could have demanded urgent talks. It could have created border army posts in the area, as it has now done. If all these failed, the constitution should have been changed as the road was being built.

Instead, the government did nothing as India built the road.

After India inaugurated it, Prime Minister Oli said he didn’t know India was building the road as no one had told him.

Stretching over several months in broad daylight, a foreign power built 80-km road through difficult terrain (involving lots of blasting) crossing into Nepal’s (or at least disputed) territory and the prime minister didn’t know? The foreign minister didn’t know? The home minister didn’t know? The army chief didn’t know?

As office holders pledged to protect Nepal’s constitution, the prime minister and his ministers have a moral responsibility to defend, or at least try to defend, Nepal’s territorial sovereignty as it is threatened. Shouldn’t they be held responsible and accountable for this failure?

The failure of responsibility was instead turned into a narrative about India’s belligerence. In response, we rushed to change our constitution but failed to hold the government to account. The parliament failed to hold the government accountable.

India has not responded to Nepal’s call for a dialogue. The world has not responded. Nobody will. The constitutional amendment alone is not an indicator of how passionately Nepalis feel about this. The real measure of our strength and determination will come if we, the people, can demonstrate that we have the power to hold our government accountable for failing us.

To bolster the value of our constitutional amendment, we must get the prime minister and his entire council of ministers to accept moral responsibility for failing to protect Nepal’s sovereignty. We must demand an independent enquiry about who knew what and when, and establish if there was any treason.  

Without the prime minister and his council of ministers accepting moral responsibility for their failures, the constitutional amendment means nothing except a new emblem.

Constitution’s sanctity breached

The constitutional amendment passed easily and with amazing speed within days.

This was a constitutional amendment of symbolism. Why it didn’t happen earlier, or why India’s intrusion was needed to justify, isn’t clear. Constitutional amendments must be about us and who we are—it cannot be a symbol of retaliation.    

There was no public debate. No stakeholder discussion. No assessment of the social, political, or economic implications. Parliamentarians spoke and voted (almost) unanimously in favor. A lone voice of dissent was barred from speaking, ridiculed for being anti-national and threatened with expulsion from her party.

Other institutions should have stepped in to provide counsel. The president could have spoken. The army could have spoken. Provinces could have spoken. Civil society could have spoken. The courts could have spoken. Instead of first demanding accountability, everyone applauded.

A government that had failed to protect national sovereignty legitimized its failure by a constitutional amendment. No other institution objected.

The safeguards of democracy in our constitution all failed. These weaknesses will be exploited again.  

Tomorrow, another government will justify its failure to reduce poverty through a constitutional amendment that will nationalize all wealth that has been in a family’s ownership for more than a generation. Another government will justify its failure to bring prosperity through a constitutional amendment that will nationalize all private enterprises.

“Silly argument,” you say with a dismissive smirk. “Of course, we would never allow it.”

Look at what just happened. We showed how it will be done.