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 Just like in other countries, foreign missions, especially the rich and powerful ones with interests here, spend a lot of money on psy ops, or dissem­ination of “positive propaganda” to influence public perceptions about them, which may in turn affect government decisions.

There’s nothing wrong with it and many countries do it. While psy ops are getting sophisticat­ed and intelligent in other coun­tries, in Nepal’s case, for some strange reason, foreign missions seem reluctant to move beyond the traditional method, i.e., paying influential local writers and leaders to portray them in good light.

This method may have worked in the past, but times have changed and now we have a sig­nificant number of bright young students and scholars who are not easily brainwashed. Further, the years of reliance on this meth­od has only led to the creation of an army of pro-this and anti-that experts, and we the people have been forced to read and hear extreme views that hardly make any sense.

Maybe it’s already late for those of you working in foreign mis­sions’ intelligence desks in Kath­mandu to rethink your approach to dissemination of positive pro­paganda. I urge you to produce genuine thinkers, not some fanat­ically pro-you and anti-them you foes, who, for a few dollars more, will love your country more than you do. It’s your taxpayer money going to waste.

Therefore, how about creating people who genuinely like you and can’t stop talking good about you, or care about your concerns without you having to be directly bribed?

Too good to be true?

Actually it’s quite easy. Work with the academia to establish a major related to your country. Area studies is in decline in many countries, but young Nepali stu­dents and professionals these days are really into understanding their neighbors and the US. Peo­ple are buying books and reading about you. What they lack is a real academic program to help them put in perspective what they read in international bestsellers. For this you have to have academic programs that expose the real you to students.

Teach them your history, lan­guage, culture, foreign policy, lit­erature, and all things you. Teach them where you went wrong and where you are still wrong, but also where you are right. You can also make arrangements for the students here to interact with the students in your country, and have renowned professors teach them over the internet.

All you got to do is find area studies academics in your coun­try, devise a course and find a will­ing academic partner in Nepal. This is quite easy and won’t cost much—maybe a few computers, desks and chairs and, this being Nepal, some bribe money and fine wine and dinners. Enroll 10-15 students who meet strict academic requirements from all backgrounds—bureaucrats, junior diplomats, military officers to journalists, businesspeople and young people who are just curi­ous about you and would also be willing to pay for an academic degree.

For the first few years you need to bring in professors from your own country to teach us. But after that we will have enough people to do the teaching our­selves. Provide scholarships for a year to study at your finest insti­tutes to the best and the brightest students.

This shouldn’t cost you extra either given that you are already providing scholarships to medi­ocre students and the ones with political connections or those rec­ommended by your “old hands”. Therefore, just send two brightest students studying about you to your country and limit the num­bers of “highly recommended mediocre students.” The two real students will make the best of the opportunity and significantly boost bilateral relations at the people’s level.

If you do this, in 10 years, you will have more than 100 profes­sionals from all fields saying good things about you. The risk is, some may only focus on your flaws and be critical of you, but many who study about you will be support­ive and they will understand why you do the things you do.

This is probably the best and the cheapest way—think of the money you will be saving in jun­kets, scholarships to undeserving candidates, seminars and con­ferences where no one says any­thing new or of value, drinks and dinners and payments and gifts to some to show yourself in a good light.

Also, you will be doing our gov­ernment a favor by providing it with the manpower that under­stands and speaks your language, which in turn will help this coun­try be more sensible in its deal­ings with you. And for those of us outside of the government and academia, we will be getting to read something sensible about you that doesn’t reek of stale pro­paganda. Now that will help to better understand and like you.

In the aftermath of the rare tornado that hit Bara and Parsa on March 31, killing 29 people, injuring over 400, and rendering over 1,000 homeless, the discus­sion over the extreme weather event has ranged from serious to trivial. The tragedy has led many to ask pointed questions about our preparedness to deal with disasters and the overall govern­ment mindset. The savagery of the winds was so unprecedented that some are struggling to find an appropriate name for the disas­ter in Nepali. With or without a name, it would be a mistake to treat this as a one-off extreme weather event.

In the past five years, Nepal has been hit by many major disas­ters: the Jure landslide (2014), the Gorkha earthquake (2015), the Bhotekoshi floods (2016), nation­wide floods (2017), the Bhaktapur floods (2018), to name a few, and every new disaster shows more cracks in our system.

Disaster mainstreaming has been a major development agen­da for at least a decade now. Both our development partners and the government have spent bil­lions of rupees on training, equip­ment and policy alignment to better prepare for disasters. Given Nepal’s poor ranking on several vulnerability indices, these invest­ments are needed. On a global scale, Nepal ranks fourth, 11th and 13th in terms of vulnerability to climate change, earthquake and flood risks respectively. On an average more than two deaths a day are attributed to disasters, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA). But after every disaster most of us are left scratching our heads as to why those investments have not trans­lated into effective early warning, rescue and relief, and post-disas­ter recovery and reconstruction.

Fiefdoms

Rescue and relief are closely guarded fiefdoms of the home ministry. Our system is designed to do some rescue and a lot of relief post-disaster. (Whom the relief actually goes to is a different story—and hence the fight for the turf.) Despite the rhetoric and sleek tweets, the MoHA’s system is not designed for early warning or mitigation. It performs through an antiquated system of an ad-hoc committee of whoever is available in the district. In other words, there is no emphasis on special­ized training and personnel and continuity of services.

Given the high turnover of gov­ernment staff, there is lack of cohesion and internalization of standard operating procedures at the district and local level from one year to the next. Disaster risk reduction and preparedness is a highly specialized field. Yet how many of the people put in charge of such critical operations have specialized skills within our gov­ernment system?

This is not to say that there is no capacity in the country. Our military and paramilitary organi­zations have shown remarkable progress in their disaster response capacity. The Armed Police Force (APF) effectively responded to the 2018 Bhaktapur floods as they could deploy ample training and stock rescue gears, including rub­ber inflatable flotillas—in collabo­ration with the UNDP and other development partners.

In comparison, the civilian side of the administration remains woefully unprepared and unin­terested. Perhaps that is why the government handed over the task of building shelters for the survi­vors of the Bara-Parsa tornado to the national army. Given the fast approaching monsoon, the gov­ernment had little choice.

Specialization

But the general lack of interest in building the capacity and the specialization of the civilian side of the administration on disaster preparedness and response is baffling. Take for instance the Disaster Risk Management Act 2017, which was passed nearly a decade after it was first floated (delayed and diluted primarily due to entrenched interests within the home ministry). It has made every attempt to keep the disaster risk reduction and management responsibility within the MoHA structures. As a result, instead of creating an agile agency with spe­cialized staff, there is now anoth­er bureaucratic web weighed down by two additional layers of bureaucracy.

The original idea was to cre­ate a nimble National Disaster Management Agency led by a high-powered individual—prefer­ably a cabinet minister. Instead, the Act creates a National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority within the MoHA that reports to an Executive Commit­tee led by the minister, which in turn reports to a council chaired by the prime minister. So, in a nutshell, the Authority is nothing but a secretariat, which in turn presides over another ad-hoc sec­retariat-like structure in the form of district committees. Disaster management is more than just rescue and relief—and clearly it is not a seasonal occupation. While the army and the armed police are there as a last resort, the civilian side needs to get its act together on mitigation and response before another bigger disaster-induced tragedy strikes.

No matter what others will have you believe, all of Nepal’s problems result from strategic miscalculation. It is to be blamed for our messy pol­itics and the rise of angry groups every 10 years or so that want to overthrow the system, and it is to be blamed for our poverty.

Strategic miscalculation results from not asking the right ques­tions essential to the country’s survival and well-being, and not making decisions that help us achieve political stability and eco­nomic growth and have the world take us seriously. The first ques­tion to ask is: Who/what is our biggest security threat?

National security isn’t just about securing our borders and ensur­ing territorial integrity. Political instability instigated by non-state actors is also a security threat and so is growing foreign influence and dependence. For every coun­try in the world, its neighbors are its biggest security threats.

Our neighbors have their own interests and agendas and they care more about those than they do about us. This doesn’t neces­sarily mean they will invade but, if they feel attacking us ensures their safety and security, or they think political instability and vio­lence work to their advantage, they will definitely do it.

The second question we need to be asking is: Who can then guarantee our survival by ensuring our neighbors do not implement their sinister designs, if and when they have any? Or who can garner enough inter­national support and act for our cause if we fall victim to one of our neighbor’s aggression?

Sadly, this question, which must have been at the heart of our foreign policy and directed our interactions with the world, is seldom considered by our policy­makers as they fear angering our neighbors. Naturally, the neigh­bors don’t want us to spread our wings. So far, they have succeeded in their plan. Nepal’s world is now sadly limited to our neighbors and we have hardly any real friend outside. The more real friends we make, the more difficult it will be for our neighbors to control or bully us into submission.

The third question we need to be asking is: Who can help us achieve economic growth and prosperity by investing here or by allowing us unrestricted mar­ket access, and what would be expected of us in return? Nepal lies between two Asian giants; it is a gateway to South Asia for China and to East Asia for India; we are a perfect place for investment—these arguments aren’t going to bring in enough investment for our sustained growth and prosperity. Before we ask investors to come, we need to find markets for our products. And market access is all about pol­itics—your use for the country that grants you market access.

That utility almost always has to do with security. The bottom line, if you want investment you need to have access to markets and that comes when you align with a power and are willing to go with its foreign policy. This means, you are willing to fight alongside if it goes to a war, and the power you align with wants you to be strong militari­ly so it will allow your products access to its and its allies’ markets. This power wants you to spend a significant part of the profits thus earned in strengthening your defense, which it thinks will be to its advantage when things turn messy with others.

Who wouldn’t want a friend with well-equipped military in times of war? If you are lucky and if you don’t have to fight your trading partner’s war, then too, you end up being strong both economically and militarily, deterring your neighbors from creating problems.

All developed countries (or the currently developing coun­tries) have followed this path. It doesn’t mean you stop inter­acting with your neighbors, but rather that you also develop a healthy skepticism of your neigh­bors intentions and are serious about your security. Once you start taking yourself seriously, others will take you seriously as well.

If not, even 50 years down the road, we will be grappling with the same-old issues and our major income source will continue to be the money sent by our young men and women working abroad (if that option is still available). The choice is ours.

Last week I visited the Tarai as part of an assignment regard­ing the mechanization of grain harvesting. Interestingly, commu­nity women said mechanization has indeed reduced time spent in the fields. But by reducing that time, men spent longer gambling and drinking, with a resulting increase in domestic violence. It would seem with every step forward, there is a partial step back.

Same can be said about the cause for equality among all Nepali people: one step forward, one step back. Take untouchability. On paper it is eliminated but in practice it is still very real, particularly in the rural areas. Look around: how often are Dalits invited into the kitchens of the so-called “upper caste” people? How many times are casual insults flung about, even in offices and schools?

Expats often struggle to under­stand this discrimination so I was excited to know that a friend was ‘walking the talk’, literally. I had a chance to catch up with him in Koha­lpur to find out more…

Nepal Padayatra 2019 is an ini­tiative started by a small team of three people—Reeta Pariyar, Ashok Darnal and Homraj Acharya—who are walking across the country, West to East, Mahakali to Mechi, through the Tarai, with the aim of ending all forms of untouchability. “Today untouchability has become more like a silent discrimination. It has been ended on paper but not in reality. It is now like a cancer—no longer visi­ble like a fever, but deep-rooted like a cancer,” explains Homraj Acharya.

“Around 14 percent of the pop­ulation, which is Dalit, face dis­crimination, adding up to a loss of economic advantages to families and the country as a whole. So we decided to march on foot to meet communities, connect with the peo­ple, record their feelings and sto­ries, and document the process. Acharya informs that the marchers were also meeting municipal offi­cials as this was the time—with new municipalities being formed—to get concrete plans from them—and from schools, private businesses, and gov­ernment offices—on how they are prioritizing Dalit communities and removing roadblocks.

I asked why Acharya, a Brahman, is participating in this march, along with his two Dalit co-marchers?

I asked why Acharya, a Brahman, is participating in this march, along with his two Dalit co-marchers? “It’s not enough for so-called upper caste people to say, ‘Well, I’m not per­sonally prejudiced.’ We from the so-called upper caste need to own the reality that discrimination exists, and work to make a difference. A personal action can be as simple as accepting a cup of tea in a Dalit home. Or adapting the hiring prac­tices in your company. Perhaps it will be talking with your school to figure out how to teach about the incredi­ble contributions by Dalit people to Nepali culture—blacksmiths, tailors, musicians, artisans, etc.”

Having been told they will spend around two months on the road, I wondered how the march is being funded. “Civil society is helping us to organize community talk pro­grams, and also inviting us into their homes to sleep and eat. Businesses along the way are also helping us. We want to do this entirely without NGO funding, which we feel would be missing the point of this initia­tive,” explained Acharya. After the march, what happens next? “We will end the march in Jhapa then drive back to Kathmandu where we will use our documented experiences as a dialogue platform with Province leaders and others,” replies Acharya.

I met them on Day 11: 251 km/300,012 steps into their march. How were they them­selves holding up? “We started out-wearing our boots, but three days ago we switched to slippers,” explains Reeta Pariyar. “Look at the blisters on my feet! But the people we are meeting and our aim out­weigh the personal hardship.”

I noticed from social media that many locals were joining in along the way. Can just about anyone march? “Sure. We welcome individ­uals and organizations to express their commitment and solidarity. Anyone is welcome to march, pro­vided they recognize that marching is only a small initial step. The most important actions take place in our daily lives.” For further information see the Nepal Padayatra 2019 Face­book page.