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Prime Minister KP Oli finds him­self surrounded by one contro­versy after another. His active involvement in the recent Asia Pacific Summit held in Kathmandu, which was organized by the contro­versial South Korea-based Universal Peace Federation, will be a lasting blot on his political career. I don’t think PM Oli intentionally invited all these controversies. I believe the mistakes he and his govern­ment have made are the result of either ignorance or lack of interest in understanding our social, cultural and historical realities. Nepal is a place steeped in social, cultural and historical values. With­out understanding and respecting those values, no government cannot function well. KP Oli is the most powerful prime minister Nepal has had in the past three decades. But he is not powerful enough to under­mine the cultural and historical her­itage of Nepal. Let us thus hope he has learned something from the Asia Pacific Summit faux pas.

It is because of the failure of political class to understand and protect our rich past that this country has lost track

Nepal is a predominantly Hin­du-Buddhist country. But Nepal is liberal and tolerant, too. Its over 3,000 years of multicultural history suggests the same. This liberal char­acter has also made our social-cul­tural history one of the oldest liv­ing civilizations in the world. From this socio-cultural perspective, we are the first-world. It is unfor­tunate that rather than working to build our national image and boost the morale of our generation by capitalizing on our social-cultural treasures, PM Oli has even failed to touch on those issues.

Nepal is one of very few coun­tries where citizens are not taught about their own culture, history, languages and religions. In western countries, it’s compulsory to have basic knowledge about your cultural and historical past. Even China has started to prioritize history as a part of its national education.

There is so much to learn from our past. For instance, our ances­tors had developed languages more than 3,000 years ago. They had already developed brick making technology in the third century. In the fifth century, they had started building temples like Kasthamandap and Changu Narayan, which have survived for more than 1,500 years. In the sixth and seventh centuries, Licchavi kings used to mint coins not only for Nepal but for other South Asian neighbors as well. Though this coun­try was ruled by different dynas­ties at different times, they were all keen on protecting and preserving Nepal’s diverse social-cultural heri­tage. We have been lucky to inherit that heritage.

Here, if a common citizen wants to understand Nepal’s past, the per­son does not even have access to the country’s comprehensive history in Nepali, and one which covers the country’s social-cultural journey of at least 3,000 years, the time for which there is some kind of a record. It does not mean nothing has been written on it. Late Dilli Raman Reg­mi’s series on Nepal’s history can be taken as major contribution. But most of what has been written is in English, and that too about specific periods, and not about Nepal’s his­tory as a whole.

If he puts his mind to it, docu­menting the socio-cultural history of Nepal as part of a comprehensive history writing project could be one of the big achievements of Oli gov­ernment, for which people will long remember him. It could be a land­mark contribution that connects this and subsequent generations to our rich history. After all, it’s a con­stitutional duty of this government to preserve social-cultural history of Nepal.

To repeat, from social-cultural perspective, we are the first-world. It is because of the failure of politi­cal class to understand and protect our past that this country has lost track. PM Oli has high ambition for economic prosperity. He talks about railways, roads, electricity, jobs and overall development. All these are important but perhaps he does not realize that the foundation of this development has to be our social and cultural heritage.

 In what was a case of blatant misuse of taxpayer money, the government recently splurged on an international summit orga­nized by a controversial INGO. The direct engagement of Prime Minister KP Oli in the Asia Pacific Summit 2018, organized by the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), has attract­ed widespread criticism, includ­ing from ruling party leaders. The UPF has in the past been accused of being involved in evangelical activi­ties in Nepal. While he has been rather tardy in his regular work, PM Oli shifted to Soaltee Crowne Plaza for four full days so that he could directly supervise the summit. Then, with­out the approval of the cabinet, PM Oli accepted from the UPF a $ 100,000 cash prize for his ‘leader­ship role in democracy and good governance’. According to the con­stitution, VIPs and VVIPs are pro­hibited from receiving such rewards without the consent of the cabinet. “The award PM Oli has received is no more than a gift for his backing of the summit,” says former Chief Secretary Bimal Koirala.

There are no strict rules on the conduct of such programs if they don’t impinge on national interest. But the involvement of the whole state apparatus to arrange for a program being organized by a controversial INGO is problem­atic. No less than Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defense Ishwor Pokharel personally received the dignitaries when they came to Kathmandu for the conference, and he also saw them off when they were leaving via Tribhuvan Inter­national Airport. This was not just undiplomatic but also a troubling indicator of the weakness of the Nepali state.

While he has been tardy in his regular work, PM Oli shifted to Soaltee Crowne Plaza for four full days to supervise the summit

Former Foreign Secretary Madhu Raman Acharya is of the view that as the Foreign Ministry invariably plays a big role in the organization of such summits, senior ministry officials should have undertaken rigorous research on the background of the organizers before approving such conferences on Nepali soil.

The direct involvement of the prime minister’s advisors in the management of the summit is also troubling. Instead of advising the prime minister against such summit they instead seem to have heartily supported the endeavor. According to Ek Nath Dhakal, the UPF Nepal chief, the prime minister’s foreign policy advisor, Rajan Bhattarai, had himself gone to Myanmar to invite Aung San Suu Kyi.

Spokesperson of Nepal Commu­nist Party (NCP) Narayan Kaji Shres­tha has expressed serious concern over the excessive engagement of the government as well as of senior party leaders like Madhav Kumar Nepal in the controversial summit. He said he had time and again sug­gested that such a program hosted by a controversial INGO should not be allowed, to no avail. However, “I personally did not take any part in the summit,” he said.

Common people were irate that the government was misusing state resources, violating diplomatic norms and adding to their difficulty by imposing an odd-even rule for the vehicles during the summit.

Another influential NCP lead­er Bhim Rawal says he is worried that the government had actually approved some money for the sum­mit and urges the government to make proper disclosures. Ruling party standing committee mem­ber Ghanashyam Bhusal agrees. “How can the government support an endeavor that the organizers themselves have failed to justify?” he questions.

Instead of burnishing the coun­try’s image, as the prime minister would like the country to believe, the Asia Pacific summit has further deteriorated the international stand­ing of Nepal. Hun Sen, Prime Minis­ter of Cambodia, is himself is a con­troversial ruler, who came to power from elections whose legitimacy has been questioned by the internation­al community. Suu Kyi, Foreign Min­ister of Myanmar, another attend­ee, is also a controversial leader because of her indifference to the plight of the Rohingya refugees. The remaining dignitaries were also not free from controversy.

Inviting such tainted figures to a questionable summit could further isolate Nepal from her neighbors and deter her real international friends from helping her. If Nepal’s voice is not heard in the internation­al arena tomorrow, the Oli govern­ment will have to shoulder the bulk of the blame.

In the past decade, one thing we have repeatedly heard is prime ministers and ministers issuing instructions to their line ministries and departments to fix this and solve that. Many of these individuals have been prime ministers and ministers multiple times, yet every time they issue the same-old instructions. Why do elected executives seem unable to do anything about a clear case of insubordination, incompetence and neglect of duties? Why do they fail to get things done, the things that really matter to the public, but show great urgency in completing things that seem to benefit few individuals?

For instance the efforts to expand and relocate presidential and vice presidential mansions respectively, a recent push, have picked up steam in comparison to other public works, which have been in the pipeline for long. Have we built a public system that enables or incentivizes pri­vate gain at public expense? Does shutting down the existing police training center without a viable alternative justify as public good? It certainly may provide addition­al comfort for the president, but at what cost?

I am not against offering the highest office bearers of the coun­try befitting perks and privileges, but they also have to be incremen­tal and need to go hand in hand with the improvement of basic services for citizens. It some­how feels that our leaders have become unresponsive to public sentiments.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the prime minister on Dec 2 accept­ed a dubious good governance award carrying a cash prize of US $100,000 against the backdrop of news reports that the very organi­zation that give him the award is lobbying to get the state to cough up Rs 32 million. Even if the prime minister does not keep the cash for himself, it certainly feels like a bribery of sort.

One would credit Oli with few achievements, notable among them his role in helping Nepal gain a degree of strategic autono­my in its foreign policy. But to say that he has done anything remote­ly resembling good governance is a stretch. Absence of self-aware­ness and periodic reflection is a dangerous trait in any leader.

To be fair, PM Oli has made efforts, yet there often seems a wide gap between his words and deeds; he isn’t rigorous enough and gives people around him an easy pass. One cannot fault him too much here, given his poor health. But the least we expect from him is to invest in people who can bring about an improved system, one that promotes public good. When he took office, there was a lot of talk of governance reform and that it would start from the top—meaning the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Govern­ment reform means both mod­ernization and accountability. As I argued in my previous piece in this space, only if leaders them­selves shift gears from how they have been running their political parties can they hope to lead a modern government capable of delivering prosperity.

No doubt, attempts have been made to modernize the govern­ment, yet in the absence of a strategic direction and sustained leadership on these issues, they appear more of an accident than a new emerging norm.

In what seemed like a step in the right direction, Prime Minis­ter KP Sharma Oli recently sum­moned ministers and officials to assess their performance. But the PM should know that per­formance-based contracts for civil servants have been thrown around for quite sometime, and yet they hardly seem to have made a dent on the overall delivery, let alone resulted in quality work, of the public sector. Absence of political will and frequent govern­ment changes had made it difficult to enforce meaningful reform. But that was in the past, or so we were led to believe by the new govern­ment. Yet the business-as-usual continues.

If the current system perpetu­ates, we are sure to have a form of kleptocracy, not a prosper­ous democracy. It is still not too late for PM Oli to leave a legacy behind by putting his characteris­tic dogged determination, which he has shown on other occasions, to work.

By: John Narayan Parajuli

 “Can I have an Americano?” I asked.“What?”

“Americano. Coffee.”

“Why do you say Americano?” he asked, imitating my accent with an exaggeration. “Why not black coffee?”

“Do you have any coffee?” I asked again.

“No, I don’t have coffee…Hey man, where are you from?”

“I live in Boston,” I replied, think­ing his asking where I was from could be indicating I wasn’t from here. “And I am from Nepal,” the insecure part of me added to ensure I got that benefit of doubt if I got into trouble. I started walking back to my couch in the train. Then, suddenly, I heard his voice calling me, “Hey man, I have coffee”.

I felt uncomfortable. But I felt getting the coffee was the best way to get away from the situation. I paid for the coffee and got back to my seat. Confounded with what had just happened I couldn’t get the heavily-built black figure I had just encountered off my head. Suddenly, it occurred to me: was that my first experience of racial discrimination in the US? Was this coffee-seller try­ing to mock my accent and protest my presence in the US? That ques­tion—“Where are you from”—made me want to go back to where I really came from—Nepal, home.

I took my first sip of the coffee, and thought: Was the man offended that I asked for an Americano instead of black coffee because he was black and he felt I was trying to act smart or shying away from using the term black? Was he offended and retaliating by trying to make me feel uncomfortable as well? Was it an outcome of the discrimination he was facing or an extension of ‘go away outsiders’? Was he an oppres­sor in that situation or was it his experiences of oppression that he acted out against? Who was the vic­tim here? Me? Him? Or both of us?

 Many of my colleagues share their experiences of micro-aggression both within academic institutions and beyond

The social worker-cum-problem solver in me wanted to go back and say to him, “Hey man, I am very new to the US and so I want to learn more about the ways of this country. Just to be clear, was it my accent that you did not understand or was there something else that made you react the way you did?” But should I go back? Would going back to him result in the aggravation of the situ­ation? Undecided and dissatisfied I told myself: whatever his reason for acting the way he did, it came from a sense of dissatisfaction caused by the patriarchal, white, male-domi­nated American society.

Many of my colleagues share their experiences of micro-aggression both within academic institutions and beyond. Faculty members share how faculties of color are struc­turally disadvantaged. My brother shares how a person of color has to work twice as hard as a white person on the same position at a hospital in New York just to maintain the job. My buddies share experiences of racial discrimination at their workplaces. My juniors share being differently and unfairly treated in the classroom or at the internship because of their appearance. And the list goes on, only to reiterate the rampant existence of discrimi­nation based on color in a country that is soon going to have a majority of the currently racial and ethnic minorities: a 2015 article in the US News shares that more than half of the American children are expected to be from a minority race or ethnic group by 2020.

The discrimination based on color can be linked with the white privi­lege. The term ‘persons of color’, in itself, was created to distinguish the non-whites from the whites. Peggy Macintosh (1988) in her book White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack tries to inform the white people of the privileges and bene­fits they derive from having a white skin, urging them to be aware of the benefits they derive from these privileges merely by birth. It will be a long time before the privilege currently enjoyed by the whites is equally shared among all.

But what do I do here now if/when I face racism? Or what should some­one in Nepal do when they are dis­criminated on the basis of their caste or ethnicity? How about discrimina­tion based on sexual orientation? These are very important questions for which I currently do not have definite answers. These are question that all of us have to continuously raise and discuss.

Right there I chose to get off the emotional roller coaster and tell the guy who sold me coffee silently: No offense intended brother! And I remain unoffended. I choose to leave this train neither feeling dom­inated nor humiliated but experi­encing something that will always remind me of who I am. And it will always be a part of me.

The coffee tasted the same. Only this time I did not enjoy it as much.