पञ्चायत शासन काल मा - भारत बिहर को बिहारी मधेसी हरु नेपाल आएर बसोबस गरेकोहो। नेपाल खुल्ला सीमा भएको ले उनिहरु नेपालमा आएर बसोबस गरेकोहो। पञ्चायत् काल देखी नै यि बिहारी हरुले नेपाल का बहुन र छयेत्री कर्मचारी हरुलाई गुस दिएर नेपाली नागरिकता र नेपाली पस्स्पोर्ट लिएको हो। यिनी हरु सुद्ध नेपाली होइन। यिनी हरु भारतीय हुन।
यिनी हरुको नेपाली नागरिकता जफत गरी कनुनी कर्बै हुनु पर्छ। यो कुरा मा नेपाली हरु र जन्जती हरु ले फेरी आन्दोलन सुरु गर्नु पर्छ। गुस लेने र नेपाली नागरिकता र पस्स्पोर्ट दिने लाई राष्ट्रिय अपरादी घोस्ना गरी, मृत्यु डन्ड को सजए दिनु पर्छ। नेत्र भोली नेपाल को अस्तितव हुँदैन। अहिलेनै नेपाल ब्चौन दिलो भाईसकेको छ।
David Seddon was until his recent retirement a professor of politics and sociology at the University of East Anglia, England. He is now the Principal of the South London College. A self-professed Marxist, Seddon has written or coauthored numerous books about Nepal -- most famous among them Nepal in Crisis: Growth and Stagnation at the Periphery (1980). His other publications are Theories of Development: In Comparative and Historical Perspective (forthcoming), Nepal: A State of Poverty (1987), and Relations of Productions: Marxist Approaches to Economic Anthropology (edited, 1978). He has also co-authored or -edited The People's War in Nepal: Left Perspectives, Pokhara: Biography of a Town, The Struggle for Basic Needs in Nepal, Peasants and Workers in Nepal. Currently on a visit to Nepal, Seddon explained to Aditya Adhikari and Pranab Kharel the changes that have occurred in Nepal's politics and economy since he first conducted research here in the 1970s, and the need to "transform the economic base and the social relations of production and class relations."
Q: You are best known for your book Nepal in Crisis. There you argue that Nepal's underdevelopment is due to its position in the structure of the international system. Have you revised your views?
Seddon: I think the broad framework very much remains the same. We came from a broadly Marxist perspective and I think that it's still the case that Nepal is structurally related to the wider world through India and through structures of economic exchange while within Nepal there are class dynamics that are playing themselves out, to which in a sense the Maoist insurgency was a response. So in structural terms I see Nepal in the same position that it was thirty years ago. But of course the detail of how the dynamics have worked out have changed and evolved over that period of time -- for 'men make history but not under conditions of their own choosing'. But I think I share very much with the Maoists their analysis of Nepal's under-development and where it needs to go. It needs to move forward in a progressive fashion to transform the economic base, to transform the social relations of production and class relations, and to move forward to democratic modern capitalist economy and state before moving beyond that to something perhaps the Maoists also have in mind, which is something where the public have a much bigger role to play a socialist economy and society.
Q: Many of the readers here of Nepal in Crisis took from it the message that Nepal should extricate itself from the global economy.
Seddon: That was very much the dominant thinking of the times. But what has happened now of course is that despite the political separation and identity of Nepal, like pretty much everywhere, it has become integrated more deeply into a global world economy. The idea of many socialists then that one could actually protect and defend national economic development without engaging with the broader world economy is no longer true. Thirty years have passed. We have the World Trade Organisation (WTO), we have all the structural transformations that took place during the 1980s and 1990s. The development of capitalism on a world scale, what some people call globalization, has gone much further now than when we were originally writing. Nepal's structural engagement has gotten much greater and is now unavoidably engaged in capitalist world economy. But I think the dynamics are not radically different. There is still a need for peripheral countries like Nepal, if they are to attain a degree of national economic development, to create their own process of transformation. Otherwise they will be simply subordinated entirely to global economy that is dominated from outside.
It will be very difficult for Nepal to become a kind of autonomous entity. There are very few countries that now claim to be relatively autonomous. North Korea, Cuba, maybe. But there are very few. I don't think that's viable. But nevertheless, insofar as governments have a degree of purchase over economic policy and what happens within the national boundaries, there is a scope for national policy. But a country like Nepal is obviously at a disadvantage. It is small, its 'space' is relatively limited. The extent to which it has actually developed its resource base is limited.
Q: What kind of economic strategy should Nepal follow?
Seddon: Nepal has to make major strides in developing its own natural resources. By that I mean physically taking advantage of the non-timber forest products, the high mountains and hills have to offer. Developing its energy profile. Hydropower is something that has lagged far behind. Lenin once said that “Socialism is soviets plus electricity.” The electricity is probably almost more important than the soviets.
Q: What should be done to change relations of production and class within the country?
Seddon: The clear direction, and it is one the Maoists at least rhetorically have in mind, is to try and transform the fundamental basis of production. In Nepal it's still true that a great deal has to do with land and agriculture. So transforming agriculture, increasing output, developing irrigation are crucial, not along the lines of a 'green revolution' that John Mellor and the Agriculture Perspective Plan (APP) laid out, but on much more cooperative and social lines. But the agriculture base needs to be developed. More important than that, other kinds of resources need to be brought to bear to allow for industrial manufacturing development. Particularly, the service sector which we know is so crucial now in modern economy -- IT, communications, electronic, these kinds of advanced technologies. These are crucial. Land scale landownership needs to be looked at. There needs to be agrarian and land reform.
Q: These are mostly economic issues. What political issues do you see as important for Nepal to tackle?
Seddon: The growth of identity politics. The fact that there is now an obsession, in my view, and a very dangerous one, with ethnic and caste identity. The Maoists have unleashed a tiger, that they are now riding. I thought the Maoist insurgency was about poverty and injustice and trying to mobilize the social classes that are disadvantaged. But as part of that struggle, the Maoists also invoked and encouraged ethnic identities to try and encourage them to join the movement against the central state. One of the things that they have done, and others now have followed without very much thought, is to try and divide up Nepal into a number of semi-autonomous, basically caste and ethnic based regions. That has been there in the Maoist conception for almost ten years. I personally think that this is extremely dangerous. Federalism is a big mistake, for Nepal. This is not necessary in fact to defend the interests of majorities or the interests of minorities, whether women, or Dalit or Janajatis -- that can be done in other ways. The idea of a federation of broadly ethnic and caste based autonomous regions seems to me to be enormously problematic.
Also, it is fundamentally undemocratic, contrary to what people seem to think. Because it identifies your politics in one way only -- that is by your caste or your ethnicity. There is no choice. Also, it is divisive; and we are seeing this at the present time. The idea that the Madheshis whoever they may be can divide off and be a relatively autonomous state immediately provokes movements against this. We have just seen a whole week of resistance by the Tharus, who live in the Tarai but resist the idea being incorporated into 'Madhesh'. Ethnic based politics will give rise to an ever continuing and never ending problem. I would argue very strongly that there is no need for federalism, that it is undesirable, undemocratic and profoundly divisive.
There is also a problem with law and order. There are widespread demonstrations across the Tarai. These are not just political party demonstrations demanding their rights. There are students demonstrating and rioting because they want a university in the far west. This is something that needs to be kept under control. The police force is entirely overwhelmed. They face an extraordinarily difficult situation. The government should be backing the police and strengthening them.
Q: How did you view the Maoists during the years of the war and have they turned out to be different from what you thought that that time?
Seddon: It's a remarkable achievement that the Maoists waged a successful struggle and have now re-entered mainstream politics. And that has broadly been accepted. Nobody welcomes armed struggle in which 13-15,000 die; but the way in which the struggle was managed and organized, and it seems at the moment relatively successful reentry into mainstream politics, is indeed remarkable. No other revolutionary group of the same kind has achieved this in South Asia or anywhere else, to no knowledge. So all credit to them. But at the moment they are struggling with a very difficult situation. Other political parties have to define themselves not just in response to the Maoists. They have to see themselves within a new context wherein national integrated strategy needs to be developed. I'm speaking here particularly of the UML, as a communist party. They are part of the government. I know there are rumours that they wish to withdraw. I think this would be a very unfortunate decision. This would isolate the Maoists. It would put them in an almost invidious position and create an alliance of much more conservative forces together with the Nepali Congress. This would be extremely dangerous.
Q: One of the things that has changed over the past decades is the increasing role of remittances in the economy. You have recently done some work on this aspect.
Seddon: One of the things I've always tried to do is to identify what seems to me to be key issues that other people don't seem to be focusing on. When I was here in 1996-97, having returned to the areas my colleagues and I studied in the 70s, was that remarkable little had changed. What had changed, however, was reliance of rural households on remittances abroad and the number of families that had workers either in India or overseas. I was lucky enough to get some funding to do a study to allow myself and two Nepali colleagues to do a study of labour migration and the role of remittances. The kind of figures we came up with then were not believed. The Nepal Rastriya Bank told us “this is rubbish”. We had the IMF visiting and saying, “this is not possible. This will rewrite the national accounts.” We were saying even then in 1997 that somewhere between 15 and possibly 20% of GDP was accounted for by remittances. Over the last 10 years that has become increasingly recognized. Remittances have contributed enormously to the national economy. But they also have a negative impact. The people who are better off tend to go to places where they can earn more from where they send back larger remittances. So the whole dynamic tends to increase inequality. The larger remittances coming from East Asia, the Gulf, America and Europe come predominantly into the Kathmandu valley, the western hill regions, areas around Pokhara, and the eastern hills. Poorer people tend to go to places where they earn less and where the remittances they send back are less. The overwhelming majority of workers from the mid west and far west are working in India. What they bring back is very little indeed. Remittances are a form of dependency, I have no doubt about that. The problem is that there is very little in the way of growth in employment within Nepal and people make a rational choice and go where they think they can do better. It would be crazy to stop this.
Q: In addition to remittances, Nepal is also heavily dependent on foreign aid. How do you view foreign aid as a tool for development?
Seddon: I am extremely skeptical about the value of foreign aid. I've worked with development agencies and watched how they operate from the grassroots upwards. Its enormously difficult for a national economy to make productive use of money coming from outside with strings. Even if they were straightforward grants, to be used as the government sees fit, that also has problems. The problem of large amounts of money and of its absorption is a major issue anyway. The 'Dutch disease' is a well known phenomenon. But the problem is that the development agencies all have their agendas. Their national agendas, their conceptual and ideological agendas. And it's quite difficult for the funds that come to spread out into the kinds of corners of Nepal where it's really needed. I am struck for example by the relative lack of investment in the northwest, in the Karnali zone. It's incredibly difficult to work there, but people live there. The trouble is that external agencies have their own agendas and their own ideas. I'm not saying it's all bad. But the money comes with many constraints and strings attached. Governments of developing countries find it very difficult to combat that. The rhetorical, intellectual and financial weight of the World Bank, the IMF, USAID, DFID, etc. is great. They are powerful and exert undue pressure and not always to the benefit of the country. If I were in charge in Nepal I'd like to encourage a policy of reducing dependence on foreign aid. Encouraging grants. Encouraging the smaller development agencies -- the Swiss, the Danes, the Scandinavians -- to contribute. I'd like to see them become in a sense the servants of the government of Nepal and not the masters that they often are.
Q: Do you see foreign aid as having a role in increasing inequality?
Seddon: Probably. It's difficult to sustain the argument in detail because not enough people have done the work that's needed. My guess is, on the whole, as any structure from above tends to be, it privileges the centre as against the periphery, the people who are closest as opposed to the people who are furthest away. It's very difficult to reach the poor, the disadvantaged without broad government commitment, policy and programmes.
Q: What are your current concerns and preoccupations?
Seddon: As ever, I'm interested in trying and finding out more about Nepal. I have for many years been a professor at the University of East Anglia, at the School of Development Studies. But I decided two years ago to take early retirement from that. I've been lucky enough to have been asked to be Principal of a new private college in London, South London College. Our managing director, who runs the business side of things, is Nepali; and we have a sister relationship with two other colleges also in London, both of them also headed by Nepalis. So there is a link with Nepal that continues. But it's a new kind of strategy for me. It's really trying to develop a programme for international students, Nepalis included, which emphasizes vocational training rather than degree level training. We're trying to develop a different kind of professional, vocational approach, particularly in the health services, like dentistry, pharmacy, nursing and so on. One of the reasons is because I believe there is a danger of brain drain for people who are highly educated. But people who have professional qualifications are more likely to come back and set up in their own country as a pharmacist, as a dentist, as a health care worker. So for me it's a new kind of educational activity. I'm here working with Orbit International, which is our main agent in Nepal, to try and recruit students for the college.
I'm also finishing putting together a book at the moment on the experiences of villagers being under the insurgency. It will be a series of contributions by Nepalis, Americans, French and British. The title will probably be In Hope and In Fear: Living through the Maoist Insurgency. It will come out I hope by the end of the year.
गिरिज ले भारत ले जे भन्छ उही गर्ने, भारत को उत राजनैतीक एजेन्ट को रुपमा नेपाल गिरिजा छ।
गिरिजा ले नेपाललाई भन्दा भारत लाई नै बदी प्रतमिक्ता दिन्छ। तय्सैले गिरिजा ले सन्सन गरिन्जेल नेपाली कांग्रेस पार्टी पनि भद्कायो, गर्नुहुने-नहुने काम मन्परी गर्यो, गण्डकी भारत लाई बेचयो, १९९० को डिमोक्रेसी पनि खतम गर्यो, सरकारी मात्रलय हरुमा आफ्नो भाई-भर्दार र आफ्न्त हरु मात्रै रखायो, बदमाश नेपाली नगरिक न्भएको छोरी लाई बिना मन्त्रलयको मन्त्री बनयो, भरत ले नेपालको भुमी कलापानी मा भारतीय सैनिक रखद पनि थाहानपाए जस्तो गरेर तर्यो, नेपालको तराइ सुसता मा भारतीय हरुले सीमा मिचेर ४८,००० हेक्तर भुमी मिचदा पनि चुप्लगेर थाहा नपाए झै गर्यो, भारतीयो बिहरी मधिसे हरु लाई नेपाली नागरिकत दिलाई नेपाली राजनैतीकमा हुलयो। यो गिरिजा को तुलो देन हरु ले गर्दा नेपाली हरुले धेरै नै पछी भबिषय सम्म्मा दु:ख पाउनेछ।
डीभी परेन भने खुसि हुनु होस् ! अमेरिकामाधेरै का श्रीमती अर्कैसँग पोइला गएका छन् !
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