Nepal has a new Prime Minister and President, and will soon have a new government and constitution. But will this make a new Nepal? Only if the nation rebuilds with the active participation of those who have been traditionally left out. Report by Martin Wroe and Malcolm Doney.

At the centre of the main roundabout in the town of Baglung in the midhills of Nepal, the King has lost his head. Several weeks after Nepal’s multi-party elections took place on April 10, promising to usher in a new and inclusive government, the traffic now passes the decapitated statue without so much as a second glance.

The scene is a potent symbol of the seismic changes taking place in this country of 27 million people which remains the poorest in Asia and 12th poorest on the planet. Just 275 km east, in the capital of Kathmandu, the real king has not lost his head – but he has lost his throne, his palace and his place as the head of the country. Sparking widespread national celebrations, the first sitting of the newly elected Constituent Assembly declared Nepal a federal and democratic republic. On June 11 Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev officially became the last king of Nepal when he and his family left the palace for the final time.

But this is more than the absence of a king – more than the striking abolition of Nepal’s 240-year old model of feudal monarchy. It is about the liberation of millions of people who had been previously excluded from shaping the future of their country. Nepal’s deeply embedded caste and class system, propped up by the monarchy and an elite political class, had mired these people in abject poverty.

After years of bitter and bloody conflict between the Nepalese security forces and Maoist insurgents – whose victims were once again poor communities – most observers agree that the surest route from poverty for a new democratic Nepal and the best chance of becoming a strong and secure state is by including everyone into the political process.

The initial signs are promising. Following a military stalemate, all parties bought into a peace process which is still continuing. Significantly, the Maoists agreed to engage in multiparty elections which the international community deemed to be largely free and fair. These elections brought an unprecedented range of people who have traditionally been marginalised from the political process into the Constituent Assembly, whose job it is to form a government and write a new constitution for the country. While the Maoists, with 37% of the vote, failed to gain a working majority, the longtime dominant parties – the Nepali Congress and the United Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Nepal (UML) – only gained 18% each. But the real surprise in the political shakeup was the success of long excluded groups like the Dalits, the Janajati and Madhesis (see Left Out, right). The new Assembly is impressively diverse – nearly a third of members are women and those who have been traditionally marginalised are better represented than ever. The average age of members has also changed dramatically, dropping by 20 years, to reflect a new generation of political leadership.

“Previously the elites – people so few you could count them on your fingers – claimed they would represent the excluded groups,” says C P Gajurel an influential Maoist ideologue. “Some were meant to represent the Dalits, others to represent Janajatis, but now the people from the grassroots have their own representation. Those previous elites won’t be able to influence the situation because it comes from the ground up.”

Nowhere is this clearer than for the women of Nepal. “I am so proud that Nepalese women are now getting rights,” adds Bandana Risal, Programme Manager at the Enabling State Programme (ESP), which promotes governance reform in favour of the poor. “In Nepal women have always had very strict and limited roles, we stayed at home, we raised the children, but now we are seen as people with rights ourselves.”

There are 191 women members in the Constituent Assembly, rocketing Nepal into the world’s top 20 in terms of women’s representation in national elected assemblies. Yet only a few years ago, recalls Risal, it was rare to see a woman driving a car in Kathmandu. and girls were routinely married off by their mid-teens. The cultural mindset has changed. “Even in remote rural areas mothers are (increasingly) saying they want their girls to go to school, not to stay at home and look after siblings. They see that education brings independence and some control over one’s destiny.”

This note is echoed by Mobina Bano Ansari, 24, an activist for Muslim women “who are gradually becoming aware about their rights”, who hopes the new constitution will help stop discrimination against her community.

The bottom line, says Risal, is that in a patriarchal society, where governance has always been a male domain, “the idea of social inclusion is gathering momentum, even among the poorest groups”.

Resolving conflict is essential to reduce poverty but this will only be achieved by ending discrimination. In short, if you are excluded, it means you stay poor – a fact that helps explain why Nepal has the second largest rich-poor divide in Asia, after China. It is no coincidence that among the poorest of Nepalis the Dalits and the Janajati predominate. Dalits, for example, make up some 12% – or over three million – of Nepal’s population but they face huge obstacles to access health and education, particularly Dalit women. ‘Untouchability’ for Dalit communities means not being able to fetch water from the same place as other castes, not being able to send their children to the same schools as other castes, not having access to health service.

It is all the more extraordinary then that Krishna Kumari Pariya, both Dalit and female, is now a member of the Constituent Assembly. And yet, her first experiences as an elected politician illustrate the gap between the aspirations of the political classes and everyday reality.

“When I come to Kathmandu for meetings of the Assembly, I try to book a room to stay in.” she says. “People show me the room and offer to rent it out to me, but when I give them my name, they realise that I am a Dalit and tell me, ‘My husband wouldn’t allow me to do this,’ or ‘actually, I have rented it to someone else.’” She says this has been repeated 20 times in two months. Exclusion, she says, runs deep. She has known it since she was in primary school. “We were having breaktime and one guy from a Brahmin family asked me to go away because he wanted to eat. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because you are a Dalit.’ I refused to go away so he beat me, and it is my first memory of being discriminated against.” This sense of injustice has fired her passion for political change and she has been campaigning for Dalit rights for 15 years. “Gradually over the years my voice became recognised amongst the community and so then I was elected to the Assembly.” But it has been an expensive commitment – her marriage has been one of the costs. “Husbands in our country don’t like their wives involved in the political process, they make us feel bad about going to meetings, they say we should be with the children or at home.”

Untouchability, she says, is being tackled in Nepali society – if it is still rife in the country at large, it is now legally outlawed. “If any politician discriminated against me in the Assembly they would be punished.”

But she has a clear view about her mission. “I am there on behalf of all Dalits and of all women,” she says. “If I could pass two laws, one would be to end untouchability properly – it’s been abolished on paper many times – and the other would be to introduce free education of all.”

Pasang Sherpa, another new member of the Constituent Assembly, is, as his name suggests, a Sherpa – an ethnic group whose most famous son, Tensing, accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary on his ascent of Everest. To this day Sherpas act as mountain guides and are one of Nepal’s many diverse indigenous cultural and linguistic minorities collectively known as Janajatis.

Sherpa is the Chairman of the Janajati Federation which aims to give a voice to these multiple groups which together make up around 38% of the population. None of their distinct religions, languages and culture are recognised by the state, he says. They are underrepresented in government jobs like the police and the civil service, their remote communities remain unconnected by road and even government povertyreduction initiatives fail to reach them.

“Previously the elites claimed they would represent the excluded groups, but now the people from the grassroots have their own representation.”

C P Gajurel, leading Maoist ideologue.

“The Sherpas are a good example,” he says. “The governments makes million in revenues from people who come to our country to climb Mount Everest, but the Sherpas, the people who spend their lives with the baggage of tourists on their backs, are not benefiting in the development of their communities.” Like his Dalit Constituent Assembly counterpart, he also remembers realising as a young boy what it meant to be excluded. “My grandfather had a close friend in a local Brahmin family and we went to his house for tea one day. But while my grandfather’s friend had his food in a metal plate, my grandfather and I had to eat from a plate made from leaves – and then we had to burn the leaves on the fire afterwards, because they were contaminated. I couldn’t understand why there was such a division between such good friends…”

It was such painful encounters that turned Pasang Sherpa to the Communist Party. And he was not alone. Though he is not a Maoist, in recent years it was their agitation and the Maoists’ avowed claim that they were fighting for justice for the excluded and the marginalised that drew support from aggrieved sections of the population. They could be said to have ridden a wave caused in part by the Jana Andolan (People’s Movement), a 1990 multi-party movement that brought the end of absolute monarchy and the beginning of constitutional democracy. Nevertheless – despite the bloodshed, the banditry and the arbitrary ‘disappearances’ of the years of conflict – many commentators credit them with setting the agenda which brought such widespread representation of the excluded groups in the Constituent Assembly, and gave the Maoists themselves such a large slice of the vote in April’s elections. However, they have no overall majority and Nepal’s new Prime Minister, Maoist leader kamal Dahal, known as ‘Prachanda’, heads a coalition cabinet. At the time of writing, the government is barely formed, and unable to establish a strategy for the new Nepal. Nonetheless, Pasang Sherpa remains optimistic that things are changing, but is frustrated. “We have made good progress since the elections but Nepal will not become inclusive as quickly as we want it to.” One of the key tasks of Bandana Risal, at the ESP is to provide training and support for new politicians – some of whom have had little formal education and no previous exposure to institutional politics. Some have yet to learn to read or write. If they are to draft the country’s new constitution they will need to build the capacity and the confidence to make their voices heard, both at home and abroad. 

“If I could pass two laws, one would be to enduntouchability properly, and the other would be to introduce free education of all.”

Krishna Kumari Pariya, newly elected Dalit member of the Constituent Assembly.

Risal’s particular focus is on the women in the Assembly. “It is important that we give them as much help as possible, because these 191 women members will set the tone for what happens for all the other women in Nepal. We don’t want people looking back to this time thinking that, while the women were there, they were not listened to, they could not influence the process, they could not achieve equal rights for women.”

“Having women from previously excluded groups in the Assembly will bring change to the way we think in Nepal,” she believes. “A Dalit woman or a Muslim woman can talk about her experiences and her aspirations in a way that a Brahmin man could never do, because he would never have known just what it is like. Women are going to make the difference.”

But will they be heard? “The men in the Constituent Assembly seem to be happy that women are now sharing power with them,” says Krishna Kumari, “but we don’t know what they think in their hearts, whether they are really trying to be inclusive.

“Including all of us who have been left out cannot solve poverty alone but economic and political equality is important, and unless people are self-reliant we won’t end the poverty.”

Pasang Sherpa believes that if Nepal is to build itself into a healthy, prosperous country, change needs to take place both at the top and the bottom. “Both the powerful and the powerless need a change of mentality.” He argues that the habits of political elites are hard to break, and genuine inclusion will not be granted easily, but if they want to remain in power they will have to learn. “The leaders of the political parties need to learn that they must serve, rather than rule – there’s no point getting rid of one king and replacing him with another.”

And the would-be kingmakers need pressure from below. “The excluded need to know that they have rights and to use them. We’ll have to make sure we get our voices heard.

And we’ll have to do that on our own.” And this is possible. “We can’t get 180 degrees change overnight, but we hope that change will come.”

“We have made good progress since the elections but Nepal will not become inclusive as quickly as we want it to.”

Pasang Sherpa, Chairman of the Janajati Federation which speaks for traditionally excluded ethnic groups comprising over a third of people in Nepal.

The Nepal equation

PLUS…

+ Following 10 years of internal conflict in which 13,000 people were killed, a ceasefi

re was established and has held. 

+ An 240-year old autocratic monarchy was abolished. 

+ Within two years of the ceasefire Nepal had held elections which brought large numbers of excluded and marginalised groups into the Constituent Assembly whose job is to rewrite Nepal’s constitution and establish a fair and equitable society. 

+ There is now a Constituent Assembly (CA), and newly elected President and a Prime Minister. The new Government will present the budget to the CA. 

+ This is something that Nepal has largely achieved by itself, not as a result of international pressure. + Globally and historically, this is almost unique.

+ Despite the conflict, over this decade:

• the deaths of children under five years of age has been halved;
• the deaths of mothers in pregnancy and childbirth have been reduced by over a fifth;
• there was an increase in school enrolment;
• three million people are now within four hour’s walk of a road;
• the number of people living below the poverty line has been reduced by 11%.

MINUS…

– The peace process is not complete and is still fragile. Around 50% of the provisions set out in the 2006 peace agreement

– such as bringing together the Nepalese and Maoist armies into one, and providing reparations for the thousands of people displaced by the conflict

– are yet to be implemented. – High levels of intimidation, corruption and strikes

– and the beginnings of armed intracommunal violence in the Tarai (southern belt of Nepal)

– have yet to be addressed. – The next phase is recovery

– Nepal is still hugely dependent on foreign aid. 80% of its development funding comes from the international community. Given the significant role aid plays in Nepal, this needs to be translated into tangible development.

– At present Nepal subsidises fuel which, with the current prices of oil, is something it cannot afford

– if it is also to support health and education.

– Nepal has been hit hard by the food crisis in remote areas that often face food shortages, and it currently has the highest child malnutrition rate in the world.

– Youth unemployment is a major problem. At present Nepal exports young people to India and the Middle East. This brings in remittances (15% of Nepal’s GDP comes in this form) but the country cannot develop on remittances alone

Left out

• Women
  

• Dalits

• Janajatis
  

• Madheshis
  

• Muslims
  

The five main disadvantaged social groups in Nepal.

Discrimination, based on gender, together with social and cultural practices and beliefs, have left women excluded from education, employment opportunities and positions of influence. Many women face a double discrimination of gender and caste or ethnic identities. Dalit women are the most excluded amongst all Nepali citizens.

Formerly known as the ‘untouchables’, the lowest grouping of Hindu castes now refer to themselves as ‘Dalits’ (meaning ‘oppressed’ or ‘broken’). They still suffer from social and religious exclusion and economic exploitation by upper castes.

Janajatis include over 60 indigenous ethnic groups within Nepal, each of whom has its own language, customs and culture. Janajati have been traditionally marginalised, poor and under-represented in state bodies like the civil service or police.

The Madhesh is also known as the Tarai – the southern plains of Nepal. Its inhabitants, of non-hill origin, are known as Madheshis. They are a diverse group of caste and ethnicities with cultural and linguistic ties that are common to communities close by in India. For long treated as not entirely Nepali, they have been alienated from mainstream political life, and from jobs in state bodies.