Getting Home

Prachanda--the filmmaker, not the Pinocchio ex-PM--is sweating watermelons as he tries to finish his script. I am excited from what I have read, and I am sure he will do a good job. It is his first, so I think he should just go ahead and jump into the cauldron.

But this post is about what I did after returning home in the evening. I searched the Google engine for Koena Mitra's new nose-job. Why? I don't know.

Jwagal Puppies: part two

I cursed the two pups--one all brown coat, the other with white spots, perhaps three months old at most--that ran across the alley which forks towards Bagmati from Jwagal Chowk. I was waiting for a plate of momo to be re-heated. Cart by the street. Would you care about tapeworm when you haven't eaten anything since 10, and it is already 6 in the evening, and there is no money in your wallet?

And just then, a man screamed, stopped a car twenty feet away from him with the sheer urgency of gesticulating palms. I didn't know why the man had screamed. I thought he was picking a fight with the driver of the blue car.

When I saw why, I screamed and thrust my palms out, fingers splayed to maximize the non-pigmented surface: among evolution's earliest contributions to primate/hominid communication, as some evolutionary biologists say.

The pup with white and brown spots had run under the car.

No, the car hadn't yet run it over. The pup wasn't tall enough to be grazed by the bottom of the car, but it was so scared to have run under the still humming machine that it was trying to run towards the front- left wheel.

Stop! Don't move! Of course, there isn't a satisfactory way of communicating with a three-months old pup, even with the evolutionary advantage of non-pigmented palms. The petrified driver, on the other hand, didn't want to be a baby-killer quite yet, I am sure.

I got down on my knees, and then my hands, to talk to the frightened pup. But I only succeeded in scaring it away--towards the other front wheel. Instinctively, I reached with my hand, thinking I could grab the pups nape and pull it out to safety. It got even more scared. The driver rolled his window down. What was I going to say to the pup?

This would easily have been the third instance of canine infantile death in as many days at the same spot. But, the pup got scared of me and kept backing up, until it backed right out from under the car.

It was still trembling, surrounded by well-meaning aliens who spoke gibberish and kept flashing their palms at it. It was an animal of the sort that makes women coo. I wish a certain woman had been at hand to witness my heroics, for that would have won me her heart over a hundred times. Instead, I had sawdust on my cheeks from pressing against the road.

The pup ran to its companion, who, oblivious of the grand drama right behind him, was raising one leg to mark a gate as his dominion. The relieved pup ran to its companion and immediately started sniffing at the urine sprinkled over cement and grass, added a bit of its own, and proceeded to sniff the other one's butt.

That must have felt like home to that little bastard. In that instance, I actually envied it the simple pleasures of its life. So little it took to bring normalcy to its life. Sniff a familiar butt.

I guess, we are all trying to do the same, in ways that vary in their degrees of complexity.

Sniff a familiar butt.

YCL Rising

http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=19237

All of this is in "retaliation" for the paper having published news implicating Ram Bahadur Thapa "Badal," a hard-liner Maoist leader very close to Prachanda, for having a doctor kidnapped. The doctor himself was a very active Maoist intellectual, appointed to his post as chief of the BP Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital during the Maoist tenure in government. The Party has kept eerily mum on the entire incident, not even asking for formal investigations or anything.

What I have been told by a journalist is that when Republica/Nagarik staff journalists ask well-placed Maoist sources about the whereabouts or condition of the doctor, the Maoist sources are quick to assure that the doctor is safe, and that this drama will end soon. More than one source [9 separate sources, is what I was told] corroborate the story.

The real questions now:

a] Did the YCL cadres who torched the van know that the driver had hidden the child under the seat?

b] How the fuck does it matter if they didn't know there was a child in the van? They still tried to burn a man alive, didn't they?

c] Did they know that the driver would escape unharmed? If so, is it still not an attempted murder? Who can correctly predict the outcome of an event like this?

d] What does the Maoist Party have to say about this?

e] Who are they trying to fool? It is either that Nagarik Daily is trying to propagate a lie about the Party (specifically, Badal and Chitawan YCL) , or that the Party has been caught with its pants down, fighting its own appointees over extorted/embezzled money, and now tries to terrorize journalists/wage earning drivers. What sort of an argument must they present to be not considered criminals?

Hamal dai!

Ranibari, a short walk from where I live, is a popular low-budget action venue for Nepali movies. They use the place to proxy for a jungle. There is a small temple, picnic-sheds [typically Nepali, these, with corrugated iron roofs], water, relatively quiet. And, it is the most accessible "jungle" inside the city limits:barely 300 meters behind Hotel Shangrila.

In this photo, Rajesh Hamal--the Last Nepali Action Hero--is wearing a ridiculous wig. Right under his palm is a dude who isn't listening to the AD's order to hide behind a tree while the shot is being taken.

Nepali movies are the most popular in a] Kathmandu, and b] the Terai belt. Kathmandu is the ethno-cultural-linguistic melting pot of the nation. Of the close-to-3.5 million citizens of the valley, perhaps around a hundred thousand watch Nepali movies in the theaters. But, the core audience is still the population of the Terai--Pahadi and Madheshi alike.

What must it feel to a child growing up somewhere like Itahari--a big source of revenue for Nepali movies--to see the exact same forest in dozens of Nepali movies each year? It isn't even a forest. It is a clearing ringed by some two dozen trees. All the actions happen towards the northern end of the clearing, as the temple and the picnic sheds occupy the southern end. The distance between the northern edge and the temple is perhaps less than 100 meters. This, and a place in Chobhar, provide the physical location and atmosphere for more than half of Nepali movies' action sequences. I wonder how it will be remembered by people just discovering cinema? There must be kids out there who run off to the cinema to watch their first movies, still. I wonder if they will dream about Ranibari's inadequate forests long after they grow up?

What the Fuck!

I hope all the top leaders of the three political parties--UML, NC and UNCP-Maoist--have a ripe pineapple shoved up the length of their rectum... what is the plural? Recta, apparently [not rectii]. Well, up their recta. Preferably using a bronze cast of a pineapple at lest 13 inches tall and 7 inches in diameter. With the serrated frond intact on top. Preferably re-using the same bronze cast on each of them, as they sit in stockades ringed to show each other their faces. With large mirrors positioned behind each political posterior, so everyone can watch everybody else enjoy the pleasures, face and culo.

Motherfuckers, each of them. I hope, when they are laid out at Aryaghat to be burned, just before the funereal fire is shoved into their face, a shit-eating bird of some kind flies right above them and shits right into their slightly open mouths. I hope they contract the most scaly-itchy-stinky venereal diseases without ever once getting laid. I hope that each time they go out to make a speech full of lies and arrogance, a foot-long worm worms its way out of their ass. I hope the day comes in their lives when they will no longer remember what they look or sound like, and start plotting to overthrow the government of that smirking bastard the other side of the mirror.

Why?

Because what they have done last night is wrong, wrong, wrong.

CA-- imminent death

In about 80 minutes, the Constituent Assembly is set to expire. It can be granted another lease of life, but the constitutional grounds on which that eventuality would have to be based are muddled at best.

I am pretty sure nothing will happen, no matter what the fate of the CA. There won't be any grand theatrics. The Maoists--forever the more theatrically aspirant and attuned--attempted the last grand theatrical gesture four weeks ago. They were not expecting contra-diction, but they found plenty. So, no such thing anytime soon.

Instead, it is the Limbuwan groups--for they too are fractioned--that have made the most dramatic declarations, and the most drastic preparations.

About theatrics and the fertility of the mind when it feels the urge to grapple for symbols: When the Maoists [YCL] were spending entire days dancing on the streets, it seemed they borrowed wildly from disparate traditions: revolutionary exhortation and symbols given the pointed wit and nimble feet of traditional styles of expression: dohori, jhyaure. Oldest forms, freshest expressions. Retaining the roots, decorating the surface.

**[I read the above paragraph and realized that I have used the colon three times in a sentence. Sorry. I am about to fall asleep, and have no strength to improve that sentence. Clearly, it is an idea that would lead to a more nuanced expression, but not from me, not right now :-) ]

Ina telling contrasting, the Peace Rally could think of only one song: Rato ra Chandra Surya, Jangi Nishana Hamro... a song the YCL can't be blamed for equating to the RNA. It had no fresh expression of patriotism or nationalism, because it hadn't spent the time imagining one. To them, Nepal is still just Nepal. Not the "New Nepal" it is to a very large part of the population. Nor the "Not-Nepal" that it is to a few, including myself.

Forgot to write what I really wanted to add here: 3 hours before the CA was set to expire, most of the women CA members--and Sunil Babu Pant, our GLBTQ(Third Gender) representative at the CA--were chanting slogans, warning the political parties to not keep the CA a prisoner to their petty squabbles.

Reason: It is extremely unlikely that an assembly of representatives elected under a political status-quo would include as many women among the body. If, for some reason, this CA goes kaput and is thrown out of the window, there is no guarantee that all the legal achievements made so far as concern the gender question in Nepal won't also be thrown out with the poop-chunked bathwater that is the past couple of years. So I was proud of them ladies, although what they were doing was decidedly ill-timed. Theirs was a most appreciable contrary view: that makes them my kindred, if only for the hour.

As this happening, the Maoist female CA members were in their seats, not joining their voice with that of their co-gender colleagues. Because, for them, I guess, the Party is above all other reasoning. Eventually, they left the assembly, filed in as a group, with note-cards filled with slogans.

These slogans had to do with two main demands: "Institute Civilian Supremacy" and "Prime Minister--Resign!"

That was a let down. Whereas, on one side were people concerned with protecting what has already been achieved and pressuring the leaders to write a constitution that moves closer to half than to a third, a greater revolutionary leap on the gender question rather than falling back, the other side showed how it enthusiastically limited its function to supporting the Party's dictat. No more. Mules, not Women. Sad.

Toothy Grin

Today, around 3 PM, a pup died in Jwagal. Something or somebody broke the dog's leg a couple of days back, I was told by a shopkeeper who had seen it limp about in the morning. When I left work around 6:30 to head home, I saw it lying near a closed gate. Dead. It couldn't have been more than six months old. Black, street mongrel. A female.

The heat had already started shrinking its snout and puffing out its belly: it looked almost in bliss, a full belly and recalled lips showing a row of teeth in a yet friendly grin.

One more day, and the gums will become exposed. Then the sharp teeth with look more sinister.

But, a dead animal just seems like the more perfected, finest crafted thing devoid only of--what else--life.

bleh

"koi koi shaam bhi aaisi maajh hoti hai ki koi lamha de kar nahi jati hai"

Gulzar, in Urdu. Talking about how din and raat are such beautiful words, and beautiful ideas, whereas dusk and dawn are bastards of their union that nobody but the poet cares for. But, sometimes, even a dusk or a dawn acts selfish and stingy, and leaves nothing for the poet.

Wah, wah!

I had thought there would be a lot to write about as May 28th approaches, but there is nothing in my mind. Newspaper headlines have been hijacked by the Unity Life pyramid scheme busting, and all negotiations are taking place behind closed doors. The division in civic life that the Maoist protests had provoked--on one side placing Maoist sympathizers who thought the party's resolve to make a final push was worth supporting, and putting across the aisle those who disagreed for various reasons, including a fundamental disagreement about the method--that division is no longer as distinct, as the pitch of confrontation isn't as sharp.

There have been very few interactions/debates/op-eds about the ins and outs of the constitution regarding the life of the CA and provisions in the Interim Constitution under which the term of the CA may be increased. I think the reason behind it is that the language being used by politicians: it is, as if, the constitution to them is basically a formal document with no real world relevance, and everything can be based upon informal negotiations between the top leaders of a few political parties.

The most ridiculous of the bunch--predictably--is Prachanda of UCPN-M: he finds it okay to suggest that the CA will merely be "inactive" after May 28, until a political consensus is reached to "activate" it. No need to pursue any legal recourse as provided by the Interim Constitution.

That is the problem: the political class--regardless of how well washed their shirts or well-shod their feet--seem to imagine that political activism is always superior to the law of the land. From this attitude stems the willingness to not only protect but also foster armed criminal groups with petty political ambitions. They become adept at defending their views no matter how incongruous to another set of accepted rules, or no matter how contradictory to something they might have fought for at an earlier date, because they forget that it is important to keep a semblance of respect for some unbendable rules. Constitutional norms, for instance. Or any other set of rules that regulates civilized dialog.

Genesis: Crumb

Huyen Pham! Blessed be ye! Your seeds be numerous like the sands of the sea and the stars of the sky!

Thanks for the book, Huyen.

Know Your [Suspended] Rights!

At present, none of the political parties are talking about extending the tenure of the CA, pursuant of Article 148, which they ought to be doing, before they start talking about any other issue. The average citizen--como moi--should be worried about this. Because, the language in the IC seems to imply that a State of Emergency means the expiration of the CA, and that the expiratoion of the CA mandates a State of Emergency. In my opinion, the political parties were either short-sighted when they wrote these clauses--not very likely at all; or, they were calculative and in consensus when they afreed to keep the fate of the CA vague.

It might have been a populist measure--to admit at the onset, even before the IC was written, that the CA might fail its mandate must have seemed too risky, inviting ready trouble from the most voluble group at that point: The People!

But, what happens when, in less than three weeks, a State of Emergency is imposed? This is a foregone conclusion by now: the constitutional crisis my last just a few minutes, symbolically, or it might last much longer, but it is a near certainty that it will happen.

Article 143(7) directly addresses the fundamental rights of the people, as they might be suspended under a State of Emergency, or as they may never be infringed upo, even in a State of Emergency. It is a long, clumsy article that goes:

Article 143(7) During the time of the Proclamation or Order of State of Emergency made *by the Presint on reh recommendation of the Council of Ministers* pursuant to clause 143(1), the fundamental rights provided in Part 3 [Articles 12 to 32] may be suspended as long as the Proclamation or Order is in operation.

Provided that clauses (1), (2) of Article 12 and sub-clauses (c) and (d) of clause (3), Articles 13 and 14, clause (2) and (3) of Article 15, Articles 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30 and 31 and the right to constitutional remedy related to Article 32 and the right to Haebeas Corpus shall not be suspended.

So, the list, simplified:

These rights will remain.

Article 12(1)(2)(3.c.d) || Article 13 || Article 14 || Article15(2)(3) || Article 16 || Article 17 || Article 18 || Article 20 || Article 21 || Article 22 || Article 23 || Article 24 || Article 26 || Article 29 || Article 30 || Article 31 || Article 32 [Constitutional Remedy and Haebus Corpus ]

These fundamental rights will disappear:

Article 12(3.d.e.f)

--Freedom to form unions and associations

--Freedom to move and reside in part of Nepal, and

--Freedom to engage in any occupation or be engaged in employment, industry or trade

*There is no provision in Article 143(7) which addresses the part after *however* that comes after the above mentioned rights. These 5 conditionals are ripe to interpretation.

Article 15(1), another right tossed out of the window, reads thus:

"Article 15(1) There shall be no prior censorship [or enforced cessation]* of publication and broadcasting or printing of any news item, editorial, article or feature or other reading or audio-visual material by any means including electronic publication, broadcasting and the press.

"Provided that nothing shall be deemed to prevent making of laws to impose reasonable restrictions on any act which may undermine the sovereignty or integrity of Nepal, or which may jeopardise the harmonious relations subsisting [existing?]* among the peoples of various castes, tribes or communities; or on any act of sedition, defamation, contempt of court or incitement to criminal offence; or on any act which may be contrary to decent public behaviour or morality."

Article 15(4), another right deniable in a State of Emergency:

Article 15(4) No means of communication including the press, electronic broadcasting and telephone shall be obstructed except in accordance with law.

In a State of Emergency, citizens will not have the right to property

Article 19: Right to Property

Article 19(1) Every citizen shall, subject to existing laws, have the right too acquire, own, sell and otherwise dispose of property.

Article 19(2) The state shall not, except in public interest, acquire, or create any encumbrance on the property of any person.

Provided that this clause shall not be applicable to property acquired through illegal means.

Article 19(3) Compensation shall be provided for any property requisitioned, acquired or encumbered by the State in implementing scientific land reform programmes or in the public interest in accordance with the law. The amuont and basis of compensation, and relevant procedure shall be as prescribed by law.

*Do you see how it would be very profitable to be the party with the Council of Ministers when the State of Emergency applies? Comprehensive land reform is political gold. If you could implement it by suspending this right, your party would be God for the next few generations. I hope at least one of the parties out there shows hte galls to take this route.

Article 25 may be suspended in a State of Emergency.

Article 25: Right Against Preventive Detention

Article 25(1) No person shall be held under preventive detention unless there is sufficient ground to believe in the existince of an immediate threat to the sovereignty nad integrity of, or the law and order situation in, Nepal.

Article 25(2) If an authority detains a person under preventive detention contrary to law or in bad faith, the person is entitled to compensation under law.

Articles 27 and 28 may be suspended under a State of Emergency.

Article 27(1) Every citizen shall have the right to demand or obtain information on any matters of concern to himself or herself or to the public.

Provided that nothing in this Article shall be deemed to compel any person to provide information on any matter about which confidentiality is to be maintained according to law.

Article 28: Right to Privacy

Article 28 Except in circumstance provided by law, privacy in relation to the person, and to their residences, property, documents, records, statistics and correspondence, and their reputation are inviolable.

Interim Constitution, again

Once more, the time has come to turn to the happiest book of the land: The Interim Constitution of Nepal, 2007 [As Ammended by the First to Sixth Ammendmends]

In less than 20 days, the tenure of the CA will expire, as provided by Article 64 of the Interim Constitution [IC]:

"Unless otherwise dissolved earlier by a resolution passed by the Constituent Assembly, the term of the COnstituent Assembly shall be two years from the date of its first meeting.

"Provided that the term of the Constituent Assembly may be extended for up to six months by a resolution of the Constituent Assembly, in the event that the task of drafting the Constitution is not completed due to the proclamation of a State of Emergency in the country."

There is no other legal provision provided by the IC to extend the tenure of the CA--it can not be done through a simple majority or two-thirds vote in the CA at any time. There is simply no law under which a bill to extend the tenure can be presented.

Which implies that, upon the expiration of the CA's tenure, the country *must* go into a State of Emergency.

Unless, a bill to amend the IC is tabled at the CA. Article 148 provides for amendments of the IC:

Article 148(1) A Bill regarding amendment or repeal of any Article of the Constitution may be presented in the Legislature-Parliament

148(2) The Bill shall be deemed passed if the Bill so presented at the Legislature-Parliament is aproved by at least two-thirds majority of the total existing members. [414 CA members]*

Article 70, provides for how the new constituion will be written:

70(1) The CA shall, in order to pass a Bill relating to the Constituiton, vote on the Preamble and each Article of such a Bill introduced before it.

70(2) To vote according to clause (1), at least two-thirds of the total members of the CA must be present and must pass the motion unanimously.

70(3) In a unanimous decision pursuant to clause (2), regarding the Preamble or any Article of the Bill relating to the Constitution, is not reached, the leaders of the parliamentary party of the political parties represented in the CA shall consult each other to achieve consensus on such matters.

70(4) The consulation to be carried out pursiant to clause (3) must bbe completed within a maximum of fifteen days from the date on which the unanimous decision could not be reached.

70(5) If consultation is carried out pursuant to clause (4), fresh voting on the Preamble or any Article of such Bill shall be carried out within seven days from the date of the completion of such consultation.

70(6) If a unanimous decosion is not reached as provided in clause (2) even after carrying out voting pursuant to clause (5), there shall be a further vote on such Preamble or Article on which a unanimous decision could not be reached; and if at least two-thirds of the total members of the CA are present at such a meeting adn at least two-thirds of the attending members vote in favor, such a Preamble or Article shall be deemed to have been passed.*

*[I edited the language towards the end of this sentence, because the translation of the IC published by UNDP is rather unclean and confusing compared to the original Nepali.]

This clause is the only way to break deadlocks in the CA if dialog fails.

This would require 4/9 of the total number of CA members, which is to say, 4/9[240 {direct elected}+355{proportional representation}+26{nominated}] = 4/9[621] = 276 CA Members.

The numbers here for the direct elected, proportional representation and nominated members are according to the amended Article 63(3)a, b and c.

A Year of Denying the Madhav

Navel-gazing, for sure. But, now that time has come to start yelling at Madhav Kumar Nepal to make way for consensus and a government lead by a different political force that everyone can agree upon/with, here is an article that was published around this time last year:

Below is "Does Integrity Count?" as it appeared in TKP. My name was spelled "Pravin Adhikari" instead of Prawin Adhikari, which is a bit annoying. But, at least the article wasn't censored as much as I thought--or as much as Rahul thought--it would be.
---

Integrity Doesn't Count?

Like a mangy old dog curling to sniff at itself, New Nepal has gone full-circle to please the crusty Old Nepal. To put it differently: Old Nepal must have very good smelling testicles that New Nepal obligingly licks them so. To put it differently: The snout is but a distant appendage to the anus; New Nepal is but a thin wash over Old Nepal. To put it differently: The cannibalistic, opportunistic, greedy snake is choking on its own tail. To put is differently: Pox on you, Old and New, for you have shown yourself to be One, seamless, shameless.

Corruption, nepotism, despotism, opportunism, ineptitude, greed, duplicity: these were among the reasons why Nepal had to change. These were probably the reasons the Maoists gave against the establishment when they waged their war. Of course, they colored their rhetoric red, for long the favorite of the class in the business of gain through murder, be they feudal or revolutionary. They set up the effigies of enemies always behind a safe red line--India, America, King--, but they killed teachers, farmers, and salary men. They lied to, threatened, coerced and cajoled the most vulnerable among peopel to gain power. They declared New Nepal, but greedy as any other political hooligans, they declared it solely theirs. From their seat in Baluwatar, which got its first cosmetic upgrade in ages, in an age defined by impermanent alliances, what did the Maoists give the country? Browse through news items since first May, and you find the answer: Corruption, nepotism, despotism, opportunism, ineptitude, greed, and duplicity. When this fact was pointed out to Prachanda, he gleefully replied: We learned it from the old parliamentarian parties.

Bijayababu's head was split open by riot-police lathi two years ago. On Thursday he worried if he hadn't been a "foot soldier" to a manipulated manifesto. A young man, whose ideals were, in a manner of speaking, spilled before his generation to consider, he has had to commit the grave sin of doubting his moment of true heroism. New Nepal was not a political achievement! It most definitely was not a Maoist achievement. New Nepal was a cultural achievement. It was the permission people granted themselves to imagine the extent of their capabilities, not tethered to a slogan or a moustache or a flag or a fist, but to a future contemplated, a future desired. A year ago when Nepal was declared a republic, there mushroomed so many "Naya Nepal" buses and rickshaws and chhang-rilas. Today they have disappeared, either behind a thick curtain of grime which is the criminal reward of passing time, or have been re-appropriated by neighborhood deities and soft-drinks. In the past year, New Nepal the political achievement has reverted to sniffing at its own rear end, while New Nepal the cultural achievement has disintegrated, doubting itself, harassed by the knowledge that it has to evolve to suit the new conditions.

Let us be coy no more--three paragraphs is enough foreplay for even the driest mind. Let us call Old Nepal by its real name: Madhav Nepal. He was the head of his party when he lost popular elections. To put it differently: people didn't choose him as their representative. His party removed another person, an intellectual and leader of the so-called Civil Society, to include Old Nepal as a member of the Constitutional Assembly. Yet, he asks to be made the Prime Minister. It is perfectly constitutional: after all, he is a member of the assembly, and that is all he needs to contest. Neither is it unethical: just as representatives of the people chose the President, representatives of the people can choose Madhav Nepal as the next Prime Minister. But, to individuals unnaturally proud of their vote and citizenship--not dumb nationalism conjoined to politics of heritage, but the simple fact that they are enfranchised citizens--this is an unimaginable mockery of the idea of citizenship. The people before whom he begged for the basic currency of democracy--the vote--denied him the opportunity to represent. Now he gets to lead the nation?

Why should this vex me so much? I am not a political commentator. I write the most mindless, inconsequential fluff; breezy Sunday read it should be. It vexes me for two reasons: first, because I think I know why New Nepal is smacking its tongue on the dried feces it has lapped up from the anus of Old Nepal. Second, it vexes me that I am reduced by helplessness to write such over-insistent, vulgar images to drive home a point.

The answer, which I claimed I know, I think, is in Bijayababu's question. To put his question differently: Why must the average citizen always have to doubt his leaders? No matter if they be Congressi cronies or mustached Maoist, or the so-called Civil Society Leader, why does duplicity have a greater currency in a political career than does integrity? How is it a greater, advantageous talent to appear a different person to each different group, but a gauche, debilitating disadvantage to appear unchanging in intent, unbuckling or un-supplicating as the case maybe, before different superiors–voters, donors? No, it is criminal to call Prachanda a "seasoned rhetorician" when the unambiguous, accurate, layman term is "liar." And it is wrong, what Prachanda claims--that words spoken by a statesman in a past date have no relevance to present circumstances. It is especially wrong if the same statesman seeks to profit from the gains made through those earlier, divergent pronouncements, whatever may be the "delta" in the circumstances since. That asks the voter to forgive duplicity as a weapon against democracy.

Whereas, an individual's integrity is the best remedy to most political problems: Corruption, nepotism, despotism, opportunism, ineptitude, greed, and duplicity. A culture that rewards personal integrity actively, punitively discourages these social maladies. To say you stand for one thing and to have the courage to defend it should be a quality worth rewarding. Integrity requires, above all, a lack of duplicity. This is not a play on words: this is a character necessity. If Prachanda is not actively lying to people who did not raise violent arms under his leadership, then he is actively lying to those who fought for him. This is a binary condition: he is either fighting for a nation where democracy will be fostered, or he is conducting the next phase of Prachandapath. One group is being lied to. And the second group shouldn't tolerate it. Similarly, no group should tolerate the idea that in a nascent democracy it should take less than a year for the political establishment to make a mockery of the idea of Vote. Let us, as citizens and not political cadres, as foot-soldiers to our own ideas and not the ideology of scheming politicians, stop forgiving the lies our leaders tell us. Let each citizen show some integrity, some spine, instead of nodding as yes-people to each manipulative bastard blown in by the dust-storm. Otherwise, too-soon, too-soon, we will get used to that taste in our mouths, and you know very well what taste I am referring to.

A Not-Elite Conversation

"Hey—are you an elite? Like, a Kathmandu elite?"

"What? God, no! I mean—can you imagine being one of those?"

"Yeah, I know, right?"

"It's okay. They behave like that only because they are ignorant. Because, you know, they can't be more critical about their class conditions, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I know, right? It's like, they haven't read the right books. Otherwise they'd be totally conscious."

"Exactly! Like they haven't, you know, read theories and stuff. Like, the right books, exactly, the right book. If you read the right stuff, it totally changes your life. That is what I find. At least."

"Yeah. Me too."

"But, God! Can you imagine being one of those?"

(both laugh derisively)

Land: How Much Reform Is Enough Reform?

The High Level Commission for Land Reform, chaired by Ghanendra Basnet has submitted its report to the Prime Minister. It recommends measures that are inadequate, and in fact regressive compared to the failed land reform that was attempted during Sher Bahadur Deuba's first tenure as Prime Minister.

The only "revolutionary" suggestion here is that the government shouldn't provide compensation to landowners for land exceeding the old limit [70 ropanis in the mid-hills] while implementing the new ceiling on the amount of land allowed per household. This reduces the budget required to implement the recommendations--this is obvious. More importantly, it helps in reducing the gap between the rich and the poor. It takes away significant amount of wealth from the already rich, and injects the poor with a significant amount of new wealth.

If a farmer [most likely, though, an absentee landlord] who had 70 ropanis of land will lose 15 ropanis without compensation. That is approximately 21.5% of land value gone without compensation. But this calculation means nothing: the old reform wasn't really implemented at all.

The report says that 125,000 new hectares of land will be freed through the proposed reforms. The amount of land required for the estimated 1,407,100 families of squatters [sukumbasi], marginal farmers [owning parcels too small for meaningful farming] and non-landowning [bhumiheen] farmers is at 421, 770 hectares.

Even after the reform, three-quarters of the farmers/squatters who need land will be left without land.

What sort of a reform seeks to leave 3 out of 4 citizens, for whose sake the reform is being implemented, without any reward?

Instead of aiming for a more or less equitable distribution of land, it recommends giving non-landowning farmers a minimum of 10 ropanis in the mid-hills and 5 Kattha in the Terai. Somebody who has been working the land of absentee landowners will likely see the parcels they have been working reduce [to 55 ropanis] with an addition of 10 ropanis to their own land.

Let us assume Annapurna Nepali worked on a 70 ropani parcel for an absentee landowner. She would have been entitled to the produce of 35 of those ropanis. After the reform, her share reduces to 27.5 ropanis, but, with new land she owns now, it goes up to 37.5 ropanis. That is a 7% increase in her income. Good for her. Also, she gains this from a *reduced* amount of effort spent: from 70 ropanis, she is working only 65. That is a reduction of approximately 7% of labor, assuming the size of a land parcel corresponds to effort required. I know this is not scientific at all, and it doesn't hold true for other figures.

If she were working 45 ropanis previously, and got 22.5 ropanis worth of produce, she could work 55 ropanis now, and get 32.5 ropanis worth of produce. That is a 44% gain in income from a 22% *increase* in labor.

If she were working 20 ropanis of land and previously recieved 10 ropanis worth of produce, she could now work 30 ropanis and get 20 ropanis worth. That is a 50% increase in labor that returns a 100% increase in income.

Let us assume Annapurna Nepali worked a 10 ropani parcel of land--much closer to the average size of land owned by mid-hill farmers. She would be entitled to the produce from 5 ropanis, but with the new gains, she will have the produce from 15 ropanis, after working 20 ropanis. Her labor doubles, her gains become three-folds.

Although, if her new possessions approach that of her old landowner, she might no longer want to work the absentee landowner's parcel. Why would she?

Assuming that land costs Rs 30,000/- per ropani in a village in the mid-hills, the absentee landlord stands to lose, in one go,Rs 30,000/- per ropani over the 70 ropani limit, while Annapurna stands to gain Rs 300,000/- worth of new property.

This is no mean gesture. It will empower the poorest, while impressing into the landowning class that the state is capable of enforcing measures aimed at equality.

This can then translate to other spheres of culture: more empowered women means less tolerance of discrimination based on gender. More empowered dalits means less tolerance of discrimination based on castes.

More empowered indigenous farmer in the Terai means less tolerance towards ethnic discrimination by Pahadi zamindars, etcetera.

According to the report, a very large fraction of agricultural land in Nepal is owned by absentee landowners, while a very large fraction of agricultural workers are non-landowning or squatters, or own insignificant parcels of land.

This dissonance between ownership and labor leads to inefficiency of production. Available capital is not put to work at its prime capacity.

Where is the most obvious flaw in this report?

In its apparent lack of assessment of land by its quality.

A family of 5--close to the national average--would need at least 5 ropanis of very good, spring-fed paddy [abbal] to grow enough rice to feed it through the year. If it is non-irrigated land that relies upon rain alone, the family needs more than 10 ropanis for rice alone. Forget about how much land is needed if the family is to survive on maize corn, or millet, or wheat, etc. Each is a different scenario.

I can think of at least one reason this reform might fail: sale of newly acquired land by rural families who see it as an opportunity to move to urban centres. Often times, the single largest purse of money sought by small rural farmers is not to add capital to their farming operations, but to leave the country to go work in the UAE or similar labor purgatory. Out of ambition and necessity, the next generation of children from these families tend to grow up in small urban centres, gaining formal education while losing out on traditional training in farming [almanac] knowledge. If this happens, the parcels of land owned by small farmers might change hands rapidly, aggregating in the hands of a few farmers with the means to purchase easily available land, and agricultural land newly begotten might soon change into residential land once remittance money starts flowing in.

The report has recommendations for zoning laws to regulate and enforce optimal utilization of various grades of land. But that is yet another set of laws to create and enforce.

Eavesdropping

Yesterday, inside Sajha Prakashan's compound, as I tried to find the latrine, I heard two comments.

1] A YCL cadre asked another: "How big is their crowd?"

Response: "It looks big. Almost as big as ours was on May Day."

2] A young man was busy splitting a bamboo cane into two: perhaps that was one of the reasons why the Maoists were using dry bamboo. It can be found easily at construction sites, and, being dry and light, they don't break bones but slap the flesh hard enough to leave welts. And they are easy to split vertically: one stick can become two in a few seconds.

In any case, the young man splitting one cane into two said to his companion: "Look at those [Nepali] flags! If they are carrying flags on bamboo sticks, how can they call it a peace rally?"

Today, at a rally to address the YCL cadre brought to Kathmandu, Prachanda told them that this was a temporary interruption in the party's "andolan" or movement. To the opposition [NC, UML, people at the peace rally yesterday], he said: "If you think that the past six days were anything else but a simple trailer, you are mistaken. The actual movie is yet to start!"

Prachanda said yesterday's rally was composed of "hired goons mobilized by the government."

I have a feeling that those YCL cadres and other Maoists who saw the rally don't quite believe that.

------

Grim Addendum: More people died in the past week from being struck by lightning than from reasons directly related to the protests/andolan.

Rally

Madankrishna Shrestha has the most impressive rhetorical skills among speechmakers in Nepal. Here is how his speech at Basantapur started:

"I see among us those who save lives--I see doctors. I see among us those with a vision to build a better furute--I see engineers. I see among us those who strive to transform Nepal into a nation where the rule of law flourishes--I see advocates and legal professionals. I see among us those who create doctors and engineers and advocates of the future--I see teachers. I see among us those who make the stuff that makes life better--I see entrepreneurs, industrialists, professionals. I see laobrers, I see farmers. I see a multitude hungering for the freedom to work and make an honest living."

I have paraphrased; I have edited and slightly and enhanced, but the effect of the speech is not betrayed. He also knew how to build the audience's reaction: he asked rhetorical questions to get the audience to raise their hands. "Who wants peace? Who is tired of the bandhs?" When thousands of pairs of hands were raised [and almost everybody raised both hands] in response, it made for a very heartening sight.

For, the unpigmented human palm is designed to signal intent over great distances.

The state hijacked the Peace Rally through a vote of thanks in the cabinet of ministers. Similarly, Nepali Congress, through its directive to the government to

invalidate the regional offices of UNHRC, has overstepped its office.

The meeting in Basantapur was not supposed to turn into a rally, for that was a guaranteed method for attracting confrontation with the YCL. The authorities had been told that there wasn't to be a rally, so they were unprepared. But, the mass was large--numerous. Hydra-headed, jubilient, eager. It circled around Tundikhel, and made a turn that proved a mistake.

YCL cadres are camped in the City Hall, the Exhibition Hall across the street, and Sajha Prakashan down the street. Within a distance of 100 meters, there must be a couple of thousand YCL cadres camped in for the long seige of the city. They were prepared, with bricks broken into fist-sized missiles piled on the sidewalk, bamboo canes and strips.

Riot police stopped the Peace Rally twice, but didn't succeed in containing it: mostly because the people at the front of the rally were earnest about their peaceful intentions. They had passed through a throng of YCL protesters earlier, and were given peaceful passage. On the surface, it seemed there was no threat.

But that was the surface. When a group used to facing no

opposition realizes there is an opposing voice, it sits unseasy.

The YCL allowed the Peace rally to pass first, but then cut into the line, cutting off one group from another. Then our revolutionary brethren came out into the street, with their sticks and stones and red flags.

The Peace Rally carried the Nepali flag--not something I agree with. This wasn't about nationalism or partriotism; this was about peace, about putting an end to bandhs, forever.

Across the fence of riot police shields were red flags printed the hammer and sickle inside a white outline of Nepal's borders.

YCL cadres were carrying rocks in their hands, holding sticks high above their heads. I had a change of clothes, a notebook, a water bottle and a laptop in my backpack. Not an even match.

Dr. Niroj Banepali, a beautiful man, smaller than my two fists together but never wavering in his belief, appeared next to me. He had a large grin on his face. Those carrying sticks and stones looked at us as if we had transgressed against a sacred formula by smiling at each other, laughing so close to their spray of angry spit. When it looked like some on our side of the fence were directly taunting some on the other side of the fence, we turned around to talk to a couple of blood-thirsty peace-marchers.

"We are here for peace. We can't react to them. We can't force them to give us passage. We have to ask them, shame them into it."

"Let's sit," I said after a few moments. Banepali was already sitting. I sat down. Some more people sat. A dozen. Soon, twenty. If the number would reach a hundred, the thousands behind us would sit, or that was the hope.

No. There were three on the ground, sitting as if that meant anything: a middle-aged man with white hair and a head with a craggy scar on his crown, Dr. Niroj Banepali, and this man.

That is when comedy of a certain kind entered my life: I needed desperately to urinate. I stood from the street and strayed into the midst of onlookers, quietly watching the procession, expressionless and uninterested. Only when I was well in their midst did I see the half-bricks and stones around their feet, and sticks in their hands. They were carrying red hammer and sickle flags.

"Khai, khai--alikati bato paam ta!" I started saying. Excuse me, could I pass? Of course, they weren't paying any attention to me: they were looking at the rally ahead of them, now stepping out to the pavement, now injecting into the crowd to form a layer few bodies thick. I saw an opening in the wall to my left. I thought--let's go into this compound, chances are, I can pee against a tree, feel relieved.

Wrong. No trees, but lots and lots of YCL and other Maoist cadres. There were children in the compound, who were helping by ferrying freshly split bamboo sticks to the street. Some chose to stand on the top of the roof of Sajha Prakashan, while a young woman--I wouldn't put her age at 18 or above... closer perhaps to 16--yelled at them for "sitting on your knees, while you should be out there."

"What is it?" A man asked me politely, perhaps bewildered that someone, carrying a backpack, had strayed into the party's camp.

"Is there a place where I can urinate?" I asked. I saw the line of jute-sacks lined sewage that had been converted into an open latrine by removing alternative sewer covers. This left concrete platforms perhaps 24 inches wide, with 24 inches wide gap on both sides. On this you'd squat, rely upon the notion that it is the face that people can identify, and therefore is attached to shame, and do your business.

I raised a flap, urinated, went to the water tap that was, miraculously, always running although in a slow trickle, washed my hand alongside a man who was filling up a plastic bottle. Half-dozen men returned from the street to go into what must be the toilets in the building.

One man was using a thin kitchen knife to split a tall bamboo--something that must have propped up the tarpaulin flap over the cooking fire. A boy ran to the street with the bamboo sticks.

I paused to watch the confrontation happening outside the compound. People around me ran frantically back and forth, collecting sticks, stones, bricks. The peace rally seemed to have been hijacked by a few who were intent on a confrontation: later, [today, Saturday the 8th of May], there were news about the rally being "infiltrated" by some who supported other political parties [NC, UML] and were looking for a fight.

I walked out of the compound and into the "peace" side of the rally. Didn't care to stick around any more.

I walked to Kupondole, somewhat disappointed that the rally had lost its dignity so quickly.

An hour or so after I exited that road, police fired 12 shells of teargas into the crowd to disperse it. It seemed, by that point, the YCL and Maoists had been overwhelmed by the not-so-peaceful protesters.

Later, in the evening, Prachanda said the Maoist Party had decide to end the bandhs because the government conspired to "make the people fight each other," and because the party was sensitive towards the suffering the bandhs were causing to the people.

I wish they had been honest about the reason. They created the need for the confrontation, not just in Kathmandu, but across the country. They miscalculated their popularity among the people, and actually lost a lot of popularity during and because of these bandhs.

But, at least for the time being, the bandhs are over.

What is it that I am doing today? Why?

I am opposing the bandh, as has been enforced by the Maoist party, with the YCL as the disciplinary force.

Foremost, because the Maoist party had pledged not to hold any bandhs. They broke that pledge.

Everyone in this country knows how necessary and important the forced closure of the country is in nudging public opinion to one or the other side of the indecision fence. Why give up such an effective political weapon?

Then, after having given it up in a public pledge, why be so mercurially amnesiac?

Second, because of the violence inherent in this particular campaign. The intimidation started long before the protests, through a very impressive press campaign: Newspapers across the country reported on, and carried photographs of YCL cadres and other citizens not always voluntarily present at the training camps learning to use khukuri and lathi. It is ridiculous for the Maoists to insist their campaign was a peaceful one, if the seedbed of the campaign was soaked with intimidation well before they took to the streets.

Third, because an "indefinite" strike amounts to political blackmail, unless this is a revolution aimed at changing the entire state, as was done in 1990 and 2006. I am sure even the most fervent supporter of these bandhs will hesitate before equating 2006 and the present event. Unless they clearly articulate that NC, UML and other partners in the ruling coalition stand against the spirit of the achievement made in 2006, or that the events of 2006 were simply a blip along the assured forward march of the People's Revolution [Maoist], it is a reaction out of proportion to the import of their present agenda: of removing MKN as the prime minister, and replacing him with PKD.

Fourth, because the mechanics is faulty: politics is a conversation that should start with one's neighbors [because it is with them that we share physical security and immediate resources], should radiate to encompass entire citizenry [because with them we share economic security and sovereignty as identifiable nation], extend to entire human species and beyond [because with them we share morality and aesthetic], and return to the neighbor once more, so that, after becoming physically and economically secure individuals with an identity, moral and aesthetic stance, we may learn to be just towards each other while sharing resources.

To bring people away from where they ought to be having the most important political debates--their neighborhood--to where they are absolute outsiders and transgressors--neighborhoods of Kathmandu--is to separate the body from the social person; this renders an individual into a mere tool, to be directed and used, not to be engaged in a conversation.

Mediation in conflict-ridden neighborhoods has to, and have always, come from local leaders, despite their ideological differences. When YCL cadres have been trucked in as instantaneous response to retaliation by locals, a lot of stones have been thrown at each other, scores have been injured.

For what? At the end, the YCL cadre from Taplejung will have no effect on the Youth Force or Tarun Dal unaffiliated youth across the divide, whereas a YCL cadre from the neighborhood can better carry both entreaties and threats across the divide.

No Flag

No flag to show. No slogans, no chants. Few demands: Integrity in civic life. End of violence and intimidation. No ideology save the individual's safety and freedom.

That is all. For the moment.

Election Day, 2008

I am always accused of belonging to the other ideological group, always the other. Therefore, I am re-posting this essay here. Samudaya seems no longer functional. In the original post, NTGK has a photo of a woman voting. This is how it went down for me at the elections

Alston--if you really think I am pro any big party, this should shed some light on my political being.

----
Elections Day

by Prawin | April 2008

elections_uml_women.jpg

(Photo by Nayantara; Women at UML candidate Raghu G Pant's last campaign rally in Lalitpur before the election)

April 8, 2008 — Some said there was no way there’d be elections. Some said elections would happen, without too many incidents, although there’d be some, but more would come, in a month or two, things are uncertain. Some said Army would take over: Maoists said the army was stockpiling weapons for that. Some Royalists said the army would take over, everybody was waiting and watching, everybody was preparing to leave the country on a moment’s notice: if it comes to that, you know, if Maoists win, although they won’t, there is no way.

I told anyone who cared to ask me that I hoped the elections would be peaceful. I hoped the parties, and YCL, would behave. Let the people decide.

On Monday, my parents left to vote in Abu Khaireni, my birthplace. I am not on the voters list there. I didn’t think I was on the list here, at Gongabu, either, but I was. Until I knew that, I was sure I wasn’t registered. I said—everybody is equally a thief, all parties. I said—I won’t vote. I am not satisfied with how the parties are behaving, how they project as if the peace that, hopefully, will be restored in the country after a peaceful election is their benevolent gift to the people, rather than something the people have earned through their patient practice of democracy.

More despairing was what I saw among those whom I idolized—the people. I have realized over the days leading to the election that the people, too, are as much thieves—chorharu—as are the political parties. More reason not to vote. I felt like a cliché—America-returned, liberal-arts-degreed, nitpicking over everything about the elections, doubly-fatalist, looking for an argument with everyone with a contrary view. I turned down opportunities to be an election observer: on election day I would sit and write fiction to earn wage, work on what needed completing. I worried about what I would write for Samudaya, the only place where I wanted to express my opinions on the events of the day. It would validate my rants in the past, I thought, if I could tell Samudaya how I lived this momentous day.

I awoke to my brother’s frustrated shouts. He started yelling at his six year old son and Bhauju because he couldn’t locate the chit that contained his name and roll number corresponding to his information on page 27 in the voting list. I tried to sleep through it, him banging the daraj open and shut, opening drawers and flipping the mattress over, laboring because he has a large belly. He yelled at Bhauju, who was in the kitchen upstairs, and he sent his son, Abhi, to fetch her.

“How would I know?” Bhauju said. “You took it somewhere the other day. How would I know where you put it?”

“When?” asked dai. “When did I take it?”

“How would I know?” Bhauju answered. Back and forth. Pitch and volume rising, dai acting as if his world would end, as if, without that chit Bhimsen Das Pradhan would surely lose to Yogesh Bhattarai or Hitman Shakya.

It was six-thirty in the morning. Voting wouldn’t begin for another thirty minutes. Voting was to happen four minutes away from home, and he had a volunteer’s pass. He was Bhimsen Das Pradhan’s party representative inside the polling station. Nobody would stop him from voting. I called my father in Khaireni. From the bustle in the background, I could tell that he was already at Shri Ram Shah HS School, where, I imagined, the polls were happening, as they always did. I could be wrong—they tell me Khaireni now has a population of close to forty thousand people. When I last left it, it wasn’t a quarter as crowded, as constructed, as plotted and watered and sold by a lakh-a hand. “Look in the black bag in my daraj, ” he said.

“Look in the black bag in Ba’s daraj ,” I said to dai, who had found what he was looking for, something that had been right under his nose all morning, through all that yelling and accusing his kid and wife.

“Your name is also in the list,” he told me. “Come, vote.”

“All are thieves,” I said. He left. I didn’t even want to watch any of the news channels: all full of politicians lying left and right, talking in one befuddling tongue. If one were to believe them, the elections was simply an exercise in wresting legitimacy from the people to stamp approval on sheet after sheet of secret arrangements among the three major parties.

But there was no electricity, therefore no television for distraction. Abhi also went next door to play with their year-old baby. I went to check my mail, read news, and I thought I would see how the election was faring. Dai was standing with other representatives, handing out business-card-sized profile of Bhimsen Das Pradhan. Very much illegal, to hand out campaign material on election morning, but I guess business cards didn’t count. I told him I was going to watch the election.

“You should vote,” everybody said. “Page number 27, your name is on page 27,” dai said.

Okay, then, I thought. “Go to the party’s table and get a chit made,” dai said.

The chit listed your name and a serial number between one and thousand, identified which line you’d stand in to vote. The same information would be with the officers appointed by Election Commission.

“I don’t want any help from any political party,” I said. “If I can prove I am Prawin Adhikari, I should be able to vote.” I had my Washington state identification in my wallet: I wanted to see if they’d take that. Unless someone present at the polling station—at the desk where Congress, UML, Maoists, Independents put their heads together and colluded—could challenge my identity and prove that I was not the Prawin Adhikari I said I was, my right to vote in that particular polling station was guaranteed by laws drawn up under the interim constitution. I said this much to dai and his friends.

“Doesn’t work that way,” they said.

“Doesn’t work the way guaranteed to me by the election commission?” I said.

“Here the representatives have agreed to a different agreement.”

“Whose representatives?” I said. “Did you ask me? Did you let me know about your decision through public media?” Sarwajanik sanchar madhyam. Anger pushed my words closer to Sanskrit than the coarse Tahanunle Nepali I speak. They laughed. Fuckers, I thought. “Everybody is a thief,” I shouted in disgust, throwing my fist in the air, not as a gesture of anger but of disgusted dismissal. I huffed and returned home, confident they didn’t deserve my vote.

But I wanted to vote in the proportionals: the only way some of the people with agreeable ideas on democracy, with which I am familiar through sarwajanik sanchar madhyam, could be placed in the debate that will shape the constitution of the country. I was so angry that it made me want to defecate, but I let it deposit, constipate, just out of spite. Fuckers, I fumed on the roof, watching schools of middle-aged women dressed as if for teej make their way through Town Planning, their mouth moving in tandem, dhoti-ends fanning faces.

Dai brought Sujan home: Sujan is a year older than me, but is a Mama by relation, someone I grew up with in Khaireni. We knocked on doors to watch Mahabharat as kids, read the book together after watching Bhimsen tear apart Dushashan. “Youth like you,” he said, “If youth like you won’t vote what hope is there?”

They are all thieves, I said. But, it was futile not to vote. I would regret this opportunity to belong again after a long absence, a period in which so much has happened. I would have no moral authority to point my fingers and direct my anger at the chor politicians at a later date if I didn’t put them in debt to me, if I didn’t put my mark on the constitution of this country. I know very strongly that I will leave Nepal at the first decent opportunity I get, and I know that I will choose to be a citizen of my professional world—fiction, cinema—over any country. But, I wanted to vote, my first, if you don’t count student association elections at Whitman.

“Come with me,” dai said as he was returning to the polling station.

“I’ll come on my own,” I told him. I didn’t want help from any political party.

Isn’t this illegal, I thought, when I saw UML and Maoist flags right outside the polling station. By law, they are required to be at least a hundred meters from the polling station: they weren’t that far even from the polling booth inside Navodit High School grounds. I looked at the face of Hitman Shakya, large, keeping with the tradition of his party, no doubt, adorning walls and aggrandizing. Party cadres were busy finding the names of people who wanted their help locating themselves on the voting list. I took long, what I thought were authoritative, strides to the polling station. The policemen stopped me right at the gate.

“Where is your chit?” they asked.

“What chit?” I asked. I knew what chit they wanted me to show—but that was a game prepared and agreed to by the parties, that only people with chits issued by one of their desks would gain entry into the polling station. I didn’t care for that.

“Look here,” I said to the policemen, “as a citizen of this country, I have every right to go in and vote. I know exactly where my name is in the list. It is illegal for you to stop me.”

“I don’t know any of that,” they said. “Can’t let you in without a chit.”

“What chit? I don’t want to have anything to do with the parties. You can’t stop me from voting. You have no right to turn me back. Only election officers can tell me if I can’t vote, not you, definitely not the parties.”

“Jabarjasti nagarnus,” they said. “Don’t try to bully us. Mildaina.”

I was bullying them? I knew there was no point in engaging in a yelling match with them. Some Nagarik Samaj gathered around me. “There is agreement in place,” they told me. “We aren’t affiliated with parties either, but parties have decided. Don’t ask me under what ain.”

Dai heard the shouts, I guess. He appeared at my elbow. He put a hand on his chest and another on my shoulder. “This is my brother,” he told the policemen. “Wait, wait here.”

I put a foot on the gate—a school’s gate constructed to file children through. There were people watching from rooftops. Four extremely slow-moving lines inching into the shade under a colorful tent, events inside of which the rooftop citizenry certainly couldn’t see. But an election must make a wonderful spectacle, even in its placidness. A policeman put his foot across the gate from the inside. People worked their way around us. Dai came with the chit—nothing but my name and the line in which I was to stand (ka), but a sanction from one of the parties, I think the Maoist desk, sufficient to convince the policeman that I was decent enough to vote. I didn’t enter immediately. I wrote in a notebook first: At 9:45 AM, I was denied entry into the polling station without a chit issued by a political party. I did it more to show the people around me that I was angry at them, the entire lot of unscrupulous fuckers that they were.

Bhimsen Das Pradhan came around wishing luck to everyone. “Isn’t this illegal?” I asked him. He didn’t respond, moved on down the line, up and down all four lines, like a tick sucking at the entire length of a particularly windy snake. Another Nagarik Samaj man came to my side. “No. Not illegal. Election Commission laws allow candidate to come with one assistant. If he had brought many, would be illegal.”

“Sure,” I said. “But how is this not voter-influencing?”

“Those that are doing are doing everything,” somebody said. Garne le sabai garya chhan. Ke legal ke illegal.

It is okay. Important thing is not to fight inside the polling station. Sanctity of the process. Nagarik Samaj tried to talk to me. Sanctity my black ass, I thought, everyone is a thief. Sabjana chor. I wrote in my note book: At 10 AM Bhimsen Das Pradhan tried to influence voters in queue at a polling station. I have to record this, I thought, I’ll show these fuckers.

“Uncle,” a small voice called from behind and pulled at my pant pocket. Abhi and Bhauju were also in line. Since she was in the female line (kha), Abhi had come to stand with me. “Is your name on the list?” I asked him. “No,” he said shyly. The man behind me showed Abhi a picture on his cellphone: Abhi riding his bike, its left training wheel broken and pointing upwards. Abhi hid his head inside my shirt, talked to my belly. We tried to fit inside the shade of a faded black umbrella held high by an elderly man in front of us.

Gongabu is an area that has grown very rapidly not only in the past few years but also over the past eighteen years: it is more directly a product of political change than anything else like, say, the real estate market. As UML and Nepali Congress diverted the nation’s wealth to a crust of the petty bourgeoisie within their folds, they bought small patches of land in small installments and built small houses, often financing it with money got from selling agricultural land elsewhere. Around late nineties, when the corruption of the parties was at its height, large, ostentatiously decorated houses mushroomed, sometimes with the national flag and guards inside, or, very often, homes of people who ran overseas employment consultancies. As Maoist violence increased, their targets poured in, building another crop of small houses or renting flats from those already there. As security deteriorated outside the valley, constructed around Gongabu area grew faster than at most other areas in the valley. After April Revolution, Maoist activists descended to live as neighbors to those they had flayed, forced to flee. YCL and Maobadi-Pidit sharing the scarce water and micro-bus seats available to them. All of them at the polling station. Rarely an indigenous Newar in queue, not a single person of Terai origins. Most voters born elsewhere.

An elderly lady came to the front of the line waving a chit. The heads at the desk huddled, looked up at the lady. Is that really your name, they asked, can we see your chit? This can’t be you, they said.

“Maybe the people writing the name in that book made that mistake,” she said.

“No, no,” the heads said. “You can go back out,” one of the heads told her.

“Wait,” I said to the lady. “You don’t have to leave. These people have no right to tell you whether or not you can vote.”

“That name she gave us,” one of the representatives said, “she is our friend’s mother. This lady isn’t she.”

“Can’t they have the same names?” I asked.

“Maybe,” they said. “Maybe not. But our friend’s mother has already voted.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t vote,” I told the lady. If she wanted, she could petition the head of the election officials at the station. If that officer was convinced that her grievance was genuine, the officer would give her a ballot, which would then be sealed in a special envelop. Her vote wouldn’t be counted unless the difference between total number of votes cast came to be so close as to make hers the decisive vote.

“Go back and ask for another vote,” one of the heads said.

“That isn’t proper,” I said. It would be proper for her to petition to the election officials. Anything else was wrong.

“I don’t want to stand in line again,” the lady said. “You can come straight to the front,” the heads said. I looked around. Everyone sought the smallest patch of shade they could find. Maheshwor Shrestha was carrying water to those in queue. The elderly lady walked out. Fuckers, I murmured, looking at the huddled heads of the party representatives. They had intimidated the guard at the front of the queue—he was handing over the chits of queued voters, for the heads to consult their copy of the voters list and pronounce whether or not a person could vote.

“These people have no right to tell anyone who can or can’t vote,” I said to people close to me. The guard asked me for my chit. I waved it under his nose. “I don’t have to show it to these people,” I said. “I know I can vote. I’ll show it only to an election officer.”

Another man was stopped by the heads. He had given his name as Shyam Piya. Problem was, Shyam Piya died of cancer about a year ago. I know because Shyam Piya was a neighbor, a Newar with roots in Bandipur, Tanhun. “You should come this way,” one of the heads called the man, but I heard later it was the same man who had given Shyam Piya the Proxy his chit. Maoists. I heard.

“Page 27,” I told the election officer when it was my turn. “I am Prawin Adhikari.” Prawin Adhikari bhanne ma nai hum.

The man confused himself by looking at the roll number, turned to a later page and couldn’t find my name. “Twenty seven,” I said, poking at the list. The man looked up, I looked down at him. On page 27 I could see my father’s name. “That’s my father,” I told the man. He took my chit and tried to put a red mark on it. His pen didn’t write. He scratched at the paper furiously, the red didn’t stick.

I moved one step up the line. Blue ink of vote seeped under the cuticle of the left thumb, dark crescent under the nail. Marked me. The third man tore off a light blue ballot sheet and asked me to put my thumb print on the stub.

“Thumb print?” I laughed. Ajhai pani aauntha chhap nai ho?

The man looked up. Perhaps nobody else had questioned him about that. “What’s the use of this?” I was annoyed that I had to roll my thumb in ink for no reason. I’ve hated it every single time I’ve had to do it. Anywhere. It seems too personal a mark to put anywhere. The only function of thumb prints should be to increase the intrigue in a crime scene.

“This is proof that you took a ballot,” the man said.

“Yeah, maybe, but it is no proof it was I that took the ballot,” I said. I meant—how does a thumb print warn you if somebody drops a proxy vote? What is there to stop anyone from dropping a proxy vote in my name? So it is proof that you gave a ballot away, but what does it really signify in the democratic process?

“But this is proof you took a ballot,” the man repeated, irritated that I had broken his rhythm of tearing off ballots from a pad. Smirk on my face, I must have tarnished the sheen of dignity he had been wearing all morning. I folded the ballot once, twice, three times as I waited for the person before me to finish stamping his ballot with a swastika stamp.

When it was my turn to cast a vote, I leaned over the light blue ballot, put my stamp on it secretively, deliberately, lightly, afraid of how delicate an idea I was dealing with. It didn’t ink well—too faint for comfort. I needn’t have worried—surely there would be heads huddled together and a head would speak for my faint swastika. But it was my first vote, and I needed it to be strongly imprinted, forceful and righteous. I inked the stamp again, leaned as close to my earlier stamp as I could, and placed it ring on ring, arms of the swastika superimposing. I looked at it again—there was no ink in the ink pad; the second swastika was just a tad off, created the illusion of a shadow under the first stamp. “It won’t count if you stamp it twice,” someone in the queue yelled. “I know that,” I yelled back. “The stamp doesn’t stamp.”

I folded my ballot. A strange thought occurred to me: since the ballot is vertical, instinct leads people to fold it in half. In fact, in a lot of places election officials were instructed to give people the ballot already folded. The tree and the sun were placed such that if the ballot were folded in half, and if the stamp had had too much ink on it, it would transfer a mirror image onto the signs of other parties in boxes at the very end of the column; a stamp on the sickle-hammer, on the third column, wouldn’t, because its column was shorter by two boxes, just short enough.

For the pink ballot, I inked my thumb without any protest, stamped the ink pad with force a few times before leaning over my ballot. I cast my vote and wondered if my blue ballot would be more important than my pink one: my gut feeling was that the pink would count for more.

I picked up Abhi and told an election observer to keep her eyes wide open. She had beautiful brown eyes. I had just cast my first vote ever, and possibly—I hope there is no reprisal in my lifetime of the events that led to this election, or of a similar election—the most important vote I’ll ever cast.

I checked the time as I walked past the guard. 10:45 AM. A man in his early twenties seemed agitated, itching for a fight. “Congressi boys want something to go wrong there,” he pointed towards the booth. “They just want a reason.” “And what will they do?” I asked him. What? Fight? Stab, shoot, burn? Do what? Why? He didn’t answer. Fucker, I muttered.

At home, Bhauju made vegetable momos. The Dhakals who live downstairs also voted or tried to, all proxies. Aarati forgot what name she was supposed to use, and was caught out. Maoists gave them chits to vote, waited for them to come out and asked them if they had voted Maoist. UML was doing the same. “Congress not so much, but they’re doing it too.” Because Congress hadn’t bothered to set up a party booth. The trick was to have representatives constantly walk back and forth between the party’s booth and the representatives’ table inside the polling station. Within the first hours of polling, a clear pattern emerged of those absent for various reasons—those registered in two places, therefore gone to their village of origin [like my parents]; overseas working or studying [millions, throughout the country]; deceased [Shyam Piya]; late to the station. Representatives noted these names, went outside, sent someone fresh inside with a new chit. It was agreed upon by all parties. Those chors, fuckers!

“Did they get the ink on your flesh?” Someone wanted to see my thumb. If it had been just on the nail, I could scrape it, buff it, get it clean, put a coat of varnish on it, go back, take care not to let the ink get under the skin. Vote again. And again. Everybody is a thief. Fuckers.

Again and again people asked me which party I had voted for. “It is a secret ballot,” I said.

“What harm is there in telling us?” they said. I remember how people waved their ballots in front of a loudly cheering crowd when they voted for the first time, in 2048. They didn’t understand why a vote like this needs to be a secret ballot, and why some other votes need to be transparent. I gave them my view on democracy:

“Every person has one vote. Every person has the right to use that vote to decide. Every person has an equally sacred right to refrain from using that vote. And lastly, every person has the duty to refrain from asking others about their votes.” People should not tell others, while the elections are going on, how they had voted, or how anyone should vote. That is against the spirit of democracy, I said. Prajatantrik maryada biparit kura ho. People laughed at me or called me rude for not telling them how I had voted. Hamlai bhanda ke hunthyo ra?

Throughout the day rumors and facts filtered through TV channels: so many bombs, so many booth captures. A majority of booth captures involved Maoists. In the evening, Ananta was smug and overconfident, gloating about how everybody had told them about their surprise at how little violence the Maoists had used in the process. I found it revolting that Maoists were taking pride in the fact that they hadn’t spilled blood: implied, I think, was a declaration that they are still capable of killing if they need to, but out of some sense of nobility they refrained. On his sides, UML and Congress politicians cried foul before a TV audience, said there were rampant abuses by Maoists—voter intimidation, booth capturing, banning other parties from sending their representatives into the polling stations at places like Rolpa. A table filled only with Maoist heads, colluding, no doubt, to ensure their ten thousand martyrs got to cast their votes. Comrades made useful in their afterlife, too; surely martyrs don’t mind that.

I suppose it will be a few weeks before everyone—people, parties, king—settles to a new reality as directed by the mandate of the people. Everybody has the Maoists as the focus of their talks now, amazed at how little bloodshed they created: more Maoists have died in the past three days than have cadres of any other party. But this patronizing and spoiling the brat forgets Terai and its complications. All incidents of real violence came from the Terai.

One thing is for sure: this has been among the most successful elections in the history of the country. People have voted in larger numbers this time than in any other election. I am sure most of them voted today. I am sure my parents voted from Gongabu and from Khaireni. No one will be so foolish as to say that all votes are genuine—millions and millions of them are proxy votes. If my parents could register me to vote, there is no reason to imagine our Nepali brothers working in countries from Korea to Kuwait weren’t registered.

Party representatives have prior agreement, important thing is to keep elections peaceful, small irregularity is always happening, in the interest of greater good must overlook minor incidents. New Nepal means looking forward, always forward, no matter little dispute here and there.

Fuckers!

Violence is here

Like I had said in an earlier post: the "peaceful" but forced closure of the city was not a sustainable proposition. There have been numerous counter-protests, with no specific [apparent] leadership, and no other articulated demand than to be able to resume basic commerce. People want to work, earn, and buy basic necessities.

The Maoists are very hypocritical: whenever large number of Maoist cadres need to be transported from one point in the city to another, they have been using trucks. However, when they found a water tanker on the streets, they vandalized it, beat up the driver. Irony is, they have contracted most of the water tankers in the city to carry drinking water for their cadres. They had declared from the podium, on May 1, that water tankers would be allowed to operate.

In Birgunj, the counter-protest has taken a religious tint, but it is really thinly veiled ethnic fissure: Hindubadis are fighting Maobadis. I refuse to believe it is about the religion. It is about Hills versus Plains, and it is about Higher-caste Hindus versus Lower-caste Hindus. It is a spillover from across the border.

The farther you go from Kathmandu, the more pronouncedly political are the clashes: In Humla, Nepalgunj, Parbat, the strife is between Maoists and one other party, either UML or NC.

In the streets of Kathmandu, they are between YCL members from outside the city, and city-dwellers. The problem is, once the lathi-wielding YCLs leave, local YCLs will have to live in the neighborhoods where they are forcibly closing shops, and in some cases, injuring locals to the point of putting them in hospital.

Prachanda met with the Indian ambassador, a shady character named Rakesh Sood.

Maoist leaders have been openly enjoying going around town in cars, while nobody else is allowed the privilege. If these hypocrites are ever to be trusted to hold the interest of the people in their hearts, the people are deserving morons.

I hope tomorrow's protest at Basantapur will be uneventful. Most likely, it will be. I just hope there will be people in good numbers there tomorrow.

Disappointed

Tomorrow's march is perhaps the first declaration of a class war since 2006, from the other direction: bourgeoisies on the proletariat. It has less to do with opposing the Maoist's forced closure of the country, and more to do with defending one's slice of civic life, and defending the right of others to enjoy their slice of civic life.

And it puts professionals, business people and other civic society types at direct confrontation with the Maoist multitude. This is very unfortunate. It is plain to see to anyone that the Maoists have been keeping hostage the futures of their own base also. But, there is a promised payoff: the new constitution will be more proletariat friendly. Land distribution is a foundational issue. Gender is, too. As is secularism. As is the question of redressing unequal land and water treaties made with India. Nepal can't achieve any modicum of stability or peace without re-imagining the state and the nation to find a more effective and urgent method of wealth re-distribution. Historically, there has been alienation of a part of the citizenry, based on their geographical and ethnic distance from the center. These are issues that all parts of the society should be interested in, not just the revolutionary red horde. Tomorrow's march from Basantapur should respond to these ideas, if it wants to have any relevance whatsoever.

Because, if we don't remember these things and insist only upon our right to open shops and factories or be able to go to our jobs, we will have forgotten what it is that separates the Maoist protesters from us, and what keeps the two groups yoked together.

The yoke should be no less than a recognized, instilled notion of equality and justice for all people on earth: your fellow citizens simply happen to be a special sub-set of that number. They deserve exactly the same kinds and amount of freedoms that you would ask for yourself--or if your conception of the self is that of a moral person--the kinds and amount of freedoms that you would recognize as the right of another person, and would defend with your life.

What separates us is our willingness to recognize the rule of law, the absolute imperative for integrity in civic life, the recognition that when we march tomorrow, we don't march merely to defend our rights, but also to defend the rights of others.

Friday: Counter-Revolution Starts

Finally! The Chamber of Commerce and an umbrella organization representing professionals [and semi-professionals like me, I guess] is organizing a rally against the Maoist closure of the country.

If you are in Kathmandu, and if you agree with the sentiment being represented, you want to be at Basantapur. This is how the SMS that is beign circulated reads:

"FNCCI, Nepal Chamber of Commerce, PAPAD & other non-political organizations are goign to organize a peace rally to oppose the Bandh on May 7th, Friday from Basantapur at 9 AM. Please join the rally with your family to show strength and solidarity. Forward this SMS to all your friends and like minded people."

If you don't like what is happening in the country, show up at Basantapur on Friday.

If you believe, like I do, that most of the Maoist demands/designs are legitimate and necessary for the country, still show up to tell them to fuck off the streets. They should be in the CA, not in the streets.

Maoist Protests, day 5

Today is day 5! Astonishing, really, how long it has held together. Prachanda says it will reach fever pitch over couple of days, but I don't believe him. I think the high-point was May 1, Saturday. The movement is coming undone: entrepreneurs forced to supply water to the protesters are supplying them with dirty water pumped up from the banks of Bagmati and Bishnumati. For those who don't understand the implications, consider this: Both rivers are stand-still cesspools. Within ten kilometers of their origin, they both enter city limits; all fresh water has been diverted by that point, and passes through humans to re-enter the rivers as effulgence.

Maoist "supporters" who had been given the choice between paying Rs. 1,000/- per household or joining the ranks of the protesters have started returning, sometimes undertaking journeys as long as 150 KM [to Chitawan] in order to return home.

Prachanda appealed to the ethnic Newars and citizens of Kathmandu to join the protests, but some neighborhoods have started organizing retaliatory groups. Around Sanepa, they have declared neighborhoods "Maoist-prohibited zones," going so far as to stop tankers carrying drinking water from passing through the streets. I doubt if anyone is offering protesters drinking water or sanitary facilities out of spontaneous support for the cause.

Maoist rhetoric is becoming less and less precise: it is no longer possible to tell exactly why these protests are happening. It is clear that a "prince" is missing from the picture, someone who could bend the wills of lesser minions and forge a strong unity. GPK seems to have done that the last time the Maoists declared an "indefinite" strike. This time around, it seems aimed only at toppling the government, establishing Prachanda as the next PM, not including any other political party in the government.

How this will help the Maoists draft and pass a constitution that is favorable to them is opaque to me. Unless, through some authoritarian act, the Maoists draft a constitution all on their own and pass it without requiring the President--who is the protector of the Interim Constitution, and whose mandate is to ensure that the next constitution gets written under existing laws--to sign it off.

Because, whenever the Maoists go to the CA to pass even the phrasing of the prologue to the constitution, they will need broad support from many other parties.

Most other parties do not believe the Maoist party is a democratic party. It has never agreed to make the fundamental gesture of making YCL into a civilian organization, instead of the semi-militant organization that it is now.

It has never agreed to stop its donation drives, which are very thinly-disguised extortion schemes. If the party were to be billed for the expenses it has legitimately accrued over the past week by putting its cadres up in various avenues, I am sure it would add up to a mind-boggling amount.

That, is also a measure of their extortion of private citizens, and their looting of the state coffers.

I think the most instructive "un-gluing" of the party and the people happened in Pokhara, where Maoists beat up sand-mine workers who support the Maoist party for working during the bandh. The workers then beat the Maoists right back. If the Party can't sell this "revolution" to its basest of the base, there is something fundamentally wrong with its PR operation. Or, of its sense of purpose. They are not coming forward with their true intention: to be in power when shit starts rolling downhill, and to force a particular character into the new constitution.

Which is what frustrates me more than anything else. For anyone who gives it any thought, most of the stuff the Party will want in the constitution is exactly what Nepal needs. But the likes of Prachanda can't stop there: they will try to make it an opportunity to cement themselves into it.

Which, in this day and age, is very dumb. Very self-destructive.

It is far more profitable for any political group to build self-redundancy into any articulation of a vision for public service, but then go on to earn the sort of merit that allows people to imagine that the political group is indispensable.

Something like what the "Civil Society" managed during the revolution of 2006.

Violence

No matter how much the Maoist party try to avoid violence during their protests, it isn't a sustainable proposition: if you add hundreds of thousands of people to Kathmandu, and at the exact same time also cut off all means that bring food into the valley, something is going to give at some point. On one hand, their rural cadres need to return home as soon as possible because it has started raining, and therefore is the perfect time to sow maize corn; on the other hand, hundreds of thousands of laborers in Kathmandu are dismayed that their livelihood has been temporarily held hostage by the Maoists.

Last night, in Gongabu, Maoist demonstrators tried to capture and burn a motorcycle that had ventured out at 6:30 PM. At its rally in Khula Manch, the Maoist leadership had said it would "grant" the people the freedom to go out to shop for essentials between 6 PM and 8 PM. The motorcycle owner must have been operating under the impression that he was free to ride out between 6 PM and 8 PM. The police had to intervene. 5 rounds of warning shots were fired into the air.

Today, there have been three separate incidents where Newars of certain enclaves around the city have beaten up men, specifying the reason: they are YCL members. This is purely hatred, mob becoming a vigilante mob. In the evening, thousands of YCL cadres will return to their designated dormitories, passing through the area where the incidents have occurred [serious enough injuries were sustained that at least one person had to be taken to the Neuro-Hospital in Maharajgunj], and confrontations are very much possible.

You can't have a "revolution" whose most salient feature is a stalemate. And, for a party that has unabashedly used violence to get its way, it is hypocritical to insist that it will refrain from violence.

There must be rancor among the ranks because a lot have chosen to abandon the revolution to tend to their farming necessities. There is no support from Kathmandu inhabitants: this fact is very easily read in the vacant and incurious gaze that meets the protesters each evening as locals crowd around shops, waiting to open them or for them to open.

The leaders had better reach an agreement quickly. It is specially beneficial for the Maoists, because, if there is violence on a large scale from the locals towards the Maoists, the leaders will lose face.