Fleeting optimism

After years of trying, Nepal’s Constituent Assembly was supposed to complete a new constitution this week. So the spectacle of elected members hurling chairs across the chamber was dismaying - indeed embarrassing - to many people who watched the TV news.
However, this exhibition is the least of what Nepal’s rulers have to be embarrassed about.
Two factors lie at the heart of the chronic political dysfunction. First is the lust for power, and bitter rivalry, among the small club of party leaders. A big reason that the constitution still hasn’t been written is that they have been far too concerned with toppling a series of governments in order to enjoy another brief stint in office themselves.
The second factor is to do with different visions of Nepali nationalism, specifically the struggle either to replace or preserve a sense of national identity that was given its present form in the 1960s.
Nepal is a country of great diversity, but it has been largely defined in the image of certain communities, and not others. Most power, prestige and wealth is enjoyed by members of the dominant groups.
The current ‘identity politics’ is relatively new, but unlikely to go away. It is important, sensitive, and potentially incendiary – although warnings of mass violence seem greatly exaggerated.
If the new constitution is ever written, how successfully it deals with these issues is likely to be a key factor in the country’s future success, or continuing tribulations.
The immediate origin of the constitution-writing project lies in 2006, when a popular street movement toppled an autocratic royal regime.
A few months later a peace agreement was signed between parliamentary parties and Maoist rebels, ending a decade of leftist insurgency.
It was a moment of optimism. The universal public agenda was for a ‘new Nepal’, in which historic grievances would be addressed and state institutions reformed. There seemed to be broad acknowledgement that many things that were unfair or unsuccessful about the ‘old Nepal’ could be improved by constitutional change.
A well-known Kathmandu intellectual told me that no sooner was the ink dry on the peace agreement than “the elites [started] muttering the parties have given away too much”.
Most of what’s happened since can be read as a concerted fight-back by the many and various beneficiaries of the previous constitution against making significant changes in the new one.
The most contentious issue has been the demand for federalism, which is especially championed by advocates for several historically marginalised communities.
According to them, the centralised state system has entrenched the dominance of upper-caste Hindus, and this can be reversed by a federal system designed to partly reflect the traditional ‘homelands’ of other groups. It is a demand to secure what they believe is their rightful place in the nation.
Opponents warn that such demands threaten the very essence of the country, undermining social harmony, and risking ethnic conflict.
However, while they have opposed this, and sometimes other measures such as a proportional voting system, designed to promote a more ‘inclusive’ state, opponents have typically offered few alternatives to address the reality of discrimination and political ‘exclusion’ faced by many – probably most – Nepalis.
This side of the argument presents itself as being against divisive ‘ethnic’ politics and for ‘national unity’.
Instead of ‘identity based’ federalism it proposes a model based on ‘economic viability’, in which, as critics in turn point out, most provinces would once again be dominated by the same upper-caste communities whose members have long been dominant.
There is, in short, no escaping identity politics, for either side. The debate has been confusing, deliberately misleading, emotional and alarmist. Yet – as they currently stand – the demands of marginalised groups hardly seem extreme.
Excerpted from: ‘Nepal’s fleeting moment of optimism’.
Courtesy: Aljazeera.com