March 21st, 2014
Policy dualism is the root cause of social inequality in Nepal. The State does not command people’s trust as it speaks often of ‘absolute equality’ but resorts to ‘unequal equality’ in practice. Studies of the National Bank and Central Bureau of Statistics show that, barring the period of 1996, the main beneficiaries of per capita national income have often been the middle-class (50%) and high-class (10%). The statistics of 2011 shows a further decline of the poor in the share of national income from what it was (12.8%) in 1977.
Ours is a post-peasant society now. It is a society in transition. As the University of Amsterdam Professor Bremen says, our social development does not follow the process of 19th and 20th century Europe. A huge group of workers has moved away from agriculture, but has not been an industrial labour force yet. Neither has it been able to protect itself in a permanent employment of this or that sector of economy.
Over 50 thousand Nepali people took to the streets daily for 19daysin April 2006. These were the people trapped between royal stratagems and a violent conflict. They wanted the movement to settle all pending issues that brought them to the trap, and free the future generation from the obligation to take to the streets again to fight any form of violence on any pretext. The sea of people in the streets was not a small surprise.
And, it happened as expected. Those in the armed conflict laid down their arms, and those advocating for the so-called constitutional monarchy and traditional form of multiparty democracy were ready to throw the monarchy in the garbage of history. The zeal of youth activists and the wisdom of elderly leaders directed the restored House of Representatives to suspend the monarchy. It was an unprecedented milestone in the political history of our country.
We named this people’s movement a Rhododendron Revolution, and the emerging system of governance a lokatantra. We wanted lokatantra to be a system more inclusive, more encompassing and more representative than democracy. At a time when an old social order was crumbling away and a new one yet to emerge, lokatantra was expected to create momentum for structural transformation of Nepali society.
Then began a wave of change! Nepal was declared a secular state. The unitary system of governance changed, in principle, into a federal system and a Constituent Assembly (CA) was elected with representatives of all castes/ethnicities, genders, regions and communities. The CA carried a mandate to declare Nepal a republic at its first sitting, and write a new constitution within two years thereby institutionalising the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. The new constitution was also needed to conclude political transition, take the peace process to a logical end address underlying causes and triggers of the armed conflict that raged on Nepal for a decade between 1996 and 2006.
More>> Trade Union movement before and after Rhododendron revolution