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#213 10 - 16 September 2004 20 pages Rs 25 KANAK MANI DIXIT in NEW DELHI Weekly Internet Poll # 153 Q. Was Girija Prasad Koirala justified in calling for a Valley shutdown on Sunday? hen Prime Minister Sher W Bahadur Deuba alighted in The Delhi run Delhi with wife Arzu, son Jaiveer Singh and five ministers in tow, the formal agenda seemed Deuba's 72-member entourage settles down for a rather sparse for a four day Total votes:2,120 ‘working visit’. leisurely four-day visit Weekly Internet Poll # 154. To vote go to: www.nepalitimes.com Even though everyone’s focus Q. Did state security respond adequately was on India’s role vis-à-vis the during the riots of 1 September. Maoist insurgency, the agreements signed Thursday were on relatively mundane subjects like sharing weather reports, the Raxaul to Amlekhganj pipeline and cultural exchanges. Deuba had told the press before his departure from Kathmandu that resolving the Maoist problem was his “prime agenda”. But there is no one in the 72-member all-male delega- tion from the home or defence ministries. The prime minister is holding the cards close to his chest, indicating either poor preparation (the suspicion of many) or lack of confidence to go it alone with the Indian leaders. Some in the Kathmandu GAUTAM DAHAL cognoscenti had hoped Deuba The Indian State Minister for External Affairs E Ahmed welcomes Deuba Jr, Arzu and Deuba Sr in New Delhi on Wednesday. would use his trip to pressurise New Delhi into agreeing to UN good Indian Oil Corporation was senior Indian official was reported to stance after their recent plenum has offices vis-à-vis the Maoist issue. But peremptorily hitting Nepal with a have said this was a “most unwanted” added to the challenge for New Minister for State for Foreign Affairs petroleum tax. “This was a shocking visit by a Nepali prime minister, but Delhi. A hardline rebel faction Prakash Sharan Mahat ruled it out. announcement, as we could never HMG had insisted on it. Ambassador seems to have pushed through the “This is an internal problem of afford it,” said the NOC Executive Karna Dhoj Adhikari pooh-phooed new aggressive posture, lambasting Nepal which can be tackled without Chairman Upendra Koirala, also in this: “It is an official trip at the the ‘reactionary Indian ruling class’ the help of third parties,” he said. the entourage. South Block rushed inivitation of the Indian prime for its ‘expansionist and Mahat is also quick to quash into damage control mode, and the minister. Everything is as it should interventionist’ designs on Nepal. speculation that Deuba might give first thing Foreign Minister Natwar be.” This either reflects the Maoists’ unreasonable concessions to Singh did when he met the Deuba A New Delhi media outlet ability now to be based entirely India on sensitive matters, Thursday was to reassure him on reported Deuba was in Delhi to ‘seek within Nepal, and/ including those which would that score. Joint Secretary Ranjit legitimacy and support’, a point of or anger at India Editorial p 2 activate Article 126 of the Ray told us: “It was a view probably based on talk in for the capture of Post mortem Constitution for treaties on miscommunication and status quo Kathmandu about how Deuba senior Maoists. natural resources that require ante has been restored on Nepal’s pipped King Gyanendra to the post As one Indian analyst put it: two-thirds majority of parliament. ability to buy its oil from the Raxaul by visiting New Delhi first. “Given the state of political flux in He added there was no plan to depot.” Discussions in closed-door the kingdom, India is willy nilly sign an extradition treaty where Apart from this muddle, there meetings between Deuba and forced to support the king and the questions hinge on third-country remains the question of why Deuba Manmohan Singh, Defence army to tackle the Maoists. We know nationals. is in Delhi for four full days with only Minister Pranab Mukherjee and this will hurt democracy in the long The visit started on a sour one official meeting plus lunch (and Home Minister Shivraj Patil have run, but there is little India can do note even as Deuba was on his no banquet) with Prime Minister reportedly centred on the Maoists. unless political parties band way to Delhi, with news that Manmohan Singh on Thursday. One The dramatic anti-Indian Maoist together and offer a solution.” l 2 EDITORIAL 10 - 16 SEPTEMBER 2004 #213 Published by Himalmedia Pvt Ltd, Chief Editor: Kunda Dixit Desk Editor: Jemima Sherpa Design: Kiran Maharjan Web: Bhushan Shilpakar Advertising: Sunaina Shah [email protected] Subscription: Anil Karki, [email protected] Double-digit lumpenisation Sanchaya Kosh Building, Block A-4th Floor, Lalitpur GPO Box 7251, Kathmandu, Nepal Tel: 01-5543333-6, Fax: 01-5521013 [email protected], www.nepalitimes.com Printed at Jagadamba Press, Hatiban: 01-5547018 What plagues the national lumpen economy plagues hydropower too POST MORTEM arly morning last the madness. Broken glass and profits from this as well as aid E Wednesday, the first sign furniture were raining down on industry related trade were ante wrote in his Inferno that the deepest layers of hell are reserved for of trouble reached the narrow streets of directed towards land D those who remain neutral in times of moral turpitude. In Central Europe, Pokhara: airlines were Buddhanagar to the cheers of a speculation that has resulted in there is a saying: ‘If all those around you are crooks and you remain cancelling flights. I had to reach frenzied mob. This flood plain of the encroachment of public silent you, too, become a crook.’ Kathmandu to talk the next day the Bagmati used to be green space and the legalised A week after the unprecedented communally-tinged riots in Kathmandu, there are certain inescapable truths. The original anger may have been about whether hydropower could fields. Now it is a characterless stealing of land belonging to spontaneous, but there was nothing spontaneous about Wednesday’s mosque accelerate a double-digit growth neighbourhoodone of temple trusts. Prospering attack. If it was an impulsive explosion of anger, we would have seen it erupt in Nepal, so I scrambled onto Kathmandus symbols of alongside were a semi- first in Nepalganj. It didn’t. In fact, Nepalganj didn’t even need a curfew. the first plane available. From individualism run amok. criminalised land management Then there was the systematic ransacking of recruitment agencies. In eight Bagmati degraded from a river to bureaucracy and a house hours, more than 150 agencies were gutted, their records destroyed. Such house-to-house arson is never spontaneous as we have seen in pogroms in New a sewer during the same period construction industry catering Delhi and Colombo. The clue to culprits is to hunt for motive. Aside from rival GUEST COLUMN that the Valley lost its old to a rural population that was fly-by-night manpower companies, the only beneficiaries were those who want Dipak Gaywali charm. uprooting itself to be closer to to wreck the country’s economy and spread anarchy. Marxian analysis where jobs and schools for their The media is a double-edged sword, and we must take a part of the blame. the air, Kathmandu looked like a distinguishes two types of children were located. The inflammatory phone-in interviews on Tuesday night over FM, some even inciting Nepalis to take revenge, were grossly irresponsible. As it turned out, the city of smokestacks. The security proletariats: the wage earning In the 1980s and 1990s, this media itself became a target of the mobs for advocating restraint. guards at the airport warned us workers in the formal sector and semi-underground capital But by far the most negligent and mysterious lapse was the outright refusal that even army trucks had to the lumpen, a class of uprooted moved into carpets, garments, of state security to get involved in quelling the riots (see p 10). The government return from Tinkune, unable to flotsam dispossessed of its mini-buses, three-wheelers, did not take the abduction of Nepalis seriously enough soon enough. When they negotiate bonfires of furniture social base and prone to dance restaurants and-since were killed, it waited and didn’t anticipate the anger on the streets. It waited too late to take steps to prevent the riots even when everyone knew it was coming. and rampaging crowds. criminality or vandalism. In 1997 when transaction costs of And when Muslims shops were being ransacked, mosques burnt, airline offices I decided to walk, and coming to terms with passport acquisition came down looted and media houses attacked state security just watched from the walked right into the heart of capitalism, many of the with its decentralised issuing sidelines. Who didn’t give the order enlightened non-western in district headquarters-into when Kathmandu was burning? societies such as Meiji Japan or manpower export. Over time, Everything we do is too little too late. The mosque was being guarded Mongkut Thailand managed to rather than formalising by a mine-protected vehicle only after pull their lumpen into an themselves more and more, it was a smouldering wreck, and there ordered and respectable working these industries, encouraged by was an armoured carrier guarding the class. Last week it was clear that a rent-seeking bureaucracy and ashes of Siddhi Bhawan and two we in Nepal have moved in the an aid industry that ignored airline offices housed there a day too late. You don’t need a ventilator when opposite direction with our this structural malaise, the patient is already dead.