IN the context of the recent declaration of emergency, a suspension of the constitution and the assumption of all executive powers by the monarch, attention has once again focused on the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. Most analysts, particularly foreign, have tended to treat the Maoists as terrorists, insufficiently appreciating the social conditions which have given rise to a range of social movements from below.
The situation has become more complex since multiparty democracy, theoretically expected to provide space for legitimate ventilation of grievances and increase participation in governance, is seen by the more marginalized strata as a failure. Now with even this avenue blocked, we are likely to experience an escalation in extra-parliamentary protest. This brief note explores links between the political economy of the Nepali state and the growth of radical social movements for transformation.
The basic economic foundation of Nepalese society is agriculture; more than 81% of the labour force is engaged in agriculture and close to 90% of Nepalese people live in rural areas. The dominance of agriculture also appears in the accumulation process, though the productive forces in Nepalese agriculture are backward and primitive. It is still the case that nearly 99% of the total investment in Nepalese agriculture is made in land, human and animal labour and primitive equipment and only 1% in modern means of production.
Nepalese agrarian production relations are complex. Alongside pre-feudal societies such as Chepang, Raute and Kusunda there are sophisticated capitalist farmers who farm for the market and employ agricultural wage labour, albeit in small numbers. Despite major political changes since the overthrow of the Ranas, the basic structure of the rural political economy, of western Nepal (at least), remains surprisingly unchanged in terms of the continuing survival of what might be termed a ‘middle peasantry' – exposing a significant proportion of rural people to acute livelihood and rights vulnerabilities. Equally, Nepalese political economy remains under- developed and slow moving (stagnant), constrained both from within by archaic and repressive sociopolitical structures and from outside by its particular relationship with India through which global forces are mediated. It is unlikely that economic growth in itself will be sufficient to significantly reduce vulnerabilities.
Though the abolition of Birta system in 1959 and subsequent introduction of the Land Reform Act 1964 reduced big landholding, some large absentee landowners still covertly hold large areas of land. These landowners are likely to be senior government officials, members of the Rana nobility and other representatives of upper castes whose land claims date back to the past. This is more prominent in the terai and less in the hill and mountain regions. Around 8% of Nepalese are totally landless and of those who have land, 65% are poor peasants owning only 10% of land. In the terai, big landlords, owning more than 10 hectares each, control more than half the land.
This data suggests that the main impulse behind social movements in rural Nepal is lack of ownership of land and secure land titles by a significant, but not overwhelming, group of rural people. It is these groups who are the focus of the various social movements. But they are not a majority, which makes mobilisation a special challenge, despite the fact that overall control over land is concentrated in the hands of a small minority.
Nepalese agrarian production relations can be broadly classified as peasant, semi-feudal and capitalist forms of production. Since the vast majority are peasants who own means of production such as land, farm animals and farm implements, peasant forms of production relation are central to understanding class relations and the political economy of Nepal. They are primarily ‘owner-cultivators', tenant and tenant-cum-owner cultivators who own small pieces of land, produce for their own consumption and depend largely on family or exchange labour, parma , within their own communities. However, in some cases they employ occasional and permanent labourers such as haliya , kamaiyas and haruwas . They maintain patron-client relationships with various occupational castes such as blacksmiths, tailors and sometimes shoemakers. The totally landless poor, whose number is small in rural Nepal, largely depend on wage labour, though tenancy and share cropping may also figure in their livelihoods.
Semi-feudal relations still play a significant role in the underdevelopment of Nepalese agriculture and economy of the country. Nearly two-thirds of those who are wholly tenants till the land on a sharecropping basis, with the rest operating on fixed rent, either cash or kind, and other tenurial arrangements. Most tenants are forced to till larger landowners' land and the surplus is not accumulated and reinvested as capitalist profit. They work for bare subsistence family needs. Further, the vulnerable people who gain access to some land can still be tied to landowners through usury and bonded labour conditions.
Capitalist production relations in Nepal are based on the appropriation of surplus labour employed as causal and wage labour. However, the number of people involved in capitalist production relations producing primarily for the markets is very small. The Golchha, Dugar, Chaudhary and Jyoti groups and some members of the royal family are a few examples of employers engaged in such relations. They manage big commercial farms and tea estates, grow off-season vegetables and run cut-flower businesses exclusively for the market, employing once, now displaced, occupational castes who are unable to earn their livelihood in their traditional occupations. In the terai, they also employ a large number of migrant Indian labourers who enter Nepal in the hope of illegally settling down.
In Nepal, the upper level leadership of all the political parties, including the Communists, is dominated for the most part by the landed class. This landed gentry not only controls politics and bureaucracy but also industries such as hotels, tourism, carpets, garments and trade. Though some surplus from agriculture is invested in trade and industry by the ruling elites, they have not been able to establish themselves as an independent national bourgeoisie. They are far more involved in the expansion of international capitalism through the promotion of foreign industrial capital. In other words, they serve not the interest of Nepalese people and nation, but the transnational corporate regime as traders, businessmen, industrialists and commission agents. In brief, Nepalese merchant capital has been transformed into comprador capital instead of developing into national industrial capital and thus does not play a progressive social role.
In the popular political debates on state development strategies, the CPN (UML), argues that the semi-feudal and semi-colonial nature of exploitation and oppression in Nepalese society has been hindering the progress and prosperity of the people and the country. Despite several changes in the politics of the country, the fundamental aspects of the national economic, social and cultural situation has not significantly changed. Similarly, the CPN (Maoist) too sees Nepal as a semi-feudal and semi-colonial state and a country that is fettered by various semi-colonial unequal treaties with foreign powers (particularly India). Irrespective of the living standard of the family or the level of adoption of modern amenities, the mentality of the upper social classes continues to be feudal. As a result, the present form of the state has increasingly failed to manage these multifarious class, national and other contradictions within the ambit of its old structure.
Therefore, it can be said that there is a structural contradiction between the well-being of the general masses of people and feudalism and comprador capitalism dominating social dynamics in Nepal. The present crisis-ridden conditions can be understood as the development of contradictions between the exploitation and oppression of the people by the state machinery under the control of feudal, comprador and bureaucratic capitalist classes and the continued struggle of the people.
Throughout its modern history, the Nepalese people have struggled against the state. For example, they fought against the 104 years of Rana autocracy (1846-1950), the so called multiparty system (1950-1959), partyless panchayat (1960-1990) and the current multiparty system under a constitutional monarchy. Despite political changes in 1951, 1960 and 1990, the basic structure of the state has remained unchanged. The role of the state has been to maintain internal security and appropriate the surplus produced by peasants and other social classes in the form of taxes to maintain the state apparatus and continued control of the ruling classes.
Even after the major political changes of 1990, an aristocracy continued to control national politics and state affairs, with major landowners and comprador bourgeoisie dominating the higher ranks of police, military and bureaucracy. This is because as the class controlling large amounts of land, it could afford better education and nepotistically access the political power of the state. It can be said that ordinary people in Nepal never had an opportunity to become thalu or thulo manchhe even after the restoration of multiparty democracy.
The political structure established as an outcome of the 1990s democratic movement also failed to ensure a sharing of power and resources among ordinary people. The Janastha , a vernacular weekly (4 February 2000) stated that 60% of the former pancha , who ruled Nepal for 30 years under the autocratic panchayat prior to 1990, had joined Nepali Congress, the ruling party of Nepal, 20% joined the CPN (UML), ML and Sadbhawana parties with the rest in the Rastria Prajatantrik Party.
According to the new constitution, the three key organs of the Nepali state are the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. In theory, the executive power of the kingdom of Nepal is vested in the Council of Ministers and all functions of the king and royal palace, except those to be discharged by him, should be carried out with the advice and consent of the council of ministers through the prime minister. However, in practice the king still holds the key to power in the country as the chief of the military. He appoints the leader of the majority parliamentary party in the House of Representatives as prime minister and forms a council of ministers under his chairmanship.
The legislature of Nepal consists of the king, the House of Representatives and the National Assembly called the Parliament. There are 205 members in the HoR elected from each district constituency on the basis of direct voting. The National Assembly, sometimes known as the ‘Upper House' consists of 60 members, including 10 members nominated by the king. The experience of the last 10 years has been that most candidates for the parliamentary election are selected by party bosses and party bureaucrats as per the interests of the party ‘sponsors' and thus show little practical accountability to the people who elect them.
The judiciary consists of the Supreme Court, appellate court and the district courts. The king appoints the Chief Justice on the recommendation of the Constitutional Council and the judges of the Supreme Court on the recommendation of the Judicial Council. However, most judges are sons and daughters of big landowners and merchants and other ruling elites. They are not only representatives of the upper class of Nepalese society but also upper caste, mainly Brahmins, Chhetries and Newars. Occasionally, they are publicly criticised for their proximity to mainstream political parties and corruption.
The state machinery, which movements from below encounter at the district and village levels, consists of the chief district officer, district development committee (DDC), village development committee (VDC), and the police and military. The chief district officer is also responsible for overall coordination of peace and security of the district since he or she is also chief of police and military at the district level. However, in most cases, they receive direct instruction from the Ministry of Home and Police Headquarters in case of police and Ministry of Defence and Royal Palace and Military Headquarters in the case of the Royal Nepal Army. In other words, they represent the ruling class at the district and village level.
Though most junior police and military officials are sons and daughters of poor and oppressed middle peasantry, senior officials of the military and police are usually related to the members of the royal family and belong to the upper castes such as Rana, Shah and Thakuri. Those who are loyal to the ruling elites are sent to the accessible urban centres and lucrative places for corruption and bribery. But those without ‘connections' are packed off to more problematic sites such as Maoist insurgency areas, where killing and violence are an everyday phenomenon. Therefore, it can be said that the police officials killed in the Maoist insurgency come from poor and oppressed social classes who are themselves already exploited by their own bureaucracy. This could be one reason why the Maoists were so easily able to defeat the police in remoter villages.
Another section of the state apparatus that rural social movement confront is the district forest office. In the name of protecting forests, aided by police and military, they are often involved in the eviction and exploitation of landless settlers, bonded labour and other poor peasants whose livelihood depends upon forest products and resources. They engage in logging forest products in partnership with other rural elites and their accomplices.
The DDCs and VDCs are elected government bodies, responsible for the social welfare and local development in their respective constituencies. Baring a few DDCs and VDCs, where more progressive and left village level activists are elected, most officials are rural elites, relatively large landowners and village money lenders, who exploit landless and bonded labour and other rural proletariat. As a result, in the struggle for land rights and movements against other forms of exploitation, these officials usually side with the police, military and landowners.
There is widespread agreement that the entire system is corrupt, and ordinary people have little hope from the state machinery for ensuring equity, justice and sustainable rural livelihoods. Overall the state appears incompetent to do anything about combating corruption, since the state machinery itself is engulfed by corruption and its important actors sustain themselves through alliances with criminal elements of different kinds.
In addition to state machinery, NGOs and INGOs are also active in the Nepalese socioeconomic and political lives. Successful NGOs in Nepal have organised communities into groups for self-help and self-development that help build solidarity among and empower community members. Until 1990, the panchayat system government discouraged independent and autonomous NGOs. However, after the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990, the number of NGOs significantly increased, from 10 in 1960, to 37 in 1977, 193 in 1989, and to 10,555 in April 2000.
It needs to be admitted that few NGOs are active in socioeconomic development, a vast majority just holding legal status. Many ‘inactive' NGOs are initiated by senior politicians and government bureaucrats in order to secure foreign funds for their own vested interest rather than deal with socioeconomic and political challenges. Those active in the remote villages for building or supporting people's organizations rarely enjoy good relations with the state machinery and are seen as competitors rather than playing a complementary role in socioeconomic development. Despite their limited numbers, these NGOs have worked in favour of struggles from below and against the state-led repression of the rural social movement.
Sometimes INGOs, UN agencies and donors such as USAID and DFID have taken an interest in improving some aspects of human rights and social justice in Nepal. Nevertheless, their overall role has been marked by ( i ) a lack of influence on poverty alleviation schemes, ( ii ) target failure, ( iii ) unsustainability of projects and ( iv ) corruption. Their efforts are seen as donor-driven and supply-led, implemented without a proper understanding of the forces that create and perpetuate poverty and injustice in Nepal. Nevertheless USAID pressure on the Nepal government to implement land reforms in the 1960s and 1970s did help to minimise the land holding gap between rich and poor peasants. In contrast, USAID also assisted the development of the public school system, formally modelled on the American colleges of education and agricultural extension, which had little relevance to the experience and needs of the people. The programme devalued local knowledge and culture and taught young people, most of them farmers, to despise farming and rural life.
Donor assisted NGOs are often considered as agents that promote globalization and the opening up of the Nepalese economy and market in the interest of global financial regimes. Most work more closely with the state machinery rather than the people and members of the emerging civil societies. Although most foreign aid to Nepal poured in to promote human rights and democracy, it failed to ensure either, even as Nepal became dependent on foreign aid even to meet its basic annual expenditure. Accounting for more than 60% of the development budget, foreign aid, constitutes a major instrument to escape the low income, poor savings and low investment trap. Further, international financial institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and Asian Development Bank are involved in financing several developmental initiatives which, though meant to reduce poverty, have not only failed to achieve their declared objectives but contributed to a growth in state-led corruption and indebtedness, as also growing inequalities.
But more than these donors and INGOs, it is the role of India that is significant in shaping political and economic conditions. In every major political change – 1846, 1950 or 1990 – India's role was central. For example, it is widely believed that the autocratic Rana regime received support from British-India, the Nepali Congress-led movement against the Rana regime in 1950 was supported by independent India, and the political change of 1990s was also influenced by major political forces in India.
Somewhat ironically, different social movements, including the ongoing Maoist ‘people's war', have taken shelter in India, training their activists to fight for democracy and human rights in Nepal. Commenting on the role of the Indian state in the ongoing Maoist people's war, the president of Nepali Congress publicly charged that the Indian state was providing shelter to Maoist rebels. In response, the Indian government decided to deploy more than 10,000 Indian soldiers along the Nepal-India border to discourage the Maoists and their activities on Indian soil. This act definitely influenced the current strategy of CPN (Maoist) to deepen the pace of their struggle.
India is not only politically influential but also dominant in the country's finance and trade. More than one-third (35%) of foreign direct investment originates from India, followed by the USA (18%). Not surprisingly, Bhattarai, a senior CPN (Maoist) leader, writes that the Nepalese comprador class, in total alignment with Indian expansionism, finds it more fruitful to invest in foreign trade or to work as agents for foreign capital rather than develop national industrial capitalism. Similarly, the CPN-UML too maintains that Nepal is a market for Indian capitalists to invest, exploit and make profit and that India exercises more control in Nepal than any other South Asian country. Therefore, India's role is crucial not only in shaping the socioeconomic and political agenda but equally in ensuring the success or failure of various movements from below.
This brief note attempts to analyse the social and political environment in which the various social movements, including the Maoist struggle, have emerged. It is Nepal's misfortune that despite a popular struggle that helped usher in multiparty democracy in 1990, the various governments failed to meet the aspirations of the people and handle the deep-seated social contradictions. This is true not only of the Nepali Congress but also the ‘left-wing' UML which ruled for a brief period in 1995. No wonder the broad masses of the people seem to have lost faith in mainstream political parties. It is this combined failure of both the state and political parties which explains the growing hold of radical social movements from below.
