-Gyaneshwar Agrahari

This is the image of Adwait Marg near Bagbazar in Kathmandu, Nepal. Since Nepal is one of the favorite destinations of tourists from all around the world, one who views this image will definitely assume that the taxis are waiting for visitors to take them to different locations of the Kathmandu valley, but this prediction is far from the reality. These taxis are waiting for common Nepalese people who are heading towards the Tribhuvan International Airport leaving their friends and families.

Nepal is an agricultural country, where most of the people follow substantial farming. The nation has not progressed enough in manufacturing and mining sectors despite healthy availability of natural resources. Tourism sector hasn’t expanded to every corner of the country; it is only centralized in few well- known places like Pokhara, Lumbini, Mustang, Chitwan, etc. Jobs offering huge payments are limited to a small group of people. Even highly educated people do not get jobs per their qualifications. Hence, the people, especially of age 18-40, move to other countries in search of jobs.

I snapped this picture while I was walking in a cool morning in this area. Every day, I see 10- 12 people keeping their luggage and heading towards the airport. The pavements are filled with their relatives and friends who are there to wish them for happy journey. Many agents, who fill their pockets with big money because of this trend of foreign employment, have settled in and around the area. The agents easily trap the common people who desperately wants to earn a large remuneration with their tempting offers and cajoling words.

According to statistics of Department of Foreign Employment, 399,406 people left Nepal for jobs (fiscal year 2072/73). More than half of the households in Nepal have at least one person in any foreign country. Traditionally, India has been the most favorite destination for Nepalese people but in recent years, countries like South Korea, UAE, Qatar, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, have attracted many highly skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled manpower of Nepal. The newest way of involving in foreign employment is getting a student visa of countries which provide permanent residence easily. Many of Nepalese students go to countries like Australia for higher education but find jobs for them and shift their focus from studying to earning money

According to the World Bank report, personal remittance contributed 31.3 percent of total GDP of Nepal in 2016, which is the highest in the world in terms of remittance’s portion in national GDP. This is the reason remittance is considered as the vertebral column of Nepal’s economy; however, there is no any noticeable benefit for the nation’s infrastructure development. The money the Nepalese workers send from other countries is mostly consumed in household necessities by their families. The United Nations COMTRADE data base of 2015 said that Nepal expended 488.49 million US Dollar just on importing electronic items. According to the CEIC Data, there is a growth of 56.7% in the motor vehicle sales in Nepal in 2016 despite the government has levied extremely huge customs on imported vehicles. These statistics clearly show that the remittance in our country is consumed in luxurious goods rather than in productive sectors like agriculture, industries and business. Moreover, people have adopted new methods of transiting cash in form of gold and other valuable items. In this case, the government does not get its share from the remittance.

The government has not still realized that foreign employment neither can be be the key to financial revolution of the country nor be the permanent solution of Nepalese people’s survival. The biggest reason behind it is that foreign employment heavily depends on political situation of the nations, where Nepalese go for work. The latest example is Qatar Crisis: Saudi Arabia and its seven Arab allies cut diplomatic relations with Qatar blaming Qatar to fund terrorism and have strong connections with Iran: Saudi Arab’s biggest rival. Because of this restrictions on Qatar, jobs of 400,000 Nepalese were in danger; however, Qatar maintained its internal economy due to assistance of Turkey and Iran and thus our people did not lost their jobs. Our government does not have any backups for its people, if any catastrophic incident like Qatar crisis happens again in the future. Moreover, the developed nations have already developed schemes at a massive scale to replace human manpower with robots which will directly affect the employment rates in coming years. In such circumstances, Nepalese people have to return their homeland, where the government possibly will be welcoming them with ‘No Vacancy” posters.

Nevertheless, only the Nepal government can not be blamed for everything. One of the biggest factor behind big number people leaving our country is their mindset. Foreign employment actually upgraded the standard of living of Nepalese people extensively; the dream of bagging a luxurious lifestyle for themselves and their family members drives common Nepalese people to be ” slaves of the Sheikhs.” In place of starting initiatives from the experience they have gained from their jobs, Nepalese people not only work for lifetime in foreign countries but also encourage their children to follow their footsteps. A common concept has been promoted among everyone that foreign employment is the one and only alternative for their progress. Unless this misconception is not eradicated, Nepalese people will continue to move to other nations in search of employment.

  –Ajit Bhatta

‘Put an alarm of 5’o clock in the morning and get to bed’. This is a part of our daily routine. And what happens ? Every morning the alarm bell rings and either we snooze it or stop it. We think it disturbed our sleep but never realize it was a morning greet and reconciliation of our day task .Instead of waking up at the mean time, we procrastinate ourselves for few more minutes to an hour. We lose our intuition and obligations for a while.  That’s a common part we humans do and realize we wasted some few minutes or even an hour sleeping but  we insist, ‘it’s alright’ . We have so many faults in our system but it’s hard to alleviate each and every vicious characters of our humankind .We either can’t think of all positivity in human beings , because that’s the common principle of human beings i.e.  making mistakes and realizing it.  And no human can succeed without making mistakes.

So, mistake was never crime nor is or will be. However, unfortunately we are guided my some wrong principles .But its mandatory to keep in mind that anything that guides us to the following place won’t get us to the leading place because till date we are living a life full of support and guidance and the time comes when we need to discover our callings and construct the way to our destiny by ourselves. The main point, herein, to be discussed is that , are we good to be great ? We are all dependent on technologies and virtual intelligence . We know we have got extreme support and facilitation from these revolutions but  we continuously question their significance. Our system never cares for these things. Time moves on , technology advances and human beings are still on same guidelines and path , i.e. taking advantage and making ill action .The reference is only for showing the common mistakes  human beings commit, but it’s not how we desire. We have all that it takes, a classy technology , supportive families and a beautiful mind . But we are draining such beautiful mind every time an opportunity comes. We must realize that our goals and vision are limited within this earth and time is also limited within the same earth , There’s no any difference between time and the actions we do .

The lacking is that , we perceive time as opportunity for the future or as future reference . We never realize that what we can do in the future is available right at the moment . One thing that most of all should think of is ”  We don’t need to have a university degree to be a person of our dream  , the only way we need to discover ourselves is the potential that’s hiding beneath us until the time we are procrastinating ourselves ” . We hardly have small portion to the life goals and career and the dreams we were meant to fulfill. We must realize , the actions are to be done right now to achieve the greatest goal we desire and that’s the only way we can say we are good enough to be the greatest person of our dream.

BSW Third year

The Times International College

-Santosh Gautam

Sustainable promotion of quality of life of the general public should be the ultimate objective of political parties.  It can be possible if the leaders keep people at the center of politics and chalk out plans with strategic vision, mission and goals with respect to the changing socio political and ecological context of the world. Now the constitution has been promulgated through a richly inclusive and representative constituent assembly and is in the process of implementation. Unrest and agitation have affected the lives of Terai and the unannounced blockade by India has caused serious havoc in the lives of the Nepalese .  Strong political will power, vision and search for viable alternatives can contribute towards the long lasting solution to these problems.The issues of the state restructuring and institutionalization of constitutional provinces have been hard nuts to crack for the existing political parties. The myopic leaders of majority of the political parties are found to be basically guided by their egocentric interests. The nation or the people have not been the matters of top priority for them. The pitiable condition of our country despite being rich in natural resources and cultural heritages is, without shadow of doubt, because of incompetent and corrupt leaders.

For long lasting improvement in the quality of lives of the people according to their changing aspirations and to develop our self dependency we need to develop strong, sustainable and contextualized development plans.  At this sociopolitical juncture the analysis of some successful models of development in our context will be useful to pave our future path.

Nordic model is a developmental model incorporating a competitive capitalism and a smooth provision for the wellbeing of the general public. In other words it is an amalgamation of free market economy with a welfare state. Nordic model insists on the need of political stability for economic growth and it believes that political stability can be achieved through different social pacts and agreements but not through any sort of tyrannical or authoritative imposition of power. In Nepal too owing to the lack of political stability the pace of developmental activities has been slow. Hence political stability in the nation and different pacts and agreements in the societies are necessary in order to increase the pace of development in every nook and corner of the country.

According to the Nordic model the state shoulders not only regulatory responsibilities but also assumes developmental and entrepreneurial roles. Conventionally Nepal has been carrying out regulatory activities and has been formulating and implementing periodic and annual developmental plans and policies. However as the majority of the projects are donor driven and have been running under project based approaches Nepal has failed to achieve desired outcomes. Similarly despite having a lot more to do to keep pace with the socio economic and technological advancements in the world  there is very limited entrepreneurial intervention of the government that is necessary for strong productivity and higher well being of the people. Following are some features of Nordic Model and their implications in Nepal.

Social Capitalism

The welfare state envisaged by the Nordic model was based on reformist ideology focused on keeping the social order and stability intact. One of its important features is that it focuses on the need to persuade labor to sacrifice some of the gains in productivity in exchange for increased accumulation and greater employment provided that the increase of profit does not unjustly go to the capitalist only. There is the need to accelerate industrial development in Nepal but at the same time social order and stability are to be kept intact. It is necessary to ensure the access of all the people irrespective of caste, religion, ethnicity and class to employment opportunities and to reduce the increasing gulf between the rich and the poor.

Budgetary Intervention for Stabilization

Nordic model advocated the strong budgetary intervention of the government for the generation of optimum mass employment.  This sort of intervention can help to combat unemployment and to reduce increasing brain drain, the drain of labor force and different social evils in Nepal.

Intervention in the Credit Market

Nordic model talks about the provision of controlling the interest rates to create conducive environment for the establishment and growth of industries. Nepal too needs to maintain easy and low interest loan for the investment in industrial sector through suitable monetary and financial policies.

Supportive Environment towards Private Enterprises

Though the model has accepted the state as an important actor of national business it does not advocate large scale nationalization. Even under a socialist government Sweden was able to provide conducive environment for largest multinational enterprises of the world. In the present context of globalization as Nepal has been facing the lack of resources for investment it needs to create such environment. Security for foreign investment, strong legal provision to attract foreign and multinational entrepreneurs can support to revitalize the national economy of our country by generating mass employment and by increasing the per capita income of the country.

Finally

At present Nepal is undergoing a political transition and is in the process of establishing a stable political and governance system so as to speed up the process of development. At this it can be worthwhile to analyze various successful development models of the world and evaluate the possibility of using them in the geopolitical context of our country. Nordic Model has some more remarkable features like the provision of social insurance, social welfare and amicable and sustainable conflict management, balanced and credible role of the state, labor market intervention for higher productivity and mobility of the labor force and stopping labor drain, removal of domestic restrictions on trade, reforms of company law and banking legislations, harmonious relationship between the employer and the employed etc.

In spite of some dissatisfactions and conflicts promulgation of constitution can be regarded as a political success but if the political changes are not accompanied by the plans to bring about a sustainable change in the quality of lives of people through effective developmental plans and policies they can be lame. Among the most successful models of development of the world Nordic model is worth considering in the context of Nepal.

However an important thing to be taken into consideration is our peculiar socioeconomic realities. As no size fits all  instead of trying to adopt any successful models of development it is necessary to develop our own models of development learning lessons from different successful ones.