Prachanda and Girija can lead the war in the new battle field if they show strong desire for improvement of the current Nepalese people’s condition.

By Ram Manohar Sah

The success of any revolution depends on the success of the revolutionaries attempt to sell dreams of a better life in the future among the common people. Revolutionaries believe in shaping the condition of any state quickly so as to facilitate better opportunity for citizens in consideration. People buy the idea of better future from revolutionaries in the hope of better fulfillment of needs in the future in a short span of time.

The need of life for each set of people may be different at different points of time. Understanding the need of human beings in the light of motivational theory will give us some insight of the psychology of human needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of need explains the human need, in the descending order of priority, in the following order:

Maslow?s Hierarchy of Needs.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

1. Physiological : Includes hunger, thirst, shelter, sex, and other bodily needs

2. Safety: Includes security and protection from physical and promotional harm

3. Social: Includes affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship

4. Esteem: Includes internal esteem factors such as self-respect. Autonomy, and achievement: and external esteem factors such as status, recognition, and attention

5. Self-actualization: The drive to become what one is capable of becoming: includes growth, achieving one’s potential, and self-fulfillment

The base of human need starts with physiological need and the tip of human need hierarchy ends at Self-actualization.

The observation of People’s war and Maslow’s hierarchy of need explains to most why people put his/her life at stake. Common people are willing to sacrifices his/her life, keeping personal safety at stake, for physiological needs. The poverty and wealth disparity can be the reason for un-fulfillment of physiological needs. People cannot bear physiological needs for long period of time, thus want fulfillment quickly, and revolution is the path they are attracted towards.

Before proceeding further, let’s examine the cause of conflict among the common people. The conflict in any state arises due to unequal distribution in either of the following development: Political Development, Social Development, or Economic Development. Revolutionaries exploit these mismatches among the common people, and wage war against the established system to remove the prevailing mismatch.

Maslow explains the economical need fully and also explains the political and social need to some extent. It doesn’t/couldn’t explain totally why people sacrifice lives for social and political need. The most promising explanation about political and social needs comes from McClelland’s Theory of Needs. McClelland’s Theory of Needs was developed by David McClelland and his associates. The theory focus on three needs: achievement, power, and affiliation. They are defined as follows

1. Need for achievement: The drive to excel, to achieve in relation to a set of standards, to strive to succeed

2. Need for power: The need to make other behave in a way that they wound not have behaved otherwise

3. Need for affiliation: The desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships

Areas of conflict where Political Development and Social Development disparity is high due to established political and social norms have shown more sign of affinity towards revolutionaries. This is due to human need for power, affiliation, and achievement among conflict affected people. Revolutionaries, to most extent, are able to provide political power among local people through distribution of power among local and regional groups. Revolutionaries also promote affiliation of one group to another by removing caste system and religion system, which is traditionally a barrier in affiliation among people. Need for achievement could be one of the motivating factors among the cadres working as revolutionaries.

Case analysis on Maoist movement in Nepal

People’s attitude toward change has correlation with the ruling political power. In the autocratic or king rule (guided practices), people are reluctant to change; whereas in parliamentary system (democratic practices), there is slow and peaceful change. But in revolutionary movement (authoritarian), like Maoism, there is quick and violent change.

The Maoist movement is Nepal has succeeded so far only due to mismatch of development (Political Development, Social development, or Economic development) in specific regions. The people’s war, which started a decade back, has succeeded in providing Political Development and Social Development to most extent in the light of success of Janandolan-II. The remaining Political Development and Social development could not be supplemented through arm war and Maoist leaders have also realized this, that’s why they have came outside jungle and is vowing to wage the war on the streets. But the Economic development war doesn’t seem to ends here.

The Economic development war is not so simple and could not be fought in isolation among different stakeholders of the country, which includes foreign governments too, in this globalized world. Maoist had two strategies to fight Economic development. First was through extortion (which they call donation) of money and second was through forceful capturing of civilian assets.

Given the current political conflict and people’s war, almost all the economic activities has either slowed down or totally stalled. In this stalled economic scenario, one cannot hope to improve the average economic condition of people only simply by economic redistribution and donation drives. So Maoist policies don’t appear to solve the current economic conflict of country.

The economic condition of country will improve only if people create some goods and service of economical value. The export of created values to third countries will help Nepal to import other goods and services that cannot be generated internally, due to resource and other constraints. All this is possible only if there is some economic activity which will create economic value for the country. Maoist policies of economic redistribution and donation drives are the worst cure for problem than the disease itself.

So far Maoists has succeeded to motivate its cadres whose need was Physiological through economical benefits of the Maoist policy. These set of people will remain attracted to the Maoists till they get their Physiological needs fulfilled. This is why, even after Maoists declared jungle renunciation and came for street politics, some cadres has not stopped established economic policy (extortion and wealth redistribution). In the changed political scenario, Maoists has failed miserable in this front, even after call from top leaders to its cadres not to collect donation or any money from people.

The solution for the fallout of economic policy (extortion and wealth redistribution) is the guarantee of economic benefits to motivated people through other means of economic activity. The most accepted solution of them will be creation of jobs.

Need of the day: Change battle ground

The Nepalese Maoists claim to have more than 100,000 supporting cadres with its organization. If Nepal can use this huge motivated and active human resource, Nepal can create the next Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore in the Asian map. The need is to redirect the motivated human resources to utilize its power for the betterment of country. The betterment of country will ultimately result in the better fulfillment of people’s needs.

The options in this direction are many, like using these human resources to build infrastructure (road, dam, school, hospital, and etc), some industrial and rural activities (green revolution for food security, handloom for mass employment, food processing for rural employment, etc), and mass knowledge empowerment through mass education drive. These fields need revolution in its own in the given Nepal’s condition.

There will be need of financing to carryout the above drives. Given the nature of activities, people will come out with local available resources in the hope of development. If required, international development agencies can be approached to help out in the development programs. Cadres could be motivated for the same reasons, as they have been motivated till now in the people’s war, like: achievement, power, affiliation, and physiological need.

To come out of the current deadlock situation prevailing in Nepal, change of battle ground from People’s war to economical battle ground is need of the day. Economical battle ground is one field where participation of each stake holder of the country is guaranteed and all the parties will be in the win-win situation at the end of the day. Prachanda and Girija can lead the war in the new battle field if they show strong desire for improvement of the current Nepalese people’s condition.

(The author works is from Janakpur and is currently studying in India and can be reached at [email protected])

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