Where Nepal is ahead

Bangladesh has made strides in political empowerment of women. Women’s literacy rates have increased significantly. Women are visible in the government administration. Even so, Bangladesh has not been able to take the bold steps that Nepal has taken for women’s empowerment.

Nepal has ensured women’s representation in three thirds of their national parliament, provincial parliament and all tiers of local government. They have also ensured that if a man is the head of any state institution, the deputy head must be a woman. If the head is a woman, the deputy must be a man. The country’s president is a woman, Bidhya Devi Bhandari. The vice president is a man, Nana Kishor Pun. In Bangladesh, the head of government is a woman, the head of opposition in parliament is a woman and the speaker is a woman, However, we are yet to have a woman president or a woman chief justice.

There are 91 women in Nepal’s 275-member parliament. It has a dual election system where 165 are directly election to the parliament. The remaining 110 come on proportionate basis. The parties represented in parliament must secure at least 5 per cent of the votes.

Visiting Nepal as part of a media team from Bangladesh in the last week of November, it seemed that it was not just a matter of seats. Women had a good position in the society too. Women were moving ahead as equals to their male counterparts in the offices, the marketplaces, everywhere. And the female-male ratio in Nepal is 50.4 : 49.6. Women were higher in number than men. Nepal is almost the same in size as Bangladesh in area, though their population is only 30 million.

Of course there is violence against women in Nepal too. There is discrimination. But the laws against such repression of women are stringent. For example, last October a woman employee of the parliament secretariat there brought #MeToo charges against the speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara. He was arrested immediately and is now behind bars. The law did not spare him. He had to resign even before the case was resolved.

The parliament secretariat in Nepal is now run by a woman, deputy speaker Shiva Maya Tumbahamphe. A former chief justice of Nepal was also a woman, Sushila Karki.

The weather was excellent in November this year, neither too hot not too cold. There were foreign tourists teeming everywhere, mostly from Europe and China.

Nepal, once which leant towards Delhi, is now more inclined towards Beijing. China is investing in power, energy, cement, aviation and other sectors there. There are presently six road routes on the China-Nepal border. A new railway line is being laid. The local writers and intellectuals have a degree of unease at this growing proximity with China. They have no problems with Chinese investment, but will resist any attempt by China to export authoritarian rule.

After a visit by the Chinese president Xi Jinping in October, Nepal sent back six Tibetan refugees. This created quite a stir at home and abroad. A certain analysts said it is because of India’s attitude that Nepal has turned towards China. Nepal reacted sharply when India recently included Kalapani in its map. A leader of the ruling Communist Party said, “We are neither leaning towards India or China, we are just maintaining our own independent position.”

Wedged between two big neighbours, Nepal is able to bargain. Bangladesh is unable to do so. Nepal has China on one side and India on the other. Bangladesh has India on three sides and no border with China.

The people of Nepal have a high regard for Bangladesh’s people. They were eager to hear about Bangladesh. Some of the Nepalese shopkeepers in Thamel even could speak a couple of Bangla words. The people may look and dress differently, but there is a similarity in language.

Over 4000 Nepalese students are studying in Bangladesh at present, mostly at the medical colleges, some engineering and a few in other subjects. The Nepalese have a sense of gratitude about that. An official said that they had medical students in China too, but were not given recognition by the medical council upon their return. But those coming back from Bangladesh are given the recognition immediately. It was heartwarming to hear something good about our education system.

The Nepalese are unhappy that the number of Bangladeshi tourists has dropped drastically after the earthquake of 2015 and after the US Bangla Airlines accident. Before the accident, around there would be around 50,000 visitors from Bangladesh annually. Last year it was only 26,000.

The Nepal government has declared Vision 2020, aimed at increasing its tourists. They want to increase their annual tourists from 1.3 million to 2 million. They hope 100,000 visitors will go from Bangladesh next year. The government and private sector is working together on this vision.

Nepal’s Pokhara and Lumbini airports are now being made international. The Nepalese are also eager for Bangladesh’s Syedpur airport to become a regional one. There are also efforts for a road route with Bangladesh. The borders are only 23 miles apart with India in between.

Nepal has a lot of similarities with Bangladesh. Both countries face poverty and unemployment. But the difference is that ‘war-torn’ Nepal has political stability. The government and the opposition work together, despite differences. In Bangladesh things are suffocating.

Meanwhile, the Bangladesh’s pungent onion problems have reached Nepal too. Like Bangladesh, Nepal also was too dependent on India.

In both Bangladesh and Nepal, the administration is rife with inefficiency and corruption. Yet both countries are also seeing rapid economic growth. Nepal wants to move from being a least developed country to a developing one by 2024.

Bangladesh has a higher annual growth that Nepal. The per capita income and average life expectancy is also higher. Then again, Nepal is ahead in several other indicators. GDP and per capita income are not always the indicators of the well-being of a country’s people. The faces of the people, their livelihood and the equality between men and women are strong indicators how well they are doing. There is a sense of peace among the people of Nepal. There is no unrest, no unhealthy competition. Perhaps that is because of the small size of their competition.

I visited Nepal before this in 2011. There hadn’t been so much development work then. Now high-rise buildings have come up, roads are wider and the tourist spots are cleaner and well-designed.

Nepal’s ambassador to Bangladesh Bangsidhar Mishra said that the 2015 earthquake was a wake-up call. The government, the political leadership and the general people felt the urge to speedily overcome all the damages.

No news media in South Asia is absolutely independent. However, I feel Nepal is in a relatively good place. In 2019 Bangladesh fell back four places in the press freedom index to rank at 150. Nepal ranked at 106. India and Pakistan ranked 140 and 147 respectively. Bhutan went up four notches to 80 and Maldives went up from 117 to 98.

The ‘Nepali Times’ 8 November editorial, ‘Censuring censorship’, was reassuring. The initiative for a media council act taken by the Nepalese government was halted due to the movement by the journalists union there. Bangladesh’s journalists, though, have not been able to thwart the digital security act.

The ‘Nepali Times’ editorial showed courage. It stated, “Elected demagogues worldwide learn fast: They have discovered that there is no need to kill journalists anymore – it is much more effective to kill journalism. By destroying the credibility of the media, citizens are no longer able to tell the difference between truths and lies, allowing rulers to get on (and get away) with wrong doing…. In the past year, NCP has taken incremental steps to suppress the press. There has not been any sudden, swift crackdown – the pressure has mounted in installments. The intention seems to be to take our freedoms away bit by bit so that we won’t even notice when they are all gone – rather lime the traditional Chinese practice of torture and executive known as lingchi, death by a thousand cuts.”

This editorial comment in the ‘Nepali Times’ is applicable to Bangladesh and many other developing countries.

* Sohrab Hassan is joint editor of Prothom Alo and a poet. He can be contacted at [email protected]. This piece appeared in the print edition of Prothom Ali and has been rewritten in English by Ayesha Kabir.