A New Year

This has been a long time coming and hopefully the plan was to usher in 2010 after this post but then it is going to be the first post of 2010..Not bad.

The month gone by seems like a blur as do most things in law school. To quote Sartaj's words, "This too shall pass has lost its meaning in law school." In fact, it has; things come, go and somehow we survive and sometimes drown.

Last month, I was surprised at the amount of interest I had in things political, high even by my own standards of interst in politics and constitution writing back home. Spending an insane amount of time on the internet made me realise the extent of polarisation faced by Nepali society. It is almost like a clear case of black and white without any shades of grey in terms of people's liking and backing for political parties. Issues like providing justice for victims of the Maoist insurgency and the State response are extremely divisive and people have differing logics based on different planes of reasonings, theories and plain emotions of support and hate.

All of this should not have come as a surprise to me, but strangely it did. Contrary to my expectations, these are people who are well read, have an idea of issues both local and international, care for the country and its future and yet have exactly differing opinions on the same issues. Perhaps, it comes down to an issue of social identity and the interests of class or perhaps it is just looking out for a better deal for oneself.

Still, between all of this we have a country which is seeing a rapid exodus of the youth both as students and workers to various countries around the world, a lack of opportunities in the country and a very murky socio-political environment. And then, the task of writing a proper constitution in which people can have belief. Althought he idea is to remain optimistic, Nepal at present seems divided and the division is not only ideological, it is multi layered and crosses over with different fault lines. Ethnicity is an issue and so is gender and language. Caste affiliations are suddenly important. It almost seems as if time is moving backwards, with solidarity being based on terms like ethnicity, caste, language. The fear of national disintegration seems almost true to laugh it off now.

On the positives, we apparently have a lot of political consciousness and an idea of the issue at stake to let peace fail. We know the world has its eyes on us, even the beleaguered UN wants us to succeed so as to show some success or reason for its existence. And big brother India would not want another super troubled neighbour on its borders.

Is there a solution to all of this? Or should there ever be a solution? Because, no matter what we do, society is bound to have issues of some sort or the other at all times. Subjects may change and the substance may differ but there will always be problems for the society to deal with. At present though, the best would be to make efforts to have a vigorous dialogue and involve the citizens much more. At present, everything appears to be stage managed with some top honchos reaching a last minute conclusion. Even the constitution seems to be heading that way; a hastily written last minute compromise.

In a polarised society like Nepal, is compromise then the best way? Where at best, parties will be partly happy and wishing for more and at worst the different actors will feel cheated. I dont know and it seems only time will tell.

Wishing a good year and wonderful days ahead to everyone and especially to my fellow countrymen/women from Nepal.