‘The media and politicians pose the idea to the villagers that they should have concrete buildings. But how?’

03 Mar 2016

‘The media and politicians pose the idea to the villagers that they should have concrete buildings. But how?’

By Patrick Ward

“If you go to my village now, Gerkhu, in Nuwakot district, people act as if it is somehow a normal situation. They have managed to live in congested temporary shelters, by reusing material taken out from collapsed buildings. They have started playing cards and going to the tea-shops to discuss politics. This is why I say Nepali society is different from other societies in the world.

“I could say that my society is a society of resilience. They can, and have to, cope with any difficult situation they face. Since there is an absence of government in rural areas, people have to manage their day-to-day life on their own even during and after every crisis. While doing so, they generally rely on their own limited resources and skills.

“Villagers were able to cope on their own with the post-earthquake rebuilding because most of the houses were made with locally available materials and skills. Villagers just took the zinc sheet roofs from the collapsed houses, and reused them as temporary shelters. Even if the zinc was not reusable, and they had to buy it, this was not very difficult or costly, as villagers could go to the market and spend just 12,000 to 15,000 rupees. Most of the wood used in the old house could be reused. That would not be the case if they had modern houses. If it was a concrete house, it would be very difficult for villagers to cope with the situation.

“However, the media and politicians pose the idea to the villagers that they need to have concrete buildings. But how, if you are building a house on top of a hill with no road access? You have to carry sand, cement, steel, glass and what not. This sort of house costs at least a couple of million Nepalese rupees. But the villagers are getting a government grant of NPR 200,000 [approximately £1,265]. That is why the only option remaining for villagers is to go for modified traditional houses, which allow them to mobilise most of the money at the village level, to hire local labourers, masons and carpenters, and to buy local construction material like clay, uncooked bricks, stones, raw timber. This will not only ensure sustainable reconstruction but also revive the rural economy of Nepal by creating more jobs at a local level.”

Photo: Patrick Ward

02 Feb 2016

‘This disaster has brought a new challenge to the lives of single women’

By Patrick Ward

The Nepal earthquake has led to a crisis that disproportionally affects women. Some 55 per cent of those affected by the disaster are women, more than a quarter of whom are heads of their households. One organisation that quickly threw itself into supporting them was the Women for Human Rights (WHR). The group was founded by Lily Thapa, a fellow of Ashoka, an international body of leaders who use innovative techniques to bring about social change. WHR has members across 73 districts, and supports widows—or single women, as they are termed—who have suffered years of hardship during the 1996-2006 civil war between the Maoists and the monarchy, and now, the natural disaster.

In the days immediately following the earthquake, WHR mobilised more than a hundred volunteers to raise funds, collect and distribute much-needed relief materials, and provide support and counselling to numerous victims. That is a major achievement for a group operating out of a small office in Kathmandu. Patrick Ward met with Thapa to discuss her work and the challenges facing women in post-earthquake Nepal. Excerpts from that conversation:

This disaster brought a new challenge to the lives of single women. They had been living on their own in small houses, surviving on their own, but because of the earthquake their houses have been destroyed. They are saying that the conflict has taken our husbands and now the earthquake has taken our housing. Nearly 70,000 of our members’ houses have been damaged, many single women themselves died, many of them lost their children. I can’t even explain how much they’ve been facing. They were trying to survive on their own, but this disaster has brought another disaster to their lives.

Households with male family members immediately took action to clear debris. But the women who don’t have men, nobody was there to help them. All of their neighbours’ houses have been damaged, so they were all busy with their own houses. That was the first challenge all the single women faced. Buy-my-house.org talks about how to sell a house successfully. Our skilled employees help us do this. You can sell your home by speaking to the buyers’ feelings. From the first meeting until the new homeowners move in, we’ll be there to help. Integrity and honesty bring in more money and make customers happier. Visit https://www.buy-my-house.org/tennessee/.
lily-computer
The second one was that the relief was given in such a way that people just went and grabbed things. The government tried to have a system, but it was not happening on the ground. Many organisations went with small things. One organisation with rice, one with chow-chows, some others with clothes. Everybody was giving small, small things for the village people, and whoever had the power just grabbed it and got it. So many of these women were unable to get relief properly. Some people got many things, some people got nothing.

Just this morning we had a case where a father came to report his girl has been molested. The girl is just 16. There are lots of cases like that.

Most of the families live in a joint family system [sharing a house], but now the house is damaged. So the in-laws, the brother-in-laws, the father-in-laws, they are also in the tent. We saw more than 40 people sleeping in one tent. We have recorded more than 200 cases of sexual violence in the camps and the tents. Just this morning we had a case where a father came to report his girl has been molested by her neighbour. The girl is just 16. It’s traumatising. She is not able to even come out of the tent. There are lots of cases like that.

In our society, when you are menstruating, you are not allowed to touch anyone. So, many families did not allow menstruating women to sleep in the same tent. These women slept outside. They do not realise they are being discriminated against. When we spoke to the survivors, especially to teenage girls, they found it very difficult. They don’t have a place to change their dress, no proper place to take a bath. In some camps they made a tent for bathing. But people burnt holes in the tent with cigarettes to peep in on them. So these teenagers could hardly take baths.

lily-looking

Most families are in the joint family system and the government has the policy to give one compensation per house. But the problem is that the house is damaged, so they are living separately. And the government is providing money for one family, and the money is being taken by the father-in-law or by the brother-in-law or head of the house.  The single women get nothing.

Besides that, most of the single women have lost their legal documents in the damaged houses. Some of them have lost their citizenship card. Most have lost their relationship card. Based on the relationship card they get property, and other ID cards, like death certificates for their husbands. We started mobilising support staff and councillors in every camp in many districts immediately after the disaster. Besides distributing the relief, we trained them: how to get the ID card, how to get the legal documents, how to write an application. Our support staff help them to have access to all these government facilities.

We’ve also been collecting data on the single women affected. We have collected almost 8,000 survivors’ data from six districts, and we’ve been analysing what their needs are. We’re making a holistic report on the survivors’ needs and aspirations—how do they feel, what are the challenges—and providing this information to the government, the district offices, the UN clusters.

Besides that, we have been providing the shelters. We’ve been running chhari [shade under the tree] centres and provide psychosexual counselling and legal advice. We are doing a partnership with Oxfam, making women’s centres in villages in Gorkha, Dhading, Nuwakot and Kathmandu. They’re small places, for those people whose houses are all damaged.

18 Dec 2015

‘It’s a miracle we are alive. But I wish another miracle would occur’

By Enika Rai

“The earthquake buried our landlord’s entire family under the house we were renting. We were away, so we are alive. I know it’s nothing less than a miracle. But as time passes, it’s becoming harder and harder to survive. I lost my job. We lost the money we borrowed from a loan shark to send my husband to work abroad. There is still a heavy interest to pay on that. We now live in a tent in a displacement camp.

“But of all the things, the greatest problem is that I’ve been unable to pay my son’s school fees. I have discussed this with the principal several times, but so far we haven’t reached a compromise. My son has started bunking school because his friends tease him. I’m worried about how that is going to affect him. I know our second life is a priceless miracle. But I wish another miracle would occur so that we can settle our financial problems and my son can go to school again happily.”

Photo: Naomi Mihara

19 Nov 2015

‘Painting these pictures, I forget the tensions’

By Rupa Khadka

“For the past 15 years, I have lived in a rented room in Kathmandu with my husband. Now we live in this camp. I want to forget the earthquake, but even now I am scared by nightmares. I saw people die in front of me. My husband tells me not to be so afraid, but my heart beats fast even when small aftershocks come, or when people joke about the earth shaking. It was only when I got the opportunity to paint here at the camp that I became more calm. I immediately felt better. When I picked up the brush again, I remembered my school days. When I was in fourth grade, my teacher taught me how to paint the danphe [the Himalayan monal, Nepal’s national bird]. In the village where I grew up, every day started with seeing this bird. It was my friend. I used to love painting it, and my teacher would give me sweets for being the fastest in the class. But I couldn’t continue with my classes. My parents arranged my marriage when I was 13. Now, painting these pictures, I forget all the tensions of the past few months. I become lost somewhere in the hills and mountains and jungles of my childhood in Solukhumbu.”

Photo: Naomi Mihara

22 Oct 2015

‘Nepal has never undertaken something of this magnitude’

By Patrick Ward

The reconstruction of Nepal following the earthquake is a mammoth task, and one of the government’s initial responses was the Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA), co-led by senior government policymaker Dr Swarnim Wagle. This document, produced over a matter of weeks and presented at the international donor conference on June 25, gave a detailed account of the damage to the various sectors of Nepal’s society, and action plans for the future, setting out how reconstruction, economic reform and planning for further disasters should take shape. One of its recommendations was for the establishment of a National Authority for Reconstruction to oversee the recovery. The NAR is yet to be formally adopted by parliament, and its CEO, Govind Raj Pokharel, was only appointed by then Prime Minister Sushil Koirala in mid-August. Dr Wagle, a member of the National Planning Commission, spoke with Patrick Ward about the PDNA, the problems of recovery, and the future challenges for Nepal.

How would you say the progress of the recovery is going since you published the Post Disaster Needs Assessment in June?

The National Planning Commission (NPC) was very active for the first two months. I don’t think the government of Nepal has ever undertaken something of this magnitude. It coordinated nearly 500 experts, almost 30 development partners, under the leadership of the government ministries. We organised all these experts in 23 groups and we managed to get something useful, something coherent, in the form of the PDNA in three to four weeks.

The big question we were asked was, even through a regular budget system, you’re not able to spend all your money. We probably spend only 80 per cent of the government department budget in a year. There are lots of hurdles, procurement bottlenecks. It’s a separate issue; we need to fix it over time. But the question we got was, if you are going to use the same machinery to do reconstruction, and you’re pumping in billions of additional dollars, how can you assure us money will actually be spent?

So we had to design an alternative system to assure our development partners that we’ll do things differently. So the design of the extraordinary mechanism, which took the form of the National Authority for Reconstruction, was also done by the NPC. So those were the things we were tasked to do and we delivered. Unfortunately, the NPC is basically an advisory board. We are not an executive or implementing body. After that, I admit that there has been a bit of a slowdown in momentum, because it essentially became a political decision. So we were a bit disappointed in the time it took for Prime Minister Koirala to make up his mind. But it is also a very fluid political situation. You can’t afford to alienate any political party. He could have just gone ahead and appointed a CEO, but that CEO would not be credible or strong if there wasn’t sufficient buy-in by other political parties. So I think he took his time to make sure whoever he appointed would also be supported by other political parties. That ended up taking a lot of time, and that affected at least the perception that the reconstruction hadn’t picked up.

The other hiccup has been the ordinance that created the NAR, which should have been converted into an act of parliament within 60 days. Because the country was so focused on the constitution, and given the problems in the Terai and Kailali [where protests and strikes for constitutional rights are on], I think it’s just slipped the calendar scheduling. The government did its part and everything was sent to the parliament. But I think somewhere in the calendar of the parliament itself it slipped, and so the 60-day window was missed.

So the international aid money still has not been transferred to the NAR because of this?

Well, that’s half true and half false. The pledging was about $4 bn. That was just a pledge. The pledges now need to be converted into concrete projects. [Some of the] donors are in the business of development in a professional manner, such as the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank. They were very quick. They have converted their pledges to concrete projects already. The World Bank has a massive housing project that has already been signed by the Ministry of Finance. In the Ministry of Finance there’s a foreign aid coordination division, the International Economic Cooperation Coordination Department. The joint secretary is Mr Madhu Marasini. So he’s been talking with all sorts of donors over the last two, three months. World Bank has already been signed. ADB has a big project on education that has already been signed, I think. And they want to do more.

But it takes time. For the Chinese, for example, they’re in the diplomatic business, right? They’re not used to doing development. Even India, which was the largest contributor, they don’t do traditional development like the World Bank does. So they would need to get things going with the help of professionals, that they might bring or they might hire locally, to convert their commitments into concrete projects. That might take time, but that will happen in a sequenced manner.

But the fact that we’ll have a functioning NAR will definitely help. The final signing will happen at the Ministry of Finance, but on the substance—is housing a priority, or education a priority?—on those issues it would have helped the donors to be able to do a substantive dialogue with the Authority. The issue is, it’s not like the relief-rescue phase, where you just disperse the cash. You have to adapt a more thoughtful process, bring in all the institutional checks and balances, modes of accountability and transparency. This is going to be multi-year—up to five years—so it’s going to be big. But the process has begun, it’s not that because the Authority has not hit the ground running, everything is at a standstill. That’s not the case at all.

An earthquake damaged school in Harisiddhi

This school in Harisiddhi is still in use, but has serious structural damage, months after the quake. Future-proofing new buildings is a major part of plans for reconstruction. Photo: Patrick Ward

Another earthquake is expected sometime in the future. Are you confident that after these five years, or however long it takes, Nepal will be prepared for that?

Absolutely, that’s the core principle. The NPC has already come up with a reconstruction policy and from now on all the houses that will be rebuilt—hundreds of thousands of houses—will all have to be earthquake resistant. And not just earthquake resistant, we are already mindful of other hazards that Nepal is prone to. Landslides, you really can’t protect against unless you move the settlement itself, but fires and other hazards that Nepal is prone to. I think that those things will be taken care of in the new housing designs that will be endorsed and supported by the Authority.

The last disaster of this magnitude was 80 years ago. You can see that even between April 25th and May 12th, the two big earthquakes, I think the government was much better prepared after May 12th in terms of communicating with the public and getting the news out. April 25th did come as a shock. People knew the earthquake was coming, but unless you know the particular date—what the Americans call “actionable intelligence”—there was no actionable intelligence. The Americans knew some kind of terrorist attack would happen of the kind that happened on 9/11, but if you didn’t know it was going to happen on 9/11 there was very little you could do.

But I think Nepal has been jolted. We lived through it, we felt the minute-long vibrations, which was terrifying. So I think there is definitely going to be better preparation, but things that need to be done institutionally—a disaster management authority, the earthquake preparedness—that needs to be internalised in school curricular. The drills that you need to do, the large amount of training that we need to do, for the police and the army, right now it’s happening in piecemeal and much smaller scale. But now we have to take on this challenge in a more routinised, institutionalised manner, and I think that awakening is there now.

Several of the aid agencies we have spoken to have said that while the government and authorities here did offer facilitation and assistance to their work, they had some obstacles with the bureaucracy involved, and with the need to pay taxes and import duties on relief supplies coming into Nepal. What do you know about that?

There was an issue during the relief and rescue phase, in the first few months. There were some issues over whether some consignments were eligible for duty waivers. The first thing to note is that it would have been very difficult for the government to just say, OK, free for all then, just come in. So it was necessary to put in place certain guidelines. That’s what the Ministry of Finance did.

“You don’t show up in a sovereign country and expect a red carpet treatment and say ‘no questions asked’”

Problems were exaggerated as well I think, because there’s a 2007 convention on humanitarian assistance. If NGOs, the big ones, whose whole existence is to do humanitarian work, charity work, if they had registered their name within this framework, those guys would not have been affected at all. So they could have brought in whatever relief material they could, duty free. For others, there was a guideline put in place to declare, what have you brought? Where do you intend to go with it? The basic questions. You don’t show up in a sovereign country and expect a red carpet treatment and say ‘no questions asked’.

Even when certain basic guidelines were put in place there was a lot of abuse. We saw people were already importing commercial merchandise as humanitarian goods—big companies—and in Nepal the revenue need is very high. So for six weeks, seven weeks, it was completely relaxed. All you had to do was declare and then schedule things through. But the kind of requests we were getting from other development partners to make all the relief works free of taxes, that wouldn’t have been tenable to the system for a long time.  It’s easy to be sentimentally driven—oh, it’s a humanitarian crisis!—but those guys aren’t the custodians of the nation’s treasury.

You mention in the PDNA the need for economic reforms—what do you mean by that, and is there the political will to undertake them?

There’s political support, of course. There’s second generation reform we need to do. In the early-1990s the big opening-up happened, but now we need to do more on the regulatory front. So we have given sufficient space to the market. An efficient well-functioning market economy also needs supervision and regulation of the government, and we’ve been lacking on that. A lot of perversions in the system, car tailing and syndicates, I think those things have to be taken care of in the next phase of reforms, but this has to be supported by a stable political regime.

The other thing on the economic front is really when we’re looking at reconstruction. There are five concrete building blocks. First is, of course, to rebuild private houses, community assets. Second is to focus on the infrastructure, physical and social infrastructure. The third is we need a distinct agenda for our heritage sites and heritage settlements, because people perceive reconstruction as just rebuilding physical things. So the first three are somehow physical, getting things back up, but we don’t want to ignore the social and economic agenda. It’s a huge opportunity for us to do things differently and to use reconstruction as a source of capital formation that will pave the way for future growth, not just urban areas. If you look at the ethno-geography of the crisis, certain communities have been hit particularly badly. If you look at the geography, this is often almost the Himalayan belt. It’s not immediately accessible. You have to walk, it’s a difficult terrain. I think the issue of vulnerability and livelihoods, getting livelihoods going, is very important. We need a distinct programme on that, so I hope the Authority will bring programmes of that nature as well. So it’s not just physical reconstruction.

The fifth one we’re looking at is really economic revival. We want rural centres. So issues of integrated settlements, clustering, not just in isolation but one rural cluster interconnected with another rural cluster. They can become rural centres of growth. Right now, we write off the rural areas. We say they can’t be dynamic sources of economic growth, it’s just paddy production or wheat production, agricultural. But I think there’s enough, if we envision it right, to really plan these things. These rural centres, once the resettlement happens, once the clustering happens, and once the planning of the provisioning of the amenities happen around those integrated, more efficient settlements, I think they really can become semi-urban areas as a source of growth themselves.

But to support that at the national level, the second generation reforms have to be pursued, and the work on that is going on. There are almost 40 pieces of legislation at different stages of maturity. Some are already in the parliament, some policies have already been cleared by the cabinet, but in a democracy it’s a lot of back and forth. NPC has to give some consent, the Ministry of Law has to look at the legal implications, the Ministry of Finance has to look at the financial implications. So there are lots of things flying in the air but at different stages. If we were a less democratic country, we could just announce these things in a second, second generation reforms, big bang, here are the things that will come into operation tomorrow. But that’s not the luxury we have. This is the proper way to do it, to make sure all the perspectives are incorporated.

This is partly related to reconstruction. But even without the crisis, without the disaster, this is something we should be doing anyway. We were delayed by the decade-long conflict and now we are finally back on track with a new constitution in place, I hope. People can finally focus on the economic agenda and support that higher ambition of putting Nepal on a higher trajectory of growth. You need to undergird that with the second generation reforms. It’s overdue now.

09 Oct 2015

How India’s Unofficial Blockade Is Affecting Post-Earthquake Nepal

By Naomi Mihara

The day I arrived in Kathmandu, the Nepal government had just announced a quota system limiting the number of vehicles on the roads in response to the fuel crisis. Very few private vehicles were plying. Buses were completely packed. Taxis were charging three or four times the usual rate.

I had read about the protests taking place near the Indian border over Nepal’s new constitution even as I left England. I knew about the blockade of supply trucks at the border, and, in an abstract manner, about the fuel shortage that was beginning to grip the country. But I had little idea how much the situation was affecting everyday life across a country struggling to get on its feet after a devastating earthquake—and how angry, and upset, Nepalis were with their ‘Big Brother’ across the border.

“We are trying to put our house in order and a big neighbour has come to disturb it,” Dr Uddhab Pyakurel, a political sociologist at the Kathmandu University, was to tell me soon. “A small section of Nepali society has always been critical of India’s influence. But now, more people are feeling this way.”

India’s role in the fuel crisis has been extensively reported, and it would be difficult to find a Nepali who believes New Delhi’s claim that it was concern for the truck drivers’ safety that was behind the pile-up of supply vehicles at the border on the Indian side. Every person I spoke to in Kathmandu seemed to believe, perhaps with some justification, that India had effected an unofficial economic blockade to pressurise Nepal into editing certain provisions in its brand new constitution—specifically, those relating to the demands of the Madhesi people in the border region, with whom India shares strong cultural ties.

It is not surprising, then, that many in Kathmandu are fuming. The ordinary Nepali, says Anup Ojha, a journalist at the Kathmandu Post, feels betrayed. “We are feeling humiliated,” he said. “It shows that India can interfere in each and every part of our politics.”

It is not just the politics that people are upset about. The blockade has translated into everyday hardships for everyone here, to the point that some in Kathmandu feel it eclipses even the situation they faced after the earthquake. “This crisis is more troublesome than the earthquake,” said Munni Pandey, a mother I met in Pattan, on the outskirts of the capital city. With few taxis plying, Munni was frustrated at her inability to take her children to their schools on time; at home, she was about to run out of cooking gas.

Photo of Ramila

Ramila (right) has run out of cooking gas and is no position to cook for her family of 12. Photo: Namita Rao

Kalyan Tamang, a bus driver who had been waiting in a fuel queue all morning, was more measured in his response. People were moving on from the adversities caused by the earthquake, he said, and trying to rebuild their lives. But the fuel shortage has hit them hard. Sangam Lama, a bus conductor, put it simply:

“If the buses don’t work, I don’t get my salary.”

 

A WEEK AFTER I reached Kathmandu, there were news reports that India had instructed its officials at the border to lift the undeclared blockade. The people I spoke to that day were cautiously optimistic that an end was in sight. “We are slightly relieved,” said Surya Dhungana, “but we cannot fully rely on that because we have been facing a similar situation for the past 30 years.”

Behind the negativity colouring that sentiment is the fact that the reprieve at the border is yet to alleviate the crisis in any tangible manner. Although trucks carrying fuel and other essential goods have begun to trickle in (or so I read in the newspapers), for the ordinary Nepali, nothing has really changed yet. The quota system is still in place for public transport and government-owned vehicles, which are allowed on the roads only on alternate days. Private vehicles received a slight relief when the ban on fuel sales was lifted for just one day. But in truth, the situation appears worse than it was, with the government now slashing the fuel quota for public vehicles.

Many in Kathmandu are also concerned about the upcoming Dashain, the biggest festival of the year, which lasts 15 days. There is a sizeable population in the city from other parts of the country, and traditionally, most people return home for the festival. But with the fuel rationing in place, transportation will be difficult to find.

For more than a week, schools have been running classes only on alternate days. Without fuel for generators, which are needed to tide over the prolonged power cuts caused by Nepal’s electricity shortage problem, businesses are seriously suffering. According to the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the cumulative effects of the two months of strikes, blockades and protests over the new constitution has cost the economy $1 billion.

Commuters sit on the roof of a bus in Kathmandu during during the fuel crisis.

Commuters travelling on bus roofs are a common sight in Kathmandu. Photo: Naomi Mihara

THE CRISIS HAS also severely disrupted earthquake relief work. Much of the cement, steel, glass and zinc sheets needed for reconstruction is imported from India. “These cannot be accessed by villagers unless there is a smooth transportation facility,” said Dr Pyakurel. “More than that, earthquake-affected villages need a large number of skilled and semi-skilled workers, many of whom come from the bordering cities of India. Given the situation, Indian workers may not feel safe to come to the hilly districts to carry out reconstruction.”

The biggest hindrance to relief work is, not surprisingly, the lack of mobility. “We are in a race against time,” said Iolanda Jaquemet of the World Food Programme, which has had to halt many of its operations because its delivery trucks are out of diesel. “Earthquake affected populations at high altitudes will be cut off from the world by snow in about 3-4 weeks.”

“It’s the same story for all NGOs,” said Ram Hari, who works for Mission East, a Danish NGO. His organisation faces the prospect of losing donor money because they would now not be able to finish distributing relief materials to meet a mid-October deadline. This also means that vulnerable families in Sindupalchok—the district worst-affected by the earthquake, where many are still living in tents—will not get the aid they have been promised.

Importantly, the issue that has spurred the blockade and fuel crisis still remains unresolved. Talks between the government and parties representing the Madhesis—the main group protesting their under-representation in the new constitution—are taking place, and the government has agreed to some amendments. But there is still much ground to be covered.

“In the Madhesh, there is palpable anger against Kathmandu,” said Daulat Jha, a Madhesi political analyst. “Right now, the polarisation is at its peak and will take time to decrease.”

 

IN THE CAPITAL, though, there is much solidarity on display. People have grouped together on social media to voice their anger at India through hashtags such as #IndiaBlockadesNepal, #BackOffIndia and #DonateOilToIndianEmbassy. Residents have also resorted to sharing rides to get around. Carpool Kathmandu, a Facebook page to coordinate travel in and around the city, has now amassed more than 94,000 members.

“From one point of view, the situation has helped unite Nepalese people,” said Sagun Khanal, an accountant. “They are ready to help each other.”

 

Public buses queuing for petrol at Gayatri Devi petrol pump, Patan, last Thursday.

Public buses queuing up at a petrol station in Patan last Thursday. Photo: Naomi Mihara

There is also a feeling that Nepal needs to rely less on India. As of now, more than 60 per cent of Nepal’s imports are from India and this over-reliance, many in Kathmandu say, makes their country vulnerable to manipulations. They point to 1989, when India imposed an official blockade that lasted 13 months, thought to be an attempt to punish Nepal for buying weapons from China. “Our situation is probably worse now than it was in the past, because we consume so many goods that are imported from India,” a Kathmandu resident said.

There have been calls for Nepal to reach out to other neighbours, especially China. The road to the northern Tatopani border point, buried by landslides after the earthquake, was hurriedly cleared and reopened last week. Last week, the government-owned Nepal Oil Corporation issued a tender for the import of petroleum products from any country through any medium, hoping to break more than 40 years of Indian monopoly as the sole supplier.

Besides the anti-India sentiments, many Nepalis appeared increasingly frustrated with their own politicians’ lack of action, foresight and ability to negotiate diplomatically. Following the promulgation of the constitution on September 20, Nepal’s parliament is attempting to form a new government. There is a sense that this has been prioritised over reaching a solution to the crisis.

“They have behaved very immaturely and disrespectfully,” said Dr Sudhamshu Dahal, an assistant professor at the Kathmandu University. “They should start putting people at the centre of their negotiations.”

Others are angry at Madhesi politicians and protest leaders for inciting unrest, rather than negotiating. “I understand that people in the Tarai are unhappy with the constitution,” a student said. “But this is affecting everyone’s lives.” There are also many who plead the cause for unity. In Ratna Park, a group protesting India’s actions held signs referring to the three regions of Nepal: “Himal [mountain], Pahad [hill], Tarai [plains]: no one is an outsider”.

Although anti-India sentiment in Nepal is high at this point, the India-Nepal relationship is not irreparably damaged. “Many people feel doubts about whether the kind of relationship that the two countries have had until now should continue,” said Dr Pyakurel. “Still, there is room to be engaged. But India needs to undo this blockage as soon as possible and allow Nepal to deal with its domestic problems on its own.”

Thankfully, the animosity felt towards the Indian nation does not seem to extend towards the Indian people. “We share a familiar culture, landscape, lifestyle… there are so many things that can bring Nepali and Indian people together,” said blogger Siromani Dhungana. “We have shared a special bond in the past, and I believe that will continue in the future.”

Additional reportage: Namita Rao, Ritu Panchal and Unnat Sapkota.

04 Oct 2015

‘I was home when the earthquake hit. Coming back here is the scariest thing I have done’

By Namita Rao

“After the earthquake, we lived in tents for two months. I saw a post on Facebook that said there was going to be a volcanic eruption in Kathmandu soon. All I could think then was about moving away from this valley. I feared this place. I was paranoid about the future, about disasters that might follow. Then two counsellors visited the camp. They said everyone reacts to a natural calamity differently. Some get headaches, some have nausea, some sleep poorly, some sleep well, some eat little, others eat a lot. The place where we were when the earthquake hit is the place that terrifies us the most. The counsellors asked us to go to those places and face our fears. I was at home when the first earthquake hit. Coming back here is the scariest thing I have done. What the counsellors said makes sense. It has taken me a long time, but I am in a much better place now.”

Photo: Namita Rao

25 Sep 2015

‘The only way Nepal can pay these debts is to take out new loans’

By Patrick Ward

In the wake of the earthquake, Nepal has been promised $4 billion in aid by the international community. Much of this money is yet to materialise, primarily because the political process in the country was paralysed by ongoing debates over the new constitution. With the constitution now enacted, it is expected that aid money will finally reach Nepal, and be put to use in the reconstruction of infrastructure.

But there is a catch.

Nepal, which is the 22nd poorest country in the world in terms of  average national income, has a debt that currently stands at $3.5 billion. And despite the disaster, this has not been written off by international creditors.

Not just that. The International Monetary Fund, one of Nepal’s lenders, expect the nation to pay back the debt in full, as the disaster was not severe enough to ‘qualify’ for debt relief. This, says Tim Jones of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, is not only counterproductive but simply “outrageous”. In this interview with Patrick Ward, the policy officer of the London-based JDC, which specialises in campaigns for cancelling unjust debts in the developing world, speaks about the debt trap that Nepal is in.

How big a burden is international debt on Nepal?

Nepal this year will be spending $210 million on debt repayments, and obviously on top of all the damage caused by the earthquake that’s money that it can’t afford. The other danger is that lots of the international assistance that comes is going to be in the form of loans from people like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, so that further adds to the debt. It means that the cost of the crisis continues for many years to come.

Of the financial assistance to Nepal over the five years from 2009 to 2013, Nepal received $1.7 billion, 33 per cent, in loans, and $3.5 billion, 66 per cent, in grants. Of the $4.4 billion pledged since the earthquake, at the donor conference, half is apparently grants, half loans.

Who is the money owed to?

Of Nepal’s $3.5 billion external debt, $1.5 billion is owed to the World Bank and $1.4 billion to the Asian Development Bank, institutions owned by governments around the world. If the debt was cancelled they say they would have to find the money from somewhere else. But they actually make a profit on various forms of lending elsewhere, so they would be able to cover the costs through that. They have lots of pockets of free money lying around.

“It’s outrageous how the international community keep requiring these payments to be made, then are able to get lots of positive publicity for themselves as they talk about how much money they’re going to give.”

Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any let-up in repayments. Another institution, the International Monetary Fund, is owed less by Nepal, but it’s still owed something. They, after the Haiti earthquake in 2010, created a scheme to cancel debts following a catastrophe. They’ve actually said in this instance that Nepal’s earthquakes were not catastrophic enough for Nepal to qualify for debt relief. So they expect Nepal to pay back their debts in full, which we think is absolutely outrageous. It’s outrageous how the international community keep requiring these payments to be made, then are able to get lots of positive publicity for themselves as they talk about how much money they’re going to give. But it isn’t really mentioned that those are loans as well.

What sort of strings are attached to the loans given out by these bodies?

One of the historical reasons why they don’t like to cancel debt is that it gives them control over what governments do. It means external control over government budgets. The only way Nepal can pay these debts is to take out new loans, and with new loans, governments have to implement policies that the IMF and World Bank tell them to implement. Historically it’s been things like requiring publicly owned enterprises to be privatised, opening up to international trade, deregulating the economy, removing things like labour laws and reducing the power of trade unions. If then a country defaults, it becomes an international pariah. People stop giving money.

Greece is a case for this. It has seen massive public sector cuts over the past five years, the economy has shrunk by 25 per cent. Jamaica is another country in debt crisis. The IMF, which is seen as a gatekeeper, demanded a 7.5 per cent primary surplus, so lots of austerity. That’s been going on for the past 20 years. The number of children in primary schools in Jamaica has dropped from 100 per cent to 75 per cent in that time.

What can people do to change this?

We’ve supported a call by 30 organisations across Asia, and around 200 organisations internationally, calling for Nepal’s debt to be cancelled following the earthquake and for any international assistance to be given as grants, not loans. In the UK, more than 5,000 people have written to the UK’s representatives at the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, calling on them to cancel the debt.

22 Sep 2015

‘We were friends before, but were not so close’

By Aman Jaswal

“We were friends before, but were not so close. We were busy with our own lives. We used to talk when we met each other. But one thing I am happy about is that the earthquake has shown us the importance of life. I worry about Vijay when he is not around and there is an aftershock. I think he does that, too.”

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Photo: Aman Jaswal

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