"SuMaN SuDhA"

Educational excellence will remain a dream until party politics is kept away from college campuses
Last week's student elections in colleges across the country were miniature versions of state and local elections. What with the political heavyweights, including ministers, joining in the canvassing campaigns, one can conclude that political parties and their leaders unabashedly use students for their political ends. The scenes we watched on television were similar to those from non-student political elections. Many campuses witnessed violence, which is never a part of free and fair election. There were also reports that attempts were made to capture ballot boxes. Counting of ballots were put off at a few campuses due to tension between student groups aligned to different political parties. The violence took a more serious turn in east Nepal when one student was killed in police firing. The state run television reported that four persons including a college principal were abducting in west Nepal. It seems for political parties, the student elections are as important as other elections in obtaining political offices and seats. No wonder there were allegations that the students who used subsidised transport and other facilities spent lots of money on elections. The open involvement of political parties in student body elections gives rise to suspicions that the aim of student elections goes far beyond improving the quality of education in colleges.
Most students go to college to pursue higher education and become able citizens of the country and the world. But there are others who, in the guise of students, are there to indulge in politics and to keep the banners of their parties afloat by winning in union elections. And this kind of student power is seen mostly in least developed countries like Nepal and also in developing countries like India. It is not that students do not take part in politics. They do. For instance, in Nepal they were active in the pro-democracy movements of 1990 and 2006. During the Vietnam War, the usually peaceful college campuses in the United States erupted against the establishment. In other countries too, students have been a potent force in the change of governments or even political system. But once these goals are achieved, the primary concern of students is education and it is here that they need to concentrate. Places of learning should be kept away from power politics. The disturbance caused by elections based on party lines cannot bode well for the future of the students. But it is true that student bodies must be elected by the students to ensure that their academic life is not marred by poor quality education, incompetent teachers, absence of extra-curricular activities, and other distractions such as unnecessary politicisation of student bodies. Student unions work for the welfare of students in their respective campuses and should try to keep politics away from academic affairs.
The way political leaders, including top Maoist ministers, went on to campaign in campuses to ensure the victory of panels loyal to their parties is a development that must be deplored in no uncertain terms. The general feeling as this writer perceived in the course of talks with ordinary people was that this kind of political interference in student affairs should not set a precedent for the future. This puts at stake academic freedom which is necessary in all academic institutions worth the name. Student unions, apart from working for the welfare of students, can help their respective institutions strengthen their reputations and stand alongside the world's best institutions so that their graduates are respected everywhere and their degrees and diplomas not considered inferior, as they are today in many countries.
Students alone cannot and should not be blamed for what has happened to our present education system. Political parties that unscrupulously use students through their student wings are more to blame. Our political parties are a bane to our students' quest for educational excellence. The parties lack vision and do not seem to realise the long term implications of their present actions. Otherwise they would not be using students for their own political ends despite knowing that students would best serve themselves, their families, their country and even their parties by concentrating on studies and on campus activities instead of party-driven student politics. Student politics during the recent elections took a violent turn. Curfew had to be imposed in some places. And votes could not be counted in a few campuses till Sunday afternoon. But this is less a reflection on the students themselves than on the parties that condone and encourage such activities. Things are not going to improve unless political parties make it a point to stay away from student affairs and not to use students in any political activities designed for short term gains. But it would be futile to expect our leaders to take decisions that would benefit the nation in the long run at the cost of their short-term party interests. But unless this kind of decision is taken by political parties, we are doomed to see students used by political parties even for petty political activities. Educational excellence will remain a distant dream for us until party politics is kept away from college campuses.

SLC terror

The SLC exam is approaching and the pressure on students for rigorous studies is increasing. Home is the first place where children are constantly reminded of exam and the need for a high percentage. The second is school where teachers torment pupils with the SLC monster. The third is society which honours SLC toppers and any kind of success for that matter. And the fourth form of pressure comes from the student herself; she has no option but to believe that SLC is really as important as people say.
Each of these factors has its own motive behind pressuring the student. For guardians, it is the fake sense of prestige in society and among relatives. For schools it is the ultimate proof of their academic superiority over other schools. For the society comprising of our neighbours, relatives and friends, it is just another topic for gossip. And for the student herself, it is mainly the anxiety to prove her worth.
But has anybody really speculated how important SLC is? Is it as important as it is made out to be? No way. I think what is learnt in grade nine is much superior to what is learnt in grade ten because grade ten gives no space for creativity and stimulation. Once you complete grade nine, I believe we automatically start studying for a mere certificate, a perquisite for admission into college. That's all. The problem starts when colleges make the SLC percentage a basis for giving scholarships. The higher your SLC score, the less you pay in college. So one may say financial factor also makes SLC seem so important.
Whatever the cause, the SLC syndrome is worth noting. In fact, it sometimes manifests as a psychosomatic disorder. An SLC candidate cannot be happy like normal people, she suffers from emotional imbalance, often has horrible dreams, rarely sleeps properly, lacks appetite and often falls ill. Many develop exam phobia, aversion to teachers and hatred for educational institutions. Learning was never fun in our educational system but during SLC it becomes a nightmare.
Isn't media playing a role in making SLC greater than what it is? Although government has long done away with the 'board' ranking system, we have not been spared the names and backgrounds of the toppers. It is not bad to know the toppers, but the problem begins when colleges compete to lure them, or simply, buy them to raise the profile of their institutions. This obviously results in an unhealthy competition. And of course, the demand for “first division” and “a high percentage” puts excessive psychological pressure on the students.
To sum up, the importance of SLC has been blown out of proportion and it is the student who suffers this hype. I don't know if those who magnified its significance ever thought of its dark sides. Or else they probably wouldn't have spread SLC terror among the young, aspiring people year after year

Military affairs
BISWO POUDEL

A massive re-evaluation of the role of the army and what the country gets from its augmented size is necessary
The size of Nepal's military is certain to be augmented in the near future, and apart from its political implication, there are some economic implications to consider. A large military can be both good and bad for a country. Economist Emile Benoit once claimed that increased defence expenditure spurs a country's growth. It's called Benoit's hypothesis, but it remains a controversial hypothesis. While the army draws people from a lower economic stratum who are likely to spend all their salary on consumption, providing a boost for the consumption sector of the domestic economy, it also takes away able-bodied men from the productive sector to what is essentially a non-productive sector and thus contributes to lower gross domestic production. The net effect, therefore, is ambiguous.
The evolution of Nepal's army size and defence expenditure is not entirely clear. The size of the army rose rapidly during the unification war era. In 1831 A.D., British resident Gardner estimated Nepal's army strength to be 15,000×3 (meaning that though there were 15,000 regular troops, there was a dhakre system, implying that the real number of well trained soldiers who could be assembled at short notice was thrice as many). Later, the then surgeon at the British Residency, Henry Oldfield, gave the figure of 56,000+ in his book Sketches of Nepal as the number of armed personnel deployed during the Tibet war of 1855 A.D. Considering that the population of Nepal at the time was below five million (inferred from the fact that the first census carried out by Jung Bahadur circa 1863 A.D. reported the country's population to be 5.2 million) and assuming positive population growth, the Nepal Army's present strength seems to be less than proportionate to what it used to be.
How much money has the army taken? Pure expenditure on the military is hard to disentangle from aggregate national expenditure, especially in the pre-1950 era of fiat rule during which Shree 3 Maharajas controlled both the treasury and the military, and spent money on a spectrum of things ranging from arms import to concubine support. However, the last 20 years have seen a remarkable roller coaster ride. Initially, defence expenditure as a percent of total GDP decreased, and then it increased sharply in 2001 (see graph).
During its formative years, the Nepal Army unified fractious hilly states, engaged in war with a very arrogant Chinese emperor Chen Leung's army in 1792 A.D., fought admirably with the resurgent East India Company forces in the 1813-15 war on the Tarai plains, and helped Nepal secure trans-Himalayan trade until now. It has also helped Nepal's immediate neighbours to maintain stability within their territories. It helped the Indian government in 1857, 1913-17 and 1939-45 in dealing with different internal and external threats. It helped the Chinese government in the 1970s to quell the Khampa rebellion. Lately, its weaknesses are also becoming evident. It lacks heterogeneity that the country it created has. The Nepal Army leadership has been de facto hereditary with very few exceptions. Descendants of those who gave their lives in Nepal's unification drive have hitherto assumed leadership. Any hereditary institution is likely to engender bitterness towards it, and 200 years is a long time for the same families to have a stranglehold over what is essentially a national institution.
The formation of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), strangely, parallels that of the Nepal Army in its early years in terms of economic promises meted out to the recruits. Prithvi Narayan Shah promised to take care of the children of warriors killed in battle. He famously granted marawat to the children of Kehar Singh Basnet who perished during the war of Satahu. Basnet's father Shivaram Basnet had previously perished in the war with Kathmandu, after which Shah had taken care of Kehar and his siblings. Shah promised land to the soldiers, and he promised to take care of their children if they should perish in the war.
Perhaps due to this reason, some children of great warriors were made colonels in their early age by the time Bhimsen Thapa became a general (for example, Colonel Shamsher Singh, aged 13, and Colonel Bahadur Jang, aged 12). This system of making minors high ranking officers was taken to the extreme during the Rana regime, when Jung Bahadur Rana's new born children (like Yuddha Pratap Jung and Bir Jung) were given the rank of major general. The same attitude is evident in the Maoists. Not only are they rewarding widows and children of their fallen soldiers, they are also trying to provide jagir to their soldiers. The model is ditto Prithvi Narayan Shah's, the only difference is that unlike Shah's warriors, the PLA didn't conquer any territory.
Merger of these two armies is a desideratum born out of the need to establish long-term peace, and is in the interest of the non-military population of Nepal. The immediate economic concerns are related to two factors -- what is the optimal size of the defence force, and what is the mechanism of integration? Vertical integration, that is, inducting PLA personnel into all, including high ranking, army positions should be out of the question. The thought of young PLA men without the required maturity leading the barracks and watching arms caches doesn't sound reassuring with all its attendant negative externalities. Horizontal integration at the sub-officer level may have immediate appeal; but if all the recruits joining the army during the next few years are from the PLA, 30 years down the road, all the generals will be from the PLA, a scenario our children may not like to inherit. Furthermore, paying for an extra 20 percent of the forces means an extra burden on the next generation who must fund these people's retirement.
The benefit of a strong army is that the army not only resists invasion from big countries (with whom the fight is likely to be frontal), but also protects us from wandering marauders (with whom the fight is normally characterized by a 360-degree assault, also called guerrilla war). By raising the cost of invasion, the army discourages big countries from attacking Nepal, something it did in the past when Nepal bordered China and British India.
In a letter sent to the then Prime Minister Chandra Shamsher on Feb. 1, 1913 with a copy sent to the Chinese president, General Chung, the Chinese Resident in Tibet after China became a republic, asked if Nepal was willing to be part of China. Chandra politely refused. In the absence of a well functioning army, the country becomes a sitting duck or a playing field of two big countries. It also becomes an easy target for organized and motivated marauders. An army provides safety from all sorts of elements. Furthermore, the army -- as an institution -- is a bequest to future generations; and they would surely prefer to inherit a strong military force. The benefit of such a strong force would be massive should India and China disintegrate in a rare case and a chaotic interregnum prevail in Asia. The only question is what is the appropriate present cost for such future benefits?
There are perhaps no easy answers to these questions. But before we decide on size, a massive re-evaluation of the role of the army and what the country gets from its augmented size is warranted. A generally “fail proof” command and control system in which revolts are less likely or eventually less costly should be demanded from the future army by parliamentarians deciding on military integration. Once an optimal size is agreed upon, the long-term trajectory to reach there can be devised by considering constraints such as the demands of different ethnic and gender groups. A hastily arranged augmentation is akin to postponing the decision and bequeathing future troubles to posterity for the benefit of short-term peace, and it should be avoided.