What is your country’s name? It was the question I put before Radha Sunuwar, the 37-year old woman of a rural village at laylay, Lalitpur. Not carefully thought out in advance, it was avowedly not my deliberate attempt. I dared to pose the unusual question to confront my friend’s speculation that women here (40 k.m south of Kathmandu) fail to pronounce the name of their own country if inquired.

We were four and Radha was preparing tea for us under the small thatched roof, which was the only big shop at the village we could see. Two of the friend took the speculation as a joke until Radha spoke out her tribal tone and said: desh ko naam! Thachaina…thachaina!

Visible lines of seriousness ran on the faces of my friends and we surprisingly looked at each other’s countenance. “You don’t know Nepal didi,” asked one among us. With a lift of her eyebrow, she said, “Thacha.” “That is the name of our country,” the next one took no less time to speak with vehemence. “Do you know Kathmandu?” excitedly inquired another. This time, she said, “yes, I know.” When we understood through her expression and gesticulating appearances that she was not joking and neither our hypothesizing friend was, it became the topic of discussion until we took the last sip of tea and felt sympathetic to her. But the educational status of women in remote villages close to Kathmandu haunted me in the wake of witnessing the nuisance of illiteracy and analphabetism.

A topic can be always turned and twisted and the one who practice that art hurriedly spoke out: what’s so important in knowing one’s country’s name? She owns a shop, earns her livelihood by herself in this agrarian land, so what if she cannot pronounce the name of her country. Speaking personally, it is a mere emotional understanding and interpretation of an issue.

What is the relationship between a state and its citizens? National Identity establishes a state of connectedness between the state and its citizens, and state power holds a position of great responsibility towards its citizens. National identity denotes the sense of belonging to one country or one nation. Our national identity is Nepali. Radha’s and mine identities become exactly identical in the nationalistic line whereby her ethnic identity and my bahun caste-group identity dissolves.

Amaratya Sen, 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics says, a man never posses an absolute identity but has plural identities and exercise them as per the contextual understandings of the situation. My identity of an urban lad into the rural hills of laylay and her rural feminine identity fade away under an umbrella of nationalism. She is of course aware of her national identity but unfortunately fails to pronounce the name of her own country. Why? She was apparently not joking. She knows Nepal but couldn’t pronounce the word. Government has spent a lot of money on praud sikshya (non-formal education) and women education but the practical scenario appears to be frustrating. The gap between urban life and rural backwardness is quite evident in the country concerning development, education, infrastructure, level of understanding, point of view, among others. Scholars and experts keep on reiterating that education is the first pillar to development but there are hundreds of thousands of Radhas waiting for the light of education. The approximation to generate women of education and refinement inside the country has been merely confined within the capital itself. Considerably, education is the only means to bridge the gap between urban women and rural women, widening of which will otherwise extinguish the process of decentralization.

Just being able to pronounce one’s country name properly doesn’t make him a true Nepali or a responsible citizen. These days, due to political mess inside the country youths are being disappointed and frustrated amid the subsisting level of unemployment, underdevelopment, political opportunism, political manipulations of academic cultures, and lack of opportunities inside the country.

Recently, one of my journalist friends upon his arrival to the homeland after having visited Darjeeling and Sikkim said, “Why cannot we endeavor to transform Kathmandu into Darjeeling and Sikkim?” His question not only evoked a feeling of his fascination with the hilly regions of South Bengal but also sprinkled hastily comments in evaluating the status of Kathmandu. Initially, I responded his question by making a facial expression characteristic of a person laughing. But, when he started assigning too low a value to his own homeland, I was compelled to state: Darjeeling is a major tourist destination of South Asia. Agreed. In terms of tourism, Nepal has become a sitting duck and India the flying goose. True. But in terms of the infrastructural level, you cannot promptly arrive to a conclusion that Kathmandu should be transformed into Darjeeling or Sikkim. You want Kathmandu to be devoid of international airport, good hospitals and transportation facilities. Because, Sikkim and Darjeeling are yet to develop them. Traffic problems, pollution, public insecurity and the negative impacts of urbanization are of course inflicting us but it doesn’t mean that we start to push aside or dismiss all the possibilities in a way of replicating or imitating others. We have our own history, cultures, socio-economic practices, religion, along with the landlocked geo-political situation, and it is obvious that we need to develop on that basis. If we turned Kathmandu into Darjeeling/Sikkim or Nepal into India, a time will come where the next generation shall be asking what used to be our country’s name.

The journalist friend paid no heed to what I told and did not replied anything until the topic of discussion took a different course. Likewise, though we were moved and provoked to the expression of an emotion by Radha’s living, we are still without heed to implement something practical that could alter the sad-but-true reality. Yes, we were personally aware but reaching the conclusion that only government can contribute largely does not assume that individuals have few efforts in changing the society.