Anybody may be allowed to call a bandh, but people should be free to support it or not; any use of force must be made punishable

For the past one year or so, the general public had felt some respite from the frequent bandhs (general strikes) called by one or the other group, big or small, and enforced by their workers through use of force. Now the country is in the final stages of making a new constitution through the Constituent Assembly, and many groups have hit the road to push their demands for incorporation into the new constitution. Therefore, various parts of the country are in agitation, some for undivided districts, others for undivided zones, and still others for undivided regions. There are also groups who are demanding ethnicity-based Pradeshes, and there are also others who do not want to have any Pradesh composed of both the plains and the hills. There are others who are agitating for special rights and privileges for their communities (mainly ethnicity-based) in the new constitution. And there are also many different groups fighting for many other different demands. Bandhs continue in many parts, and the two-day nationwide bandh was organized on Sunday and Monday, with more nationwide bandhs in the offing. Regional or local-level bandhs are being held every day, in some regions continuously for over a week.

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The main reason for every bandh is that every group says it wants to get its ‘rights’ but hardly any group has come to the fore to say that it has to fulfil its duty to the general people and to the country as well. Almost any group or its leaders speak of democracy or ‘loktantra’, but they ignore the fact that the main principle of democracy is to use one’s right without infringing on the rights of others. Two kinds of practices, among many others, that have been seen in full play in connection with the ongoing protests across the country are the use of force to enforce the general strike and the exploitation of children by using them in staging street protests rallies, in the latest case in a semi-nude state. These two kinds of things are not tolerated in any democracy worth the name, but in Nepal even such things go unpunished despite strong criticism of such evil practices by conscientious people and organizations. Children do not even know what they are being used for.

The economy suffers the direct daily loss of at least two billion rupees for one day of Nepal bandh, but its other wide-ranging consequences are much more costly. Now, time has come for the political parties and the government to think of saying goodbye to bandhs. The use of force to make any bandh successful, whoever may organize it, should be banned. The success of every bandh is based on terror. Anybody may be allowed to call a bandh, but people should be free to support it or not; to close their businesses or other activities or not, but any use or threat of use of force against those who ignore the call for bandhs must be made punishable. Government after government has been seen to be helpless when it comes to dealing firmly with those who grossly violate the rights of others and vandalize public and private property. They should be tried before a court of law and properly punished, including that they must be made to pay compensation to the aggrieved party. Failure to enforce rule of law will only lead to anarchy.

Goal missed

The government had expressed commitment to provide education for all by 2015 in an international conference held in Senegal in 2000. As many as 164 countries, including Nepal, had made this commitment by expanding early childhood care and education especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children. Providing education for girls was a special agenda of the Dakar Conference.

The government had set the target of 80 per cent enrollment of children at schools. But it could achieve only 74 per cent of the children aged between three to five years of age. The informal education programme for adults between 15 to 60 years of age has also become ineffective due to poor planning and implementation. Of late, only eight districts have been declared fully literate but their authenticity could not be verified independently. Most of the families who live in remote districts give the least

priority to sending their children to schools due to poverty and the schools which are also far away from their settlements.

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