Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, April 3:

Intellectuals from Karnali Zone today demanded amendment in the constitution and revamping of the centralised National Planning Commission for the uplift of empoverished people living in the Karnali zone, which is lagging far behind in development process as compared to other parts of the country.

“The extreme economic backwardness of the Karnali region is the result of the State’s historic negligence and unqual distribution of national resources and foreign assistance or loans recived in the name of poor people,” Dr Nanda Bahadur Singh said, announcing the formation of Karnali Intellectual Society Nepal (KIS Nepal).

KIS Nepal president Singh said that the region, which is the origin of the Nepali language, would never rise from abject poverty and join the mainstream of the national development unless a political system is developed in which national resources and foreign assistance are distributed in proportion to the size and population of the region.

He said that the successive governments turned their eyes blind once the region was anexed into the Kingdom of Nepal in 1791.

Vice-chairman of KIS Nepal, Kiran Prasad Shrestha, who is also general secretary of the Nepal Medical Council, said that no significant progress had taken place in the Karnali Zone for the last 45 years because of total negligence by the State. “What crime did our forefathers commit for which we are being punished now?” Shrestha questioned.

Karnali region has the least literacy rate and highest infant, maternal and adult mortality rates as compared with rest of the country.

Literacy rate is so low in the region that only four girls are doing post-graduate course and there is no zonal hospital as of today.

These days, no health workers visit the poorly equipped health-posts due to the Maoist threats of reprisal. Shrestha disagreed with statistics by the CBS (Central Bureau of Statistics) about human index of the region. “The statistics given by the CBS is not reliable as no in-depth study has been conducted there over years, especially after the Maoist insurgency broke out,” he said.

KIS president Singh accused the government of not launching any programmes to address the problems caused by the insurgency in the region. Former Nepali ambassador to Japan Prof Kedar Bhakta Mathema said that it is high time that the Karnali diaspora in the capital and abroad raised “voices of the voiceless people”.