Who Will Stand for This Cabal?

A Different Bloom

A crop of giant trees in full bloom at Patlekhet, Kavre, draws this footloose sapien.  

What’s the big deal, mate? In the Spring season, every flowering tree blossoms, even in this day and age of global warming and climate change, even in an era of drill-baby-drill climate deniers.

Yeah, it does. But look at these giants among trees. They stand clearly apart from all sorts of local flora! Where on Earth did they come from? Did Father Sky shower their seeds one fine day and Mother Earth give us those giants?

Aware that racking my brains over this thing will yield nothing, I give my monologue a pause and approach a sapien tending to his chicken and chicks on his isle of man by the dirt road. After all, puchhne mein kya jata hai (what’s the harm in asking?), right?  

From him, I gather that those are paulownia trees with a story deep underneath.

Apparently, some years ago, some smart guys lured gullible local people into buying and planting the new saplings, promising a great economic return. The saplings grew by leaps and bounds in keeping with their very nature, and emerged as big question marks in these simple people’s lives as the promised returns never came.

A cursory web search shows that paulownia  are the fastest growing tree species and they grow in diverse climatic conditions. There’s an industry around these trees that portrays them as magic trees that can protect the global flora—and fauna—as they grow and regenerate very fast, and are useful in very many ways.

For example, www.paulowniaitaly.com states: Thanks to its high flash point, its excellent compressive strength index, its insulating properties, paulownia is widely used in the construction sector, for the construction of houses, floors, load-bearing structures, poles, beams, ceilings, coatings, upholstery materials, fixtures, doors and any furniture.

But for local people quite afar from the above-mentioned industries, these trees do not mean much, at least for now.

Apart from the giant trees and the man comfortably lodged on his piece of good Earth, this sapien has a brief chat with a taxi driver along a winding road in his quest for a place where air is fresher, where there is relative peace and from where one can get a 360-degree view of those majestic mountains on the horizon. On the contrary, here you find one more sapien much worried over the state of affairs in the republic and how he wishes he were in Kathmandu to be a part of unfolding political developments in a republic in chaos.

What will happen next? The guy behind the wheel wants to know after passing us through a sharp bend, safe and sound.

Dunno, I reply, acutely aware of the inability to fathom the complexities of a very serious question.

On my journey home from the woods, I meet a fast-atrophying polity halfway along a choc-a-bloc artery, in Koteshwor.

In the wake of protests against the current crop of leaders and for the restoration of monarchy on March 9 and thereafter, heated exchanges have been taking place between the said crop and the royalists, in the parliament and beyond.

Sparks Fly

Leading the charge from the current leaders’ camp is none other than Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, who was at his reactive best  recently (or worst?).

Pointing out at a frame in which a certain ‘Hinduwadi’ figure was seen displaying a placard sporting the picture of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath during the rally to welcome former king Gyanendra Shah upon his return from Pokhara, he said the royalists did not even have a leader of their own, unlike figures like him, who fought and defeated the Panchayat regime with their ‘organic’ ideology at the call of their own leaders by bringing masses onto the streets.

Oli was at his satirical best (apparently, his best may not have been good enough in a country with a formidable troupe of humour artists and satirists old and new, produced through laugh Nepal laugh kinda shows) in his response to the organisers' claims that the instance was part of a ploy to malign their movement. He said: Yes, it was me. I brought the rallyists in cars, motorcycles and also the placard with that picture, which some Ranaji was carrying. By the way, the Ranaji in question is my brother.

Did such a sharp mind miss the forest for the trees?  

Against the backdrop of the May 9 protest, CPN-Maoist Centre Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal chose to hit both the royalists and the government in a typical guerrilla fashion while addressing the Parliament days later, on March 12. “There is now a need to fight on two fronts—against the government’s misdeeds and against reactionary elements,” he said, cautioning that misreading the leniency on the part of the political parties to let the king stay on in the country even after the revolution—the overthrow of the monarchy and the declaration of a federal secular democratic republic—would be a grave mistake. 

In a measured tone (he said much more, but this much may be quite relevant), Nepali Congress General Secretary Gagan Thapa stressed the need for political parties that support the present Constitution to find common ground, listen to the people’s concerns and address them before it’s too late.

Chanda Karki, a lawmaker from the RPP, said that slogans shouted against political leaders and in favour of the king were just a trial (trailer) and added: An inept government is the root cause of the massive protest seen on March 9.

Mahesh Bartaula, the chief whip of the CPN-UML, illustrated how the protesters with the former king’s provocations had violated the 2015 Constitution by singing Panchayat-era national anthems and dishonouring the current anthem, and sought legal action against the violators. Bartaula summed up his speech thus: The monarchy cannot be an alternative to democracy, autocracy cannot be an alternative to democracy.

More VIP Mouths to Feed 

At a time when the republican polity does not seem to be at the height of its popularity (to say the least), one more fig leaf has come off it. A piece of news states that the government plans to bring a law to provide lifelong pay and perks to VVIPs such as former presidents, former vice-presidents, former prime ministers, former chairs of Council of Ministers, former speakers and former chairs of the National Assembly. Per the report, the government is drafting a law to provide these royals of the republic with monthly allowances, house rent/house maintenance allowance along with vehicles and staff as well as aides for their respective secretariats. 

A whole new generation has grown up in the country without monarchy, so one can say that there’s a certain disconnect between a considerable number of people and the former king. Besides, a politically fragmented society has a considerable number of brainchildren and cadres of one or the other party. 

But will government moves like the one mentioned just above not further alienate the subjects of this republic of new royals? What’s more, pretty soon, former province chiefs, former chief ministers, former speakers of provincial assemblies and even former lawmakers may make a beeline for maintenance allowances, to be followed by former representatives of local bodies.

If this hard-earned polity caters only to a cabal by piling tremendous pressure on the taxpayers already paying exorbitant taxes for below par services, who will come to the fore to defend it? Youths  from diverse ethnic backgrounds with common problems, toiling it out in sweat shops around the world to feed their families back home? Political cadres of different hues and shades? The cream of the cream that has left the country and made it big around the world? Women, young children and senior citizens awaiting remittances from family members? Why would diverse sections of the society want to stand for a growing cabal that draws and draws and draws from them?

Time to find answers to important questions like these is running out—and fast. The sooner the top brass of the three major parties realise this, the better.