Struggle for Inclusion
Kathmandu Post
May 26th, 2011
by Rukmini Chaudhary, Som Maya Tamang and Shakun Sherchand Leslie
Once again, three women -- a Tharu, a Tamang and a Thakali -- congregated at Maitighar on April 26, 2011, to oppose the passage of the Samabesi Bidhayek. This Social Inclusion Bill has resurfaced without significant changes promised after the five-point agreement signed by the then UCPN (Maoist)-led government with the Adivasi Tharuhat Sangarsha Samiti in April 2009 when the Bill was issued as adyadesh (ordinance).
The April 27 banda was a civil disobedience act called by the Newars and the Tamangs, with solidarity from the Adivasi Janajatis, Dalits and Muslims, to protest this discriminatory Social bill. This issue of continued state discrimination has been raised by four political parties --the Sanghiya Loktantrik Manch, Dalit Janajati Party, Newa Party and Independent (Muslim) Party -- by obstructing the proceedings of the CA Constitutional Committee.
The original ordinance had 'imposed' the inclusion of 92 indigenous identities under the broad 'Madhesi' category, thereby manipulating the social inclusion statistics. What it effectively did was allow the hill high caste men, who have had all the historical benefits, to capture the 55 percent under the so-called "free competition" category. In fact, many hill high caste men have surnames which use "la" at the end (e.g., Dahala, Nepala, Khanala). They have sought to secure control of their traditionally dominant groups over the state bureaucracy and resources.
The Social Inclusion Bill perpetuates discrimination by setting aside only 45 percent of these reservations for the Adivasi Janajatis, Dalits, Madhesi, Muslims and women without any logic. The much-touted 33 percent women quota is in reality only required within the 45 percent allocated for the discriminated groups - not within the remaining 55 percent. This would bring the women's total share in government jobs to less than 10 percent-not the promised 33 percent. Furthermore, women would be categorized without caste or ethnic distinctions, thereby undermining the possibility of a truly diverse state structure. Therefore, the new Social Inclusion Bill must take into account the diversity of Nepali women in order to achieve the real changes promised by Jana Andolan II.
After the 2008 elections, only the Madhesi community benefitted from Dahal's 2009 ordinance. They secured a sizeable chunk of state positions at the expense of the quota reserved for other groups who were demanding full proportional representation.
Similarly, these historically marginalized groups were apprehensive about the major parties' proposal to distribute national scholarship schemes. The Adivasi Janajati had been slotted 32 seats, while the Tharus were placed within the Madhesi reservation of 28 seats. Despite the national claim for more educational opportunities for women, their reservation decreased from 33 seats to 20 seats. The Dalit claim for equal educational opportunities was actually curtailed from 15 seats to nine seats.
This resistance to achieving real inclusion as committed by the Interim
Constitution's Social Inclusion Bill can be defined as the traditionally dominant groups' desire to maintain their dominance through the Big Three leadership.
The Bill, if unobstructed, will continue the trend of the one-caste hegemony at all levels of statehood, irrespective of when the constitution is drafted. This would bring the new democratic process to a halt, questioning the preamble of the Interim Constitution which promised a truly democratic, secular, inclusive, federal state.
Without a workable and sincere blueprint for social inclusion that addresses the continuing historical discrimination, the new Nepali state would be encouraging and validating 'caste apartheid' on a new legal level. The democratic constitution for the racially disfranchised black South Africans only came into existence after the state accepted its guilt for its historical racial discrimination and was willing to end it through serious affirmative action.
The Nepali state is rife with nepotism and corruption, fed by continuing caste selection tendencies. Recently, the Kathmandu Municipality selected seven Brahmin men, three Brahmin women (under the women's quota), four Chetri men and only one Newar for the 15 vacant posts. Where is the inclusion? This continuing mono-cultural trend is detrimental to the well-being of the state. Without accommodating the aspirations of the historically discriminated and diverse groups, the trend of protests (and bandas) will not end anytime soon. Repressing diversity leads to exclusion and, in worse cases, instigates violence, as has been apparent in
the Terai and around the world.
As diverse groups feel squeezed out from most functioning organs of governance, they are questioning the Social Inclusion Bill much more seriously. As every Nepali is defined by caste, the new constitution is expected to solve these lingering, historical problems by collaborative dialogue and negotiation to achieve a new national social contract with full proportionate representation at all levels of the state.
The international community's effort in bringing viable balance to disproportionate representation in their own organizations strengthens the previously discriminated identities. To exercise political rights to challenge the unitary and exclusionary caste system without external intervention is in consonance with Nepali democracy.
At the most, donors can act as a powerful medium of change. Instead of applying conditional economic sanctions on Nepal's development, it may be more effective for the donor community to revaluate its role at this historic moment so as to benefit the most deprived of Nepal's 28 million people.
Freedom in the West was achieved through various civil rights movements and civil disobediences. While Nepal struggles to chart out its future, the Adivasi Janajatis and other discriminated groups will continue to fight for the soul of their country.
Chaudhary is a CA member
Tamang is hairman of the Sanghiya Loktantrik Manch
Leslie is president of the Nepal Federation of Himalayan Indigenous Buddhists
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Another Friend Departs This World
'Every breath we take...', as the song goes...
And remember our passing friends with kindness
As memories are sometimes all that define our lives...
And remember our passing friends with kindness
As memories are sometimes all that define our lives...
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Shabat Blessings in Kathmandu
I ain't a twitterer, yet...
I prefer to blog on Bambuddhism -- where I can express swirling, hestitant, inchoate fragments of ideas to myself w/o forming those staccato chirpings of the ultra-modern technological era.
I'm guess an old-style, old-world, old-technology guy at heart...
Words, sentences, poetry, expression, observation, symbols, nature, earth, wind, bamboo... those are what I rely on for my muse and inspiration, not modern morse code.
I guess if you want to understand my sense of my own life look up my recent post on 'Bamboo Buddhism' a week or two ago.
Of course, I still have that youthful, naive, eager, innocent urge to improve. cleanse and purify the world, but with a few more decades under my belt, I'm a bit more of a recluse from the outside world, as well...
Tending my own garden, as Hugo described, in "Les Miserables".
[It's 4 pm on a Saturday, a sunny afternoon after a morning drizzle. I'm just about to take a late afternoon bucket bath after being out in the garden since about 8 am this morning. Some cleaning the streambed where a slew of bamboo leaves and stuff had collected along the stone passages. Then, out in the far back -- what Sue Roe called 'the Farm' the other day -- trimming the extra lower branches on the new bamboo culms. Afterwards, digging a 1.5' deep canal below the lower rock garden to keep the water moving off our land so as not to collect at the narrow passages between the boulders. Then, a mid-day dal bhaat w/ Leah and her dear Danish friend, Esther, before going back outside trimming branches on the Himalayan maple and the Deodar (Himalayan cedar) by the guestroom that were occupying too much of the frontyard. Most recently, back to finish the canal, using a hoe, a shovel while mostly digging the soil out the mud w/ my hands, tearing my nails and putting on callouses on my keyboard office hands. I like looking at the scraps and scratches on my hands during the week as a reminder of my 'other' life out back up here in Budhanilkantha...]
One needs that privacy and physical labor, too, as we get older and more wounded or disappointed by the world.
A place of one's own.
Somewhere where we can be slightly purer, untarnished, and, for a few moments, free of the world's eternal travails and compromises.
Scott has Kampot. Robin had Correivic, Scotland. Matthew and Caroline their own separate La Grasses idylls. Bruce the Cape. Dave his Oregon coast. Jeff Maine. Rick his cabin in the Adirondacks. Diane and Marc their cottage in woods of Ontario... while I have Budhanilkantha.
Each of us has created our spiritual oasises in nature. While, for some reason, Nepal become mine. I believe we each have to find our own while we are in this crazy, demanding and marginal world.
Make a honorable life, create a family, offer love to a few precious individuals, raise a chld, love deeply, lose friends peacefully, embrace the sorrows that fill our days, drink deeply from literature, offer kindness to other's personal lives, honor our parents, offer something fresh for the world, keep a bit of it for oneself and constantly re-create oneself to find humor and sensitivity in the tragi-comedic passing of this human condition...
I guess that's a bit of my zeitgiest and worldview...
There is time enough, time enough, to form one's soul while helping to liberate others (and vice versa...) from our daily sufferings.
Life's a gift.
A mixed-up blessing, for sure, but while we are here it's enough to ensure a joyful celebration of an amazing natural world... w/ man as a bit of an after-thought.
But one we are definitely thankful for...
Such are my shabat blessings today...
I prefer to blog on Bambuddhism -- where I can express swirling, hestitant, inchoate fragments of ideas to myself w/o forming those staccato chirpings of the ultra-modern technological era.
I'm guess an old-style, old-world, old-technology guy at heart...
Words, sentences, poetry, expression, observation, symbols, nature, earth, wind, bamboo... those are what I rely on for my muse and inspiration, not modern morse code.
I guess if you want to understand my sense of my own life look up my recent post on 'Bamboo Buddhism' a week or two ago.
Of course, I still have that youthful, naive, eager, innocent urge to improve. cleanse and purify the world, but with a few more decades under my belt, I'm a bit more of a recluse from the outside world, as well...
Tending my own garden, as Hugo described, in "Les Miserables".
[It's 4 pm on a Saturday, a sunny afternoon after a morning drizzle. I'm just about to take a late afternoon bucket bath after being out in the garden since about 8 am this morning. Some cleaning the streambed where a slew of bamboo leaves and stuff had collected along the stone passages. Then, out in the far back -- what Sue Roe called 'the Farm' the other day -- trimming the extra lower branches on the new bamboo culms. Afterwards, digging a 1.5' deep canal below the lower rock garden to keep the water moving off our land so as not to collect at the narrow passages between the boulders. Then, a mid-day dal bhaat w/ Leah and her dear Danish friend, Esther, before going back outside trimming branches on the Himalayan maple and the Deodar (Himalayan cedar) by the guestroom that were occupying too much of the frontyard. Most recently, back to finish the canal, using a hoe, a shovel while mostly digging the soil out the mud w/ my hands, tearing my nails and putting on callouses on my keyboard office hands. I like looking at the scraps and scratches on my hands during the week as a reminder of my 'other' life out back up here in Budhanilkantha...]
One needs that privacy and physical labor, too, as we get older and more wounded or disappointed by the world.
A place of one's own.
Somewhere where we can be slightly purer, untarnished, and, for a few moments, free of the world's eternal travails and compromises.
Scott has Kampot. Robin had Correivic, Scotland. Matthew and Caroline their own separate La Grasses idylls. Bruce the Cape. Dave his Oregon coast. Jeff Maine. Rick his cabin in the Adirondacks. Diane and Marc their cottage in woods of Ontario... while I have Budhanilkantha.
Each of us has created our spiritual oasises in nature. While, for some reason, Nepal become mine. I believe we each have to find our own while we are in this crazy, demanding and marginal world.
Make a honorable life, create a family, offer love to a few precious individuals, raise a chld, love deeply, lose friends peacefully, embrace the sorrows that fill our days, drink deeply from literature, offer kindness to other's personal lives, honor our parents, offer something fresh for the world, keep a bit of it for oneself and constantly re-create oneself to find humor and sensitivity in the tragi-comedic passing of this human condition...
I guess that's a bit of my zeitgiest and worldview...
There is time enough, time enough, to form one's soul while helping to liberate others (and vice versa...) from our daily sufferings.
Life's a gift.
A mixed-up blessing, for sure, but while we are here it's enough to ensure a joyful celebration of an amazing natural world... w/ man as a bit of an after-thought.
But one we are definitely thankful for...
Such are my shabat blessings today...
Monday, May 16, 2011
Nepali Politics, May 2011 -- It's Complicated...
Nepal is currently enduring a lengthy post-conflict peace process that is girded by the issues of the Maoist cantonments and the drafting of a new constitution.
These two distinct processes are at the heart of the lengthy peace process that began in 2006 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) followed by the promulgation of the Interim Constitution in 2007 and the Constituent Assembly elections in 2008.
The Constituent Assembly (CA) was supposed to complete the process of drafting and promulgating a new Nepali constitution by May 28th, 2010, but missed that deadline and is soon to miss the one year extension date of May 28th, 2011. Yet, the final agreements on the new constitution remain closely aligned to the final decisions on integration, rehabilitation and reintegration of the Maoist army which has also been delayed.
Until there is greater progress on the cantonments, the final constitutional issues will remain unresolved.
Along with the issue of the final detachment of the People’s Liberation Army from the United Communist Party of Nepal Maoist (UCPN/M) and the drafting of the new constitution, the major political parties continue to struggle over the issue of power-sharing in the government. The present government is led by Jhalanath Khanal of the Communist Party Nepal-United Marxist-Leninist (UML) supported by the UCPN/M and the Madheshi Janadhikar Forum (MJF), one of the important Madhesi party factions. However, there are deep rifts w/in each of the major parties while the three largest Madhesi parties have all split over the last year into separate factions.
It is likely as a price of extending the CA past the current May 28th deadline (as set and revised in the Interim Constitution 2007), the Congress Party, the second largest in the CA after the UCPN/M and before the UML, will insist upon a consensus government, including them, under a new prime minister. This political negotiation and calculation has taken up much of the various party leaders’ time over the past few months, leaving less time for resolving the remaining issues to draft a constitution by May 28th.
The situation will remain rather tenuous and uncertain until final negotiations and agreements are made right before the deadline of midnight on May 28th.
In addition to the various political struggles within and between these three major political parties, there are deep and unresolved issues among the major ethnic, linguistic and geographic communities in Nepal.
As all three of the major parties are lead and controlled by Brahmin-Chhetri men (15% of Nepal), there has been a growing movement of indigenous people (‘adivasi-janjati’), Madhesi (people from the terai or lowlands along the Indian border) and Dalits (the formerly untouchable castes) to ensure that the new constitution ensures the progressive restructuring of the state, including new provinces based on ethnic and linguistic boundaries, as well as much expanded reservations or proportionate representation for the historically marginalized.
Each of these communities are represented in the major parties, but they are rarely on the Central Committee or Politburos where real power lies. For that reason, the Madhesis, after a major political movement in early 2007 when they protested the lack of federalism in the Interim Constitution, formed new political parties to represent their interests. Neither the indigenous peoples (IP) nor the Dalits have successfully initiated such parties to-date, although they have a few very minor parties in the CA who vociferously advocate for their rights, in addition to the work done by the IP, Madhesi, Women’s and Dalit CA Caucuses.
Among these various political actors and parties, the UCPN/M, naturally, is considered either the most radical or progressive, depending on your political perspective. The UML is often seen as a more opportunist party willing to swing either right or left to align with the other two major parties for their own party or personal interests. The Congress, once the progressive, anti-feudal party of the 1960-80s, is now seen as more conservative in the political spectrum, the status quo ante party.
The three major Madhesi parties (MJF, Terai Loktantric and Sadbhavana) have all split into two separate factions each, contesting for influence and power among the major three parties. There are altogether 27 (or 28…) parties in the CA, including many with less than five representatives.
Along with state restructuring, proportional representation, some of the other major issues facing the country while drafting the new constitution include: the form of government (directly elected president, prime minister in a parliamentary system or a mixed system) and the type of electoral systems (first past the post, proportional or mixed system) and an independent judiciary.
As there have not been local elections since 1997, and the previous local governments were dissolved by a Congress government in 2002, all local government is being managed by government officials. This, too, is a serious, lingering issue as without locally elected leadership the structure of good governance and democratic government is deeply flawed. Yet the current political parties mostly say that there can only be local elections after the issues identified above are resolved and there are national, then provincial elections some three to five years in the future.
As they say, it's complicated...
These two distinct processes are at the heart of the lengthy peace process that began in 2006 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) followed by the promulgation of the Interim Constitution in 2007 and the Constituent Assembly elections in 2008.
The Constituent Assembly (CA) was supposed to complete the process of drafting and promulgating a new Nepali constitution by May 28th, 2010, but missed that deadline and is soon to miss the one year extension date of May 28th, 2011. Yet, the final agreements on the new constitution remain closely aligned to the final decisions on integration, rehabilitation and reintegration of the Maoist army which has also been delayed.
Until there is greater progress on the cantonments, the final constitutional issues will remain unresolved.
Along with the issue of the final detachment of the People’s Liberation Army from the United Communist Party of Nepal Maoist (UCPN/M) and the drafting of the new constitution, the major political parties continue to struggle over the issue of power-sharing in the government. The present government is led by Jhalanath Khanal of the Communist Party Nepal-United Marxist-Leninist (UML) supported by the UCPN/M and the Madheshi Janadhikar Forum (MJF), one of the important Madhesi party factions. However, there are deep rifts w/in each of the major parties while the three largest Madhesi parties have all split over the last year into separate factions.
It is likely as a price of extending the CA past the current May 28th deadline (as set and revised in the Interim Constitution 2007), the Congress Party, the second largest in the CA after the UCPN/M and before the UML, will insist upon a consensus government, including them, under a new prime minister. This political negotiation and calculation has taken up much of the various party leaders’ time over the past few months, leaving less time for resolving the remaining issues to draft a constitution by May 28th.
The situation will remain rather tenuous and uncertain until final negotiations and agreements are made right before the deadline of midnight on May 28th.
In addition to the various political struggles within and between these three major political parties, there are deep and unresolved issues among the major ethnic, linguistic and geographic communities in Nepal.
As all three of the major parties are lead and controlled by Brahmin-Chhetri men (15% of Nepal), there has been a growing movement of indigenous people (‘adivasi-janjati’), Madhesi (people from the terai or lowlands along the Indian border) and Dalits (the formerly untouchable castes) to ensure that the new constitution ensures the progressive restructuring of the state, including new provinces based on ethnic and linguistic boundaries, as well as much expanded reservations or proportionate representation for the historically marginalized.
Each of these communities are represented in the major parties, but they are rarely on the Central Committee or Politburos where real power lies. For that reason, the Madhesis, after a major political movement in early 2007 when they protested the lack of federalism in the Interim Constitution, formed new political parties to represent their interests. Neither the indigenous peoples (IP) nor the Dalits have successfully initiated such parties to-date, although they have a few very minor parties in the CA who vociferously advocate for their rights, in addition to the work done by the IP, Madhesi, Women’s and Dalit CA Caucuses.
Among these various political actors and parties, the UCPN/M, naturally, is considered either the most radical or progressive, depending on your political perspective. The UML is often seen as a more opportunist party willing to swing either right or left to align with the other two major parties for their own party or personal interests. The Congress, once the progressive, anti-feudal party of the 1960-80s, is now seen as more conservative in the political spectrum, the status quo ante party.
The three major Madhesi parties (MJF, Terai Loktantric and Sadbhavana) have all split into two separate factions each, contesting for influence and power among the major three parties. There are altogether 27 (or 28…) parties in the CA, including many with less than five representatives.
Along with state restructuring, proportional representation, some of the other major issues facing the country while drafting the new constitution include: the form of government (directly elected president, prime minister in a parliamentary system or a mixed system) and the type of electoral systems (first past the post, proportional or mixed system) and an independent judiciary.
As there have not been local elections since 1997, and the previous local governments were dissolved by a Congress government in 2002, all local government is being managed by government officials. This, too, is a serious, lingering issue as without locally elected leadership the structure of good governance and democratic government is deeply flawed. Yet the current political parties mostly say that there can only be local elections after the issues identified above are resolved and there are national, then provincial elections some three to five years in the future.
As they say, it's complicated...
Monday, May 2, 2011
Greg Mortenson: 'Three Cups of Cappuccino'
'Three Cups of Tea'...
I remember joking w/ my sister, Claudia, when she asked me about Greg Mortenson's "Three Cups of Tea", as I'd spent decades working on development issues in Nepal. I told her that I should write a book called, "Three Cups of Coffee", a more pungent, aromatic modern double shot of espresso in the Himalaya to contrast with Greg's soothing, relaxing, semi-colonial image of an afternoon tea in the Karakorum.
Cards on the table: I've never read Greg's book nor met the man himself, so I don't have much to comment on this stories, exaggerated, heroic or misunderstood.
I have, however, spent a few decades, like many friends and colleagues, working on similar issues of basic education, community organization and leadership development in someone else's culture. That in itself has me reaching for another shot of coffee...
Because it's what I have often referred to as 'hopeful-hopeless' work. Our dreams and aspirations are so real and yet imagined. Our desire to help, as my dear, dear friend Robin used to say, "make the world a bit less miserable..." is hard-wired into us. We come with some extra chromosone of empathy. Even though we are a species known for the survival of our fittest -- our unique double helix of being is balanced awkwardly between that clever instinct for survival with an almost innocent desire to protect the weak and the vulnerable.
Odd ducks, we are, trying to glide in the sacred realms while often tripping in our ungainly efforts to be simply good, moral and compassionate.
Yet, for all of those who believe that humans are a selfish breed, there are those tender emotions and acts of kindness that fill our hearts and provide a sense of our redemption in a difficult world.
Thus, when we find an individual or organization that touches our good graces, that appeals to our higher ambitions, that reminds us that 'but for the grace of g-d goes me...', we often respond with generosity and trust.
I know this because I saw this time and time again during my work at Save the Children. When I I first joined I thought the name too overstated, too grand, too misconstrued. I tend to try to find a common mean closer to ground realities, rather than 'reach for the stars', as Bette Davis once said. I prefer not to indulge in ideals or unfulfillable hopes. I didn't want to be marketing something that was unattainable or unreasonable.
But, over the years, this anxious concern did find a balance for me between the aspirational, almost religious name of the organization and the more complex, human reality of the actual field work. I came to accept that name because I found so many good, caring and intelligent people w/in the organization who thought seriously about the integrity of our work and the institution. My respect for them elevated, as well as grounded, the agency name in a host of personal effort and struggle.
Which, I believe, is equally true of CARE, ActionAid, WaterAid, PLAN, USAID, UNICEF and other organizations working to alleviate poverty in this world.
'Hopeful-hopeless', as I said, another of the word-play contradictions that help me balance my thoughts and emotions...
Yet those 25 years also taught me many lessons about people, development work, management, advertising, ambitions and disappointments.
I still remember that envelope-making project in Gorkha district I started in 1984 in honor of my beloved Grandmother Rose Rose after her passing. It seemed such a good and straight-forward project. Train some villagers, preferably Janjati or Dalit families in the skill, provide them the basic equipment, link them with a purchaser/middle man and -- et voila! -- new income for these families and good deeds made manifest in this world!
Of course, as you knew, it didn't quite work out that way... The villagers were not accustomed to this craft, didn't have a place to store the reams of paper, were busy with their daily labors to keep the family afloat, didn't really have an easy contact w/ the buyer as they were in a villge and the envelopes were, by and large, an urban need, etc., etc...
I remember the sadness I felt in realizing after some months that the 'good' I had hoped to do in the name of my grandmother had been another modest Ozmandias, another well-intended gossamer effort that turned to dust soon after I turned away...
As my older friend, sage and inspiration, Bruce Lansdale used to say: "No good deed goes unpunished..."
I wasn't punished for that failed project, unlike other more large-scale ambitions when one's actions face political, social or personal resistence or aggression, except in the way when one feels that you've let yourself or someone else down -- which is a very real form of self-doubt.
There's an image in my mind that always returns every few years of this naked human ambition, not in a do-good, development sense, but the effort of man to control or conqueor his surroundings. I once worked for a few months in the Kordofan province of the Sudan, running a way-station for oil folk in the late-70s. I used to joke that we had the largest stock of food for a thousand miles in any direction (which was true...).
One day on a long, meandering drive with a friend, a few hours from nowhere in the brush-like landscape of central Sudan, we came across an enormous bulldozer, the size of large tank, resting on a mound of earth with nothing resembling a work-site or habitation anywhere near by. It was my '2001' (the movie) moment when, if I hadn't known what the original purpose of the machine was for, I would simply have stared w/ gaping jaw at the strange, metallic beast that had come from some distant world and been abandoned there in front of me...
Yet, over the years, I have seen many primay schools, healthposts, forest plantations, irrigation canals and government offices lying as abandoned and isolated and pathetic in the hills and terai of Nepal as that unforgettable image of modern technology and aspiration in the wild emptiness of the Sudan.
Of course, there are successes in 'development' work. We have seen positive changes in the education or public health standard of certain communities and countries. There are impressive and dignified achievements in individual lives. There are mango and orange orchards where they did not exist before. There are irrigation canals or women's cooperatives where they did not exist before. There are trained village workers who did not have those skills before...
The record of modern, post-colonial Western 'development' assistance can be defined both by its accomplishments and noble objectives -- but the story would not be complete without a realistic assessment of the misplaced idealism, the excesses of external funding, the impact of an foreign agency on a local culture, the mixed ambitions of the people themselves (the villagers, the staff or the government officials), or the corruption and rigid hierarchies within each organization one must work with to achieve those elusive ambitions.
What Greg Mortenson faced in the complex Afghan or Pakistani society can be no less than what I know from Nepal, Bhutan or the other Asian countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, where I have worked over the decades.
But what struck me poignantly years ago was the repetitive advertising for his book any time I visited the States. No matter what city I was in, there seemed to be a full page ad for "Three Cups of Tea", either promoting the book and/or to meet Greg himself to hear his inspiring stories first-hand.
I wondered what motivated Greg, what type of man he was, how he seemed to be able to give so fully to his cause -- and where the funds for the publicity were coming from. Along w/ this perpetual book tour were the increasing number of articles in magazines and on the web about the unusual Greg Mortenson and his tale of survival and transformation into the archetypical Western saviour bringing goodness and generosity to the under-served people in a distant land.
The famous 'White Man's Burden', I believe is the title of a recent book (that my son, Joshua, described to me...).
Or, as my mother used to say, "If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is..."
Maybe I was skeptical, as well, of a solitary, even if well-meaning, American achieving as much as Greg seemed to promise in the rugged frontiers of the Northwest Province along the Afghan-Pakistan border. It seemed too much like a wannabe tale of daring and do-good, where those who were fighting us on one side of this ancient, untamed border turned to gender-sensitive lambs on the other after meeting Greg...
I am no expert on the NW Frontier, but I have been to both Afghanistan and Pakistan on a number of occasions between 1995-2001 when I was the regional director for Save the Children. I know a bit of those valleys, the Khyber Pass, Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif and the proud, independent cultures that inhabit those dry, isolated and rough lands. I have some experience with community development programs there. I have witnessed the passion of those children for an education and yet the societal restrictions and proud paternal authorities that control their lives. I know how different those traditional Central Asian Islamic cultures are from the Hindu-Buddhist world below the Himalaya -- and yet how similar some structural patterns replicate when foreigners try to 'do good' in someone else's world.
What we promote back 'home', the good deeds that we do, the advertising that helps bring in the funds for us to continue our efforts, can be so removed and distinct from the work that we actually do and the complexities or obstacles that we face in turning good intentions into lasting, sustainable change (as the expression goes...).
I remember once telling an SC advertising executive that he couldn't keep using a photo of a Nepali child carrying a 'doko' (a traditional basket on one's back) with the tag line: "Stop another form of child abuse!" I tried to convince him that, even in the 20th c., this was simply the way that Nepalis in the hills, men, women and children, carried water, firewood, corn and their daily necessities. They didn't use shopping bags or throw the groceries in the trunk or backseat of the car.
But, he wouldn't listen. He knew the image was appealing to the kind souls of the average American. He knew that that photograph with that caption would raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the organization. He knew that he had to raise those funds to meet his own annual target for the year. He didn't have time to think about what the image and words did to the realities or self-respect of Nepal and Nepali people -- who would likely never see that eye-catching advertisment in People magazine.
He reached across the table, grabbed my wrist and said with all his confidence and condesension, "It raises money!"
"Three Cups of Tea" raised money, lots of it. It's an endearing, persuasive title, as Greg appears in person to be a gentle, persuasive individual. His book seems to offer the seductive image of two men from different cultures, different worlds, different histories, different languages sitting together to resolve the world's problems. The contextual time where these villagers live in the isolated Karakorum mountains to our modern uber-connected world dissolves in the snap of a photo, the jolly, good humor and affection between the young man who brings education, schools and money from the West to the humble, proud and yet gentle people in a distant land.
But all the recent news based on Jon Krakauer's investigative reporting asks us, "Is it mostly true?"
Again, I don't know. I don't know Greg. I don't know Jon. I don't know CAI, Greg's foundation.
But I do know that we can easily create a romantic tale in a distant land that warms our hearts and encourages us to contribute to the well-being of others. I know how we long for the belief that two people sitting together over a few cups of tea can agree on peace and education for all of their children, the girls as well as the boys. We want to believe that this can be true around the world, for the Dalits as well as the high caste, the Southern Bhutanese, as well as the Drukpas, the Turkomen as well as the Pashtun, the Hispanic as well as the Anglo, the poor as well as the rich, the South Bronx as well as Riverdale...
The fact is that the story takes place far on the horizon, out of sight, when we sleep and dream their daily lives start in a distant land and a different culture. The fact is that their social norms are not the same as ours and their history has taken a hugely different path. The fact is that we don't speak the same language or read the same books. The bitter truth is that we want them to be far away from us and not asking for help on our doorstep or on the corner simplifies and cleanses the reality for us. The black and white images from far away allow us to feel good, better, even kinder without complications or a hint of the complicated realities behind the screen. Greg was content to serve as that screen for us.
I wonder if Greg, like Icarus, didn't fly to close to the sun, to close to the radiance of half-met promises of noble pursuits. I wonder if he didn't come to believe exaggerated truths about himself and the people he was trying to help. I wonder if others, friends, publishers, partners, encouraged these seductive traits in him. I wonder if he sought to sell a story and bought into a lifestyle that quickly began to float away from reality of Pakistan and Afghanistan, float like those ethereal, radiant Renaissance saints, so pure, noble and untarnished by the confusing realities of this world.
I do know that the hard slog and lifetime effort of trying to help bring change in someone else's society is not achieved in a merely few years or through an advertising cyle or book tour. I do know that we are still and always foreigners, 'strangers in a strange land' as the Hebrew scriptures say, when we chose to live and work on international 'development' issues overseas. I do know that our role should rarely be in the foreground, but in the background, slightly off camera, assisting others to gain the skills, knowledge and confidence to lead their communities and organizations.
I do know that we must strive, as Elie Weisel wrote (in "The Gates of the Forest"), to be "honest, humble and strong" while living in this world full of high-minded idealism and egoistic realities. I know that we risk alot in entering someone else's society, to put our oars in someone else's reality, and hope we know or learn what we are doing...
I do know that we are limited creatures, liable of making serious mistakes in our personal and professional lives. I know that, these days in particular, the world is ever-watching, ever-vigilant, ever on-line...
The good work that so many are doing, both high-minded people in their own lands and the well-meaning foreigners who join them, the hard effort of creating new leaders, setting new social standards, expanding an understanding of rights and resources, ensuring that all children can attend a quality school, evolving stronger local communities -- while riding the turbulent waves of the globalization that are sweeping across our continents and countries -- will continue for decades to come.
I do sincerely wish Greg the best. I believe that he cares and wants to do well. But I think that he should step off the fund-raising merry-go-round to spend some serious time reflecting, not just responding, to his critics and this controversy.
For it's not enough to drink three cups of tea, one has to imbibe even more deeply of one's role in someone else's country, of one's responsibilities to them and recall the promises one originally made to one's self, and others.
For along with the raising of the funds for 'good deeds' is the careful and cautious spending of those resources. The shepherding of those funds for the most possible good. The quiet work of empowering others to fulfill their dreams and ambitions.
The life-long, inter-generational changes that imbue a community with pride, self-confidence and self-reliance.
I remember joking w/ my sister, Claudia, when she asked me about Greg Mortenson's "Three Cups of Tea", as I'd spent decades working on development issues in Nepal. I told her that I should write a book called, "Three Cups of Coffee", a more pungent, aromatic modern double shot of espresso in the Himalaya to contrast with Greg's soothing, relaxing, semi-colonial image of an afternoon tea in the Karakorum.
Cards on the table: I've never read Greg's book nor met the man himself, so I don't have much to comment on this stories, exaggerated, heroic or misunderstood.
I have, however, spent a few decades, like many friends and colleagues, working on similar issues of basic education, community organization and leadership development in someone else's culture. That in itself has me reaching for another shot of coffee...
Because it's what I have often referred to as 'hopeful-hopeless' work. Our dreams and aspirations are so real and yet imagined. Our desire to help, as my dear, dear friend Robin used to say, "make the world a bit less miserable..." is hard-wired into us. We come with some extra chromosone of empathy. Even though we are a species known for the survival of our fittest -- our unique double helix of being is balanced awkwardly between that clever instinct for survival with an almost innocent desire to protect the weak and the vulnerable.
Odd ducks, we are, trying to glide in the sacred realms while often tripping in our ungainly efforts to be simply good, moral and compassionate.
Yet, for all of those who believe that humans are a selfish breed, there are those tender emotions and acts of kindness that fill our hearts and provide a sense of our redemption in a difficult world.
Thus, when we find an individual or organization that touches our good graces, that appeals to our higher ambitions, that reminds us that 'but for the grace of g-d goes me...', we often respond with generosity and trust.
I know this because I saw this time and time again during my work at Save the Children. When I I first joined I thought the name too overstated, too grand, too misconstrued. I tend to try to find a common mean closer to ground realities, rather than 'reach for the stars', as Bette Davis once said. I prefer not to indulge in ideals or unfulfillable hopes. I didn't want to be marketing something that was unattainable or unreasonable.
But, over the years, this anxious concern did find a balance for me between the aspirational, almost religious name of the organization and the more complex, human reality of the actual field work. I came to accept that name because I found so many good, caring and intelligent people w/in the organization who thought seriously about the integrity of our work and the institution. My respect for them elevated, as well as grounded, the agency name in a host of personal effort and struggle.
Which, I believe, is equally true of CARE, ActionAid, WaterAid, PLAN, USAID, UNICEF and other organizations working to alleviate poverty in this world.
'Hopeful-hopeless', as I said, another of the word-play contradictions that help me balance my thoughts and emotions...
Yet those 25 years also taught me many lessons about people, development work, management, advertising, ambitions and disappointments.
I still remember that envelope-making project in Gorkha district I started in 1984 in honor of my beloved Grandmother Rose Rose after her passing. It seemed such a good and straight-forward project. Train some villagers, preferably Janjati or Dalit families in the skill, provide them the basic equipment, link them with a purchaser/middle man and -- et voila! -- new income for these families and good deeds made manifest in this world!
Of course, as you knew, it didn't quite work out that way... The villagers were not accustomed to this craft, didn't have a place to store the reams of paper, were busy with their daily labors to keep the family afloat, didn't really have an easy contact w/ the buyer as they were in a villge and the envelopes were, by and large, an urban need, etc., etc...
I remember the sadness I felt in realizing after some months that the 'good' I had hoped to do in the name of my grandmother had been another modest Ozmandias, another well-intended gossamer effort that turned to dust soon after I turned away...
As my older friend, sage and inspiration, Bruce Lansdale used to say: "No good deed goes unpunished..."
I wasn't punished for that failed project, unlike other more large-scale ambitions when one's actions face political, social or personal resistence or aggression, except in the way when one feels that you've let yourself or someone else down -- which is a very real form of self-doubt.
There's an image in my mind that always returns every few years of this naked human ambition, not in a do-good, development sense, but the effort of man to control or conqueor his surroundings. I once worked for a few months in the Kordofan province of the Sudan, running a way-station for oil folk in the late-70s. I used to joke that we had the largest stock of food for a thousand miles in any direction (which was true...).
One day on a long, meandering drive with a friend, a few hours from nowhere in the brush-like landscape of central Sudan, we came across an enormous bulldozer, the size of large tank, resting on a mound of earth with nothing resembling a work-site or habitation anywhere near by. It was my '2001' (the movie) moment when, if I hadn't known what the original purpose of the machine was for, I would simply have stared w/ gaping jaw at the strange, metallic beast that had come from some distant world and been abandoned there in front of me...
Yet, over the years, I have seen many primay schools, healthposts, forest plantations, irrigation canals and government offices lying as abandoned and isolated and pathetic in the hills and terai of Nepal as that unforgettable image of modern technology and aspiration in the wild emptiness of the Sudan.
Of course, there are successes in 'development' work. We have seen positive changes in the education or public health standard of certain communities and countries. There are impressive and dignified achievements in individual lives. There are mango and orange orchards where they did not exist before. There are irrigation canals or women's cooperatives where they did not exist before. There are trained village workers who did not have those skills before...
The record of modern, post-colonial Western 'development' assistance can be defined both by its accomplishments and noble objectives -- but the story would not be complete without a realistic assessment of the misplaced idealism, the excesses of external funding, the impact of an foreign agency on a local culture, the mixed ambitions of the people themselves (the villagers, the staff or the government officials), or the corruption and rigid hierarchies within each organization one must work with to achieve those elusive ambitions.
What Greg Mortenson faced in the complex Afghan or Pakistani society can be no less than what I know from Nepal, Bhutan or the other Asian countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, where I have worked over the decades.
But what struck me poignantly years ago was the repetitive advertising for his book any time I visited the States. No matter what city I was in, there seemed to be a full page ad for "Three Cups of Tea", either promoting the book and/or to meet Greg himself to hear his inspiring stories first-hand.
I wondered what motivated Greg, what type of man he was, how he seemed to be able to give so fully to his cause -- and where the funds for the publicity were coming from. Along w/ this perpetual book tour were the increasing number of articles in magazines and on the web about the unusual Greg Mortenson and his tale of survival and transformation into the archetypical Western saviour bringing goodness and generosity to the under-served people in a distant land.
The famous 'White Man's Burden', I believe is the title of a recent book (that my son, Joshua, described to me...).
Or, as my mother used to say, "If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is..."
Maybe I was skeptical, as well, of a solitary, even if well-meaning, American achieving as much as Greg seemed to promise in the rugged frontiers of the Northwest Province along the Afghan-Pakistan border. It seemed too much like a wannabe tale of daring and do-good, where those who were fighting us on one side of this ancient, untamed border turned to gender-sensitive lambs on the other after meeting Greg...
I am no expert on the NW Frontier, but I have been to both Afghanistan and Pakistan on a number of occasions between 1995-2001 when I was the regional director for Save the Children. I know a bit of those valleys, the Khyber Pass, Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif and the proud, independent cultures that inhabit those dry, isolated and rough lands. I have some experience with community development programs there. I have witnessed the passion of those children for an education and yet the societal restrictions and proud paternal authorities that control their lives. I know how different those traditional Central Asian Islamic cultures are from the Hindu-Buddhist world below the Himalaya -- and yet how similar some structural patterns replicate when foreigners try to 'do good' in someone else's world.
What we promote back 'home', the good deeds that we do, the advertising that helps bring in the funds for us to continue our efforts, can be so removed and distinct from the work that we actually do and the complexities or obstacles that we face in turning good intentions into lasting, sustainable change (as the expression goes...).
I remember once telling an SC advertising executive that he couldn't keep using a photo of a Nepali child carrying a 'doko' (a traditional basket on one's back) with the tag line: "Stop another form of child abuse!" I tried to convince him that, even in the 20th c., this was simply the way that Nepalis in the hills, men, women and children, carried water, firewood, corn and their daily necessities. They didn't use shopping bags or throw the groceries in the trunk or backseat of the car.
But, he wouldn't listen. He knew the image was appealing to the kind souls of the average American. He knew that that photograph with that caption would raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the organization. He knew that he had to raise those funds to meet his own annual target for the year. He didn't have time to think about what the image and words did to the realities or self-respect of Nepal and Nepali people -- who would likely never see that eye-catching advertisment in People magazine.
He reached across the table, grabbed my wrist and said with all his confidence and condesension, "It raises money!"
"Three Cups of Tea" raised money, lots of it. It's an endearing, persuasive title, as Greg appears in person to be a gentle, persuasive individual. His book seems to offer the seductive image of two men from different cultures, different worlds, different histories, different languages sitting together to resolve the world's problems. The contextual time where these villagers live in the isolated Karakorum mountains to our modern uber-connected world dissolves in the snap of a photo, the jolly, good humor and affection between the young man who brings education, schools and money from the West to the humble, proud and yet gentle people in a distant land.
But all the recent news based on Jon Krakauer's investigative reporting asks us, "Is it mostly true?"
Again, I don't know. I don't know Greg. I don't know Jon. I don't know CAI, Greg's foundation.
But I do know that we can easily create a romantic tale in a distant land that warms our hearts and encourages us to contribute to the well-being of others. I know how we long for the belief that two people sitting together over a few cups of tea can agree on peace and education for all of their children, the girls as well as the boys. We want to believe that this can be true around the world, for the Dalits as well as the high caste, the Southern Bhutanese, as well as the Drukpas, the Turkomen as well as the Pashtun, the Hispanic as well as the Anglo, the poor as well as the rich, the South Bronx as well as Riverdale...
The fact is that the story takes place far on the horizon, out of sight, when we sleep and dream their daily lives start in a distant land and a different culture. The fact is that their social norms are not the same as ours and their history has taken a hugely different path. The fact is that we don't speak the same language or read the same books. The bitter truth is that we want them to be far away from us and not asking for help on our doorstep or on the corner simplifies and cleanses the reality for us. The black and white images from far away allow us to feel good, better, even kinder without complications or a hint of the complicated realities behind the screen. Greg was content to serve as that screen for us.
I wonder if Greg, like Icarus, didn't fly to close to the sun, to close to the radiance of half-met promises of noble pursuits. I wonder if he didn't come to believe exaggerated truths about himself and the people he was trying to help. I wonder if others, friends, publishers, partners, encouraged these seductive traits in him. I wonder if he sought to sell a story and bought into a lifestyle that quickly began to float away from reality of Pakistan and Afghanistan, float like those ethereal, radiant Renaissance saints, so pure, noble and untarnished by the confusing realities of this world.
I do know that the hard slog and lifetime effort of trying to help bring change in someone else's society is not achieved in a merely few years or through an advertising cyle or book tour. I do know that we are still and always foreigners, 'strangers in a strange land' as the Hebrew scriptures say, when we chose to live and work on international 'development' issues overseas. I do know that our role should rarely be in the foreground, but in the background, slightly off camera, assisting others to gain the skills, knowledge and confidence to lead their communities and organizations.
I do know that we must strive, as Elie Weisel wrote (in "The Gates of the Forest"), to be "honest, humble and strong" while living in this world full of high-minded idealism and egoistic realities. I know that we risk alot in entering someone else's society, to put our oars in someone else's reality, and hope we know or learn what we are doing...
I do know that we are limited creatures, liable of making serious mistakes in our personal and professional lives. I know that, these days in particular, the world is ever-watching, ever-vigilant, ever on-line...
The good work that so many are doing, both high-minded people in their own lands and the well-meaning foreigners who join them, the hard effort of creating new leaders, setting new social standards, expanding an understanding of rights and resources, ensuring that all children can attend a quality school, evolving stronger local communities -- while riding the turbulent waves of the globalization that are sweeping across our continents and countries -- will continue for decades to come.
I do sincerely wish Greg the best. I believe that he cares and wants to do well. But I think that he should step off the fund-raising merry-go-round to spend some serious time reflecting, not just responding, to his critics and this controversy.
For it's not enough to drink three cups of tea, one has to imbibe even more deeply of one's role in someone else's country, of one's responsibilities to them and recall the promises one originally made to one's self, and others.
For along with the raising of the funds for 'good deeds' is the careful and cautious spending of those resources. The shepherding of those funds for the most possible good. The quiet work of empowering others to fulfill their dreams and ambitions.
The life-long, inter-generational changes that imbue a community with pride, self-confidence and self-reliance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)