IN MAGAR COUNTRY

These hills of central Nepal run on Gurkha remittances, but is the money being used productively?

The rural hinterland of Palpa, Gulmi, Syangja and Arghakhanchi in central Nepal is Magar country. To the bus traveler on the Butwal to Pokhara highway, this seems a desolate corridor reflecting little economic dynamism. Industry is nil, commerce is weak and while agriculture is the mainstay there is never a bumper harvest.

And yet, the people of this area manage to survive. Not only that, they keep radios and videos and buy expensive land in Pokhara to the north and Butwal and Bhairawa to the south. There is a lot of ready cash available in the Magar villages of Palpa, Gulmi, Syangja and Arghakhanchi.

The answer to the incongruous affluence in the region is to be found in two buildings of stone and cement, both near the regional hub of Tansen. One is the District Soldiers Board Building and Compound in Chilangdi village and the other is the Brigade of Gurkhas Welfare Centre in Khorbari village. The pension of the Indian, and British Gurkhas in the region is distributed from here.

Most adult males in Chilangdi village, where the Indian pension camp is located, served or are currently serving in the Indian Army. About 3,500 ex-servicemen draw their pension from here, but a number of old pensioners continue to go to Gorakhpur (in India) or Pokhara, as they did in the past. Nevertheless, the total amount distributed by the Chilangdi camp comes close to about NRs 2.5 million. The minimum pension is NRs 400 per month. and the maximum is about NRs 2,900. (The recent devaluation of Indian currency has buffeted the economy of this area.).

The British Welfare Centre at Khorbari, for its part, is located near villages with heavy recruitment in the Brigade of Gurkhas. About 400 men come here to draw their pension, which is distributed once a year. The total distributed is about NRs 1.5 million. The minimum pension received by an ex-British Gurkha is NR 1100 per month.

The pension camps maintain records of the pensioners and when one dies they decide on the beneficiary. They also provide assistance in education, health and income-generation. The Welfare Centre helps servicemen on duty to keep in touch with their families, acting as a conduit for letters and messages. The Centre also helps with loans of purchasing land or cattle, and provides education allowances to pensioners' children. In case of need, the Centre also provides allowances to those who left service before 1945 without becoming eligible for pensions.

There are various agencies and individuals around the world who provide assistance to the ex-servicemen of this region through the British Welfare Centre. One such person is Sir Horace Kadoorie, 81, a millionaire who lives in Hongkong. Sir Horace was never a soldier but it has been his crusade to help ex-British Gurkhas. Though disabled by paralysis, he occasionally helicopters in from Kathmandu to inspect the projects that he has assisted in — bridges, school buildings, latrines and a demonstration farm in the Welfare Centre which raises pigs and rabbits.

TARAN BAHADUR

Gurkha recruitment pervades life in Palpa and the adjacent districts. This has been so since soon after the Anglo Nepali War of 1814-1816, when the East Indian Company recruited mostly Gurungs and Magars. During the First World War, when 114,000 Gurkhas were called into service, approximately 35 per cent are said to have been Magars. Both the Gurkhas who were awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in that war were Magars, Kulbir Thapa (France, 1915) and Karina Bahadur Rana (Palestine, 1918).

Today, it is not so much the glory of battle as the pay-packet and pension remuneration that is the attraction. Among the first things a newly married bride does is to implore her groom to go join military service, preferably in the British Army or Indian Army. (The Royal Nepal Army is the third preference, and the Nepali Police is even further down.) A family without a son in a foreign army is pitied.

In that sense, a visit to the house of Taran Bahadur Thapa, 72, in Chilangdi village shows that his extended family has done well. There are 14 females and 11 males. Two sons are in the Indian Army, each earning over NRs 2,000 a month. Another is with the British and earns NRs 3,600 a month. One, the much-decorated Khem Bahadur Thapa, is retired from the Indian army and receives a monthly pension of NRs 800.

In addition to the non-military income of other members of the family and the sale of agricultural produce, the family earns a cash income of NRs 8,400 every month. But a visit to Taran Bahadur's house in Chilangdi would not show this relative affluence. The diet is poor, the living conditions unhygienic. Such is the condition of many families of ex-Gurkhas here.

THE SILENT ECONOMY

For what it represents, recruitment in the Gurkhas immediately raises the social stock of a family. When a Magar boy is selected, his family can suddenly get everything on credit. It can get loans from well-to-do neighbours or money lenders and shopkeepers in order to purchase land, cattle or commodities. They are paid back with interest when the recruit comes home on leave.

Till the late 1970s, the military men used to buy gold bullion, gold ornaments and valuable cloth, particularly velvet. They also brought huge consignments of personal goods from abroad, in addition to cash. With their vaults bursting, bank managers in Pokhara and elsewhere advised the pensioners to invest in industry and business. A few took the advice, but many failed. One such enterprise which was the recently liquidated Palmi Siddhartha Oil Company of Palpa, whose shareholders were from Palpa and Gulmi.

The majority of ex-servicemen, however, had little entrepreneurial skills and they were not adept at tackling the bureaucratic hurdles put in the way of enterprise. Gradually, therefore, the ex-servicemen have drifted towards safer investments, which means buying land, or throwing up buildings in urban centres. The price of land in Pokhara and Butwal has risen nearly ten times in the last 3-4 years. The price of farmlands, particularly khet rice fields, has increased considerably in rural areas. In the village of Cherlung in Palpa, where the irrigation system is quite good and the land gives three crops a year, the cost for a ropani of land is NRs 80,000, which is what the khet fields of Kathmandu cost today.

It becomes obvious that thus far the government in Kathmandu has been relying on the economic "safety valve" provided by Gurkha recruitment while doing next to nothing to assist returned soldiers, including the Magar ex-servicemen of central Nepal, to join the economic mainstream. Not only should there be a willingness on the part of the Government to utilise the diverse skills that ex-soldiers bring back with them, there must also be a concerted programme to make productive use of the capital that exists, and is presently being wasted through conspicuous consumption or on land whose value is artificially high.

Gurkha recruitment will not continue forever, so it is time for the Government in Kathmandu to begin to pay attention to the needs of the hill economy, particularly in areas where recruitment is high. Rather than leave the Magar servicemen and pensioners of central Nepal to fend for themselves, the Government must begin to accept as its responsibility the problems presently attended to by the pension camps.

V.K. Kasajoo is editor of Tansen-based Satya weekly.