Roundup of regional news

Cleaner Air in Kathmandu

WHAT IS MADE in India, is powered by Bangladeshi batteries, charged with Nepali electricity, and runs on us-made DC motors?

Answer: Kathmandu´s electric three-wheeler commuter vehicles.

Called Safa (Clean) Tempo, they are white in colour and green in nature. With zero emission, they are different from the 3,000 or so diesel-powered smoke-belching tempos that ply the narrow streets of Kathmandu.

It is a modest beginning—there are only seven Safa Tempos quietly doing their smokeless rounds in Kathmandu—but it is a unique initiative for a region where air pollution in cities is becoming a major health hazard.

Safa Tempos were built and test-run by the USAlD-funded Global Resources Institute as a pilot project, and were bought by the Nepal Electric Vehicle Industry (NEVI), a newly-formed private group. During the six-month trial, the tempos ran over 125,000 km and ferried 250,000 passengers: proving that EVs were an economically viable and ecologically desirable mode of transport. Kathmandu, more than any other congested city in the region, desperately needs cleaner public transport. Vehicular emission from old diesel buses, trucks and tempos together with temperature inversion in the bowl-shaped valley make Kathmandu one of the most polluted cities in the region.

Kathmandu not only needs EVs, it is ideally suited for it too. The Valley has a relatively flat terrain, the distances travelled are short, average speed hovers around 35 km/hour, and there is ample hydroelectric power available, especially during the off-peak period when the batteries are charged.

NEVI plans to add 23 more tempos to the existing fleet, and set up battery-exchange facilities for at least 100 EVs to cater to private owners. "Our major challenge, however, is to convert all the other diesel tempos running in Kathmandu," says Bijay Man Sherchan, NEVI´s managing director.

If all goes according to plan, NEVI expects to establish its own manufacturing and assembly unit to produce new EVs—two-, three-and four-wheelers.

Green transport is an idea whose time has come, and there are other private EV companies getting into the field in Nepal. The government and Kathmandu Municipality have lent support. The Finance Ministry has drastically reduced import duty on EVs and EV components, and the industry has been offered electricity at reduced rates. There is also talk of a comprehensive transportation master plan for Kathmandu Valley that will expand existing trolley bus routes and EV commuter services, and then banish diesel vehicles to outside the Ring Road.

Maybe Kathmandu can be a Safa City, after all.

Tigers in Central Asia

AS THE FIVE republics of Central Asia begin to convert from command to market economies, the Japanese and South Koreans are competing for influence and markets. Koreans have a headstart simply because hundreds of thousands have been living there ever since Stalin forcibly moved them to Kazakhstan from the Korean peninsula in the 1930s.

Korean multinationals have been quick to- seize on the compatriot connection. Now, it seems the Japanese are not far behind. And both will be there much ahead of India or Pakistan.

Officials from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan trooped to Tokyo in March. The former Soviet republics want friends who will help them exploit the natural resources on the vast and rugged hinterland along the former Silk Route.

Despite the proximity to South Asia and the economic logic of cooperating with nearby neighbours, it seems that the East Asian tigers will beat the others with their sheer economic clout.

Both Pakistan and India have been trying to access the Central Asian market, but the Afghan war is making a mess of Pakistani efforts, and Indian approaches via Iran seem too cumbersome. As is usually the case, the inability of New Delhi and Islamabad to hitch wagons means that the Central Asian gravy train, too, will pass them by.

Otherwise, the large investment, expertise and entrepreneurial base of the two countries pulling together would put South Asia, with its strategic location, in a much better position than other suitors.

Japan is using its strong presence in the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to influence the Central Asians, according to the Bangkok-based Asia Times. The bank was founded to help former East European and Soviet bloc countries to adjust to the market economy. Asked if Japan was trying to take the lead role with aid and investment in Central Asia as it already has in Mongolia, the Japanese Director of the EBRD, Katsumoto Suzuki, replied: "We are ready."

The Japanese strategy in wooing the Central Asians includes using the "Asian card". Eisuke Sakakibara, the seniormost "Asianist" in the Japanese Foreign Ministry "likes this one very much", said an underling.

"His feelings are sympathetic to the area— and, of course, Central Asia is part of Asia." And as Hideaki Nonaka of the Eastern Siberian Investment Fund noted, the Kyrgyz people were racially similar to East Asians and had "a similar mentality".

Sounds like another co prosperity sphere to us.

Out of Siberia

IF BIRDS COULD talk, the four Siberian cranes that glided down in formation for a touchdown at Bharatpur sanctuary in Rajasthan on 1 February would perhaps tell us why they skipped their winter vacation this year as well. Was it fear of Afghan sharpshooters waiting to ambush them on high passes of the Hindu Kush, or the state of Indian politics?

Whatever the reason, ornithologists and conservationists were ecstatic when the birds were spotted rummaging through the reeds in the marshlands outside Bharatpur town. For they did not turn up at all during the last two seasons.

The Siberian crane (Grus leucogeranus) is among the most endangered of migratory birds, with a total wild population of no more than 3,000. Those breeding in eastern Siberia during the summer spend their winters in Poyang Lake in China, while those from western Siberia migrate to Iran or the Bharatpur marshes.

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature-India, the number of birds coming to Bharatpur had dwindled from 200 in 1963-64 to five in 1992-93. The last two winters saw none, and bird watchers had despaired of ever seeing the Siberian cranes back again when, suddenly, they arrived, albeit a few months late.

Normally, the cranes arrive in time to spend the whole winter in Bharatpur, and so the natural question: where did the four long-distance fliers spend the freezing months of December and January? For that matter, where did they travel to the previous two winters? Are there some warm climes elsewhere, too, which offer the same diet of the sedge called Cyperus rotundus that grows in the marshes?

The International Crane Foundation believes that trigger-happy mujahideen on the bird´s migratory air corridor path over eastern Afghanistan are to blame for the Siberian crane´s declining numbers in Bharatpur.

The cranes don´t stand a chance against guerrillas who nearly made another flying object extinct: Soviet helicopter gunships.

Dead Eyes See Again

THERE IS A MAN in a Gujarat town who waits by the cremation ghats as the dead are brought in. He wants their eyes. Not for some gruesome ritual to please an animistic deity, but to make use of them in his mission of mercy.

When Dr Bhagwandas Seth of Siddhpur town lost his young son in a road accident 12 years ago, he decided to transform his personal tragedy into a boon for the sightless. The doctor himself extracted his son´s dead eyes, and donated them.

Since then the doctor has worked like a man possessed. As he told the Press Trust of India: "There is nothing like giving someone a new life." Since 1984, he has removed nearly 3000 pairs of eyes from the dead to bring sight to the living blind.

Except for Sri Lanka, where eye donation has now become national in scope, voluntary organ donations are rare in South Asia. The superstitious believe that giving up eyes will mean being sightless in the next birth. But Dr Seth perseveres, spending a large part of his days inside the Siddhpur crematorium, persuading distraught relatives of the dead to allow the eyes to be donated.

A large number of bodies, including those from outlying regions, are brought to Siddhpur for cremation because the town lies on the banks of the holy Saraswati. The doctor arrives with volunteers of the Red Cross Society at six every morning, and he stays till nine. If a body arrives at any other time, he is called from his home or clinic.

Getting eyes donated was much more difficult ten years ago than it is now. General awareness, the doctor´s own personal example and his persuasiveness, have enabled Dr Seth´s team to present the Red Cross with at least two pairs of eyes every day.

The Red Cross has long been the beneficiary of Dr Seth´s mission. "We have more than 100 volunteers who go to the villages and try and remove superstitions concerning eye donations," says a Red Cross volunteer. "They have been successful in inculcating a scientific temper in the people."

A WORLD WITHOUT FICTIONS, part of an essay in The Atlantic Monthly by American humorist Garrison Keillor, written on the Whitewater scandal, is one perspective that should not be lost in the Hawala-related breast-beating in India.

A democracy needs good humor to keep it bumping along. When scandal breaks and we see the humanity of the great revealed, naked, dumb, there is always a cry for new rules or at least a new awareness and sensitivity that will prevent this terrible thing from ever happening again. We should be careful, though, not to make the world so fine and good that you and I can´t enjoy living in it. A world that is safe from any sexual harassment will be a world in which there is no flirtation. A world that is safe from thieves will have no entrepreneurs. A government that knows no friendly connections or favors between politicians and businessmen would be the first in the history of the world. And a world without fictions, my friends, would be unbearable for all of us.

The Peerless Peerzada Brothers of Lahore

IS THERE ANYTHING that the Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop (RPTW) does not or cannot do? The Lahore-based cultural group, already known for organising everything from puppet theatre to Bharat Natyam, just put up Pakistan´s first international drama festival.

It got rave reviews, with about a dozen foreign companies and five local ones staging performances for the better part of a month. The festival was the crowning glory of the Peerzada family, who have all by themselves managed to provide Lahore with a cultural boost over the course of more than a decade.

One could argue that this shouldn´t be hard for the rptw considering their experience in holding two biennial international puppet festivals in Lahore since 1992 and the dates October 10-20 are now on the calendars of puppeteers around the world.

The Workshop was originally started in 1936 by Rafi Peer, a well-known drama personality, but soon fell dormant. After his death in 1974, it was revived some years later by his children. At first, their main focus was inviting foreign one-person shows and staging puppet theatre.

In 1990, while participating in a national puppet festival sponsored by the government-run Pakistan National Council of Arts (pnca), Faizaan, one of the brothers, got the idea of organising an international puppet festival. Together, the Peerzada brothers, sisters, and in-laws, managed to pull it off, and the puppet festival was held successfully in October of that year.

Pakistan shares a theatre and puppetry heritage with India, but India has had the higher profile because the performing arts there have always received more patronage. As Mustafa Sajjad Haider, director of theatre at the Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA), says, there is so little support for theatre in Pakistan that people from "good backgrounds" are reluctant to venture into the profession.

Even though there are arts councils in all major towns of the country, these have remained dormant, and the private and corporate sector generally hold a cynical view of the arts. Enter: the Peerzada family, with the conviction that a good show and brimming enthusiasm was all that was required to get some culture going.

The RPTW receives no grants from the government, and it survives by going ´corporate´. It has grown from a one-man show organiser and Karachi-based puppetry company to a cultural consultancy of sorts. Want to stage a national dance festival, but lack the manpower or knowhow? Call the Workshop, as Bharat Natyam dancer Tehreema Mitha did last year. Result: the country´s first national dance festival in November-December 1995. Want proper lighting for a big pop music concert? No problem for the RPTW (they did it for the Pakistan World Cup Cultural Committee).

Now, with an international theatre festival behind them, what more is there for the Peerzadas to do? Where is the challenge? Perhaps, might we suggest, an international film festival?

– Tom K. Maliti

Royal Reading

WITHIN ITS HANDFUL of states, South Asia has two kingships (three if you are to count the Dalai Lama of Tibet as god-king). And while we know that kings normally do not have time to read all the verbiage that social scientists turn out, King Birendra and King Jigme might want to find some time to brush up on what social anthropologist Declan Quigley, of (appropriately enough) The Queen´s University in Belfast, has to say in the latest issue of Anthropology Today.

Kingship raises, writes Quigley, an exciting range of theoretical questions on the nature and functions of political ritual and the social roles of myth and symbolism. With reference to media accounts of the British monarchy, he writes that the declining public estimation of the monarchy is not so much in terms of what they do, but how it is reported. Royal dalliances, after all, hardly constitute historical novelty.

"The real harm, monarchists lament, is done by the instant and detailed publicity afforded by modern communications, since legitimation of the crown demands that it retain an aura of mystery, and mystery sits uneasily with tabloid headlines screaming out the latest peccadillo."

Writes Quigley: "It is the sheer numbers who now have the opportunity to invade the royal domain through the media which strips the monarchy of the illusions of dignity so categorically. Of course, it is not only the royals who are sacrificed this way for the benefit of society: any public figure is open to the same fate, and the more public, the greater and more humiliatingly invasive the scrutiny."

As for the future of the royals, Quigley notes: "The paradoxes that persist may well ensure the survival of a number of monarchies well into the next millennium. If, as some have argued, the essential ingredients of all ritual are to be found in the heightened contrivances of royal ceremonies, then royalists may be right that we lose something very fundamental when we abolish monarchy. In any case (for those monarchists who need consolation), whether one looks at the installation rituals of republican presidents the world over, or the more mundane workings of caste systems where ritual centralisation remains an everyday political necessity, it would appear that many ostensibly non-monarchical systems live (prosper?) only by surreptitiously proclaiming: ´The kingdom is dead; long live the kingship.´"

Rickshaw in the Time of Hartal

AS DHAKA CITIZENS puzzled their way through the extended standoff between their government and opposition, the city had shut down and all vehicles running on internal combustion were off the streets, unless one counted the ambulances and stray autorickshaws with red banners flying, carrying journalists to work. Pedal power, however, was plying.

In normal times, Dhaka´s Land Cruiser set tend to be exasperated by the rickshaw-wallahs who seem to have been brought to the city by the thousand simply to make it difficult for the rich and possibly famous to drive around.

During hartal time, however, even if your address is in upscale Banani No. I, you hail a rickshaw. After all, you would rationalise, there might be too many rickshaws in this world (or, at least, in Bangladesh), but they are earth friendly and provide more employment than any other mode of private or mass transit. Even Sheikh Hasina arrived for a rally last month on her trusty tricycle.

What nobody had guessed was that the rickshaw-wallah is a serious capitalist at heart, who understands demand and supply better than the product of foreign universities who populate Dhaka and pretend to direct the affairs of state. Rickshaw fares rise and fall like a peaking flood, depending on the time of day, weather, heat and mood of the energy source. As yet, no NGO study has been funded on this precise subject, but we expect a donor to fill that gap before long.

During hartals, the demand for pedal power is understandably high, and so the supply sider is on the driver´s seat. The more you bargain, the higher the fare. When the three-wheeler with seating arrangement is unavailable, no matter who you are and who is watching, it is okay to hail a flatbed rickshaw, generally used for ferrying vegetables and fowl to market. There is a hartal on, and there is work to be done.

The opposition seemed to have finally wised to the fact that the efficacy of hartals are severely compromised if everyone gets to go about by rickshaw. They held a brainstorming session to carry out a quick cost-benefit calculation. What would hurt the Cause more: losing the rickshawwallah vote or doing a semi-hartal? The decision was taken to ban the three wheelers.

Which was how the main opposition party of Bangladesh came to declare in the Battle of the Begums that no rickshaws would ply from morning till afternoon in future hartals. Fortunately for the Dhaka rickshaw, Begum Zia gave in to Opposition demands just as the axe was about to fall. But, as they say, there is always a next time, especially when it comes to hartals.

Colombo´s Instant Condoms

IT HAS BEEN nearly 25 years since Colombo ad man, Anandatissa de Alwis, who was to later serve the J. R. Jayawardane government as minister of information, broadcasting and tourism, picked "Preethi" ("happiness" in Sinhalese) as the name for a condom being pushed by an international agency spreading the family planning message in the Third World market.

It proved to be a brilliant idea that has become the stuff of marketing legend. Previously, condoms used to be sold only at pharmacies and druggists, and buying them was quite "shy making", as the locals would have it. But Preethi changed all that (although girls called Preethi had a thin time, much like men named Nirodh in India or Dhal Bahadur in Nepal), and the contraceptive became available in every corner shop and general store. That was a great leap forward.

Now a further advance has been made with the first condom vending machines being installed in Colombo and its suburbs. The Family Planning Association of Sri Lanka, advertising the location of five such machines, described the new service as "Our contribution towards the eradication of AIDS from Sri Lanka."

Who are Nepal´s Maoists?

A MAOIST INSURGENCY and police reaction has violently shattered the calm of Nepal´s western midhills. The violence is centred in the Rapti Zone, which has been a stronghold for a far-left faction of the Nepal Communist Party from very early on, as it is the base of the prominent underground leader Mohan Bikram Singh.

Member of the central committee of what was known as the party´s 2nd Congress (1957-78), Mr Singh was jailed from 1961 to 1971. Following his release, he formed the nucleus of a new party, around which he tried unsuccessfully to unite the old comrades, who had divided in 1967 following the Cultural Revolution with the split between Russia and China.

Working underground through the 70s and 80s, with much time spent in India, Mr Singh became close with the Revolutionary International Movement (rim). Following RIM´s lead after Mao Zedong´s death, his party decided that China had become reactionary and counter-revolutionary. It distanced itself from the larger Maoist groups such as the Marxist-Leninists. (The Marxist-Leninists themselves had origins in the early 1970s, when some young Maoists in Jhapa district started a Nepali version of the Naxalite People´s War, then in progress across the border in Naxalbari, West Bengal. These "Jhapali" later gave up violent means and took on the name Marxist-Leninist. After the People´s Movement of 1990, they joined parliamentary politics, and even formed the government in 1994-95.)

In 1986, Mr Singh´s party split into two, the majority staying with Mr Singh in CPN (Masai), and another leader, Nirmal Lama, forming the minority CPN (4th Congress). The issue was whether to accept the strategy of participating in the elections under the partyless Panchayat system of that time. Mr Lama, who saw feudalism as the main adversary and the 1950 overthrow of the Rana regime as an unsuccessful revolution, was for joining those fighting the Panchayat system in order to hasten the overthrow of feudal forces. Mr Singh, on the other hand, maintained that India was the principal enemy and that all democratic developments from 1950 onwards were part of the reactionary expansion of Indian hegemonism. He was for "total revolution" and opposed any kind of joint action with any force to bring down the partyless system.

A year later, the Masai itself split into a CPN (Masai), this time with Mr Singh in the minority, and a CPN (Mashal), with Mohan Baidya in the majority. Mashal and the 4th Congress, together with a splinter of Masai, united after the 1990 People´s Movement. But their subsequent attempt to coalesce into a "Unity Centre" (with its political wing the United People´s Front) failed when, in 1993, the "Centre" broke up into the CPN (4th Congress) of Nirmal Lama and Lila Mani Pokharel, and the CPN (Maoist) of Pushpa Kamal Subedi aka ´Prachanda´ and its visible spokesman, Baburam Bhattarai.

It is this CPN (Maoist) group which has launched the "people´s war", with a base in the mid-western hills of Nepal. The other two groups agree with the philosophy and objectives of such a war, but disagree with the timing and the fact that it serves the interests of the petit bourgeoisie, that is, small shopkeepers and landlords, and so do not perceive it to be a workers´ movement.

– Stephen Mikesell

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