Sadly!

Some 13 years ago, probably in 2051 BS, when our bus on way to Pokhara from Palpa sped in the middle of the thin jungle with the driver sighing and uttering the Maoists, I thought, sadly, Nepal would never remain the same it used to be a few years earlier. Continue reading…

(Or Maybe Something Irrelevant)

On Monday, May 28, 35,000 schools re-opened after 12 days of shutdown! For the records, 8,000,000 children across the nation were affected.

The reason behild closure, then continuation of closure and then re-opening were all but thrash reasoning. A kind of joke!

Let first have a look at the chronology of events:

May 13 – Institutionalized Schools’ Teachers Union (ISTU) began protests that demanding the salary scale equivalent to that to government teachers and appoitment letters

May 16 – ISTU, including the Nepal Educational Republican Forum (NERF) and All Nepal National Free Students Union (Revolutionary) – two Maoists organizations – annouced shutdown of schools

Private and Boarding School Assocaition of Nepal (PABSAN) and National-PABSAN (NPABSAN) too annouced closure of schools with PABSAN president Umesh Shrestha saying that the schools neither ask fees with students during the closure nor pay the teachers

May 17 – Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala expressed concerns

May 18 – Ministry of Education formed a talk team led by spokesperson (Minister Pradeep Nepal was in Maldives participating in the anti-doping conference), NERF refused talks with non-ministerial level team

May 20 – Minister Nepal returns and in harse words says he is not able to fulfil the demands as it not educational but political (however, during closure the demands included immediate annoucement of republican state)

May 23 – NERF says it won’t sit for talks until minister apologies for what he had said

May 25 – Police brutally beat teachers during their sit-on at the ministry, they immediately annouced two-hour of transports shutdown for the afternoon

Minister and state-minister express conerns and say they were not involved

May 27 – Valley was shutdown in protest with MERF and Revolutionary taking the lead

In afternoon, Revolutionaly annouces that on request of guardians, students and NGO/INGOs they ended the school shutdown giving one-month ultimantum to ministry to fulfil their demands or face more protest

Let me ponder on some questions:

1. The shutdown of schools was called by ISTU, NERF, Revolutionary, PABSAN and NPABSAN. But when Revolutionary said the shutdown ended, it ended. How? Where were ISTU, PABSAN and NPABSAN?
2. The protest began demanding something. But it ended without any demands fulfilled. Why the shutdown was then for?
3. Why do we find Maoists organization involved in every protest against government? And, then they always put up pure political demand (mostly immediate annoucement of republican state) and ends the protest for nothing. Why?
4. How come ISTU, the main body that began the protest find themselves lost in the middle of the protest?

I don’t have answers to all. The only thing I believe is the Maoists organization try to gain three things from such protest. First, they want to establish their sister organizations as strong ones, second they want to put pressure on the government for pure political reason and third, they want to gain faith of people by ending the protest.

I am opposing the idea of school re-opening but what I pondered is why are we seeing protests (affecting the everyday administration and people) for nothing!

Police held two teachers on suspicion of leaking question papers of School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examination after Young Communist League (YCL), a wing of the Maoists, bought questions from them.

SLC Exam is something that holds very high value in Nepal. The nation-wide examination, called Iron Gate, is not only attracts attention of all Nepalis but also considered a landmark to judge any school or student.

Private schools are doing business (well there may be slight social service factor). And if they stood out good in SLC examination, there are high chances that they will get more students, can raise the fees thus acquiring more benefits. No wonder if they are buying questions for thousands of rupees.

Last year, the SLC exam questions were printed in Janak Educational Material Center, and some of the questions were suspected leaked. There were questions available which turned out to be right 40 to 60 per cent.

This year, the picture is gloomier (despite printing the questions in India). The questions of English, held on first day on April 4, were exactly the same. Then, my students told me, the boys and girls sitting next to them today’s exam of Nepali was already writing answers – when the question was yet to be distributed.

As I am a teacher to a school, I knew that there were offers to buy questions more than a week ago.

The teachers of Ganesh Secondary School in Bhaktapur who were arrested are not the real culprits. How can two teachers of a school reach the Office of Controllers of Examination (OCE)? There are more people involved, and I am sure, there are millions of rupees involved in this corruption.

Will we get a fair investigation? Difficult! Because such leakage, I think, isn’t possible without the high-ranking officials being involved. And when high ranking officials are involved, you know what.

This is probably happening for a long time. And time for the government to think about minimizing the SLC exam’s affect on the people. One best way could be holding it differently in different district with different schedule and publishing results separately so that it doesn’t cause nation-side interest.

My students are confused about the future of their exams. They happened to be giving exams in the SOS School which is right next to OCE where the YCL held the protest and the students were stopped for half-an-hour. When they asked me about it, I couldn’t answer – I just say, think about your studies rather than all these non-sense things but I know they won’t be able to concentrate and the answer I gave to them wasn’t enough.

Finally, the Maoists have joined the government. If their nomination in the interim parliament didn’t suggest the end of the 12-year-long war, then their entrance into the interim government should.

For a Maoist cadre I met at the teashop gossip, it wasn’t a big achievement for them. For him, it was just the shift of power – or he put it, the Maoists joined the legitimate power. They had always enjoyed ruling.

This I found as disturbing as anything else. I thought, what if the Maoists cadres all over the country continue what they used to do during their jungle-rule shouldering on the legitimacy.

I believe this will gradually change, and hope it will soon change.

I am living in the great era of transition. I experienced party-less Panchyat, then the popular movement of 1990, the democracy, the Royal Massacre, King Gyanendra’s rule, in-between the Maoists’ people’s war, the unique peace process and there are still more to see.

Would I die with the happiness that despite all that my mother nation experienced my nation is now going good? Having seen so much in the past two decades, I can’t say anything.

The problem probably lies in our perceptions. We expect too much, and then get frustrated. We tend to change the words for creating new hopes after being dissatisfied from the old word.

Wasn’t the word Prajatantra (or democracy) good enough? We changed it into Loktantra because we get frustrated with democracy era. Properly managed decentralization could have done wonders, but now we are talking about federalism.

We hoped too much from the democracy after 1990. Then there were corrupt leaders adding to the woes. The King tried to cash the frustration of the people, he could have succeeded (weren’t general people taking ‘let’s see’ approach for almost a year) hadn’t he gotten his aides wrong.

Now with all that gone, we are hoping revolutionary changes from the Maoists, and that’s not going to happen. What they have done so far after coming to mainstream politics. The same old cliché: fighting for the positions and driving Pajeros.

Possibly we are all unlucky that we lacked the exceptional leader during all these time.

How difficult is English language? If you ask the students of private schools, they will say not very hard; students from public schools will give the different answer. English, a compulsory subject for School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examination has ended thousands of dreams of studying in campuses. Government has time and again introduced a few ideas and changed curriculum to make sure much more find the subject easier. I was a monitor of English Speaking and Listening Test that carries 20 marks in SLC today and all that was proved once again. Continue reading…