Oped»
Village on the move
- CROSSROADS
MAR 30 -
My village, like many another villages on the Eastern end of Morang, is on the move. It has been constantly changing, evolving, and going somewhere, like everything else in Nepal, without planning or foresight, buffeted by local and global forces.
Young children are growing, most children of hill settlers go to school but many Madhesi children (especially Rajbanshi and Muslim) don’t. Among those who do most either drop out or get stuck at the Iron Gate of SLC. Yet, Kasim, a Muslim boy with disabilities whose illiterate father Sanglu had helped me hone my Bangla reading when I was about eight or nine by making me read his dog-eared Hatimtai and Hadith stories, passed SLC in first division. The village mosque in which he teaches part-time while attending Plus-Two classes in the village bazaar (yes, there’s Plus-Two college there now!) is concrete and painted. It didn’t have even a good thatch roof or walls when I had been sent by my Pundit father to learn Arabic, Urdu and Persian at age eight or nine. The Madrassa is registered now, and they are trying to have a regular teacher appointed with government funds. The Muslim population has increased without any thought of what these young children will do when they grow up without education. Parents, themselves illiterate and un- and semi skilled labourers, have little motivation, drive or knowledge to keep their children in school and help them focus on studies when they come home. There are no playgrounds in the village where these young kids can play and develop their physical strength and mental discipline, all the public land either having been tilled or made use of for private purposes. In the urban as well as the rural settings, profit-making private schools have mushroomed without adequate infrastructure, such as playgrounds, libraries, labs, and enough space, for a student’s all-round development. Yet, all this is a vast improvement over what was there only a decade or two ago.
In the past years, the parents themselves have taught themselves various skills. For example, one of the two brothers of a Bengali Muslim family has taught himself masonry, the other brother has learned carpentry, both traditional caste occupations. In another Laheri (bangle seller of Muslim caste) family, one of the three brothers has taught himself plumbing and tube well boring, another does heavy duty sawing, the eldest has his wife selling bangles and his son planning to go for overseas employment. A few young men in their twenties have returned home from their stints in Delhi or Punjab but many have stayed in India. Yet, the young between the ages of 10 and 18 who are in the village have neither opportunity to learn various skills to join the future labour force nor means or motivation to continue in schools. In the absence of both, many have turned into petty thieves, stealing whatever is within sight, from fish from a fish pond to fruit from trees. The challenge for Nepal is not just how to get a republican constitution in place but think about making its growing young population skilled for the future, especially when even UP and Bihar are on a giant leap forward.
Only a decade or so ago, there was no telephone communication in the village. I had to ask my mother to come to Rangeli or Biratnagar, 15 or 40 kilometres away, so that I could speak to her on the phone from North Carolina or Illinois. Then came the VHS system run by car batteries, which enabled me to speak to her in the village bazaar, twenty minutes’ walk from the village. Then in 2006, I was able to install a CDMA set at home. And now, that, too, has become outdated because almost everyone has a cell phone. The village bazaar that was notorious for its brawls, drunks and card players has not only political and NGO workers of various hues helping people realise their political and social rights and grow vegetables in cooperative groups, but two wireless towers stand like giants with tall ears to enable people to buy more mobile phone lines. Even labourers can communicate now about the price of their labour and sell it wherever the going rate is higher. Or, a farmer in his fields can call home for changes in the breakfast menu or reschedule mealtime.
There was a time not long ago when I had to walk North to Mahendra Highway or South to Rangeli, both about 15 kilometres, to get to Biratnagar to catch a bus for Kathmandu. Now, there’s night bus service to the capital that leaves the village bazaar everyday at 1:30. My villagers who live in Kathmandu can load up as many sacks of Basmati rice and other foodstuff as they can to see them through the year. Many have motor cycles that enable them to get to Biratnagar in the morning and come back in the evening. And almost every family has a bicycle now which was a rare means of conveyance not long ago; it has certainly replaced the bullock cart which has become rare.
To be sure, there’s still much interethnic tension and suspicion in the village. Old ways of viewing each other has not only remained intact but grown with the politicisation of cultural groups and their rights. Muslims, Rajbanshis, Pahades and other Madhesis still hold on to their cultural and ethnic differences and prejudices. But the explicit hierarchy that existed before has become fluid. Non-Pahade groups still believe that the hill high castes continue to run the show in this country but both realise that there is change in the air, and the future will no longer remain the same. All this has occurred because of the political changes of the past few years, and people of all groups in order to survive and make a living are learning to get along and view each other with a new eye and perspective. Yet, there’s hardly any conscious cultivation of multicultural education in the village. People have learned to solve their problems and get along based on their instincts and survival needs, not on conscious cultivation of multicultural ideology and education. Almost all NGO groups are focused successfully or unsuccessfully on economics, physical health, early childhood education but hardly any one teaching people about cultural differences and building a mutually respecting, egalitarian multicultural society.
So, the village has been changing. New generation is replacing the old, new technology outdating the old under the influence of globalisation and national politics. Yet, these are unplanned and unorganised developments. These are trickle-down rather than bottom-up changes. There has to be a structure, a system, and village-level organisation to help people achieve their best potential. For an envisioned, planned and structured society to be born, national politics has to deliver because common people are trying the best they could to improve their lot in life. There now has to be the invisible hand of democracy and enlightened capitalism to extend a helping hand and show the right way to the future.
Posted on: 2010-03-31 08:07
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