New Year's Aspirations

Parmeshwar Devkota

We have welcomed the New Year 2081 B.S., wishing good health and happiness to our family members, friends and relatives.  The New Year brings new hopes, aspirations and opportunities. With this, further progress and prosperity is expected.

The progress of a person or a state is directly related with time we have been spending. If a nation visualises the future times and makes national plans and budgets in accordance with the needs of time, it moves ahead towards the path of affluence. That's because time matters for the continuity of human existence and advancement since the evolution of the universe. 

But, the some people have mixed up element of time with philosophy and others with religions, making it more complex. As intelligent Sumerians and Indians worked out on it, they devised the mathematics, algebra and astronomy and divided it into three parts - the past, present and future, as well as good times and bad times.

But we have fallen into the trap of myth of cycle of time. Some pundits of the past, by seeing regular events of the nature such as summer, winter and rain, came to the conclusion that ‘time is cyclical’, as if it were like Yin and Yang. They meant that the good time comes after bad one. In reality, however, that's not the case. If it were the case, after seven decades of bad times, we must have good times. 

Two proofs can be put that time is not cyclical but spatial. First, if the time were cyclical, we would have experienced good times after the nation achieved freedom and democracy more than seventy years ago. We are exchanging our greetings by saying, ‘Happy New Year’, but scenario is not rosy to have happy days in near future in terms of political stability and democratic order.

The House of Representatives (HoR) was repeatedly disrupted and is now prorogued, with the political parties divided even on pertinent national issues and leaders implicated in corruption and fraudulent scandals.   

The second point is that when our leaders jointly struggled to liberate this country from the clutches of Rana Oligarchy, the people in Korean Peninsula were fighting war. They were as poor as we were in Nepal. In course of time, South Korea has transformed itself into a formidable economic force.

The per capita income of that country stands at 34,400 USD. On the other hand, our per capita income is a meagre 1,300 USD. Will we be able to have per capita income on a par with Korean people without working hard? Perhaps not. So, the time is not cyclical but spatial with three distinct division - past, present and future. 

So, the leaders in power must understand that flowery speeches and lofty commitments will not make the country prosperous overnight. What they can do instead is correct their past mistakes and formulate new policies, so that the country could take the pace of the development. Interestingly, it is a coincidence that the political parties, which have been championing for socialist economy and the parties which have been pleading for open market economy, are in the hot seats of the government.

They are formulating the budget for 2080/81, as well as the 15th five-yearly periodic plan.  On the occasion of New Year it is imperative for the government to prepare progressive and result-oriented budget so that it will be a milestone to eliminate poverty from the country and attain prosperity.