The State Must Protect The Vulnerable

The Constitution of Nepal has granted rights and duties to people. It has granted 32 rights while only four duties. As a result, the politics of Nepal has become more aspiration-oriented than stability-driven, which is essential to liberate the oppressed, support their virtues in gaining maturity, and provide an equal playing field. Each political change in Nepal has expanded the social base of politics and enlarged people's civic rights. The disproportionality of rights relative to duties has made the constitution and development rights-based. But the weakness of the state has made these rights non-actionable as they do not engineer ecological, social, economic and political progress. Equal participation of all Nepalis in deliberation, planning, setting priorities, mobilisation of resources and support, distribution and monitoring of outcomes can create ownership, stake and shared justification of development. 

Harmonious life can be achieved by balancing freedom and order and reducing the cost of livelihood for the weak and powerless and constitutional dispensation. The moral principles underlie the belief to transcend interest-based political economy and create inclusive institutions and policies to represent everyone, not just the self-interests of the stronger. It does not create the condition of leading a good life of dignity.  The constitution imagines an egalitarian society, ending social discrimination and providing fair opportunities even for the weaker members of society to survive, compete and thrive. Justice for the poor is an obligation of the institutions of the powerful and democratic regime. 

Equality of opportunity

Both seek to provide diverse measures of justice such as tax payment, equality of opportunity, rights and needs-based fairness (minimum wage, social protection, social security, etc.), procedural distribution of public goods and services, proportional representation, quota, positive social discrimination for women, Dalits and marginalized communities and those of remote areas. These are vital equalization measures. But by no means are they sufficient to enable the weak to pursue self-conscious choices, realize potentialities and live a life of dignity.

The imposition of law in society is formed based on the power equation without feeling about the legitimate needs of people and insidious structural injustice — poverty, inequality and skewed opportunity are unfair. The lack of compassion, the connection and feeling to the other in suffering is painful. It is a crime to punish the innocents by depriving them of the necessities of life.  It demands that adjudicators and lawyers raise themselves and accept the ethical integrity of law rather than find loopholes to defend illicit actors in the hope of hefty fees against the human rights of the weak. The integrity of law is based on truth and impersonality in the utility of laws. They are accountable for their interpretation of law and verdicts. Certain preconditions are vital to establish the rights of the weak in the governing institutions and processes.  

Embodied cognition: The elites of society, judges, lawyers, policy makers and leaders can help realise the rights of the weak if they can reflect on the ecological, social, educational, economic and political conditions of Nepalis, create vibrant public sphere to debate on the priorities of the weak especially in areas of livelihood, education, health, technology, institutional resources and supply prudent judgment affirming janata janardan, the sovereignty of people. Embodied cognition can embrace the working of power, capital, mediating agencies and public institutions. Ecologically and socially disembodied policies cannot harness organic connections authorities with the life-world of people, care less about their integrity and mandate and act recklessly for parochial interests.  

Obviously, the knowledge and beliefs of people are context-specific. Scientific or social scientific reasons cannot transcend human nature, feeling, sentiment, etc. and solve all social problems if they are not embedded in the life and hope of Nepalis. Therefore, the experience of people, empathy and their fellow-feeling for the weak are the essence of human quality established by Nepali sages long ago. To be sure, Sanatan Dharma does not suppose human beings as ends in themselves as rational creatures, as argued by Immanuel Kant, owing to their capacity for moral action according to the imperative of universal reason.  Their survival and progress rest on the resilience of plants and animals. 

Therefore, human survival demands not only laws but ethics of sustainability rooted in universal laws of Sanatan Dharma, which are morally binding. In this sense, knowledge and reason ought to be reasonable and accountable to the well-being of the weak and, therefore, conditions of fairness as described by John Rawls must be set. Ronald Dworkin rightly claims the justice for hedgehog where the welfare state balances the competing priorities of liberty and equality.  To him, universal values complement one another.

Voice of the voiceless: To make democracy stakeholders, the governments must emphasise uplifting the downtrodden and marginalised people and communities so that they do not feel alienated and fuel the feeling of rebellion. It is important to listen to them and mainstream their voice in the public sphere and policy making, not speak over them to silence their voice. The constitution has adopted the right to information to make public affairs transparent and enable people to demand access to decisions. Functional education is a key to asserting these rights and exercising freedoms. Media, civil society, courts and representative institutions have a duty to safeguard and promote these rights. Nepali civil society, as a public sphere, is expected to mobilise grassroots people with a sense of volunteerism. 

They are expected to create important venues outside the state, polity, government and business in demand articulation. In Nepal, however, the capacity of latter institutions to respond to these demands is imperfect. The politicisation of people has increased their capacity to ask questions to their leaders, invoking the constitutional right to information. The invigoration of the public sphere is vital in Nepal to link public opinion to public policy and ameliorate the plight of the weak and wretched. It aims to tip the scale to provide decisive leverage to the weak in a contest with the strong to breathe national vision.

Visibility of the invisible people: Mindfulness to people, accepting their sovereignty, the principle of affected and subsidiarity allows their presence, to share experience and voice in the political and policy contexts.  Nepal has to cultivate civic education to link democratic theory into practice so that passive people can be transformed into active citizens who can claim rights, negotiate demands and terminate ties with dysfunctional leaders. Free and fair elections have raised two points: a surge of people’s grievances and a choice in leadership selection. In no way does it generate capacity to settle the grievances unless there is political will, courage and capacity to bolster state agencies with the ability to link grievances to policies and their execution, thus making visibility of public priorities. 

Nepali political parties are said to be formed to serve as a transmission belt between the people and the polity and keep the political dynamic through feedback. If they are cut off from this role, they lose legitimacy and efficacy. In Nepal, they look weak in performing political functions and face the penetration of non-political entities, marking rationality deficits. The rise and decline of parties in elections explain the salience of silent voters.

Justice beyond legal quibbling: In Nepal, justice is linked to livelihood, freedom and peace. Justice for the poor suffers if they are tyrannised by legal logic to defend the status quo, not morality and fairness. Logic by its very nature serves the interests of powerful people who can buy expert layers specialised in legal rhetoric, idioms and jargon, not rooted in public reason and public morality that rest on good conscience, prudence and wisdom of philosophy. Without them natural selection becomes a political culture. Public morality goes beyond the logic of the constitution made on the basis of power balance, not the native spirit of sanatan dharma or universal values, which requires the adjustment of law to the cosmic web of life. 

The validity of the rule of justice can provide enduring political stability. But when powerful leaders are caught in corruption, impunity and patronage and a mass of layers defend this in no way they promote the national integrity system and adapt to the changing desire of people for representation, generational justice and public good. The business of politics is freedom, order and justice, not the personalisation of public interests or bureaucratisation but their de-personalization assuming the weak into account.

Equalisation of gaps: In a plural society like Nepal, the rights of weak and marginalised people must be actionable to uplift their broken life and draw their loyalties to the state where their fate and good life are tied. Do planners and policy makers take perspective, preference and concern of the weak into account for reducing the gaps in cognitive, legal and material conditions of life in worthy initiatives for nation building? These factors are correlated to Nepalis basic freedom, civic engagement and democratic self-determination. They enable them to strategically negotiate the moral terms of progress in unjust power relations. 

Nepali welfare state continues to face an uphill battle as successive regimes have built consensus on neoliberal ideology in favour of financial capitalism and flagged the social contract, egalitarian effects of democracy,  distributive justice and trickled up profits to power elites while coercing the poor to race to the bottom or migrate abroad to eke out their livelihood. A big incentive for the poor to organise, build solidarity and participate in productive activities can spur a big advance toward inclusive progress frozen long by the suppression of productive forces of society.   

Capacity building

The art of Prime Minister Balendra Shah is building the capacity of the Nepali state to implement the vision of a dignified, stable and prosperous nation. His steps to reform education, health, admin and justice and revive unlawfully privatised and ruined import-substituting public industries to boost native production can have a healthy effect to reduce poverty, create jobs, retain youth and reduce trade deficits. But he is not without resistance from neoliberals and radicals as they are socialised in not national self-determination, but dependency, loss of national dignity and identity and a political culture of conformism against constitutional spirit.  A functional polity requires a sustainable economy that cares not only the dignity of labour but also reconciles economic justice with political freedom and the health and wealth of future generations.

 It is linked with its independent foreign policy that balances national interests with mutual interests beyond unfrocked priests of a shift from buffer conditioned by colonial powers to a vibrant bridge which discounts security dilemma arising out of rival conception of security of neighbours where the south prefers linearity and liberal elaboration of democracy, market economy and regime compatibility while the north on concentric circle, sovereignty and choice of the polity. Reality of the nation’s strategic geography demands a sense of balance and diversification, seeking a just order.  

(Former Reader at the Department of Political Science, TU, Dahal writes on political and social issues.)