Corrupt and the systemic rot

August 31, 2023

As Nepal’s regime grows more tolerant of immoral persons getting richer through illegal means, mass frustration is growing about things never improving ‘in this country’.

Nepal Discourse

The corrupt are bad, no doubt. But worse are those who let them roam free.
In today’s Nepal, corruption is all too pervasive, available in various forms and magnitudes. Officials seeking bribes to deliver regular civil services, politicians taking money from businesspeople to fund their election campaigns, students cheating during tests, community leaders accepting favours, teachers taking salary every month but not teaching classes regularly. The list is endless.
Everyone knows about corruption and even who the corrupt are. However, people in individual capacities can do little to cure the nation of the malaise. All the members of society can probably do is show general disapproval of corrupt behaviour and practices. We may even ask people about their means when they grow rich overnight, rather than hobnobbing with them.
Social boycott of the corrupt could be a way to rein in the beast, especially when the state does not make sincere efforts to tame the ill practice. More often than not, state organs seem to be working to bring to justice the persons amassing wealth illegally while in fact conspiring to absolve them of their crimes. Observers even suspect investigations by police or any other authorised agency or committee sometimes become ways to clear politicians or top officials of the allegations levelled against them.
In a number of corruption probes currently ongoing, some heave praise especially on Home Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha for “daring” to look into the widely believed involvement of high-level officials and senior politicians in such scams as selling land from the compound of prime minister’s residence, making Nepalis fake Bhutanese refugees so as to smuggle them into the United States and bringing in over a quintal of gold hiding the metal in unrelated import consignments through Kathmandu’s international airport. But there’s a catch. There already are rumours of conspiracies afoot to weaken the cases against those accused who live close to the quarters of power.
As the current ruling coalition is composed of diverse political parties, a clash of interests is apparent. It already has divisions over the classic cases of shady dealings among traders, ordinary individuals and politicians. Some powerful political actors and top bureaucrats and businessmen have come under the scanner with a few of them put behind the bars, but there are suspicions of moves to free them of the charges. The latest case of loosening the noose around their neck is the transfer of several additional inspector generals of Nepal Police overseeing the investigations.
The current administration of Pushpa Kamal Dahal faces a tough test if it can withstand the pressure from major coalition partner Nepali Congress and a couple of smaller forces not to proceed with investigations into the suspected involvement of some of their major leaders in one of the three major scams.
Corruption is sapping Nepal of its resources, putting the country off the path of progress. While ordinary Nepalis confront a multitude of problems such as natural disasters, prices going through the roof, an unprecedented toll taken by the lumpy skin disease on cattle and a perennial shortage of farm inputs, the ruling elite seem unfazed. How the political class is aloof from these maladies is evident from the mere case of parliamentary disruptions for the past month due to the discord over how to settle the triple scams by causing minimum harm to the established parties’ interests from the salvos coming from their leaders’ incriminations. This has prevented members of parliament from drawing the government’s attention to people’s plight. Agriculture Minister Beduram Bhusal said recently that the government can’t compensate farmers even for the deaths of oxen that they could have used to till their land in the prime crop season.
The common citizen’s perception today is that corruption not only is rampant in Nepal but there’s growing impunity for the people dirtying their hands in it as long as they provide kickbacks to those in the seats of power. As the country’s regime grows more tolerant of immoral persons getting richer through illegal means, mass frustration is growing about things never improving ‘in this country’. This perception is driving able and talented youth out of the country, giving them the resolve ‘never to return again’.
The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index prepared by Transparency International ranks Nepal 110th among 180 countries in the world. With 34 points on a scale of zero to 100, Nepal was behind Bhutan, the Maldives, India and Sri Lanka as a country with “rampant corruption”. Based on the latest Multidimensional Poverty Index of the United Nations Development Programme, 5.13 million of the nearly 30 million Nepalis are poor considering 10 sub sectors of deprivation in health, education and standard of living. The World Bank puts Nepal’s 2022 per capita gross development product at 1,336.5 US dollars while that of India is 2,388.6 and China’s $12,720.2. Leaving the two immediate neighbours of Nepal, which are also the most populous countries in the world, aside, the 2021 GDP per capita of Bhutan—another mountainous landlocked country close to us—was $3,266.4.
This bleak scenario prepares even less resourceful Nepalis to take up unimaginable hardship and pay any price to be able to go to a well-governed country for work and living. A recent case is of Nepalis choosing to join the Russian forces as the country fights Ukraine after invading the neighbour in February, 2022. A young Nepali who has been working in Russia told a Nepali television channel recently that the sole motive of the recruits is to accept the offer of handsome pay and, if luck favours, later take Russian citizenship. But they are being thrown into the war with barely a month of training in the midst of Kyiv’s counteroffensive aimed at reclaiming its lost territory.
It may be mere coincidence but Nepal’s debt has seen a steep climb after 2015, the year the country adopted the federal set-up and the country was shaken by twin earthquakes. Post-quake rebuilding may have added to Nepal’s public debt and the effects of Covid pandemic since 2020 strained the financial system but people in general are easily blaming the additional public positions and provincial legislatures and administrations that were created in mid layer of the federal polity for ballooning per-capita debt which has crossed Rs70,000. This reality, coupled by the overarching sense of hopelessness, could create fertile ground for political activists such as those trying to revert Nepal to a Hindu state, to revolt to overthrow the new system. From any political regression, the sense of which the ruling Maoists know more than any other political force in Nepal, it is the present crop of leaders that have led the country, more to its ruin than good, since the democratic restoration of 1990, that stands to lose. What the resulting chaos will bring is hard to predict now.
What’s obvious still is that the ruling class has its grip on the state affairs and can stop the multilateral bleeding of the nation’s capital. One hole that needs urgent plugging is corruption.
The urgent remedial action expected of the present breed of Nepali political leadership is one that, at a bare minimum, gives the people hope that things will improve slowly but surely. There should be an assurance, least of all, that the pace of growth and development may not necessarily be fast but that it is in the right direction and on the right path. There must be confidence that we’ll come out of this dark cave of corruption and make a gradual move towards a better future. A prolonged failure will be suicidal for the occupants of Singha Durbar.