Discussion on Feasibility of Socialism in Nepal held in Kathmandu

November 10, 2019

Foundation for Critical discourse in Nepal, a recently found think tank, organized a discussion on Feasibility of Socialism in Nepal under the program ‘Critical Discourse on Contemporary Issues in Nepal, 2019.

Three working papers on Feasibility of socialism in Nepal, pro-socialist health and education and International agencies and prospect of socialism were presented by Former finance minister Surendra pandey, Health issue expert Dr. Saroj Dhital and security and inernational relation expert Dr Deepak Bhatta respectively.

Delivering a working paper of Feasibility of socialism in economical aspect for Finance minister Surendra Pandey said, ‘unless the capital is developed socialism could not be achieved, Nepal have to decide about its own course of economic agendas analyzing context of current situation of the country and the world’. Pandey opinioned, seven major sectors should be set as premier agenda, including land management, management of industry and economic sector and motivation, investment and management in education and human recourse development, health and social security of citizen, good governance and corruption control, transportation and infrastructure development and lastly, reformation and transformation of bureaucracy, police and legal sector for prosperity of Nepal.

Speaking on pro-socialist Health and Education, Dr. Saroj Dhital said, ‘Education and Health, that is stated and fundamental rights in constitution could not be subject of business, the course towards socialism should be clear in this issue’. Dhital said, ‘priority of health service, health industry and NGO’s working in health issues should be oriented towards socialism’.

Dr. Deepak Prakash Bhatta speaking on International Agencies and Prospect of Socialism said, ‘we should focus on analyzing where do the agendas of current international institutions fit in our course of journey towards socialism’. Bhatta said, ‘we should be able to match course of digitization in the world, where we fit in the course of digital word should be analyzed in our context’.

Concluding the session, social scientist professor Chaitanya Mishra said, ‘talking about feasibility of socialism, which should first decide if socialism is desirable or not in current context, if it is desirable who should decide what kind of socialism we are talking about’. Mishra said, ‘current world context is different than time of Marks, Engles, Stalin or Mao. Current knowledge of socialism should be based in analysis of current time’.

Professor Mishra said, ‘policy and plan of our political party doesn’t rhyme, they are not focused on analyzing current world situation and Nepalese context’. Mishra said, ‘our constitution has precisely mentioned about kind of socialism we are focusing on, which is socialism based on democratic means, we should focus on mention of constitution’.

President of foundation Khagendra Prasai said, ‘we are saying there is problem in understanding socialism, we are in dilemma about what would be our social system based on, this discourse is focused to discussed on those issues’. According to Prasai, newly constructed organization will be focused on discourse in issues of current propriety in country. The organization is focused on knowledge generation; we will be continuing such a discourse regularly.

The discussion session was chaired and moderated by social scientist Professor Chaitanya Mishra, who also delivered the concluding remarks on the discussion.