THE DIFFERENT MEANINGS OF BEING A GLOBAL NEPALI
A recent op-ed article by a prominent thought leader, businessman and author risks to forget that many nepali youth have global aspirations but “local” means to achieve them.
I always enjoy reading the weekly column that Sujeev Shakya, a well know entrepreneur, business consultant, thought leader and author, writes for The Kathmandu Post.
As founder of Beed, a management consultant firm, Mr Shakya has raised the bar of professional consultancy in Nepal. More recently he also ventured into the field of leadership development in addition to be one of the key masterminds behind the Himalayan Consensus Summit, a global gathering that brings together the best minds of the region.
In his last article published on June 16th, “Call for Change”, Mr. Shakya highlights the global outlook and mindset of an increasing number of youths in Nepal, many of them behind the recent protests against the government handling of the pandemic.
Mr. Shakya often takes bold and visionary positions against “system” inefficiencies including rent seeking behaviors that are so common in Nepal; he advocates for higher and better standards in the business sector as well in the whole society.
In “Call for Change”, Mr. Shakya writes that these youths” want to compete with their peers throughout the world. Therefore, when one looked at the pictures of demonstrators squatting on the road, it was no different than youth in Amsterdam, London or Los Angeles”.
I agree.
There are so many youth in Nepal so proficient with the English language.
Their soft skills (including public speaking and negotiation skills developed by attending numerous Model United Nations events) are such that they could easily outperform many European youth, especially in the use of English language and global exposure.
If you look at this the future of Nepal appears to be rosy.
It is promising because sooner or later the political class in power will pack and go and the force, creativity and ingenuity of these “Global Nepali” as are defined by Mr. Shakya, will take over.
However, I have a concern.
While I was walking on one of the main streets where these youth were protesting, I did not see any banners against the atrocious murder of Dalit youths that happened just a few weeks ago in Rukum, a remote district in western Nepal.
This occurred after a failed attempt to help one of them, Nabraj BK, to elope with a local girl belonging to an upper-class family.
This leaves me to wonder why not a single youth also peacefully protested to bring justice to the six Dalits youths killed by local people.
Thinking deeper, how many disadvantaged youth, including Dalits were protesting against the government’s Covid Response?
How inclusive and representative of the entire national youth population was the protest?
The fact that The Kathmandu Post published a story that the police committed several acts of negligence in the initial phase of the investigation and politicians have started meddling in the case, something that is not totally unusual for Nepal, should call for more attention.
My concern is the following: how aware and how conscious of caste and other forms of discrimination are those smart, bright “Global Nepali” who are exercising their constitutional right to peaceful protest against the government?
If they are protesting so vigorously and yet peacefully, they are really showing how much they care for the country.
They should praise in all the possible ways.
They want to thrive in a prosperous Nepal but at the same time, what is their vision for a more inclusive and just nation?
Maybe they were strategically and tactical, focusing on the Government’s response to Covid-19, because the consequences of it can determine life or death for so many.
Maybe they will pick up the issue of social justice and caste discrimination in the next cycle of protests.
Maybe there was a high number of disadvantaged youth joining the protests.
If this was not the case, then system should be blamed.
Perhaps those “global Nepali” are only representative of a small group of youth, those who are fortunate enough to think about going oversee to study, not doing that out of necessity, and ending up working in the Gulf or in a factory in Malaysia.
As we know there is another category of “Global Nepali” with different dreams but equally contribute to the development of the country, whose remittances have kept afloat an entire nation for so long.
There are also other segments of the Nepali youth population that might have equal global aspirations but unfortunately only local means that don’t enable them to match their ambition with the reality they are forced to live.
Among this group, there are those who are really the underdogs, those who are discriminated because of their disabilities or caste or gender.
These are those who either stop dreaming very early or never ever dreamed before because their number one priority has always been about survival.
The “Global Nepali” youth described by Mr. Shakya are going to have a big responsibility ahead: help the country to truly become a middle income country, one that will look more like Singapore.
Many of them will go to study overseas and, hopefully, a majority of those going to do so will come back to help rebuild a new and better country.
Will they be able to do it inclusively, guided by a spirit of national reconciliation and social justice, in alliance, and in partnership with those other youth who have been less fortunate and privileged and experienced the brunt of social economic discrimination?
The alternative is a social economic model that keeps perpetuating entrenched inequalities: exclusion rather than inclusion, opportunities for few rather than for the majority.
A “prosperous and happy” Nepal, will depend also on creating the conditions for all the youth of the country, no matter their families’ economic conditions, to have an opportunity to succeed.
Social justice will require change in attitudes and behaviors and the humility to understand what it means be a youth in Nepal without the platform and tools that make one “global”.
