Skip to main content

Corruption & Bureaucracy are destroying Nepal

 It was common in the time of kings to offer favors to their close friends. The tight circle would then offer favors to those below them. The hierarchy was set; power came from the top and trickled slowly downward. Well, the king is no more. But the authority figures who have power are still ever-present in today's democracy. Those who have power now exercise similar misuse toward those who have none. The only difference is that there is no central authority exerting immense power; instead, power is divided among politicians, judges, bureaucrats, and business folks. This is not to say that everyone misuses their power, but I am certain that if you are from Nepal, you know how far knowing someone can take you (source/force).

Growing up in Kathmandu, I have always been aware of the fact that my family and I belonged to the have-not section of this divide. Anytime we needed to get something done, we had to either bribe someone or cozy up to people just to get their duties fulfilled. This is the case in most offices around Nepal. According to Transparency International, Nepal ranks 108th out of 180 corrupt countries around the globe. I am surprised that we didn't rank lower.

To friends who live in western democracies, bureaucracy is still a problem, but what they may not have to deal with is corruption at such a basic level. If you have enough people in your pockets, you can get away with anything in Nepal, as the countless political appointments of convicted felons to positions of power can testify. If, instead of people, you have deep pockets of cash, you can run scot-free from crimes that would implicate the poorest of the nation in a heartbeat. So, I ask you, why wouldn’t someone who considers themselves honest and hardworking want to leave such horrid conditions? The corrupt bureaucratic system of Nepal undoubtedly contributes to hundreds of millions of people migrating to foreign nations.

"The Trial" by Franz Kafka also deals with such a story, where bureaucracy comes down hard upon an individual who is stuck in a demented society.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How my Nepali parents raised me and How I'm changing : A personal story

 Comparison is the thief of joy. At least, that's how it has been for most of my life. If you knew my folks, you'd understand—growing up, it was always about who scored better in exams: me or my friends. This instilled in me the belief that I had to compete and compare myself with others to earn the love I deserved. It's not their fault; I was their first child, and many other parents in our society acted the same way. But this constant comparison of everything you do and have with someone else stifles your satisfaction. What years of reading self-help books and incredible fiction has taught me is that even the great people who led the world were once trapped in this same mindset. So what changed for them? Most of them started competing with themselves—comparing who they were yesterday with who they are today, and with who they want to become tomorrow. This is one powerful way to transform your life, and I am working on putting it into practice. I still catch myself compari...
Post a Comment
Read more

How does a Nepali feel in a new land ?

 From James Baldwin's "Stranger in a Village" ; "People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster." As the story goes, I understand it is about a clash of cultures, a clash that probably let those cultures meet; the black and the white one, American-made. I see those ideas that underlie there everywhere around me as well, maybe in different terms. I do not understand my own culture deep enough to talk about it, but I do feel there is a necessity of un-reality that surrounds it. By un-reality, I mean a way of seeing things that are a tad different than the way things actually are. Nepalis are an optimistic bunch; most of us believe fate will play its role and good will come out of everything—a far stretch from the reality that we live in. We're not chained down or enslaved physically but mentally. I feel the unea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nepal Ascendant the 2300s: Imagining a Future as a Global Power

 I've been reading and learning about world history. The lessons I can take from it are many. What amazes me is that there are so few key events that shape history; much more is shaped by various wild probabilities and chances that determine who we are today. As a student of Literature, I am interested in learning about the truth just as much as about fiction. After all, fictional worlds often imitate the real one, and sometimes it's the opposite as well. Yesterday, while talking with a friend of mine, I had an insight: in the Nepali literary scene, there are hardly any fictional works that try to imagine a future for Nepal, purely in fictional terms. The idea is to write about Nepal as an underdeveloped nation reaching the heights of a superpower, with the span of this dramatic rise taking place over decades or centuries. Imagining a few aspects of this story excited me, but working on it and actually thinking of the conditions that might result in that kind of importance on t...
Post a Comment
Read more