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Can Nepalese Civil Society Create
a Space that Binds All?
Dev Raj Dahal
The silent social change carried by civil society groups
in thousands of villages and towns of Nepal has provided
the political parties and the general citizens’ vital
social energy for them to speak, agitate and reclaim the
sovereignty rooted in them and rationally shape the power
relationships in society. A genuine civil society is self-chosen
by the citizens themselves and emerges from a process of
rational contestation of ideas about good life. The ongoing
discourse in Nepal between popular sovereignty embedded
in individual liberty and representative democracy legitimized
by majority rule has caught the imagination of various civil
society groups. This discourse has divided the Nepali public
into those who defend absolute popular sovereignty rooted
in human rights and the accountability of power to those
affected by its exercise and those who accord primacy to
the essence of representative democracy which tends to pluralize
sovereignty into various institutions of governance. Can
civil society represent a unifying symbol of popular will
capable of bridging these two camps? It is also important
to resolve the risks associated with these discourses to
prevent anti-democratic spiral in political life.
The politics of Constituent Assembly (CA) has motivated
every Nepali citizen to search for a good life by reinventing
vision, form structures, define the environment where they
had to operate and unleash positive impacts in public life.
The CA however, signifies many things to many people. Can
civil society groups help achieve common goals set in CA?
When they suffer from a package of self-ironies especially
in areas of autonomy, membership, charity work, supporting
the marginalized, rural-orientation, resource utilization
and self-governance measures how can they create rationalized
public as a precondition for democratic consolidation? Can
they help satisfy the aspirations of multiple social eruptions
against the political class they themselves have fanned?
In this critical juncture of the nation’s history,
Nepalese civil society groups need to redefine what is possible
for them to do, what is legitimate for them to do and what
they should not do. Given their anti-state disposition,
they should definitely not excite a nasty fight that generates
widespread distrust against democratic institutions of the
state. The political challenges for Nepalese civil society
groups, however, are varied and complex. To put them into
proper perspective requires one to see their relationships
with other actors of governance.
Social Microcosm
The irreducible pluralism in Nepalese civil society reflects
not only diverse and asymmetric life-forms of the nation’s
class, caste, gender, region and religion but also an essential
aspect of a democratic society. These groups draw sustenance
from a mixture of social contexts and historical spirit
of citizens’ community-mindedness and public-spiritedness
entrenched into the political culture of duty-bound behavior,
dharma and its liberating ideal—emancipation of all
and not just those of the oppressed. Recent democratic upsurge
facilitated the integration of the movements of subsidiary
identities of civil society into a meta identity of secular
public and has set a good example of how social capital
operates in the Nepalese society. The central challenge
for them in the realm of “social” now is to expand
the domain of particular form of social capital, such as
guthi, dhikuti, volunteerism, public-interest federations,
associations, CBOs, NGOs, etc located at certain location
into the national scale, beneficial to various communities.
This helps to transform diverse people into equal citizens
and emancipate rights-based civil society as an urban bourgeiois
space in favor of spontaneous socialization of primordial
society into a civil society.
Civic Solidarity
Nepali state, as the only locus of democracy and central
organizing element of foreign affairs, is very weak to mediate
between citizens and the state. A decade-long insurgency
and counter-insurgency operations have eroded the state’s
authority and capacity to perform basic state functions
and release the potential for system integration. It is
the duty-based civil society groups which are complementing
the development functions of the state and providing the
resiliency to citizens’ initiatives to cope with their
problems at the grassroots level. Social movements of civil
society are liberalizing the nature of traditional politics
from status-bound to social contract, altering the functions
of political parties and seeking to universalize the human
rights of Nepalese citizens. The vision of civil society
groups based on freedom, social justice, solidarity and
peace-building will continue to hold relevance for Nepal
as universal reference points to improve the condition of
Nepalese citizens caught in structural injustice. The task
ahead for political parties is to establish a synergy between
the sectoral social action of civil society groups and national
action of the state and make both sets of actors inclusive,
visible, representative and accountable to larger public
action. The peace accord has offered an opportunity to political
parties to build strong networks of association and reengage
with the bottom of society. This can lead to enhanced faith
of ordinary citizens in the possibilities of modern politics.
Modern democracy requires not just political and economic
participation but also voluntary social and civic ones to
mediate power and wealth in society, create checks and balances
and hold the state and market institutions accountable.
In Nepal these groups have played a role in the construction
of citizens’ civic identity and emancipate people from
their pre-rational orientations through the struggle for
rational public order. As an infrastructure of democracy
constituted through citizen-based initiatives they can incubate
a strong condition for true participatory democracy. Real
democratization can occur if Nepalese civil society groups
can overcome their partisan character, develop autonomy
from the interest groups, build coalitions across the various
civic groups and enable socially legitimate collective action
on matters of public good. Participatory democracy driven
by information revolution does not become functional if
civil society groups do not generate the habits of debate
and offer political leadership effective opposition and
competition on matters of public and national importance.
It is imperative for the Nepalese civil society to ensure
that the questions of common good such as security, peace,
democracy, livelihood and identity are not neglected even
for the marginalized. These are preconditions for the evolution
of a rule-governed conception of public order.
Policy sovereignty
Globalization has internationalized the Nepalese market.
But, it has also expanded civil society’s reach into
the regional and global discourse and ignited fresh hope
from a sort of global political renaissance articulated
through the emerging social movements and world social forums.
The universality of human rights has endorsed the legitimacy
of the plurality of liberal values in Nepal. But, political
sovereignty would be meaningless if there is no policy sovereignty,
to enable the Nepalese decide the type of political, economic
and social system they prefer for themselves and their children.
The competitive spirit of the Nepalese citizens, civil society
groups, markets and the political parties equally requires
a strong coordinating role of the state to beef up the economic
and social foundation of politics. Nepalese civil society
groups can help the leadership to articulate the policy
sovereignty of politics in economic matters and help to
define national priorities for action, seek the support
of international community and achieve the economy of scale
through market efficiency and social integration. There
is also an imperative to build trust and seek the synergy
of civil society-private sector partnership to enable the
torn state to assume basic governance functions—security,
rule of law, voice and participation, delivery of public
goods and conflict resolution.
Responsibilities
In a phase of difficult democratic transition the responsibilities
of Nepalese civil society groups are monumental in scope.
First, democracy building in Nepal requires a political
consensus on social contract and establishing the legitimacy
of the state action. Second, modernization of the infrastructure
of democracy---political parties, NGOs, CBOs, public interest
groups, media, educational institutions and the other agencies
of socialization-- is a precondition to democracy consolidation
and developing their compliance to the rule of law. Third,
capturing the sovereignty of policy domain is another area
to enforce the accountability of governance to public and
push for conflict-sensitive programs. In a governance regime,
however, a sound mechanism of mutual accountability of internal
and external stakeholders must be built so that scarce resources
can be concerted into civic and voters’ education for
broadening awareness of the citizens as well as multi-track
peace-building efforts. The suffering of the losers can
easily pose risks to the order of society. Fourth, development
of the linkages of micro and macro institutions of civil
society is essential to enable their efficacy in the realization
of the vision of good governance based on human rationality.
A positive peace requires the framework of social justice
where civil society groups with other stakeholders can enter
into cooperative action for a sustainable democratic peace.
Source: The Telegraph Weekly, 24 September 2008
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