News, Views From Nepal

Yuba Nath Lamsal As we are bracing for three-tier of elections this year, it may be worthwhile to mention a Turkish proverb. The proverb goes: “The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them”. This age-old adage is equally apt even today given the way elections are held and representatives are elected mostly in developing countries. Axes continue to chop the trees and the trees keep on electing the axes. In principle, elections are the life-blood of democracy but in practice people are losing faith in elections. This is not the case of a particular country but largely a global phenomenon. Even in countries that claim to be the successful model of representative democracy, people are sceptical about the system, the governments and their policies, which can be well seen in the too low voter turnout. However, there is no other better alternative to r...

  Yuba Nath Lamsal The world is interconnected and inter-dependent.   The advancement of science and technology has reduced the world into a small global village. In this interconnected world, no single country is fully self-sufficient and self-reliant on all facets. All countries, big or small, powerful or weak and developed or developing, are intertwined together requiring cooperation and coordination among nations. This is the defining feature of globalization from which an individual, a society and a nation cannot escape. Right from the time when Homo sapiens moved from African jungles to Asian and European landmass forming dots of civilizations, the concept of nationhood evolved. Civilization is the product of human interaction and endeavours. States were born and developed. In the human history, since the first state evolved in Sumeria (present Iraq), several states were born and disappeared from the map of the world. The process of birth and disappearance of states c...

  Yuba Nath Lamsal In 1992, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama came up with a new book ‘The End of History and the Last Man’. In the book, he argued that with the disintegration of Soviet Union and collapse of the Warsaw Pact bloc in 1991, the western liberal democracy triumphed as a victor in the ideological war against the communist empire. He described this scenario as the end of history arguing that the western liberal democracy will remain invincible and there will be no challenge from any quarters to this liberal order. The book indeed stirred political academia worldwide but its hangover evaporated within a few decades, as the liberal order came under assault from within itself and from its messiah. With the demise of Soviet Union, the bipolar world changed into the unipolar and the United States turned out to be the sole dominant superpower. The West mainly the United States set the rules of the international system, which continues even today, alth...

The inherent character of political power is vying for control over resources. In the pursuit of control over more resources, rulers seek to centralise power and expand control in the larger range of territory. This is how empires are built. When the central authority weakens, the empire begins to crumble in a way Benjamin Franklin said ‘empire diminishes like a cake from the edges’. In this phenomenon of history, several empires came into being and eventually turned into footnotes of history. In the words of Colombia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, ‘an empire is a state that uses force to impose rulers on another country’. The empire building started with the dawn of civilization. Until the mid-20th century, empires were built by means of force, war, coercion and sabotage. Roman, Ottoman, Byzantine, Egyptian, Chinese, Russian, British and several other empires were built and vanished. The empire is the manifestation of centrality of international power. The empire bu...

  Yuba Nath Lamsal   “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep” —Robert Frost This is how American poet Robert Frost has described life as a journey. Life is truly a journey and we are all fellow travellers. The 27 years of association with The Rising Nepal was a precious part of my life's long journey, which is both bumpy and exciting. In this part of the journey, there are thousands of incidents that go deep down in memory lane. However, a few of them are so momentous that they always keep on chasing in my mind. Adieu to a man of principle That was the sombre night of April 26, 1999. Piercing through the serenity of darkness, an unusual mid-night call woke me up. That was the age of landline telephones as cellular phones were not available in Nepal. Half-awakened and a little scared, I rushed to the next room to attend the call anticipating something unusual and bizarre....