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Feature Articles (English)
The Maladies lie in political parties
-Vinaya Kasajoo
Many people laughed when former Prime Minister Krishna
Prasad Bhattarai told the audience at a public meeting that there
was danger to democracy from the people rather than from the palace
or the army. Rana Prime Minister Chandra Shumsher knew this long
ago. He had revealed this but in different term while inaugurating
Trichandra Collage, the first college of Nepal.
Since innocent, ignorant, uneducated and uninformed
people are fertile fields for autocratic system every coup against
democracy captures the sources of information and tries to keep
the people misinformed. Nepal has already experienced such a coup
in the past when Mr. Bhattarai himself was the speaker of the first
parliament. That's why he expressed this bitter truth from his own
experience.
In India, people who once moved around Mahatma Gandhi
and Jawaharlal Nehru are now electing Lalu Yadav and Phulan Devi
as their leaders. Now they are celebrating the nuclear bomb explosion
as well. It is a case of sabre ratling that may not serve any cause.
Many say that democratic values in India have received setback during
the last fifty years. If the system was getting there would not
be Gayarams and Ayarams around, would they?
To get the answer we must come back to Mr. Bhattarai.
He could tell how our neighbours are fiddling with democracy like
the proverbial monkey fiddled with the coconut. Mr. Bhattarai is
apprehensive of the Indian way of democratic exercises in which
the common people do not have any important role, except at the
time of election.
Since it is easy to make fools of innocent and uninformed
people religious fundamentalism is in rise. People are not allowed
to ask questions about religious texts. People seem to seek their
emancipation not through labour but through the charisma of political
leaders, cinema stars and criminals. They are in fact losing power.
Now the question is, should we follow our big neighbour
or take a different route? Mr. Bhattarai is anxious that people
are running out of patience with leaders here. All know that voting
is an important tool in democracy. It expresses the people's opinion.
Common people do not care about election and hence, Bhattarai's
warning about danger from the people. But is there any solution?
If the status of political parties is anything to go by, there is
no solution. Political parties are losing their mass support.
Does Mr. Bhattarai or his party Nepali Congress have
any solution of this crucial problem? At the time not only Nepali
Congress but almost all the political parties of the sub continent
are striving hard to be bigger and powerful. But in contrast almost
all of them are becoming smaller and weaker after every election.
Non except political leaders may be blame for the
people's alienation. In their attempt to make themselves and their
party powerful, the people were never given the opportunity to learn
the real meaning of democracy. Leaders, like their former rulers
always felt it easy to rule the ignorant people. Therefore, they
tried to weaken them by keeping un-informed, ignorant, without self-confidence
and self-respect.
It is clear that democracy cannot sustain without
well-informed, educated and empowered people. What we need are concrete
plans and programs for sustaining democracy. We have not learnt
any lesson from our own experience and from the experiences of neighbouring
countries.
It is true that our well wishers from many countries
came to help up. They took our parliamentarians to visit their country.
They gave good- communication system as well as modern printing
press for use in the parliament. Some of them promoted our education
system whereas some tried to change the role of mass media and develop
free, independent and credible press. We are still very far from
the target. Was it worth the while?
The type of information available to set up development
efforts is so large that the existing media structure and traditional
communication system cannot disseminate them. Most of our traditional
communication structures have broken down. The traditional press
is politicized. A democratic communication system with people's
participation is lacking. How can we educate our people and involve
them in the exercise of democracy? This is a big challenge, which
every responsible citizen has to face if we want to sustain democracy.
Let us draw a leaf from Denmark. Folkehojskole is
Denmark's contribution to the outside world. It has to do with popular
education. Popular education means more than just spreading knowledge
and technical skills among the population at large.
Furthermore the Danish tradition of popular education
rests on a solidly democratic outlook: no one can claim privileged
access to the absolute truth - so every one has a right to have
his say.
The concept and vision of folkehojskole can be quite
useful for strengthening democracy in a country like Nepal, where
majority of the population has never visited any formal school.
Mass education of the community can be enhanced through the concept
of folkehojskole.
Every year some 2% of Denmark's entire population
go to a folkehojskole. Most of them go on courses lasting only a
few weeks, but some 15,000 a year attend courses lasting several
months.
The fact that popular education is so intimately linked
in the Danish tradition with the concept of learning for life is
mainly the work of Nikolai Fredeerik Severin Grundtvig (1783-1872),
a clergyman and writer. He was a contemporary of two other eminent
Danes - Hans Christian Andersen and Soren Kierkegaard.
During the 1830s Grundtvig sketched out numerous plans
for setting up some kind of high school based on his experience
in England. His idea was for the king to set up a higher civil service
school. Here the country's future administrators would sit side
by side in the classroom with the sons and daughters of peasants,
farmers, fishermen, workmen, tradesmen and housemaids
For various reasons all these plans came to naught.
But Grundtvig's ideas came to play a major role for the Danish peasant
farmers, as the hojskoler helped them to gain the authority and
self-confidence to take full advantage of the democratic rights
granted them under the Danish Constitution of 1849.
After Denmark's defeat by Germany in 1864 there was
a sudden upsurge in the folkehojskole movement. In less than ten
years some 50 new folkehojskoler were established throughout the
remaining territory of the country. One of the school's main concerns
was to lay a basis for the nation to come to terms with the new
situation.
The last third of the 19th century was the golden
age of the folkehojskoler. During this period they acted as a powerful
cultural dynamo, helping to lay the foundation for the modern welfare
state.
The concept of folkehojskoler is flourishing in many
European, African and Asian countries. Danish immigrants have established
folkehojskolers in the United States. Danida, the development aid
section in the Danish Foreign Ministry which has the largest contribution
to the democracy and human rights project in Nepal, has been working
on adult education and folkehojskoler in our neighbouring countries,
India and Bangladesh. If Danida uses this concept to strengthen
democracy in Nepal it will be a worthwhile effort.
(Published in The Kathmandu Post daily- August 3,
1998.)
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