Endangered Pluralism

The violent protest in front of the venue of the “Miss Nepal” contest last week has made it clear that xenophobic brand of nationalism is on the rise in Nepal. It came as no surprise when the Maoists joined other leftists groups and demonstrated in front of the venue where the contestants were competing for the coveted crown. Krishna Bahadur Mahara, a Maoist ideologue and the information minister, had publicly acknowledged that he is both personally and ideologically, against the beauty pageants. If he could, he would have stopped the recently held “Miss Nepal” contest from taking off.

Despite vehement opposition from the leftists and the radical feminist groups in Nepal, the beauty pageants are organized year after year and operated within a greater context of generalized and widely accepted misogyny. It may be hard for freedom-loving, open-minded people to comprehend why the leftists and the radical feminists are hell-bent against things such as “beauty pageants,” which do not infringe on anyone else's personal rights.

Richard Wilk's claim may be helpful in understanding why the political left and the radical feminists hate beauty pageants and vehemently oppose it. Wilk says the pageants make sense of everyday life in this global order by creating common categories of difference. Furthermore, under the watchful eye of television, beauty pageants are engaged in ideological labor that undermines the presumptions of a global capitalist order, which is extremely distasteful to the political left.

The political left and die-hard feminists are totally against the beauty pageants and think such contests demean women and corrupt Nepali culture. They think beauty pageants as subordination of women to the status of sex objects in the new economy of global consumerism. What these leftists ideologues and the so called “hard core feminists,” who if allowed, would reduce the women's status to a vessels for reproduction fail to understand is that the norms that these beauty pageants promote are not even remotely as obsolete as they like to believe. What they seem to undermine is the fact that the beauty pageants do reflect contemporary culture, one in which the political left and the feminist groups pay lip service to women's right.

The leftist groups pose to be progressive and claim to be the champions of the women's right issues, but in fact they try to control the freedom of women. They fear that events such as beauty pageants would free women from socio-cultural bindings and subsequently lead to the liberation of their subjects. They tirelessly talk about equality and human rights of women but their sister organizations such as Youth Communist League (YCL), in the name of moral and cultural policing try to deprive women of their rights to indulge in things they like and want to participate in, and infringe women's right to choose. Thus, the Maoists and the other leftists groups are hiding their real willingness to subjugate women in a cloak of good intentions. If the leftists and the feminists really vouch for liberation and upliftment of women, which they claim to be the case, they should take on more pressing issue such as marginalization of women and work towards weakening the patriarchal structures, which is the main culprit behind women's backwardness.

The never-ending opposition of beauty pageants by the leftists and the so-called “women rights” groups reflects the problematic politics and the desperateness on the part of the feminists to align with the leftist groups to ensure the momentum of their fizzling movement. In the name of retention of culture, what the leftists and the feminists in Nepal are trying to do is stereotype the image of Nepali women. They want to project Nepali women as weak and submissive. For them, reinforcing the fundamentalist viewpoint of women as subordinate pays and it pays heavily. If women start perceiving themselves strong and independent, the very slogan of liberation of women that the leftists and the feminists have been cashing in so far becomes redundant and untenable. Thus, what the liftists and the feminists in the name of opposition to commoditization of women are trying to do is promote their own version of “cultural nationalism” as a substitute for the state-sponsored ideology of secularism in Nepal.

The powerful rhetoric of “cultural nationalism,” which the political left preaches, when set against the so-called hegemony of Westernization, becomes emotionally appealing to the millions of leftists and the feminists who perceive westernization of Nepali society as an inherent threat to their political future. So far the political left has been tremendously successful in manipulating the anti-western sentiment propagated by the leftist media and the polity under the deceptive garb of cultural retention to propagate their political ideology. The protest against beauty pageants is one of many such manipulative moves that the political left uses to promote the notion of “cultural nationalism,” which contributes towards securing its goal of establishing a proletarian communist state.

Beauty pageants draw a lot of flak from the leftist groups and the feminist groups who object to, basically because they cannot see the beauty contests further than the judgment of woman's appearance and promotion of glamour. The beauty pageants should be viewed as an event showcasing women's talent rather than an event showcasing beauty, sexism, vulgarism etc. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

Beauty pageants are innocuous. It helps winners catapult their careers in an upward motion. Their participation elevates their status so they are likely to succeed in their future endeavors. Besides, the winners of the pageants participate in promoting social issues and issues related to nature conservation, which in itself is a great thing.

The leftists and the feminist groups need to drop the obsession with women's bodies and what women do with it. They should stop viewing women as vessels for reproduction and putting women's right to bodily autonomy on the chopping block. The true liberation of women will take place only when they can freely decide on what they want to do with their body. The time has come whereby we, Nepali citizens, rise against the cultural and moral policing by the leftist and the radical feminists. The talibanisation of Nepali society in the name of “cultural nationalism” is simply unacceptable.

Role of Private Property

Recently, some members of Maoist-affiliated Trade Union ANTUF(R) physically assaulted a local businessman when he tried stopping them from writing graffiti on his private boundary wall. Instead of respecting the owner's right to exercise his private property rights, the Maoists indulged themselves in a brawl. What appeared even more disturbing is that the Maoists fined the owner and forced him to apologize for exercising the right that is granted by the law of the land.

Freedom in its entirety cannot be fully realized without private property rights. Of many reasons why communism failed was the inability to acknowledge the need of private property. It fails to reward those who excel, and fails to punish those who lag behind. There is no incentive for greater effort, neither in creativity, entrepreneurship or hard work.

Capitalism thrives because it rewards ingenuity, capability, and hard work. In a capitalist society, individuals that are capable and hard working thrive while those who are lazy or unable to conform to the demands of society are less successful and lag behind.

Private property is in the best interest of a democratic society because it gives meaning to the very concept of freedom and libertarian principles of justice. Freedom and property rights are very closely related to each other. The right to do as you please with your private property is an integral part of ones' personal freedom. Thus, in a free democratic society each person is free to acquire property and do whatever he wants with it without any interference, as long as stretching of his arms doesn't hurt someone else's nose.

Secured private property rights provide the legal certainty necessary for individuals to commit resources to ventures. The threat of plunder or confiscation greatly undermines confidence in market activity and tremendously limits investment possibilities.

Secured property rights are extremely important for the exchange and the extension of ownership to capital goods. They help foster the development of financial markets that are prerequisite for economic growth and development. Since the inception of peoples' war, the Maoists have forcibly grabbed thousands of hectares of private land in an attempt of creating utopian society and haphazardly distributed among the poor like Robert Mugabe's henchmen did in Zimbabwe.

Haphazard distribution of someone else's property is a sheer violation of property as well as basic human rights. Wealth should be gained through fair competition rather than conquest. Conquest cannot be a legitimate basis for rights, because conquest is a denial of rights.

In addition, what the Maoists fail to understand is that distribution of land that is locked in the form of dead capital is not the solution to the mass poverty and backwardness that exists in Nepal. The poor will be unable to make the best use of the newly gained land and generate further wealth in the absence of capital that is required to buy seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and farm equipment.

If the Maoists want to be the champions of the poor in a real sense, they should respect individual property rights and encourage ingenuity, hard work, and fair competition in the society. The poor in Nepal or for that matter anywhere in the world do not need land to lead financially secured life and break out of the vicious cycle of poverty. The poor already have innate skills to survive. All they need is capital to put their skills into practice. They should be provided with some capital so that they can put their skills into practice.

It is extremely necessary to remove the borders to trade so they are free to trade their most important property-labor with those who want it.

Despite the constant influx of development aid for the last five decades, approximately half of the country's population is still languishing at the bottom of the pyramid. The solution to the existing mass poverty that exists in Nepal does not rest on the availability of more aid from the West, but the introduction of policies that can integrate the wealth that already exists into the formal legal system and thereby into the global economy. So far, the ruling elites have failed to turn the despair of the people into hope and their uncertainty into a promise. Foreign aid myopia seems to have blind-folded politicians of our times. In the midst of our own poorest neighborhoods, crowded urban centers and remote hinterland, there are millions of dollars locked in the form of dead capital. What we lack is the way to grasp the means to unravel the mystery of how these assets can be transformed into capital.

The real problem lies in a kind of political blindness, which has kept politician from seeing what the real source of wealth is: Real property, or sound property rights? Once a society has a sound and well enforced property rights, it is bestowed with the secret of capital. The assets stored in the form of dead capital can then be used to generate loans and credit which in turn can create the much needed wealth. Nowhere in the globe has an economic system that is characterized as respectful to private property failed to lift the status of its citizens.

It was well-defined property right laws that helped Western countries convert informal property systems into formal ones and move from the Third World to their present First World status in the late Nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These countries prospered mainly because private property rights allowed citizens to use their property to create capital.

The challenges Nepal is facing as a nation are therefore to replicate this history. Thus, well-enforced property rights are the need of the day to create a new economic order providing the right incentives for massive economic growth to occur. It is of utmost importance because it acts as a mediating device that successfully captures and stores the mechanisms that are necessary to run a market economy.

One of the many challenges confronting the post-April revolution that Nepal pumped up with unmatched enthusiasm is to uphold private property rights and enforce these rights effectively. Inability to do so can seriously hinder the increase in productivity from available resources and in increasing the value of things that we possess. In the case of Nepal, it is not resources that are too scarce to lift the status of the poor and downtrodden. It is rather the political and economic institutions based on secure property rights and the rules of law.