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Letter to President Obama from Nepal

Bhuwan Thapaliya - 6/1/2010

Namaskar! Heartily greetings from the world’s newest Republic. I saw you dribbling the basketball and the first lady graciously dancing with the kids on the idiot box, couple of days ago. Great to see you guys. I had wanted to write to you earlier but as my mind couldn’t reach consensus with my heart due to the naked dance of inflation, political chaos and desolateness of law and order in Nepal , I was in a trance like stage.



Mr. President, they say when America sneezes; the rest of the world catches cold. This observation made during the Great Depression years of the early 1930s holds true even today after all these years as exemplified by the just concluded recession that sickened the world more than in any other time in the history though its impact on the immature Nepalese economy has been minimal.



Mr. President, while all Nepalese economists would agree that the Recession began with the sub prime crisis that spread into other markets, there is considerable disagreement about the other causes. But so much has been written and broadcasted about the ‘Recession’ in Nepalese media that there is no shortage of statistics describing recession and the collapse of the Wall Street. Nonetheless, what constituted ‘Recession’ is typically vaguely defined.



So what went wrong in America ? America ignored the Law of Diminishing Returns in my own understanding. America made the biggest blunder by presuming that it could engineer uninterrupted prosperity on and on. As expected its banks and its corporations crashed one after another as the house of cards and with them went the America ’s illusion of eternal prosperity.



Mr. President, furthermore, America thought that it could displace business cycles with the aid of macroeconomic policies but that never happened. Instead the government’s program to stimulate growth encouraged excessive burrowing and diluted the savings. On the other hand, over confidence, poor management and economic policies, Ponzi – schemes and executives who took their superiority for granted ruined America .



Mr. President, since taking the office, you have endorsed various economic measures to curb the recession and reports showed improvements in the areas hit hard by recession -- manufacturing and housing. The recession ends when aggregate demand increases again to its expected level. Fortunately for America, it is increasing and the credit goes to you and your economics team, which includes top guns such as Larry Summers and Christina Romer though Former President Bill Clinton said his Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers were wrong in the advice they gave him about regulating derivatives when he was in office, according to the Bloomberg report.



Now it’s official. Recession is over in the U.S. The global economic outlook isn’t gloomy either. The stains of recession are peeling off and the risks to the global financial system, which has taken an estimated $1.6 trillion in losses since the crisis erupted, have moderated from the extreme levels in response to concerted fiscal and monetary policy stimulus measures.



But it is a pity that the time has not yet come to celebrate as the fear of rising unemployment at least for a year lurks in – a massive factor that may diminish the aggregate demand and could take the economy for a roller coaster ride yet again.



Mr. President. Let me brief you about my nation now. Political forecasting, always a dodgy business, has grown even more difficult in Nepal . For a start, soothsayers have had to cope over the political vacuum left over by the demise of G.P. Koirala and the serpentine ploys of the political parties, new-fangled attitudes of the Maoists, and the vagueness of foreign diplomacy further complicates the matter. Here and there, a flash of hope can occasionally be seen -- but it rapidly disappears into a new wave of political hegemony.



Is this just a blip on a nation where wild swings in political fortune are common, or the beginning of a genuine political turnabout? Cyclical uncertainty certainly provides part of the answer, Nepal still depends heavily on. Meanwhile, majority of the Nepalese think that it is not the time to be distracted by other issues. The time is to focus on the Constitution drafting process.



The challenge now is to channel the current hype into reasonable and sustainable political measures. After writing the Constitution, there has to be a long term plan, first with the political parties and then with all the stake holders, for securing our nation as well as protecting our sovereignty. This plan will have to be based on a two prolonged approach – a) political efficiency and b) use of collective commoner’s energy.


The analytical picture is blurred. A symptom of Nepal ’s democratic backwardness is that its major political parties hardly agree. Why the various stake holders of the Nepalese politics are distorting the democracy is difficult to discern. Call it the dearth of elegance in the language of politics. Meanwhile, at least in the distant future, the political consensus and equilibrium potentials do thus not really exist. The consensus curve is shrinking. But there is good news, too: Political counter-strategy is a lot cheaper these days than we thought.


However, it is not the spirit of democracy to reject any clan, any creed, any race or any culture. The spirit of democracy in most nations barring few has always asserted the ideal of unity, trust and solidarity. It comprehends all, and it must be the highest aim of democracy to be able to comprehend all things with sympathy and love. This they say is the spirit of democracy. But this very spirit of democracy has been distorted in Nepal .



Furthermore, there is this prejudice that is ruing Nepal . Maoists prejudice, the CPN- UML prejudice, and Nepali Congress prejudice. These three major parties prejudice is so pervasive in Nepal ’s political system that it is almost impossible to produce an objective judgment about guilt and innocence, right and wrong, and good or bad. Other evidence from the past few months, however, has pointed to murkier interpretation of Parliamentary power in Nepal .


These parties it seems have consumed more power than generated by the people’s revolution. And this had made them autocratic. They don’t care about the commoner’s voice; they think from Parliament they can dictate the rudder of Nepal . And it is their very act, which has distorted the spirit of the Nepalese democracy. For the commoners, it seems that the Nepalese democracy is a mere Parliamentary democracy only.


Not to forget that one of the weakest aspects of Nepali democratic process has been its disregard for the voices of the commoners. In summary, this is a true tribute of the political parties to millions of those commoners who made the people’s revolution successful. Isn’t this the parody of all the parodies?



Mr. President , Nepal is going through one of the most dramatic periods of its social development and political maturing. However, it appears very important for all its political actors to display common sense and objectively reassess all "assets and liabilities" of the remaining political system in order to preserve and more effectively utilize all its resources.


Do the Nepalese have political wisdom to overcome all the challenges standing presently in their way so that long lasting peace and prosperity will ultimately prevail in the country after a long hiatus? This is yet to be seen.



Finally, Mr. President, for the first time in history, almost all the world’s people were bound together by Recession. Considering so, I congratulate you and your team for slowly but surely raising the aggregate demand. As you know, without strong demand in the rich world, many underdeveloped countries such as my own country Nepal will be left far behind. But this time around we don’t want to be left behind. We want to narrow the gap between us and you. Hoping for your cooperation. Wishing you and your nation all the best.