CIVIC EDUCATION: ROLE OF YOUTHS IN LOCAL SELF- GOVERNANCE

Organised by Nepal Foundation for Advanced Studies (NEFAS)

10 November 2003, Janakpur

Nepal Foundation for Advanced Studies (NEFAS) took the discussion in the civic education series "Civic Education: Role of Youths in Local Governance" to Janakpur and held a seminar there on 10 November 2003.

Local governance experts, political party workers, journalists and mainly teachers and academicians were assembled in this central Tarai town for the discussion. Executive director of NEFAS, Ananda Srestha welcoming the participants said, "We believe that youths have an important role to play in consolidating democracy in Nepal. We are not here to impose some imported ideas on you, but we rather seek to collect ideas that you have regarding civic education in Nepal." There is a need to answer questions like, 'How can youths be mobilized to use local resources?' Or, 'How can youths help the society in general?' We know that human rights and a sense of justice helps youths to fulfill their responsibility towards the society," he said and asked the participants to provide comments to the presentations about to be made so that they could provide a valuable input to the publication being planned. He also lauded the contributions of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) for its continuous support to NEFAS's nationwide project on civic education.

After the brief address, the working sessions began to discuss the issues of the day. The seminar was divided into two sessions, the presentation sessions and the floor discussions. Ram Kumar Dahal a political scientist, made his presentation on "Role of Youths in Local Self-Governance" first, followed by "Civic Eduction for the Young Generation", a joint presentation by Khagendra Prasain and Shiv Raj Dahal. The sessions were chaired by a local university teacher, Dr. Shivendra Lal Karna.

The floor discussions followed after the presentations.

FLOOR DISCUSSION

Kishori Shah (advocate): The Constitution has been praised for being complete, but I find that it is silent on local governance. Rulers appear to think that they therefore need to fill the void by forming their own laws regarding local governance. The paper should have pointed at this lacuna.

Youths should have been mobilized for Nepal's industrial development. And the fault lies with the electoral system which allows the minority to rule the majority. The electoral process should also bar leaders from standing up for public posts unless they acquire the necessary education qualification.

Shital Jha (political party worker): On Prasian's presentation, he should have read the paper limiting himself to his ideas on the paper, rather than going on a tangent. He talked about failure of democracy but to conclude that it failed in 12 years is taking things a bit too far.

Environmental components have been missed by the paper-I am talking about the social and natural environments.
On Ram Kumar Dahal's paper, villages are vacant and youths are not around. Not only brain drain, but, more importantly, youth drain should have been taken up as an issue that the government should be taking care of.

Uday Kant Thakur (RPP): The paper tilts more towards social studies rather than civic education. Until the right of participation is ensured by law, youths cannot play their role. The Panchayat system had a separate constituency for youths, but not today. We should think about involving youths in governance by raising the issue of right to participation.

Bijay Kumar Lal (Economist): Practical steps and the necessary polices to involve youths in the issues you have raised have not been provided by you. You only mention that participation is necessary. You don't say how.

Dr. Surendra Lal Karna: On Ram Kumar's paper. Please specify the type of youth when you talk of youth-- village youth, educated youth, illeterate youth, urban youth or any other kind of youth. You should also come out with a proper translation of "self-help groups".
I am surprised to see no discussion about the role of youth in a democracy.

The paper talks much about brain drain, but nobody seems to talk about the muscle drain that is taking place and the two need to be separated.

In the second presentation, Prasain talks about knowledge, but we need to talk of useful knowledge, making it a value driven concept, rather than just bland knowledge.

Bimal Kant Jha (School teacher): The condition of youths is perhaps the most pitiable in Nepal, whether it is regarding education, poverty or the general environment in the country. The first step towards alleviating their plight needs to be taken at the grassroots at the pre-primary level. The education system is creating a wall and distorting our own traditions, cultures and value systems. I do not seen any relation between what we are discussing today and the capacity of the education system to deliver as of today.

Villages are devoid of youth. They have all gone abroad with the connivance of the government, which is encouraging them to go out, instead of employing them. And, to talk about their role in democracy during such a point in time is not sensible.

I also believe that democracy is not totally unsuccessful, but is indeed sick. We have not been able to implement the Constitution resulting in its weakeness.

Prakash Chandra Shah (engineer): Former Speaker Daman Nath Dhungana has said that responsible people's representatives have not been transparent and responsible. I believe that the root of problem lies there.

Which are the sectors that youths need to be involved and what are their roles? These questions have been answered. Here are some additions. Late King Birendra is said to have given a list of dos and don'ts as a gift to former prime minister Girija Koirala when he returned from abroad. And the listed points e.g. Politics without principles…. are noteworthy food for thought.

Politicians need to have some specific skills to deal with people.

Sunil Kumar Mandal (school teacher): Youths should be made aware about the environmental destruction that takes place with infrastructure development. Also, how do you make village youth aware about their responsibility?

BM Khanal (journalist): Democracy did not come to Nepal after people were made sufficiently aware about the system. We take the right to information as the biggest achievement. In spite of the right being mentioned in the Constitution, we still have debates. It is useless to expect something, like role of youth in local governance, that has not even been mentioned. The state has not appeared honest regarding the right to information.

There is a gap between civic sense of yesterday's and today's citizen. We think of commercial benefit in education today, but not yesterday when they talked of being good citizens. In other words, yesterday's students were more intelligent than today's although those of today may have more knowledge.

We talk of transparency only today, but this is something that should have come with democracy. It is clear that we do not have democracy at the moment, but we are still talking of transparency. There is some inconsistency here.

Rajesh Karna (journalist): There are inconsistencies regarding the age that qualifies on to be a youth-- at 18, you can vote, while you need to be 25 to stand up for elections. And at which age does youth end? There may be geographical or cultural or health issues related while defining youth.

Rabindra Shah (journalist): International forces appear to be trying to inflict disabilities in our youth. The have started by polluting education-we never had the chance of reading about our culture and religion in textbooks, but plenty about alien culture and religion. That continues today. The governments that came to power in the past 12 years came to execute foreign agenda, not domestic. It is this that led our youths to flee the country.

First, we need to impart moral education to make corrections to these distortions. For example, at the moment, youths are made aware of their responsibilities, but responsibilities are not given to them. They can only be made responsible only by giving them responsibility.
Secondly, democracy is a system that can correct itself, otherwise it cannot be democracy.

Prof. Ram Kumar: You talk of politics as being dirty, and then later talk about participation in politics to correct things. You talk a lot about the dirtiness but not on the ability of politics to do things.

Knowledge, virtue and skill have been discussed. You should have added 'attitude' to the list.

Regarding leadership, you have not mentioned the need to fulfill promises by politicians. I think that the political problem lies in the utter disregard for this aspect of politics.

NEFAS has been making continuous efforts regarding youths. It should continue to do so.

Digamber Raya: Education needs to be healthy, if there are problems in the education system, social problems abound. That is the problem with us at the moment. The paper does not appear to include ideas of our traditions.

Today, commerce comes first, not values. Some youths are gone abroad, others have entered the jungles with guns. Youths are not safe in villages today, unable even to fight for their existence.

You should have also included a component on character building. Women are the only ones living in the villages today, who are taking care of children, elderly and also social responsibilities.

Ram Chandra Shah (teacher): You talk of infant democracy. When was democracy born? Whatever is born will die. When will it die? You also say, democracy has failed. Democracy never sat for exams, why should it succeed or fail? It is politics that is pushing youths away from the country. These problems should have been resolved years ago, not today, when the problem has already started afflicting us.

In Nepal, women's illiteracy is high and the number of women is greater than men. We need to focus on them.
Citizens should be made healthy-- physically, mentally and socially. The society should be run with the heart, not with the head.

Minaxi Jha: The paper should have been shorter and should have been read out, instead of extempore presentation.
You talk of role for youth. But how, in a country that is devoid of youth?

I do not think that democracy has failed. All this has happened because people were not aware, not because of the failure of democracy.

Kamal Shah (journalist): I would like to classify youths in two categories, first, those who move from villages, study in urban centers and then move back to the village. And others who don't. Those that don't need to be attracted to the villages.

Santa Byathit (journalist): Our country has no youths. People are born old and die old in Nepal. Knowledge has been imposed on us and we devalue other knowledgeable people.

Until poverty is resolved, it is useless to talk of youth.

Sociologist Jha: Paper writers should try to be more focussed on how to build the personality of the student. It is us, elderly people, sending younger people to foreign lands. Until the old age people do not control their needs, youths will keep going broad.

I think you need a separate paper on mobility of youths for employment.

Before the session ended, Ananda Srestha, the NEFAS executive director made his clarifications regarding the policy questions saying that the inputs would be valuable for the publication being planned which could prove very useful to the students. "But policy matters is for the policy maker to take up," he said. Regarding the concerns about drain of youths, both brain and muscle drain, taking place, he said that NEFAS will try to pick up that topic in the future.He also asked the participants to keep sending comments to NEFAS should they feel that they did not have the time to do so today.

The authors then made some clarifications regarding queries about the papers and promised to include relevant comments in the final draft of the papers before publishing them. In conclusion, the chairperson made his remarks.

Chairperson's remarks: I believe that the authors will accommodate the concerns raised at the floor discussions. Although the seminar is on youth, I see no representation from youth organisations. This is a serious issue as the responsibility is also ours regarding their absence. We should ask them why they did not come to participate.

The discussion has shown that youth are not being led towards religious and traditional education. We need to free ourselves from blame games. Janakpur itself is rich in democratic traditions since King Janak's days. We can do more if we try.

Regarding 'failure of democracy', it is us who do not behave democratically, or act in an infantlie manner. It is not democracy's fault that the system suffers today.

The discussions broke off for lunch after Shiv Raj Dahal gave the vote of thanks.