Civic Education for the Young Generation

Seminar organized by Nepal Foundation for Advanced Studies (NEFAS)

18 April 2004, Kathmandu

Academicians, teachers, non-government workers and journalists who were gathered for the discussion had one common thing to say, that it was improper management of the young labour force that had brought so many problems in present day Nepal. The discussions had started with the executive director of NEFAS, Ananda Srestha, welcoming the participants saying that teaching of rights as well as responsibilities to the younger generation makes them understand the society they live in better, promotes patriotism by allowing one another to respect each other's rights and help preserve national unity. Srestha said that such education encourages people to participate in decisionmaking, thus making democracy vibrant. "Politics is not bad in itself, only its abuse is," he said, "as it leads to decay of public life." He also said that politicians untrained on civic education create an environment that becomes impossible to retain youths within the country who are forced to other countries to seek their livelihoods. "I hope you will provide us with valuable comments that can be helpful in cleaning up the dirty politicking we are faced with today," he said.

Dev Raj Dahal of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) said that youngsters appear to be dissatisfied today and are being socialized by crisis. "This has forced them to rebel, leave the country, or despair. Some have been oriented themselves towards consumerism. We need to give them a sense of responsibility towards the society by educating them on the law of the land, the Constitution and their Nepali identity. Positive values need to be inculcated into them. The main objective is to turn youths into capable citizens," he said. He also said that the education existed in the school curricula in the past and has made a comeback again. Dahal informed the participants that his organization had been assisting the civic education effort of NEFAS for about six years.

THE two brief addresses were followed by the actual working session where historian Prem Raman Uprety presented his paper titled "Youth of Nepal and the Employment Scenario in a Civil Society". Shanta Pokhrel and Prem Sharma were designated the commentators while Gunanidhi Sharma chaired the session.

In his presentation Uprety tried to show that Nepal ahs always had a surplus of working youths. The following was his thesis: Historically, the surplus had always been used for trans-Himalayan trade, used as porters of South Asian goods to China and vice versa, or as mercenaries for foreign armies. They have been serving the foreign armies ever since they fought for Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab in Lahore and later the British government. Among the three countries known for sending mercenaries to foreign countries, Switzerland and Serbia have stopped doing so after World War II, but Nepal is still sending them. The continuation has been embarrassing for the government at times, like during the food air-drop in Sri Lanka, when India sent Nepalis in the Indian army on a peacekeeping mission in the Sri Lanakan conflict, but the practice of sending youths still goes on.

In the 50s, youths organised into sports clubs and Tol Mandals. This was the first practice of civic education as they were all democratically elected bodies. After democracy was established, a lot of change was seen in youth activities. But the larger section remained marginalised. Now we see that they have even started taking up arms (the Maoist insurgency). Unless a radical social engineering is done, there is not much chance for things to take the youth to be brought back on track.
Commenting on the paper, Prem Sharma said that the objective of the paper is hard to gauge as the concepts of youth, employment and civil society are inadequately dealt with. "There is no consistency between concept and definition. Issues roam around the problem at the periphery rather than taking the core issues head-on. The domestic labour force is untouched and the demographic profile presented is too old. There is no linkage with the civil society, despite the title. The writer says that a lot of social engineering is necessary to overcome the problems in Nepalese youth. He should have given examples of social engineering. The date provided are too old and are inadequate.

Another commentator, Shanta Pokhrel had this to say: The definition of the term youth is mired in controversy as various standards have been adopted by different countries and organizations regarding the upper age limit of children. The age group that is called youth is either 15-29 or 10-29, depending on which standard you take. And, the paper does not say which should be adopted and why. We see that the 15-29 range is preferred by many throughout the world. Including 10-14 school-going children opens up a whole new facet and can be discussed here today. Although even politicians over sixty have liked to put themselves in the youth category, biologically, it is accepted that the age range between 12-18 is taken as adolescent, 18-25 as young adults and 25 to 35 as adulthood.

Youngsters are taken as problems in the West too, not only here. If we take them as problems, how can they contribute to the society? Educating them will prevent them from taking the wrong path or being used as mere political tools. The youth is carrying guns today, throwing stones, getting sexually abused and the like. It is a huge force that needs to be properly channeled. Obviously, child labour is not a good foundation for proper adulthood.

The paper says 24,000 Nepalis were killed in WW I, but data for WW II has not been provided by the paper. The use of Gurkha and Gorkha is not consistent. The mentions the 2046 movement after the movement against the Ranas, but the 2036 movement has not been mentioned at all. In fact, it was the 2036 movement that led to the 2046 movement. The paper should have used the 2001 census data some of the data used are debatable.

We see the out-migratory trend shifting from going to fight as mercenaries to work as labourers in other countries. There is a positive aspect here as it helps the remittance economy. But when government policies include the sending youths abroad for employment, what kind of impact will it have on the future generations? Students will shape their training to suit foreign employment which is not good for the country itself. The best and the brightest thus move away from employment within the bureaucracy and the non-government sector. Popular pressure on the government to create employment at home, rather than foreign employment, would help. How will programmes like BP for the poor affect the youth? Pushing youth to politics is not a good thing, although they should be allowed to participate in politics.

Excerpts from Floor Discussion

Soorya Lal Amatya: Not Khel Mandal, but NRT, the New Road Team, is the organisation that represented democracy in the sports sector in the past, as I myself was involved in it. The paper should have provided a way out of the problems as well. The political situation we are undergoing will come to an end, if not now, then later. Even Cambodia had a resolution.

The paper misses out on Nepalese working in the Singapore police. Local Afghans are being trained by Nepalese. We do have the potential, only that we have not been able to manage that potential. Nepal excels in mountaineering. How do we promote the youths in such professions? On the other hand, thousands of Nepalese are seeking jobs in north India, and living as refugees there. We should promote brain drain, in the sense that we train them and send them for employment abroad.

Vidya Bir Kansakar: Ever since the ruling class focussed on limiting state privileges to their kith and kin, the classes that could not enter the network were forced to leave the country. The Ranas had a system of giving back only 40 per cent of the Indian currency remittance to those actually earning.

The paper appears to have a gender bias. Nepalese girls have been sold to Indian brothels. In the seventies, it was estimated that about 300,000 Nepalese women were working there.

The feudal system in Nepal appears to be always handling the demographic problem by externalizing it e.g. foreign employment. The Ranas were always afraid that those employed in India might create political problems at home.

The Nepalese government does not show any concern for those employed in foreign countries. Those countries, in return, appear to be treating the Nepalese as they please. Other countries have their embassies to take care of such problems. For example, there are 750 Nepalese dead bodies awaiting a return home because no one seems to be willing to bear the costs of transporting them.

The NDS (National Development Service) programme was a good programme, aiming to introduce the country to the students and give schools good teachers at the same time. As soon as the Nepali Congress came to power in 2048, the campus elections gave the AANFSU (communists) the win. The NDS programme was scrapped for sheer political fear by the NC.

We are training our students to be foreign citizens as they would earn more that way. We train them to serve other countries. We are talking of sending Maoist surrenderers to Malaysia for employment. Remember, that we sent the Nepalese to fight the Malaysian communist insurgency in the past. How times have changed.

How are we spending the remittance money? Post-war reconstruction funds had been used to construct many public service centres and institutions in the past. Are we doing anything from the royalty that we collect today?

Regarding data, the sports club was set up in 2004, which has helped a lot of political activities since then.

Narendra Upadhya: Which youth are we talking about? Those in the jungles or those abroad? Since there are no youths here, which youths are we talking of?

Achyut Bahadur Rajbhandari: There are two issues here- the youth and civic education. Additionally, we are also seeking their place in the public sphere or the state.

Civic education is supposed to turn people into citizens. This means, making them members of the society, participants in good governance of the state, managers of the health and hygiene of the society and many other such public activities.

The sense of responsibility of any member of a society can be imparted through civic education. Even their professional education and their public responsibility fall within the ambit of civic education.

The state can provide civic education through schools and civil society organisations. There may still be parts of the society that may not be included in the education system. An adequate network of educators needs to be set up to educate all- the Dalits, the women, the backward communities and all other sectors. The state can take upon itself the responsibility that it has the ability to fulfill. It needs to formulate policies for others to do so where it cannot reach. A national level Civic Education Commission is one idea in that direction.

Sushma Acharya: Youths have been losing their sense of identity, the sense of belonging to the country and the sense of duty. The fault lies with the education system we have. Three kinds of citizens are being produced by three kinds of schools, private schools, public schools and schools abroad. The curriculum we have does not teach students to use their water resources, and other national natural resources. We, the teachers and parents, are to blame as it is us that egg on our children away from these responsibilities.

Fifty per cent of the population are women, 48 per cent of which are poor and a lot of them uneducated. How can we move ahead by tying down this huge pool of human resources. We have a negative attitude to everything. How can we have a positive attitude while dealing with the youth? This shows that we need civic education for inculcating public responsibility in people.

Samira Luitel: There is a lot of information in the paper and a lot is left for implication. The definition of youth is a controversial subject. Still, the paper should have tried to explain why Nepal takes a separate view on the definition.

Is protection helping or doing harm to our children? For how long do we protect them?

The author talks of social engineering, but does not elaborate.

He appears to not have noticed that the paper has become gender-biased. Female youths in insurgency, female headed households and youths, women trafficking and youth etc. are interesting topics to be pursued.

Rudra Upadhya: Can we suggest changes in the inheritance law to help youths stand on their own feet?

Nepal has about 400 manpower agencies with 40 of them in operation. They take a lot of money and they neither send the youths abroad, nor do they return their money. Such fraud needs to be controlled.

Also, the foreign TV channels have been contributing a lot in the decay of today's youth.

Habibullah: How does the state visualize the youth? Our upbringing is such that we are responsible for everything wrong today. The state-society relationship determines the kind of vision we have on the youth. Unless our government thinks about building the society, our youth will always suffer.

Tulasi Pathak: Technology is as important as politics or economics. In fact, the three need to be interlinked. Political stability is needed for progress. Policies need to be formulated to provide incentives for industry and employment. Korea progressed very fast from the dire situation of 1965 to today's status. We can do the same.

Shrawan Sharma: Youths are generally centred around their own development, meaning to be prosperous and content.

What are the motivating factors for civic education? What is the kind of political structure that promotes civic education which kind does not? The paper does not explain the political context needed for civic education.

What is the implication of the ongoing security crisis for civic education? The various aspects of the remittance economy should have been dealt with. For example, what is the implication of the mass youth exodus?

Political parties have been mobilizing the youth. This does have positive implications as well. The bureaucracy is not an organisation that is worth emulating. It is too backward to contribute anything for the youth.

The state has its responsibility to provide employment to those youngsters trained abroad.

Lal Babu Yadav: Civil society is said to function where there is democracy and human rights. But we also see civil society functioning even where these attributes were not there. Was the civil society functional in Nepal in the past when there was no democracy?
In Nepal, the Constitution is functional, multiparty democracy is also functioning, but where do the people stand.

A lot has been made out about federalism. Malaysia is highly centralized in spite of the federal structure there.

Globalization was implemented in Sri Lanka and then terrorism followed. In Nepal, globalization was enforced in 1990 and soon afterwards the Maoist insurgency began.

Civic education should be carried out with the vast rural population in mind. Alienation needs to be avoided. Conflict, rights and responsibilities, peace etc. should be included in the civic education curriculum.

Rabindra Khanal: Our education curriculum is a problem today. The high school curriculum is unnecessarily complicated and is not sustainable for schools. The rural areas cannot have the facilities necessary to teach science or English. Too many students are failing because of absence of teaching facilities and teachers there.

Private schools are competing unnecessarily by introducing activities which are not needed for students. Too many students are being admitted in many schools where the teaching environment does not exist. Many of them fail when they give their high school exams.
Civic education is the responsibility of the government. The paradox in Nepal is that industry is being run by the government and the social service sector is left for the private sector to handle.

Maheshwor Man Shrestha: The seminar is a civic education seminar, but the paper talks of youth employment. It would be healthy to distribute papers two days ahead and comments solicited in written form. This does not rob the opportunity for later commentators as usually happens in seminars.

There are differences in the definition of the term youth, because people from separate disciplines are trying to define it. There is also a difference between the economically active group and youth.

We have taken youth as a problem. They should be taken as an opportunity. For that, we need to share the responsibility and the government should take the leading role in that.

The youth should be able to understand their rights, duties and responsibilities through civic education.

We have not been able to link our education with research.

We say that the remittance forms a large part of our income. But we should be able to distinguish between respectfully earned income and income earned in an undignified way.

Ram Karki: Civic education should begin from childhood, not later. I as a civic education teacher, have found that the introduction of the subject in high school classes will not help much. Children should be cultured from the very beginning of schooling.

In the Tarai, guardians of students themselves help their students cheat in exams by daring even to cross the security cordon of policemen. And the failure rate is high there.

We talk of rights only while talking of civil liberties, not the responsibility that comes with it.

Binod Nepal: Nepal's biggest problems of the day are unemployment and poverty. Every year 350,000 people enter the labour force and are left unmanaged. Education appears to be the leisurely activities of the unemployed. If you are employed, then education does not appear to be needed. Lack of education does not appear to have stopped people from going abroad for work.

Suman Dhakal: The joint family system has promoted the motivation to earn for later generations. Only a change in the inheritance law can change the situation.

Private education has been promoting corruption as it requires a lot of money to be able to afford such education. Private school education also produces the ruling class. The public schools just produce labourers.

Saroj Nepal: Civic education needs to be pursued at the micro level, meso-level and the macro level.

Since there is more employment opportunity in the urban areas, people migrate to the cities. Similarly people have been going abroad where there is more opportunity. The state never tried to modernize the agriculture to prevent the exodus from villages. Agro-based industry is therefore a necessity.

A large chunk of the government spending goes for civil construction because of development activities. We need to formulate policies to promote those areas that are dependent on the construction.

We talk of our huge hydro power potential, but we do not have a strategy to move ahead.

Similarly, mountaineering, hoteliering, trekking etc need to be promoted.

Pushpa Pradhan: We appear to be running a deficit in civic education and moral education. Foreigners have said that our education does not teach us nationalism and cultural values and that we have had to import such values. Other countries have prospered because of their aggressive human resource policies.

All foreign employment is not bad. Managers were able to learn a lot of industrialization techniques whilethrough trade.

We have also been contributing to the unemployment problem by failing a lot of SLC examinees and charging a lot of fees from 10+2 entrants. This discourages students from studying further.

Ramesh Mainali: I do not think Nepal has a surplus of youth. When we have not even tried to absorb the existing youngsters in employment, how can we have a surplus? The author talks of immigration workers from India. Indeed, we send the energetic youth abroad while we live on the remittance and employ foreigners at home.

Bharat Pokharel: Lack of civic education has led to the problems we face today and no sector of the nation can improve without civic education.

Ananda Aditya: The data needs updating. The paper does appear to fit within the umbrella title as it is, but it needs to be shown to fit by making changes in the paper.

NEFAS has been organising such programmes for the part 11 years. But in this particular case, I do not see many youngsters here. University students could have been called in to participate more. Civic education is better in if we can impart it to younger students.
The UN takes persons of up to 18 years as children. Our law has determined that 16 year olds have reached maturity. We need to remove this inconsistency.

The paper should show the future road ahead to come out of our problems.

We have conceived of a children's parliament. Other such concrete programmes for the youth can follow.

Sabitra Thapa Gurung: The paper and the commentators have shown their negative attitude towards those serving in foreign armies. The state itself has sanctioned the such recruitment.

One commentator appears to say that Lahures are stupid. But it is not only they who are stupid as brain drain is there even in other ethnic communities, not just those that are known for rearing Lahures. We should not be discriminating the IT Lahures from the real Lahures.

Binod Bahadur Shrestha: The paper does not provide us anything about the contribution of the youth from the historical perspective. They have done a lot in the arts sector and other sectors of nation building.

The failure of the multiparty democracy should not be attributed to youths. It is the sightless leaders who are to blame. And, we should be able to distinguish the right from the wrong, not just accept what these leaders say. When they say there is no democracy, we agree. When they say there is democracy, we agree. This is not right. We ourselves need to be able to discriminate.

Excerpts from the Author's reply

• The paper had a limited objective of stimulating discussion on employment of the youth. I agree that the data are indeed old as I could not access the new data in the short period I had to prepare the paper. But the greater issue is not the numbers themselves, but the trend. And there is no shift in the trend in both the old and the new data. In fact, the same trend has remained for the past hundred years.
• I have not dealt with the future deliberately as it is a controversial area. I wanted to leave that to the floor.
• I agree that it is not bad to go to work for foreign armies. In fact, Nepal's hill culture is the Lahure culture. The Lahures have brought modernization to the hills and it is they who have protected and preserved the culture. In many instances, they have even invested in development.
• Today, the problem is such that we are sending people abroad not only through the official channel but also informally. It would be better to send them officially, after training them.
• Youths have been migrating abroad leaving the old couples behind. This will bring a social problem in the future.
• Nepal's civil society was vibrant in the ancient days-- the guthis, the kipats and the like did a lot of public work. The traditional system has more or less disappeared and we are trying to replace them with NGOs and INGOs.
• We did have a subject called Civics at the I.A. level in the past. Now, we are talking of introducing it to the school level.
• Nepal's main export today is manpower and I have not talked much about export of women. Indeed, the Rana rulers themselves were involved in flesh trade and the opium trade, not only with India but also with Tibet.

Chairman's concluding remarks: We have seen that the state should be seriously involved in this aspect education-how do we turn the youth into a productive asset? The question is whether we are using them or abusing them. The rebellion today is also the result of the unfulfilled aspiration of the youth. The young generation is a dynamic component of the society as they manage the old and direct the young and new.

The Lahures should not only be criticized as it is they who brought modernization in Nepal after the War.

All of us here are related with education and we need to harness the youth resources and apply them for nation building. If we can provide a curriculum that addresses the overall needs of the youth, not just the efficiency and similar aspects but total contentment, an ideal citizen can thus be produced.