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| Suresh Poudel |
Following the
promulgation of New Constitution, Nepal has been confronting the shortage of
petroleum supply and other essentials for around two months now. Life is being
more difficult due to the limited supply of petroleum and other basic needs.
The constraint in supply has a political origin but it has affected all
political and non- political beings in the country. Different sections of the
society have different say in this regard which has resulted into the blame
game between India and Nepal. The ongoing situation has given ways to debate on
different aspects of Indo- Nepal relationships.
Nepal has virtually a
unilateral trade relationship with India where the former depends heavily on
the later for the supply of petroleum including other goods therefore the
disruption of the supply from India has affected lives in Nepal. In the
response, the government of Nepal is assuring its citizens to bring the
situation to normal by saying it is working towards it. In this article, I am
not going to add the issues on Indo-Nepal relationships. Instead I want to ask
myself and countrymen a few questions which I believe they are supposed to ask
themselves before indulging themselves in a blame game.
The questions are: Have
we ever created opportunities within the country? Have we ever thought of
future energy demand? Have we ever accessed the potential of our human
resources? Have we ever debated about our job market? Have we ever talked about
building national infrastructure in tourism and other important sectors of the
economy? Have we ever analyzed the future course of national economy and its
interrelationship with rest of the world? Have we ever put our ideas in
capitalization of remittance? Have we ever looked closely on the development of
rest of the world? Have we ever encouraged learning science and technology to
assure better lives for future generation? Have we ever followed norms as our
ways of living? Have we ever done politics for the people and the nation? Have
we ever thought of value addition rather than trading the same good at higher
prices? Have we ever valued education for other than earning better wages? Have
we ever followed ethics in our deeds? Have we ever respected work rather than
ensuring the better position in job? Have we ever used the raw materials and
natural resources we have to change them into finished products? Have we ever explored our mother earth to find
the hidden treasures? Have we ever produced the minimum we need to sustain if
we have not ensured the supply chain smooth? Have we ever debated logically in world forums
to establish our significant presence in world stage? Have we ever formulated a
tax policy compatible to our national need?
These are the sorts of
questions that hit my mind when I see our people expecting other nations to
build their nation and supply the essentials. We are the ones supposed to find
the answers to all such questions and only then we will do justice to ones who
are fighting for rights and opportunities. However, the tragedy is we never got prepared to find the
answers to such questions, actually never explored the questions. In a true
sense, the habit of skipping problems made us unable to stand on its own feet.
Nevertheless, we should not forget the harsh reality that we are the citizens
of one of the least developed countries in the world. I believe we have enjoyed
all rights what a poor country can offer to its citizens but we often forget
our basic responsibilities as a citizen. Had we realized our true self, we
would have prepared ourselves to stand on our own. In fact, we have dementia,
so we become ultra-nationalist at one moment (at difficult times) and the next
day our aspiration looses practical basis which throws us into difficulty.
