A home-made crisis: The connection between the failure of good governance, mismanagement and the Maoist insurgency in Nepal

Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: Nepal a country which is located between its powerful neighbours India and China is one of the poorest countries in the world. Nepal has never enjoyed much press coverage, that is, until February 2005, when the king Gyanendra dissolved the Nepali government and announced the state of emergency , which allowed him to rule the country exclusively. The international community regarded this decision as non-democratic and called on the king to restore universal human rights which were suspended according to the declaration of the state of emergency. The king issued an official statement cited the ongoing, radicalised Maoist insurgency and the inability of the government to curb the movement as main reasons for his takeover. Nevertheless, high officials in the country and foreign observers question this pretence. During the conduction of my field research in Nepal, I considered a combination of multiple causes as main reasons for the protracted Nepalese conflict. The main conflict parties, the political elite including the monarch, and the Maoist movement have strong negative perceptions of each other. The perception that Maoists are undertaking terrorist attacks to come into power because they want to disturb the peace of a stabile regime should be regarded as misguided. Even if personal ambitions have to be considered, interviewees mentioned several times that the Maoists are responding to grievances within the Nepalese society and that the political elite could not provide the basic needs for its population. This assumption can be supported by the published 40-Point Demands of the Maoists, which includes the demands of political rights, liberties, economic and social security. It becomes apparent that those asserted claims call for social responsibility, equality and justice. Furthermore, this poses the question, of whether the Maoist insurgency is a form of indicator or warning signal of the political, economic and social situation in Nepal. In particular, it implies the fundamental question, how a state should operate and what kind of responsibilities the state has. The concept of good governance is regarded as a contemporary means and guarantor for an effective state. In every respect, good governance presupposes accountability, honesty or transparency of a state with all its institutions, but besides the structural characteristics the concept disregards the actions that will be undertaken by the [...]

Zusammenfassung
Inhaltsangabe:Abstract:Nepal – a country which is located between its powerful neighbours India and China – is one of the poorest countries in the world. Nepal has never enjoyed much press coverage, that is, until February 2005, when the king Gyanendra dissolved the Nepali government and announced the ‘state of emergency’, which allowed him to rule the country exclusively. The international community regarded this decision as non-democratic and called on the king to restore universal human rights which were suspended according to the declaration of the state of emergency.The king issued an official statement cited the ongoing, ‘radicalised Maoist insurgency’ and the ‘inability of the government to curb the movement’ as main reasons for his takeover. Nevertheless, high officials in the country and foreign observers question this pretence. During the conduction of my field research in Nepal, I considered a combination of multiple causes as main reasons for the protracted Nepalese conflict. The main conflict parties, the political elite including the monarch, and the Maoist movement – have strong negative perceptions of each other. The perception that Maoists are undertaking terrorist attacks to come into power because they want to disturb the peace of a stabile regime should be regarded as misguided. Even if personal ambitions have to be considered, interviewees mentioned several times that the Maoists are responding to grievances within the Nepalese society and that the political elite could not provide the basic needs for its population. This assumption can be supported by the published ’40-Point Demands’ of the Maoists, which includes the demands of political rights, liberties, economic and social security. It becomes apparent that those asserted claims call for social responsibility, equality and justice. Furthermore, this poses the question, of whether the Maoist insurgency is a form of ‘indicator’ or ‘warning signal’ of the political, economic and social situation in Nepal. In particular, it implies the fundamental question, how a state should operate and what kind of responsibilities the state has. The concept of ‘good governance’ is regarded as a contemporary means and guarantor for an effective state. In every respect, good governance presupposes accountability, honesty or transparency of a state with all its institutions, but besides the structural characteristics the concept disregards the actions that will be undertaken by the []