Dr. Tara Niraula

Deuba At Columbia
March 22 Event At Columbia
Symposium At Columbia
My Proposal To The Saturday Symposium At Columbia

I had the opportunity to have lunch with Dr. Niraula earlier today. Two of the audio files went corrupt, so I am having to do a summary write up. The second file was especially revealing. The questions I asked were as follows.

1. How do you like the idea of dividing the country into three states based on the three river basins? Kosi, Gandaki, Karnali.
   
2. If there were 180 seats in the lower house, how about having 60 seats in the upper house, three seats for the lower make up one for the upper? All directly elected.
3. How about reserved seats for the DaMaJaMa in the lower house? Dalit 5%, Madhesi 10%, Janajati 9%, and Mahila 12%. One fourth of their purported shares in the national population.
   
4. How about having the parliamentary affairs ministry translate the statements by MPs into three languages to be put online? Nepali, Hindi and English.
   
5. How about barring the political parties from raising funds? Instead they get state funds in direct proportion to the number of votes they earn.
6. Everyone on the state payroll has to put their family property statements online.
   
7. All state expenses are kept online.
   
8. Every elected official should get a decent monthly salary.
   
9. How about having direct elections for president? If noone gets more than 50% of the votes, there is a second round between the top two candidates.
   
10. Direct elections for the governor of each state.
    
11. Party tickets should be distributed by members of the said party who are at that level in the party or below.
    
12. How about direct elections for district chairperson, chief police office, chief judge, and attorney general?
13. 10% of the federal budget to the 25 poorest districts.
14. All parliamentary constituencies of roughly equal population.
    
15. Tri-lingual education policy.
    
16. Elections on Satudays.
    

He said we need more than three states, maybe more like five. He is for direct elections also for members of the upper house. He has reservations on the reservations issue. Instead he thinks there should be policies and programs to positively impact the entire groups of people in the marginalized categories. On languages he is more for the local languages in the various local areas. On transparency issues, and issues of direct elections, we are in tandem. He is also for party primaries deciding who gets the party ticket. He is not so sure we should be directly electing police officer and judges. Those ask for technical expertise, and should be treated like a meritocratic civil service. On the language issue, we had divergent viewpoints, not on principle, but on specifics and technicalities. Elections do not have to be on Saturdays. The day, whatever it is, could be declared a holiday. If we can take a day off for the king's birthday, why not take a day off for elections, he said. He was also weary of my over emphasis on the internet. Most of that will have to be district level and above, he said. We might even want to start out only at the state and federal levels. And even in America, politicians send snail mail, he pointed out. The online medium has serious limitations in a country like Nepal.

I wish you could hear him elaborate on these points. The second file was more than an hour long.

Audio

Tara Niraula 1
Tara Niraula 4












Audio

Ram Chandra Poudel
Pampha Bhushal
Amik Sherchan
Malla K. Sundar
Sitaram Tamang
Dr. Om Gurung
Sanakman Maharjan

Paramendra Bhagat: Madhesi Rights (00:15:00)
Somnath Ghimire (00:41:29)

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