The NRN Debate: It Is A Global, Online World

(sent to NepalNews.com)

Over the past few days I have read with great interest the raging
debate on the NRN question at the NepalNews website. Rabindra Mishra
and Krishna Sharma have come to it from two tangential angles. I have
also followed the ongoing NRN conference in Kathmandu through the
online media outlets with great interest. I wish the NRNA made and put
online full fledged videos of all the key speeches. It is so easy and
inexpensive to do.

Two words answer most of my curiosities on the topic: internet and
globalization. The world has changed fundamentally over the past
decade. You could argue it has turned upside down this past year with
a black man in the White House. Is that a slap to 500 years of world
history? The churns of digital technology and globalization have
affected Nepal and Nepalis as they have peoples everywhere. I receive
calls in New York City from some of the tens of people from my
homevillage near Janakpur, Nepal, who are in Malaysia and the Gulf
states. I might have taken the American college route to
globalization, but they also flew. Recently when I spent a few days
with MP Jitendra Sonal of the Terai Madhesi Loktantric Party in New
York, he found himself talking to an informed person who skimmed
through the news headlines on Nepal most mornings. For the first time
I got to meet Madhav Nepal in New York, but he has been calling me a
friend for a few years now. The physical distance of tens of thousands
of miles and the fact of never having met did not hinder. I got to
meet Pradip Giri at an event in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York
several weeks back for the first time. I had long admired him, but
that was my first time meeting him. People were puzzled he talked
about me so many times in his speech that day. He has been on my
mailing list. I have long admired both Pradip Giri and Baburam
Bhattarai. Their intellects astound me.

I have not been to Nepal in years. Some people argue that is a good
reason I should not be commenting on Nepali politics. To them I say,
there are astronomers who have never been to planet Jupiter. I know
Nepal. I care about Nepal. I think about the country daily.

Rabindra Mishra's weakness is to not realize or respect that talk
itself is action. I long to see the day when I can get the Nepalis in
New York City to start talking about immigration issues as they affect
their lives right here in New York and in America. The Irish
immigrants could vote in Boston 150 years ago upon arrival, and before
getting legalized. Why can't the Nepalis today? That question is not
being asked.

But concrete action is important, and Mishra's very own Help Nepal
network is a good example of the good work the global Nepalis can hope
to do with modest contributions of time and money. I have sponsored
the education of tens of Dalit kids in my homevillage the past several
years. True, I have not needed a dual citizenship to do that. But it
is not either or.

The Chinese economic miracle of the past several decades could not
have been possible without the active role played by the Chinese
diaspora. A dual citizenship regime would similarly free up the global
Nepalis in their efforts to put Nepal on the China-India track. The
leadership role will have to be played by the duly elected leaders in
Nepal, there is no doubt about that. But the global Nepalis are needed
to lubricate the incoming flows of capital, technology and ideas and
skills from the global pool to the Nepali playground. India did it.
Nepal should do it. It makes fundamental sense. You could send people
from my homevillage to Malaysia or you could bring foreign direct
investment into my village and create jobs there so those people no
longer have to go to Malaysia. Nepal can not dream of ambitious
infrastructure and industrial undertakings if it does not go for dual
citizenship. To put it absolutely bluntly, an economic revolution in
Nepal is not possible without dual citizenship for the global Nepalis.
I am confident the new constitution will have the appropriate
provisions.

A necessary byproduct of globalization is that people will move
around. People from Nepal will go to other parts of the world. People
from other parts of the world will want to move to Nepal to live
there. And all that is a good thing. One great growth industry for a
country like Nepal could be retirement tourism like India has been at
the forefront of medical tourism. You would build communities where
retired people from rich countries could come spend the final decades
of their lives. They might barely get by on the money in their own
countries. In Nepal they could live large on the same. And the entire
time they could stay connected, having weekly video chat sessions with
their grand kids far away.

Brain drain is a colonial era phrase. It has to be retired. Today
there is only mobility, of capital and technology and people. We want
a world that pours a trillion dollars into microfinance. We want a
Nepal that is peaceful, and vibrant, and democratic, a Nepal where
Nepalis and non Nepalis alike get to contribute to rapid economic
growth. The global Nepalis are going to play a key role in that.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Risk Of Flooding for Himalayan Villages (news.sky.com)
• Real change in the air for Wall Street reform? (americablog.com)
• Beware The Reverse Brain Drain To India And China (techcrunch.com)
• China allays US trade war fears (news.bbc.co.uk)