Educational Reforms in Nepal: “Mother, Can I Go to School With Brother From Tomorrow?”

 

By Divas

The Maoist-led Government of Nepal has vowed to eradicate illiteracy from the country within two years. Article 17(2) of the Interim Constitution of Nepal (2007) holds the State responsible for educating its people, “Every citizen shall have the right to free education from the State up to secondary level as provided for in the law.” The 2005 estimate of literacy rate stands at an average of 47.5 percent. Not only the total literacy rate remains one of the lowest in the world, but also, like in all other South Asian countries, gender remains one of the major factors in determining one’s access to education. The female literacy rate remains at 29 percent, less than half compared with that of male being more than 64 percent.

 

The school systems in Nepal represent its class, caste, and gender anomalies. Government Schools are meant for people from lower strata of society and the girl children. Some daughters often make their poor parents dumb-founded by asking, “Why don’t you provide us with a quality education like our brothers get in the boarding schools?” 

 

One of the reasons why Maoists proudly identify their bloody war as “home-grown revolution” is their focus on educational discrepancy among the population. The Maoists have been vociferous as well as violent against the dual mode of education – the government vs. private education. Thousands of “English Boarding School” run by private sector were forcibly shut down and the “bourgeois education” promoting class difference was replaced with  “revolutionary education” by the Maoists in their strongholds during the “People’s War”. Time and often the Maoists issued circulars warning all non-public educational institutions to either voluntarily shut down or face “dire consequences” including the “purge”.

 

A large section of the Nepali population still believes that the Maoists were not wrong in identifying the root problems in the education sector of Nepal, among others. However, being the largest party leading the country after the Constitutional Assembly elections, the Maoists have realized that they can not shut down the “boarding schools” which claim to provide an alternative to thousands of students who’d otherwise surely head for India and other foreign countries. Some dreamy ones even wonder what if the Maoists make it mandatory for all government staffers to enroll their children in government schools only.

 

Understandably, the “mastermind” Maoist Finance Minister Dr. Bhattarai had no other option except for proposing a heavy investment by the government in the education sector. Ironically, the success of all Maoist initiated programs depends on smooth cooperation from other parties in the country and a hefty contribution from abroad.

 

Anyway, hardly anyone would disappoint the “n^th-times marginalized” girl student from a government school who believes with hope in her eyes, “We’ve suffered a lot due to our ignorance. Let’s give the Maoists a chance to prove themselves, at least in eradicating illiteracy and improving the standard of community schools”.

Sex in Kathmandu City

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Nepal’s DPM Bamdev Gautam has declared a crusade against night restaurants in Kathmandu to curb the flourishing “nude dance” culture in the capital.

Sex Work in Nepal*

Debates on prostitution in Nepal have been dominated by the issues of trafficking and the migration of females from Nepal’s middle hills to north Indian brothels but comparatively little research has been done on prostitution in Nepal itself.

The subsistence nature of large parts of the rural economy meant that there was no mass market for commercial sex until comparatively recently. Economic development and urbanization and the increasing integration of Nepal within global consumer cultures has altered this so that there is now an expanding domestic sex market in all parts of the country.

There is also a small but expanding trade catering to sex tourists and expatriates. Sex work sites tend to concentrate in urban areas of the Kathmandu Valley, Pokhara and in the cities and towns of the Terai where there are dense sexual networks linking the Indo-Nepal border areas.

There are many sex work sites along the main north-south transport routes and along porterage routes. Sex work sites can also be found in the bazaars of the hills. Usual sex work sites include ‘drinking pubs’, hotels, restaurants and lodges, the worker’s own home, roads, bus parks and jungle areas. Much of the trade is underground and FSW tend to be extremely mobile.

Women of all castes and classes become sex workers, although those who are trafficked or migrate to India come primarily from ethnic minority groups in the hills.

Contrary to popular belief not all females working in the Indian or Nepali sex industries have been trafficked as a result of abduction, drugging or deception. Many young women and girls are sent into sex work because they can earn relatively high wages that can be remitted back home to support families in impoverished villages.

Confusingly prostitution is neither legal nor illegal in Nepal – although sex workers are subject to police harassment and arrest. The estimated number of sex workers is over 25,000 with about 5,000 based in the Kathmandu Valley. Around 5,000 children are thought to be exploited in prostitution and around 35% enter sex work by the time they are fifteen. Around 100,000 Nepali women and girls are believed to work in the Indian sex industry although this figure is open to question with some estimates being significantly higher.

*From the WHO report SEX WORK IN ASIA, 2001

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