At the home front, education has not been regarded as a vehicle of democratization and economic progress, either. All the activities in the field of politics and education, mass education that is, have been the most visible phenomena in the towns and cities.

Prem Khatry
The writer has spent much ink at this particular slot assigned by The Rising Nepal in trying to assess the role of education in modernizing the society. An attempt has also been made that education does not always mean the one imparted under the roof a building called ‘the school’. Knowledge to light up man’s personality and transform the society can be imparted outside the roof and wall of such a building. This is the reason why some of the early hominids succeeded in the process of evolution, others, as Charles Darwin in his masterpiece ‘the origin of the species’ in 1859 argued. Systematic knowledge stored and applied in the day to day life made some species ‘fit’ whereas others proved to be ‘unfit’ and disappeared from the face of the earth.

Development Tool
Our education system took some motion after 1950 but the history of timely changes has been a checkered one. Of late, especially after the 1990, partisan politics began to create roadblock instead of improving the quality of education and making it an effective tool of overall development of the country. It may sound little pessimistic but the result of over politicization of education will begin to show the result in a decade or so when there will be a pathetic dearth of manpower in nearly all possible fields of development. This does not need to be proved further – a cursory glance of the trend of youth migration – for quality education in developed countries and job hunting in the gulf and East Asian nations – is enough to look at.

At the home front, education has not been regarded as a vehicle of democratization and economic progress, either. All the activities in the field of politics and education, mass education that is, have been the most visible phenomena in the towns and cities. This is where things happen, and happen very fast. Political parties are born here overnight (or split from the mothers and stepmothers), reside here almost permanently, organize rallies and impress the media. New schools and colleges also mushroom in the similar fashion. Because the government does not have any concrete plans to accommodate the high school graduates in the colleges (+2s), they have to find all possible ways to move to towns and cities for higher education. The low income population has thus been deprived of its right to educate the SLC graduates leaving them no option than migrate to find jobs in other countries.

Whither EFA?
The simple argument made here is that whether political parties are aware of this or not, villages of Nepal in the near future will have no flag carrier of any working political party. There will be dearth of active and qualified youths, students, farmers, workers and other fraternal fronts at the grass-root level of Nepal’s multiparty democracy. On the one hand, the political parties are lagging behind in creating strong political bases at the bottom level, on the other the interest in and knowledge about the nature and function of democracy is also being eroded gradually. First and foremost, people are bound to think of their daily needs – education and democracy do not come as their priorities. The issues of human rights, informal education, gender and development, among others, have been the agenda of NGOs and INGOs with the government agencies sitting in the back. This would mean that time will come when people in the far-off and the rural regions of the country will be less interested in their voting rights and role in consolidating the democratic process. For them, Education for All (EFA) has been a false dream.

No Representation
In democracy, every citizen plays vital role in all the processes of development regardless of sex, class, ethnicity, age, or other criteria. Accountability and credibility count for one’s success in making upward movement but wherever you go, the culture of representation is the backbone in democracy. In Nepal, the last local level election was held about 14 years ago. So the new generation, aged between 12-16 (hypothetically) whether at school or the farm, does not know much about the most vital processes of representation through election to the local and the central bodies. And, there are chances that it might take a few more years to see the roots of democracy created and facilitated to function for the development of the country. And, if the new generation loses interest in the political structure leaving only the parent and grandparent generation to continue to remain hooked to this or that political party, there can arise several problems in the functioning of democracy in our country. The lessons on these issues provided by our textbooks are now to be taught as fairy tales.

The closed chapter of election for representation has been exerting adverse effect on our planning system. The 1990 revolution paved the way for multiparty democracy. This would mean that high positive performance rate can provide you opportunity to rule. Since there have been only three elections so far, voters have not been able to rate the performance of the parties very well. And, the parties are growing only in numbers over the years without proper platform to function. Development planning has been the responsibility of the bureaucracy at Singh Durbar.

Finally, as the country remains in a political, economic and developmental limbo, the intellectual community of the country remains disinterested and disheartened in the ever-fragmenting political parties and their functioning capacity. In a democratic society, it is the people at the grass-root level that needs power, capacity and resources to strengthen democracy and plan for meaningful development. Without equity based programmes, proper representation and distribution of resources, this task is just not possible. Functional and quality education planned by the elites, supported by the political parties and implemented by the government to create the highly required manpower for development will bring the derailed development process to the right track. Politics and education, without locking their horns, must complement each other in the spirit of collaboration and consolidation. Where politics gives the right vision, education based on equity and equal opportunity provides proper conduct and sense of belongingness to the nation. But only Lord Pashupatinath can actually predict how this country will take the right turn and change the highly gloomy picture of old Nepal to the much talked- about ‘New Nepal’, and when.

source: Khatry, Prem(2011),"Democracy, Education Complement Each Other", RisingNepal, 1 August 2011