Voice of Madhesi Activists: Challenging the status quo of the dominant civil actors!

Dipendra Jha-AdvocateChairperson: Tarai Human Rights Defenders Alliance (THRD Alliance)

Contents

• Introduction• Conflict background• Hill-tarai gap• Client-Patron Relationship• HR situation and threat to HRDs in Tarai

– EJK short movie

• Disconnection with social realities• Conclusion

THRD Alliance

Introduction

• The ethnic-caste nexus, client-patron tradition and extreme political polarization limited resources access

• Seven to eight percent mainstreaming civic actors have a simple theory of ki ta hamra ki naramra

• Madhesi are in semi-colonial status and they have to deal with hegemonic homogeneous identity of Nepali nationalism

• Thus, my paper questions the exclusivist Kathmandu centric civic approach

THRD Alliance

Conflict Background

• The Maoists conflict tapped Madhesi landless, youth, Dalit, and excluded castes in Tarai to fight against landlords

• Learning form the Maoists' insurgency, many armed groups with JTMM in the lead started armed movement in Tarai since 2004

• The foundation that created violence to be legitimized is primarily influenced by identity crisis and exclusion from the state structure

• Madhes Movement: 22-point agreement, 8 points and latest 4 points have been signed( but psychological, emotional, intentional biasness remain the same)

• 7 points agreement fails to incorporate even a single agenda included in the four point

THRD Alliance

Hill-Tarai Gap

• There is a pre-convinced notion among Kathmandu based civil society and rights activists that the social actors having Madhesi identity are closer to the armed groups, promoter of separatism and a RAW agent

• By birth Madhesi activists are ‘unpatriotic’ and 'friends of armed groups‘• Kavre killings- national agenda whereas Mahottari killings-Madhesi • Madhesi activists have to prove their loyalty every times by condemning

violence more loudly, ensure loyalty and have to defame other Madhesi activists to appease for resource access

• Otherwise, the door of resource could be blocked at anytime by the mainstreaming actors who serve as a client to the donors

• Donors only see those pictures and problems; the mainstreaming actors want to show them.

THRD Alliance

Continue…

• The resource access is limited by structures that are either based on family ties, ideological bond or ethnic identity.

• This is as a powerful weapon to limit resources and opportunities within few hill elites

• To fashion the inclusiveness, the Kathmandu based civil society organizations often include ‘a show piece Madhesi ’ symbolic member

• The bridging of gap depends upon to what extent the dominant civil society organizations would be ready to share power with the social organizations lead by Madhesi

• Giving a proportional staking to the powerless can be a cause to delegitimize the status quo enjoyed by the hill centric civil elites

THRD Alliance

The Client-Patron Relationship

• Donors have manufactured a strong channel of patrons among high-profiled civil elites, mostly Bahuns having hill origin

• Generally, the funds are channeled either through their patrons or on their recommendation

• Secondly, the dominating hill high caste elites have the same patron of clientelism functioning at the district and community levels

• These two ways of patron-client relationships are the dominant feature of donor’s funding to civil society

• Mafiaed resources within ‘a thin layer of hill centric wealthy beneficiaries’ marginalizing a large portion of people

• The intention of donors to channel funding through self-serving elites is, somehow, guided by the notion of underpinning liberal agendas, as the centrists’ civil actors connect donors’ interests with the powerful political leaders.

THRD Alliance

Continue….

• The para-jumping approach of NGOs activities by outsiders in collaboration with the Kathmandu based hill elites has, so far, failed in Madhes

• More responsive to donors than to beneficiaries.

• One explanation for this failure is outsiders’ lack of knowledge about local values, culture, languages, social capital and practices

• Locals Madhesi are suspicious of outsiders’ objectives, intervention, conditionality, and coercion

• IGOs and INGOs should reconceptualise themselves as interlocutors and facilitators – not seeing locals as passive recipients or obstacles

THRD Alliance

HR Situation

THRD Alliance

Continue….

• Over 256 killings took place since 2008• No taskforce to investigate killings in Tarai has been formed yet though

Madhesi Morcha forwarded it as demand in 10 points • A total 790 youths have been charged under the Arms and Ammunitions

Act, 1962• '4.6 New programmes would be undertaken to improve the security of

the Tarai Madhes. The misuse of the law by the semi-judicial agencies will be curbed by revising the Arms related laws' 4 points agreement between the UCPN-M – Madhesi Front

• HRDs face racial discrimination, threats from the security agencies and armed groups, psychological fear and physical threats

• Mainstreaming actors in Kathmandu use all methods of persuasion, pressure, coercion, power and manipulation to weaken the Madhesi activists

THRD Alliance

Conclusion

• The top-down fund distribution is problematic. • Kathmandu based civil society elite acting as gatekeepers exclude

Madhesi social actors• The outsider tends to forget the diversity and gaping disparity in power• The status of the Madhesi social activist has to be transformed from

'users', and 'takers' to 'makers' and 'shapers‘

Thanks

THRD Alliance