KATHMANDU, Nepal – On the afternoon of April 16, I was driving back from my 94-year-old grandma’s house on the outskirts of Kathmandu to my office in the downtown. Driving on the dusty road on the edge of Nepal’s only international airport, I came upon an unusually high number of vehicles. The hitherto empty road was busy with traffic.

My wife, Kabita, who was riding behind me, suspected that something was wrong, saying maybe there’s a strike (called bandh in the local dialect). I dismissed her comment. But as we entered the newly constructed six-lane highway, the situation began to get clearer. The road was a picture of chaos – a blockade had caused a huge back up of traffic. Several vehicles were turning around and many passengers were stranded. In a situation like this, no one can tell you what’s going on. Everyone seems in a hurry either to get beyond the barricade or return to safety.

Protests like this are increasingly common in Nepal as anger over lack of devleopment and bad government increases.

I displayed my press ID and explained to him that it was media people like me who often risked their lives to support their cause. It was merely my trick to persuade him to let me go through, though I am always a supporter of peaceful protests against injustice. But I never approve such unruly acts that create disarray for hundreds of travelers. He did allow me to go forward, but, sensing that the unrest could get worse farther ahead, I asked my wife to get off the bike.

An intersection ahead looked like a battlefield, with stone carrying, and visibly angry protesters on the one side and baton wielding policemen on the other. I was sure from my previous experiences that if I could convince one of the protesters, I would be able to safely cross the tense area. But as I drove my bike, a group of protesters started to throw stones at me. Luckily, a police inspector came to rescue me from the attack and escorted me for a few minutes. I left the area unhurt. But the incident shook me in a way I had never experienced.

I’m narrating the incident in detail not only because impromptu protests like these have become common occurrences in Nepal, but also because it shows how angry and frustrated Nepalese are. Also, my hunch is that the fury was directed less at the law enforcement agency that was unable to punish the guilty (in this case the driver) and more at the way the country is (mal) functioning. Indeed, the country is gradually sliding towards anarchy and lawlessness.

Everyone agrees that it’s not easy being Nepal. It has a herculean task ahead. In less than a month, the deadline to draft a constitution ends. A 601 member constituent assembly that was elected two years ago is tasked with writing the constitution. A decade-long Maoist insurgency and government counterinsurgency has claimed 13,000 lives with thousands injured and hundreds disappeared. Not a single person (neither from the Army nor from the Maoists) has been punished for numerous wartime crimes. Transitional justice is still only in words not in deeds and a culture of impunity has and is likely to prevail.

Thus, Nepalese have paid a heavy price. And peace seems ever elusive with the former rebels threatening to carry out revolt and the political party leaders upon whom the people have placed high hopes have fallen back on their role of bickering and infighting. Corruption is rampant and unemployment is rising.

The largely mountainous country which is bordered in the north by China and elsewhere by India, both emerging Asian powers, has lagged far behind the rest of the world. It still is one of the poorest countries in the world. While the citizens of our neighboring countries are having what seems like a party (with double digit growth and rapid development), we feel like poor cousins who were not uninvited.

But it’s our own making. In Nepal, the hereditary Rana family ruled the country with an iron fist for over a century while India’s infrastructure was laid by the British. Even the end of Rana rule in 1950 could not ensure freedom and democracy, a prerequisite for inclusive growth and overall development. King Mahendra snatched power from a democratically elected government and introduced a party less and autocratic Panchayat system that ruled Nepal for the next 30 years until 1990.

The ruling elite and the Kathmandu bourgeois were the ones who took maximum advantage of those three decades of tyranny. During this period, I grew up in the eastern hills of Nepal, on the margins, reading the regime’s propaganda in the name of text books.

With the reinstitution of democracy in the spring of 1990 came the promise of a new Nepal. But a ‘People’s War’ waged by Maoists in mid-1990s dashed those hopes. The hope was revived after the mass protests in the spring of 2006 that was instrumental in ending both the Maoist insurgency and the 240-year-old monarchy, thereby paving the way for the world’s youngest republic.

But like everything else in Nepal, uncertainty looms large vis-à-vis the dramatic decisions taken during the crucial and transitional period that have had far reaching consequences. The changes have taken place have occurred only as part of negotiations among the various political parties. Therefore, the likelihood of these transformations being retracted (due to lack of commitment and institutionalizing) cannot be fully ruled out. Also, some of the changes are seemingly cosmetic.

And it’s not like Nepal’s lack of social and economic growth can be blamed on a lack of resources. It is, in fact, endowed with immense resources – hydropower, tourism, the export business and agriculture are some of the many untapped sectors. But this is a country whose main exports are human beings. Two million of Nepal’s 28 million people are working on foreign shores. Nepalese migrant workers toil in often sub-human conditions in the Gulf countries and the country’s fragile economy hinges on the remittances they send.

For a country that prides itself in never being colonized when the entire Indian sub-continent was in the grip of the British, its dependence on the international community and the southern neighbor India is an unpleasant fact. So is the fact that one of world’s oldest nation states is grappling with issues like drafting a constitution, restructuring the state and ensuring their deserved place in the new state apparatus to the hitherto marginalized communities.

On that April afternoon, after I arrived at my company office which is the publisher of one of Nepal’s leading dailies, I sat at my desk and gave the incident a hard thought. After a while, I shared my experience – where else? – on my facebook page. Several comments soon popped up with my friends suggesting to me to be careful and play it safe.

Indeed, these are apt suggestions for our leaders and common people alike, in whose hands remain the future of the struggling nation.

Deepak Adhikari is a Kathmandu-based journalist whose stories have appeared in Time magazine, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, OpenDemocracy and others. I met him in the United States when he came here on an Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship.

In his article Deepak said, “Publishers and editors of Kantipur Publications in Nepal have been told to stop reporting on the circumstances surrounding the murder last week of Nepali media entrepreneur Jamim Shah.

“Shah was assassinated on Sunday 7 February in the capital Kathmandu.

“Kailash Sirohiya, the publisher and Managing Director of Kantipur Publications, Nepal’s largest media conglomerate, says he received a threatening email in which he was warned that he must stop the coverage of Jamim Shah’s murder or face the consequences.

“Sudheer Sharma, the editor of Kantipur Daily, Nepal’s largest circulation newspaper and Ahilesh Upadhyay, the editor of The Kathmandu Post, received phone calls in their offices in which a male caller with an Indian accent threatened to take action against them and their publications.

“The threats have caused concern for journalists working in the country where violence against the media is on the rise. As a result, there is now an atmosphere of fear in many of the country’s newsrooms.”

No one is accusing anyone, at this point, but journalists and journalists’ organizations are urging the government to fully investigate this and other attacks on journalists.

Following the killing of Jamim Shah, the Committee to Protect Journalists on Feb. 10 joined with its colleague in the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) to demand an end to what it described as “the impunity surrounding attacks on journalists in Nepal.”

The committee’s statement said, “The FNJ made the demands today in Kathmandu during a protest rally that came two days after the shooting death of Jamim Shah, the chairman of the Nepalese television station and satellite network Space Time Network.
“Local and international media reports say Shah, a successful entrepreneur with many media and other business interests was killed Sunday evening by two masked gunmen on motorbikes in Kathmandu’s Lazimpat district…

At the time, Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, said, “The government has yet to make good on its assurances that it made when it came to power that killers of journalists will not receive political protection.”

Nepal ranks eighth on CPJ’s Global Impunity Index, with at least five journalists’ murders currently unsolved.

The CPJ is an independent, nonprofit organization founded in 1981 to “promote press freedom worldwide by defending the rights of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal.”

From March to August, 2008, Deepak worked at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on an Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship, a cultural and professional exchange program for journalists. Here are some links for Deepak:

Deepak’s Diary

His LinkedIn profile

His Twitter