By Madan Lamsal

 

Had Fritz Schumacher been alive today, he would have instantly renounced the British nationality to become a Nepali citizen.  There is not even an iota of doubt that he wouldn’t have been impressed by the drastic influence of his book ‘Small is Beautiful’ during last exactly four decades since it was published. Every hermit knows that he should be where his disciples reside in plenty. Schumacher was an economist and knew what would have been in his profit. No doubt, there is a big fan following to his work world over, but all those are individuals. In our case, entire nation-state of Nepal adheres to and practices ‘small’ in the staunch belief that everything small is surely ‘beautiful’. 

 

We like to call Nepal a small country regardless of the fact that it is 41st biggest in size and soon be 32nd largest in population, out of some two hundred countries in the world. But we are determined to keep our economy truly small; therefore, nobody is at all interested in its expansion. We want to keep the value of our dilapidated rupee ever small, by a thing called ‘pegging’. We are particularly against the big projects like in hydropower. Do you remember the fate Arun III faced some two decades ago just because it was to be the biggest project ever conceived in Nepal at that time? Even today, the project with the same name, to be developed by a joint-venture and another project called Upper Karnali are just not taking off in spite of the fact that there is no visible reason for them not to go ahead. They are mega projects and we in Nepal love everything small.

 

Both leaders and Nepali people hate big political parties too. Therefore, there was not a single party in the last Constituent Assembly (CA) with absolute majority. The Maoists’ was the biggest party though, but its leaders hated it to remain like that. So, they had a vertical split as Cash Maoists and Dash Maoists along with many splintered shards called Matrika Yadav Group, Mani Thapa group etc. Same was the case with Madheshi Forum which was the fourth force in CA, but now it is divided into so many small parties that almost every CA member then is now in charge of his splinter group. If you go further back in history, there was a time Nepali Congress used to be the largest party of the nation. Both its leaders and people hated this identity. So it got split between 36-group and 74-group. Then it was the turn of CPN-UML to be divided.

 

Even flourishing, big businesses of one time like carpet, garments, textiles, tanneries, pashmina just to name a few, are now rendered to ramshackle. Our new revolutionaries are totally averse to big joint ventures so they chased away quite a few of them, using their YCL brigade.

 

There could be many more proofs to vindicate that the love of small is true Nepali character, a tradition that is embedded in our blood. Then, there was no surprise that our own Luck-Man Car-key, the new head of anti-corruption constitutional agency made sure that he personally went to revenue administration-related offices to admonish the employees only to travel in small vehicles, live in small houses and perhaps not to forget to bring small gifts for him. Being highly experienced both in revenue administration and corruption, Car-key’s choice of these offices as the first visits are nothing but natural.

 

I would like to urge to all fellow citizens to completely stop to think big and continue to love small, so that we can preserve and protect our true national identity. For this reason, we are ready for small constituent assembly elections by excluding several parties in fear of it being grand and now we want a small constitution, that finally institutionalizes the concept ‘small is beautiful’.