As reasons for Nepalis to travel outside the country change, it’s time for the country’s diplomatic corps to shift gears

WHETHER it’s the earthquake in Japan or political turmoil in the Middle East, labour policies in Malaysia or a murder in Delhi, Nepal seems to be getting caught up in external events like never before. The first thought after the Japan quake was, “Oh, my God! What a disaster for the Japanese!” In the next breath, people said, “What about the Nepalis who work there?” Libya, a North African country most popularly known for Gaddafi’s notorious ways, suddenly became known to the public for the Nepalis stranded there amidst the turmoil. The sensational Arushi murder case in Delhi not only involved a murdered Nepali house servant, but had other Nepalis implicated as well.

Nepali migrant workers are said to be on death row in countries in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Dead Nepali bodies lay stuck in Saudi Arabia because of convoluted exit laws. For those bodies that do get shipped to Nepal, families of the deceased often aren’t compensated for death and disability. Even when payment is released, the money disappears or gets stuck on its way to families. Similarly, changes in labour and penal policies in South Korea, Malaysia, and other labour destinations in Asia, Africa and Europe as well as refugee and immigration policies in many advanced economies have directly affected Nepali households in the country’s towns and villages. What dœs this all mean for Nepal’s foreign policy? And what dœs this mean for the idea of class and labour as theorised by Marx and others a century ago? In March 2010, I faced two situations in Delhi that made me wonder about the workings of our diplomacy.

In one case, I had to trade Nepali currency illegally at Indira Gandhi International airport in order to buy snacks because no legal outlet would take Nepali currency. When I asked more than one agency, I was told it was the policy there not to accept Nepali notes. When I visited the Indian embassy, I found the entry incharge having a verbal duel with a Delhi-based, young Nepali student from Gulmi. He said that the man, also from Gulmi, was always rude, never helpful, yet the embassy had kept him there forever. Once inside, I found that neither of the two receptionists spoke or understood Nepali. And then, to my dismay, the embassy didn’t have Indian railway tourist forms. When asked why not, the receptionists said that it was not the embassy’s job to keep them. A visitor had to get it from the New Delhi Railway Station. I found out at the New Delhi Railway Station that I didn’t need the embassy’s recommendation for a train ticket, but I took a bunch of forms back to the embassy anyway and, with some effort, met an amiable diplomat after the ambassador himself didn’t respond to my request for a meeting. I asked the official why none of the receptionists spoke Nepali. He said that the Indian embassy in Kathmandu, too, employed local personnel as its lower-level staff. I said it was not a matter of employing local people or a cheap display of patriotism but the functional ability of the front staff to serve the embassy’s clientele. In my view, I told him, the Indian embassy in Kathmandu would be amiss if its receptionists didn’t speak Hindi. Many Nepalis come to Delhi from villages in the hills of Nepal; they may not know Hindi, certainly not English. How would they communicate their needs, especially since it takes such an effort to meet with an official, even for a man with a PhD? And then, why was the gatekeeper so unprofessional in dealing with Nepalis, and has he been like that for so long, as the young man attested? Why didn’t the embassy keep railway forms for visiting Nepalis? The official said that Delhi is filled with Nepalis who had been living there for years. Even these Nepalis came to get tourist privileges. I said that it was the embassy’s job to differentiate between local and travelling Nepalis— a visitor from a Nepali village would be hard put to go back to New Delhi Railway Station just for the form.

The official assured me that he would report my complaints to the management. All this has made me rethink nationbased definitions like class and dignitary- based functions like diplomacy in today’s changing world. Certainly, Nepal’s diplomatic corps may rue the passing of its glory days when they hobnobbed only with foreign dignitaries both at home and abroad. More and more, especially in the past two decades, they have had to deal with, or ignore, the pressing issues and problems of their own countrymen abroad, especially the uneducated and the illiterate, as Nepal has become the source of globalised unskilled labour. The number of Nepalis abroad has increased in the past decade as a result of asylum, labour export and migration. Nepal’s changing global landscape requires reorientation and a new mindset in our diplomats. In fact, labour and economic diplomacy have become even more consequential than the political diplomacy of the past decades. Our diplomats should be trained to meet their uneducated, illiterate country folk on foreign soils and taught new ways to serve them because the latter help sustain the country as much, if not more, than diplomacy that emphasises dealings with high profile dignitaries. Need should guide the design and planning of embassies and their functions. Similarly, old definitions of class, at least its nation-based political valence, hardly explain the idea of mobile labour any more.

The past definition of labour was based on a stable society of national industry and agriculture. Much of the labour that Nepali youth offer is now provided outside Nepal on a more internationally mobile terrain. To think of class as only the working class within a nation-state is now sorely inadequate. But the challenge is how to think about work and labour outside Nepal with those inside—and then come up with a theory that understands labour relations and reproduction of labour in terms of flexible geography and global mobility. How can one combine the small number of the industrial working class within the large peasantry inside with Nepal’s even larger population of mobile migrant labour outside? This is a challenge for thinkers, including the Maoists. Maybe they need to go back to school for a refresher course on labour, finance, class, imperialism, expansionism and so on so that they can update their Marxist and Maoist theories to meet the challenges of the fast moving world. For only creative discourse and evolving functions can cope with emergent realities of internationally mobile bodies.

Nepal’s diplomatic corps may miss the glory days when they only mingled with foreign dignitaries

Published on: 23 March 2011 | The Kathmandu Post