The confusion and disorder outside the departure hall at the Tribhuvan International Airport during evening hours have become even more confounding. The sheer number of departing passengers—around 1,400 migrant workers leaving Nepal every day—is big enough to overload insufficient space. Inefficient management of queues for travellers makes matters worse, and then the size of families that come to see them off turns the throng into chaos.

Even before turntables begin to move in the arrival hall, there is a scramble for grabbing the limited number of baggage trolleys. However, a significant number of departing passengers seem to have little use for the complementary facility. The first-time entrants into the labour market of West Asia or Malaysia can be seen clutching their backpacks nervously as they hold their passport and ticket to future in another hand. Returnees from among the huge Nepali workers overseas cohort can often be recognised from their suitcases that still have security check stickers from their previous trips.

Students headed to Australia push their shiny suitcases on wheels even as they balance backpacks bulging with goodies from home that will keep them emotionally secure till their return visit for vacations after several months. Then there are Nepali diasporic populations going back to their workplaces in North America after an annual break or attending some family function. They are the ones picking up baggage trolleys for their humongous suitcases, huge canvas bags and handy valises. The count of tourists visiting Nepal has hit back the magic figure of 1 million in 2023 for the first time after the pandemic, but Nepali workers overseas and the Nepali diasporic population together outnumber them by almost 4 million.

The breast-beating in Kathmandu about the “emptying out” of the country due to the large number of youths flying abroad is probably justified. While it’s true that indicators of absolute poverty have significantly gone down and life chances of the downtrodden in the countryside have markedly improved due to large remittance inflows, the reality of stagnating productivity in agriculture and the insignificant contribution of the industrial sector to the national economy should be matters of long-term concern.

The initial symptoms of the “remittance trap” that de-incentivises policy innovations and breeds complacency among development planners have begun to bite. The collection of revenue is almost entirely dependent on consumption, which forces the government to play around with import regulations and interest rates rather than invest in building human capacity, improving infrastructure, and raising investors' confidence.

Among several sociological consequences of the men of productive age migrating abroad en masse, the challenges of women heading families with aged parents and youngsters without their fathers around remain to be properly studied. Somewhat comparable to the frivolous “grass widows” of obsessed golfers, Arabiya Janani in colloquial Maithili refers to women with little or no education having to take up all responsibilities of running the household while their husbands toil in the scorching heat of West Asia or humid sweatshops of Malaysia. The least studied area, however, appears to be the political repercussions of the middle class losing its faith in the future of the country.

Aspirational émigrés

While Nepali workers in countries with which Nepal has labour agreements have future plans for their families back home—paying off debts, building a house, educating children, buying health services for elders or even contributing to the construction of a temple or mosque in their village—most middle-class kids headed to Australia, Europe or North America intend to leave their place of birth for good. Even when they are holding student visas or paying touts to be smuggled into their dream countries, they appear determined not to come back home.

The poor youths have always been pushed out of the country to wherever they could find some work for sheer survival. After the humiliating treaty of Sugauli, the tradition of defeated Gorkhali soldiers joining the Nasiri Battalion of the East India Company was formalised, and Nepali rulers became obligated to facilitate the recruitment drive of the British forces by offering them their ablest youths from the rural peasantry. Desperate mercenaries from Nepal fighting for Russians in the Ukraine war are inheritors of the celebrated Gorkhali tradition of so-called martial races.

The poor of Madhesh have been going to work in the cities of the Ganga plains for centuries. It’s almost a cliché that the fortunes of the ruling class in Kathmandu have been built with the blood of Janajati soldiers dying for their imperial masters in unknown lands and the sweat of the Madheshi peasants tilling their land holdings in the malarious plains of Nepal. Even though quite small, the middle class were often content with their lot in life, and all they aspired for was a job in the bureaucratic machinery of the regime that ensured some upward mobility with the pelf and privileges of office. Even the bourgeoisie are not willing to put up with the conditions in the country that they have helped create due to a combination of ineptitude, incompetence and rapaciousness.

Overwhelmed with all-pervasive hopelessness, most middle-class parents are willing to empty their savings, pawn the family jewellery, sell ancestral property, or take up loans at usurious interest rates to fund the flights of their progenies into an uncertain future in unknown lands. Economic globalisation, revolution in communication and universalisation of consumptive culture are undoubtedly powerful pull factors that lure aspirational youths from poorer countries into the flourishing business of human trafficking. But the decisive factor is often the false belief that any kind of life anywhere else is better than remaining stuck in a country that has no future. The self-perpetuating sense of despondency debilitates youngsters to such an extent that they fail to explore the alternative options of living in rather than leaving out of the country of their birth.

Impulsive agitators

A new crop of politicos has ridden the waves of disenchantment of a section of voters that remain stuck in the morass of the dysfunctional system due to various reasons. The politics of Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli is the demagogic populism of jingoism and xenophobia. Pushpa Kamal Dahal has become adept at playing the appeasement game with multiple minorities at the same time. A politician of the old school, Sher Bahadur Deuba continues to rely on the power of patronage. The trio holds little appeal for cyber warriors who want instantaneous solutions to problems that have been left festering by rulers of the past for several decades, if not centuries.

Balen Shah peddles positivity with a copy of a forgotten map on his office wall. Harka Sampang seems to believe that the picture of the mythical ruler Yalambar has the magical powers of restoring Kirat pride. Rabi Lamichhane skillfully airs selective grievances that can’t realistically be addressed in a hurry and then harvests public frustrations. Most populists have an agenda, howsoever unconvincing they may appear; the problem with rabble-rousers is that they are rebels with no cause other than self-aggrandisement. A jump in their numbers is likely as people without hope begin to vote for politicos without innovative ideas, let alone offer an ideology for an unpredictable future. Meanwhile, keep your seatbelts fastened as the country greets an uncertain 2024 with a sense of foreboding. Happy New Year, anyway!

Published on: 3 January 2024 | The Kathmandu Post