On/Off the Record
By P.R. Pradhan
A section of people, including some members of parliament, have demanded the downsizing of the existing number of the Nepal Army, advocating that a handsome amount of non-productive funds could be saved. Looking at their faces, it makes clear that they are advocating for the Americans receiving funding from the Open Society, a CIA-funded organization.
Until now, Swarnim Wagle and Sumana Shrestha of the Rastriya Swatantra Party and Bimala Paudel Rai, former foreign minister and also known to be an NGO lady, who is a UML MP, are the faces advocating for downsizing the Nepal Army strength. They, however, have remained silent on the present system with federalism, secularism and republicanism, which virtually destroyed the nation’s economic structure due to the unbearable financial burden of operating the system.
Whether the political parties belonging to them – RSP and UML – also believe the same, the concerned parties should clarify.
Nepal’s parliament ratified the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a 500 million US dollar grant project. Earlier, there was no practice for ratifying such grant projects from Parliament. Those donor countries are preparing grounds to bring their own security forces to protect their projects.
According to former ambassador Rambhakta Thakur, in 2001, a proposal was presented to pass from the LDCs’ summit in Brussels, Belgium, for deploying the donor country’s army for security while giving development aid to the LDCs. Thakur, who represented Nepal, had opposed such a proposal.
In the implementation of the MCC grant project, which is under the Indo-Pacific Strategy initiated by the USA for containing China, the Americans want deployment of their security force in Nepal either under the MCC or the SPP. We can speculate, those MPs are developing grounds for dismantling the Nepal Army in the course of serving their boss.
In the past, the Indians were against strengthening the then Royal Nepal Army. The late King Birendra had planned to increase the Nepal Army number up to five hundred thousand. The king’s idea was that even if a country would launch an attack on Nepal, the Royal Nepal Army should have the strength to fight against the enemy country at least for one week so that Nepal could get the necessary time to raise its voice in the UN Security Council.
King Birendra had also a plan for empowering the Royal Nepal Army by producing small arms within the country and selling them in other countries in the region.
We can understand why the Indians created obstacles in increasing the number, however, this time, it could be the USA, which is against the NA.
Considering the global security scenario, Nepal must increase the existing number of the Nepal Army to a minimum of five hundred thousand by developing separate wings, such as the infrastructural development force, production force, etc. under the Nepal Army. The infrastructure development force should be used in the construction of infrastructural projects. Accordingly, the production force should be used for land cultivation, forestation, and running different production-related industries.
Accordingly, those ex-armies should also be linked with the Nepal Army under the Nepal Army Welfare Fund in different production-oriented programmes.
We believe that the Nepal Army should remain a professional army, meanwhile, the force should be allowed to run different industries in the process of industrialization in the country. We believe Nepal is a less developed country, although, it is going to be graduated to the developing country shortly, however, the market mechanism doesn’t function based on demand and supply theory. Today, the market is controlled by middlemen and brokers, who are exploiting both the farmers and consumers. Government interference is essential to break the chain of those brokers and middlemen. It can be done through the use of the Nepal Army.
Those who are advocating for downsizing the Nepal Army number should try to learn from the Bangladesh model of mobilization of the Army. Many big but previously sick industries, after being handed over to the Bangladesh Army, have been running in profit. The Army is even running big tourist hotels in Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, we believe, after the introduction of federalism, the country’s non-productive expenditure has massively inclined that the entire revenue of the country cannot meet the increased expenditure. Therefore, we suggest scrapping the provincial structures, from which, the nation can save an attractive amount of non-productive expenditure. Similarly, there is no need for proportional representation in the federal parliament. By scrapping these provisions, the country can save an attractive amount of non-productive expenditure. Today, Nepal has become a factory producing political leaders. We need to change such a practice by transforming Nepal into an agricultural and industrial country by stopping the present trend of producing political leaders and their followers.
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