Questions on the validity of Universal Human Rights!

The question against the claim of Human rights as Universal is justifiable, but for that we must be confirmed that people who question against it-are indeed- looking at it with a narrow concept of the culture that they are living in. I agree that questioning is reasonable; there is no concept as such which is neutral and universal- except the sun we see- but every question has their own possible answers, and for me- if I have to deal with the concept of ‘universalism’ in the Human Rights, I would say it is valid on the ground of establishing peace, justice and freedom in the world. In the mean time, I may change my mind if I come to know that there exist any culture, ideology or ‘more’ universal thing that confronts-challenges-or claims to protect the individuality and dignity of human beings and maintains the ground I am referring to.

Cultural Relativists, or those who have alternative views to the validity of Universal Human Rights, are usually seen to question the concept of ‘universalism’ itself. They claim no concept as such is universal. For they believe the concept of ‘universal’ Human Rights is a continuation of the colonial syndrome of the western societies, who are possessing a universal value to spread it all over the earth, in the form of one ‘universal’ culture. Similarly, they even claim that entire focus on ‘individual dignity’ is in a way, breaks the social fabrics, and when it breaks there is no importance of individual as such. For instance, Individual are ‘knots’ and society is the ‘net’; certainly without the knots the net would collapse; but without the net, the knots would not even exist. (Steiner & Alston, 2000) 

The concept of nets and knots are extremely important in this context. Alternative views argue that without the net, the knots would not even exist, or in simple meaning, without society an individual cannot exist. But what is more important here is what kind of net we are preparing. Does that net hold the foundation of peace, justice and freedom. In the name of helping the net exist, how far it is justifiable to limit the reasoning and freedom of people. Isn’t it important to first protect the individual dignity of the human beings, give priority to their choices and reasoning, and then with their wisdom they contribute to make a ‘just’ society. Also, the culture is the way of life and it is always desired, but limiting ourselves to the culture to an extreme gives us nothing in return; in short, it restrict ourselves against other possibilities of life, and the pleasure we get form cross-cultural experience and solidarity.

            It is fact that ‘Universal Human Rights’ is a western concept because it started somewhere from their premises. But here, when it comes to maintaining peace, justice and freedom, a ‘concept’ must be separated from its origin and if possible, it should be studied in wider perspectives. Though we live in different parts of the world, with different religion, ideologies and culture, but after all, who are we who are living? In simple words, we are human beings, which is a universal fact. If somebody comes and tell me that ‘no, we are not human beings’ then I go wrong. However, if we believe in human beings and have faith on ‘humanity’ then definitely the concept of ‘Universal human rights’ is universal. In a conclusion, we must understand, human nature is universal because they have power of universal ‘organ’ (Steiner & Alston, 2000)  of knowledge and which cannot be limited by any culture, religion, etc. Individual is important because they make up societies. Therefore they must have rights to protect each individual dignity-but for this-the only limitation is to enjoy rights without interfering others.

Social Opportunities and development

           

Amartya Sen in his book ‘Development as Freedom’ has highlighted the importance of ‘social opportunities’. He explains the creation of social opportunities is important for countries, especially those which are looking for development, in order to achieve development through rapid economic growth. The creation of opportunities includes services as public education, health care, and the development of a free energetic press  (Sen, 2000). He suggests, for instance, the case of Japan which enhanced its economy through social opportunities. Japan became successful to break the chains of general poverty with the help of social opportunities it had created long ago. It had already prepared its people by providing education and health services. The social preparedness of Japan in the form of human development helped it to attain development through rapid economic growth.

           

Not only with Japan, but the social preparedness has significantly helped China to grow its economy. China entered into market-oriented economy in 1979 while India entered in 1991. Both of these countries, in recent years, have been showing a rapid economic growth. But in comparison, India has not been able to grow like China has succeeded. The basic reason behind this is because of the social preparedness. China had always focused in preparing its people with the help of education and health, and thus the prepared people seized the economic opportunities faster as compared to that to India-which could not prepare it people due to many differences.

            

We now assume that the social opportunities, as a long term investment, can be a strong preparation a country can opt for, but how far it is possible for the poor country to provide Universal Education and Health Care is a major concern. The major problem of the poor countries will be in allocating resources to expand public services. But to Sen, it is quite not a problem, because of the relative costs; these social services are relatively inexpensive in poor countries. Therefore, following Support-led development practice, a country need not wait to become richer in order to expand its economy. This way a country can prepare itself, provide its people with health and education-that ultimately make them capable for economic reasoning. This will lead them to economic prosperity like it did to China and Japan.

            

If we attempt to analyze the case of Nepal with the concept of ‘Support-led development’, then the picture becomes bit clear. Nepal has already entered into the market oriented economy. However, Poverty has been the major problem of Nepal since ages. Development plans and policies, in recent years, have explicitly mentioned poverty in their main objectives. The country is listed as a poor and under-developing in the global context. Likewise, the country does not have a strong economy to support a huge expansion in its social opportunities like health and education. However, the country has been investing a lot-with the help of foreign loans and aid-in education (17 per cent of total Budget which is 40 per cent out of 43 per cent that is allocated for social sectors). The results are also coming satisfactory, for instance, 94.7 per cent population, until 2011/12, have access to primary schools within the distance of thirty minutes. Keeping all these issues in mind, it can be concluded that, being a poor country, Nepal has not opted to wait to become rich to provide education and health to its people, which is praiseworthy. Equally important are highest political will and effective policy implementation to which Nepal is still struggling. 

Has democracy been successful to reduce poverty in Nepal?

In order to answer this question, we must, at first, try to find out in what ways ‘democracy’ and ‘poverty’ are related in context of Nepal. Implicit in this statement are answers about why democracy came in the country during 1950s-for the first time in history, and again in 1990s- as an effort of restoring democracy. In the mean time, ‘poverty’, in case of Nepal, appears to be an outcome of the past autocratic regimes, and as a gifted challenge to the democracy. On that ground, I will make an attempt to see -to what extent- democracy has been successful to address the problem of poverty in the country.

Poverty, in case of Nepal, is an outcome of the past autocratic regimes, by all accounts. For instance, until 1951 i.e. during the 104-year-old autocratic Rana regime, Nepal experienced the picture of severe economic stagnation. The hills areas experienced an acute shortage of labor even for normal agricultural operations, leading to conditions of acute scarcity on famine (Shaha, 1990). This was because Nepalese people who were abroad, mainly in India, did not wish to return because of their growing dissatisfaction with the condition of life inside their own country. In contrary, the Rana administration lived the most luxurious life ever with the wealth of the country on their side, while Nepalese people were subjected to extreme poverty. Shaha writes that in those days, as even now to an extent, Kathmandu presented a striking picture of contrast between extreme poverty and vast wealth (1990). In such a scenario, Democracy, for the first time in Nepal in 1951, became a tremendous hope for Nepalese against their extreme poverty situation.

The interim democratic era (1951-1960), nine years of infant democracy, could not produce much in terms of reducing the problem of poverty, but it achieved significantly in terms of signing new treaties, agreements, admission, etc. For instance, conclusion to Delhi Agreement, first foreign aid agreement with United States in 1951- named four point program which was soon followed by India (in the same year), China (1956) and USSR (1958), membership of UN (1955), etc (Aryal, Subedi, & Thapa, 2010)  . In addition, the spirit of the first five years plan (the beginning of the planned development initiatives in the history of Nepal), launched in 1957, was overshadowed by another political upheaval in 1960 i.e. the beginning of the Panchayat Era.

NGOs driven Bottom-up development: a western influence over the traditional development practices in Nepal

Concept of Bottom-Up Development

During 1970s, the concept of the ‘Bottom-up’ development emerged as an antithetical view to ‘top-bottom’ development process, and thus claimed to reverse the directionality of the development decision making. Main focuses were given on community participation, conscientization, self-reliance, freedom of choices and empowerment. Also, it challenged the main features of the ‘top-bottom’ paradigm, mainly ‘planning arrogance’ of the experts and technocrats, and even questioned the paternalistic nature of the state in the development process. Moreover, the overall idea of development shifted to ‘people/community-centric’ approach to which the Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), on the other side, responded as care takers. Since then, the role of NGOs in giving life to ‘bottom-up’ development has been hugely recognized and appreciated. The theoretical advantages of the NGOs over the state were one of the main reasons that helped in gaining tremendous popularity

Structural Adjustment Policies: Aspects and Social Effects

During 1970s, many neo-liberalists argued the idea of state intervention in the economy, thereby re-introducing the essence of classical economic theories in real practice. For neo-liberal theorists, the route to greater economic growth, and therefore greater levels of well being for all, was through reducing state intervention and letting the market set prices and wages (Willis, 2005, p.47). This ideology became the most accepted view of the Global North which came to Global South in the form of various means, one of which is known as Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs).