| Username |
Post |
| HahooGuru |
Posted
on 29-May-02 07:03 PM
With due acknowledgement to Nepalitimes.com
SOUL SEARCHING
The letter from Paschim is annoying (Letters, #92). The reader apparently harbours a grudge against CK Lal, how else could he fail to see the point Mr Lal has so powerfully made? (“Do our banners still wave?” State of the state, #90.) Every Nepali owes more than Rs 8,000 to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank and most of this money has flowed back to western countries as consulting fees or profits. Electricity, telephone and water charges have gone up and even government education now comes with user fees. All of this has been done to please the donors who think that they own this country. It is true that Nepali elite is equally to blame, and even Mr Lal may be guilty of taking some consulting fees and selling his soul for a fancy car, but the fact is that at least he has the courage to own up to his sins. I salute Mr Lal for his courage in exposing the very people who support the glitzy lifestyle of people of his ilk.
Dr Narayan Khatri, Pokhara
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| HahooGuru |
Posted
on 30-May-02 02:21 AM
In Nepal, peoples are so divided that the number of
bimarsha readers are fixed, same as Deshanter or Dristi. They
take what appears in Bimarsha fully, no left-right, it goes to their
stomach directly, and digested without any Pachak. A fellow
once told me that Deshantar (?) wrote : Deoba le sab afna
ex-MP lai timiharu lai MP chahiyeko hoina, la ma jitaidinchu bhane,
the friend said to me "Deoba le ta yasto pani bhanyo re".
Kya gajab. He further tells me that Deshantar and Bimarsha
are the only trustable news papers in Nepal.
Well, I had another friend who even subscribes original printed
copy to his residence. HE was so blind that he refers to only
Dristi, and all other as Chor-patrika haru.
Now, the guy who complained against Paschim, probably is
one ananya bhakta reader of NepaliTimes (I am also a reader
but, not ananya bhakta), and I feel so much amused that
Santan thari tharika. Kina hola taga ko Ghoda jasta mera
fellow citizen haru? I have now started to ask whether I am
also similar in others eye? God bless me, I am not like that.
HG
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| bhakata |
Posted
on 30-May-02 03:31 AM
Gurudev,
Just before Mexico UN conference on financing for development, even Bush administration put the blame on the World Bank for the failure of aid money. Mr Bush even asked WB to stop lending and go only for grant. Even the WB has admitted that they made many policy blunders in the past, and now they have learned valuable lessons. But what about the accumulated debt and the damage such policy has made in terms of wrong policy direction? Who will bear the cost?
For paschim, the topic was a very wrong choice for him to argue for. There is no question of if CK Lal's numbers add to his conclusion. Mr Lal (or anyone) does not need any number to back up such matter of conventional wisdom, all one need is courage and professional honesty. And Mr. Lal did it, my salute to him!
Bhakta
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| ashu |
Posted
on 30-May-02 04:32 AM
Bhakta,
Unfortunately, NOT all criticisms are similar.
There are nuanced criticisms and there are blanket criticisms.
Nuanced criticisms are awfully difficult to do; they require sophisticated
conceptual skills and laborious research processes.
Blanket criticisms that only reinforce one's suspicions and prejudices
all the more are easy to do, and are easy to dress up with articulate,
flowing sentences that SOUND true (but not really true) -- a la some
C K Lal pieces.
Nuanced criticisms take ALL the available evidence into account, and try to
assess a given issue. These criticisms address objections with facts, figures
and evidence and counter-arguments and are usually even-handed or
fair-minded in their tone, without necessarily being sympathetic on one hand
or harsh on the other.
My limited experience is that people who are into nuanced criticisms are
usually NOT trying to "win" or score a cheap point, as it were. They often
display a scientific temperament (without necessarily being scientists
themselves!), and are trying to discover and understand the multi-sided complexities of a given issue, and are trying to understand that particular
issue better.
In an ideal sense, these people's loyalty is to the truth -- regardless of the
path that truth may lead them down to.
Blanket criticisms in a newspaper or anywhere else, on the other hand, are
more like high-class sloganeering, often with a patronizing holier-than-thou tone. You ASSERT a few true-sounding, specious, generally-heard-and-accepted conclusions in public, and simply close your eyes dreamily and hope that those assertions will fly -- just like that -- and that people will lap them up.
Of course, you don't provide any evidence to support your assertions because, well, you grandly assume on your own that what you are saying is so true, so pukka, so satya and and so common knowledge that your assertions need NO defense and NO substantive explanations.
That's criticisms at its worst.
I understand the need for CK Lal or anyone else to be opinionated. Sure, a columnist (or for that matter, a Sajha poster) who is not opinionated is like
an 70-year-old flabby boxer: hardly inspiring and hardly deserving of our confidence.
I also understand the need for those columnists to bash up the World Bank
and so on.
What I do not understand is why on earth they don't do a little extra work, a little extra research and use the publicly AVAILABLE evidence to argue their points of view as fairly as they can. Surely, they can do that, right? That's all.
(For a fine example of nuanced criticism, check out this critique of Arundhatri Roy's books by Ian Baruma:
http://www.thenewrepublic.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20020429&s=buruma042902
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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