The Slogan Generation

(This is a RECYCLED piece. This was first published in The Kathmandu Post about 10 years ago.This was later re-published in The Nepal Digest electronic newsletter. I remembered this article, after reading today's The Nepali Times -- see the link below. Some of the stuff here might be a bit dated, but that's OK -- this blog is a good place to maintain a small little archive of one's interesting and not-so-interesting articles.)

The Slogan Generation

by oohi ashu

Cycling to Baneswor last Wednesday, I suddenly realized that as someone between the age of 20 and 29, I am one of 3.4 million Nepalis who belong to 'The Slogan Generation'.

Why the slogan generation?
Very simple.

Ever since our childhood in the '70s, the keepers of the Nepali state, regardless of their politics, have been feeding us nothing but slogans.

The first slogan we were taught in primary school was the famous
"bikas ko mool footau noo parcha" [translation: the source of development must be found]. Nobody ever explained what bikas really meant; but whatever it meant, we were assured that its 'source' would be 'reached' through the then 'national soil-appropriate' Panchayati system.

Imagine our shock when -- twenty years later, all grown up -- we saw not only that "soil-appropriate" system's biting the dust, but also that our predecessors had confused the seeds of binas with the fruits of bikas.

And the result?

Today as members of the slogan generation, we remain unsure as to how to reconcile our slogan-washed image of a "proud and independent nation" with that of our emerging global identity as the world's second poorest country -- shyly squatting, as we do, on the world's door-mat with a begging bowl.

In social-studies classes, we learnt "hariyo ban, Nepal ko dhan"
[trans: green forests; Nepal's wealth]. Again, only later did denuded hills and devastated Tarai jungles show us that the green forests were really the then Panchayati Ministers' lottery to untold wealth, which they continue to enjoy even to this day.

And as impressionable students in high-school in the '80s, we chanted to the tune of blood-boiling nationalism. Only today are we waking up to understand why the brightest among us quietly emigrate to the West, while many brawny Nepalis increasingly risk their lives in sweat-shops from South Korea to Saudi Arabia.

And of course, ethnic diversity was always there for tourists to click their cameras at. But to us, it always came wrapped up in "euta desh, eutai vesh" [one country, one dress] -- whether we liked it or not. Still, state-sponsored slogans spun its own web of mass hypnosis. Remember the ones about fulfilling every one's basic needs by taking us all to the heights of "Asialy Maap-danda" [Asian standards] by the year 2000?

The year 2000 is only 35 months away. But even with a new political system with its attendant Constitution, what have we been hearing? Vapid speeches and empty slogans, one after another.

One group that has squandered all its goodwill shouts "BP ko sapana sakar parau" [Let us fulfil BP's dreams], while its opposition calls for "safeguarding democracy" and then goes on to engage in spectacular fist-fights inside the Parliament. Still others are vowing to breathe life into their Panchayati skeleton, whereas some with glinting khukuris sway to the slogans of Chairman Mao -- shattering the impoverished monotony of mid-hills like Rolpa.

Pedalling along, I was tempted to theorize why foreign companies doing business in Nepal too have started flashing one-liners to attract the slogan generation. Then again, raised on easy, empty slogans, what else could stir my generation's almost-Pavlovian reflexes? "Wear your attitude" was one hip slogan I found on a large billboard on my way to Baneswor.

(Originally published in The Kathmandu Post.)


Nepali Times ko slogan article link:

- http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/340/Editorial/13328