An encounter with the State at Singha Durbar
प्रकाशित मिति : मंसिर ८, २०७५ शनिबार
– Hari KC
‘Singha Durbar Gaugauma’ was a widely used political slogan during the debates on state restructuring and elections campaigns. What this implied was that as the country had adopted a federal system of governance, the political power vested in the center would be devolved to local bodies so that the state-administered services would be easily accessible to people from far-flung places. Based on what I observed in and around the Singha Durbar during a recent fieldwork for my doctoral research, if what the politicians’ pledge—Singha Durbar Gaugauma—means simply reproducing the microcosms of the Singha Durbar, this is absolutely not what Nepali people aspire for. Let me begin with a few representative vignettes from my observation around the Singha Durbar premises.
l When a Secretary refused to see him, a middle-aged man said: “Singha Durbar is no different to America… Italy for us, sir.”
l Another young man, holding some loose folios in his hands, was venting his ire when the other person on the phone presumably denied him a “pass”: “I just need to drop off my documents, sir … it’s urgent. I’m right at the gate…”
l A couple of baffled looking young men who were seeking information about employment opportunities abroad, walked up to me and asked: “Do they let you in with a citizenship certificate?” When I said that they would require you to produce a “pass”, they whispered something in each other’s ears and walked away in silence.
The Singha Durbar houses 24 important state apparatuses, including all major ministries. However, if people do not personally know some officials or party-workers to help them obtain a ‘pass,’ they cannot access those state machineries. But if the general people are restricted entry, who are those thronging the chambers of Secretaries, Ministers and other high-ranking bureaucrats?
My observation revealed that they are interest groups, party affiliates, or dalals with some sort of nexus with people in power and politics. Obviously, the valuable time and energy of the state officials could have been put to better use.
What I found more shocking was the country’s bureaucracy. I had an appointment with a Secretary for 1 pm, but unsolicited visitors meant that I had to wait for above an hour. What is more, when I entered, the Secretary’s eyes were glued to the table in front, and he did not even bother to heed my presence. Deeming that to keep standing would be a disrespect to my dignitary, I decided to sit on the empty sofa nearby. As I was about to take my seat, one of the three other officials (perhaps subordinates to the Secretary) rather offensively told me to avoid that sofa as if sitting there would violate its sanctity.
Insignificant though such encounters may sound, they tell us about the state’s effects on the everyday lives of people. More importantly, they provide a window into larger processes of governance and power, and also reveal the fundamental character of our State and its bureaucracy. The state is indeed a set of practices enacted through relationships between people, places, and institutions and not a unitary object. Everyday encounters such as the ones presented above raise some fundamental questions: Despite a restructured political system, what explains the perpetuation of the status quo? In the (good) governance discourse, why do ordinary people’s everyday lived experiences not get sufficiently voiced?
Good governance should be at the center of not only development process but also of the entire statecraft. However, often, such everyday lived experiences are largely seen as insignificant, or we (both social critics and citizens) simply take them for granted. The dusty, broken streets of Kathmandu get painted and embellished overnight for the BIMSTEC but are forsaken the next day; we simply take this for granted. There is no water in our taps; again we take it for granted. The psyche is so accustomed to the everyday aberrations that we consider them integral parts of our life, and any anomalies of the state hardly ever provoke us.
To stay silent would mean abetting the state in the production of what Michel Foucault calls ‘governmentality’ that rules through the willing participation of ‘government-able’ subjects. Let’s shun status quo; let’s question, critique, and even thwart those seeming normalcies that make us ‘subjects’ and not ‘citizens.’ As for the Singha Durbar, the first step should be to ban the frequenters from it. No more impenetrable, status quoist Singha Durbars.
The author is a doctoral candidate in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada.