“Activists demonstrated against King Gyanendra months ago, successfully bringing his absolute rule to an end. Now they’re back on the streets. But this time, they're calling for the new government and Maoist rebels to iron out their differences and hold vital elections which will shape the future of their country.”

For the past ten years, the Nepalese people have been suffering from a civil war in which more than 15,000 lives have been lost and torture, rape, and AIDS infections have been widespread.  Once perceived by westerners as a romantic launching ground for Himalayan expeditions, complete with picturesque indigenous peoples living traditional lives, the tourism industry, previously the largest source of income in Nepal, has collapsed.  Beyond subsistence agriculture, the Nepalese are primarily surviving by means of working the Middle East and sending back remittances. 

This picturesque traditional society has remained so largely because it has been ruled by one of the last autocratic kings on the planet.  In 1996 Maoist rebels, frustrated with the people’s lack of voice, began attacking the government, and thus began the civil war.  After ten years of this violence, this spring the king finally conceded to pro-democracy activists within Nepal.  There is at long last a fragile cease-fire between the royalists and the Maoists.  The democratic activists are now demonstrating in hopes of encouraging the Maoists to respect the new democratic government and thus allow a return to normalcy for the Nepalese people.

There are specific political moments in each nation in which public political protest is a powerful force for change.  Just as civil rights marchers in the U.S. successfully defeated the Jim Crow system in the American south, so too have Nepalese protesters successfully won democracy for their country – if, and only if, they can keep the Maoists from engaging in violence again.

Often Americans wish to help those in need elsewhere.  More than one-third of American households voluntarily gave more than $400 million to victims of the December 2004 tsunami in the Indian ocean.   But charity, while crucial in an emergency situation, is not likely to create a peaceful democratic society in Nepal.  Moreover, whereas it is important for the Nepalese to protest on behalf of democracy in their country, a protest for Nepalese democracy in the U.S. has no effect.

What can we do?  Well, to begin with Nepal is one of the poorest nations on earth.  The civil war has largely destroyed what little economic development had taken place in Nepal.  Research shows that democracies are far more stable when their economies are growing than when they are shrinking:

"Political scientist Adam Przeworski examined the experience of 139 countries over four decades . . . the probability that any individual democracy would be overthrown by a dictatorial regime was nearly four times as great if the country's per capita income was falling than if its income was rising." 

In a newly democratized nation such as Nepal, this fact is crucial:

“There is no doubt that the probability that a democracy survives increases with per capita income.  You can control it for everything from the kitchen sink to the grandmother’s attic.  That relationship will survive anything.  It’s monotonic, and it’s strong, unbelievably strong.”

If we want the infant democracy in Nepal to survive, the best thing that we can do is to help Nepal grow.

Peace entrepreneurship is a new category of social entrepreneurship, the amazing Business Council for Peace (BPeace), based in New York, is one of the pioneers in this field.  They “volunteer their time to help women in regions of conflict and post-conflict start businesses.”  BPeace is currently focusing their efforts on training women from Afghanistan and Rwanda, with business experts both traveling to these countries and flying women from these nations to the U.S.

As important as it is to expand the BPeace effort, few of us have the time or resources to fly to Nepal or to fly Nepalese women to the U.S.  Are their on-line initiatives that could be similarly useful?  There are millions of Americans who spend several hours per day on-line, in discussion groups, surfing the web, shopping, buying things.

There are three ways in which Americans can begin to work as peace entrepreneurs in Nepal without leaving their computers:

1.  Create a business importing Nepalese goods.
2.  Create a business selling Nepalese remote services.
3.  Provide on-line entrepreneurial education for Nepalese people so that they can earn income in the global remote services industry.

It is important to realize that being an entrepreneur of any kind is not easy; nine out of ten businesses fail.  If one is motivated by the desire to do good rather than to earn significant income, it is easier, but still focus, commitment, and persistence are required.  But if enough socially conscious Americans developed a sustained commitment to peace entrepreneurship in Nepal, we could begin to help this one beautiful nation create a democracy that survives.

Creating a Business Importing Nepalese Goods

There are numerous challenges in creating import/export businesses, including required licenses, tariffs, and other regulatory obstacles.  The best approach for beginners here would be either to begin working under someone who is already in the business of global crafts importing or to find such a person to serve as a mentor.

Creating a Business Selling Nepalese Remote Services

Vinod Khosla, a leading venture capitalist, estimates that the global remote services business will be the largest business on the planet by the year 2010.  Cheap global broadband will allow a wide range of work to be done anywhere, anytime.  So far the remote services business has largely been corporate call centers, accounting, and software development in India and Eastern Europe.  But already small scale entrepreneurs are hiring people around the world to program, provide graphic design services, research services, secretarial services, transcription services, security monitoring services (observing security camera footage in real time and notifying the security company of crimes), etc.  The possibilities for these small-scale enterprises are limited only by the boundaries of entrepreneurial imagination.  Pay rates that are low in the developed world, such as $1 dollar per hour, represent generous salaries for many people in the developing world.

For background on these remote services projects, see Bruce Judson’s Go It Alone:  Do What You Do Best and Let Others Do the Rest, a book on how to create a one-person entrepreneurial enterprise that relies on hiring services from others rather than hiring employees.  See also Harry Beckwith, Selling the Invisible:  A Field Guide to Modern Marketing for a short, brilliant book on how to sell services in inspiring ways.  Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich is also an important classic for those who have never before traversed the entrepreneurial process of moving from vision to reality.  The “Working for Good” curriculum, available at www.workingforgood.com, continues a helpful mental framework within which to engage in such entrepreneurial activity.

Providing On-Line Entrepreneurial Education for Nepalese People

Open World, the organization that pioneered this vision of grassroots globalization, has a range of resources available on their site, http://www.openworld.com.  Open World has also created simple software that allows anyone to create visual lesson plans that may be used to teach people across the world.  The following is a demonstration of a lesson on energy from a high school girl in Sri Lanka:

http://presenter.openworld.com/flash/HL2/player.swf

There are, of course, numerous other on-line educational systems for those who want to teach others across the world.

Future installments of this blog will provide additional suggestions.  We intend to create an on-line community of idealistic entrepreneurs who work together to stabilize democracy in Nepal and create a vibrant, healthy growing economy there that will once again support a sustainable eco-tourism business. 

I am in contact with Hari Bansh Jha, who inspired this post, and will post our ongoing conversation as is relevant.

Peace,

Michael

P.S.:  The photo of women and children is from "Save the Children," which includes information on child prostitution in Nepal:

http://www.savethechildren.org/one_world/nepal.asp

Dear Michael,
 
It gives me pleasure to inform you that I browsed Zaadz website with a lot of interest. Besides, I went through certain portions of the attachments that I received along with your email.
 
First of all, I would like to congratulate for your mastery work on "The Creation of Conscious Culture Through Educational Innovation" and "Prediction Innovation Markets and World Peace."
 
In my view, your proposal on "Create Peace and Support Democracy in Nepal" is innovative. Whatever that you have suggested for the American people to support the cause of sustainable peace in Nepal is pragmatic. However, I would like you to consider two root factors that led to the conflict - one was the unemployed hands and the other was the lack of spiritual feelings among the common Nepalese population.
 
Until recently, about 2000 people used to cross Nepal boundary for their desinations in India each day to save their lives from the government and rebel forces. Even now, approximately 500 people are leaving the country each day for employment in different countries, including in Middle East, Korea, Japan, Malaysia and the others. Over 400,000 people have been displaced from the rural to urban areast. 75,000 girls have been forced to work in the cabin restaurants, dance bars, massage parlours, etc. in the urban areas, who are mostly subject to all sorts of sexual exploitations. Simiarly, child labour problem in domestics, street children, etc. are at the peak. It is estimated that each year 12,000 girls/women are trafficked to India alone. Thousands of girls are trafficked within the country each year. The situation has aggravated to such an extent that certain groups of people have been forced to go for organ transplantation. These are hard realities, but are the bitter truth.
 
Such spiritual feeling as Atmabat Sarbbhuteshu (meaning the presence of the same soul in each instinct) fast decayed. As a result, one throttled or killed the other and brought the economic activities to standstill. Since the conflict is the outcome of mental state, the problem cannot be resolved if people do not feel the need of revival of this feeling of oneness, which is the very essence of spiritualism. But for this our own people are capable. The only thing that is needed is to support the institutions or individuals who aspire to bring spiritual revoluciton. Impact of such activities, however, cannot be confined to any particular boundary. As the sun knows no boundary, the ideas of spiritual person know no boundary. And the entire mankind might be benefited from this. When we speak spiritualism, it is beyonng religion.
 
Besides, what we need to do is to support the development activities - be it related to the tourism, carpet industry, garment industry, handicrafts or even the software industries. In this process, the Business Council for Peace can really play an important role.
 
I will be the happiest person to support peace initiative in Nepal and elsewhere. Our research centre, CETS, could be a liasion office between the Americans and Nepalese in facilitating the peace process - be it in matter of economic support to the Nepalese or even in the spiritual development. American people can learn from the Nepalese and make their life better if the spiritual traditions of Nepal are revived.
 
Dear friend, I am prepared to shake hands with you warmly in carrying out the peace and development efforts and thereby help the millions to have a better life tomorrow.
 
Looking forward for fruitful cooperation.
 
 
With regards,
 
Hari Bansh Jha     
 

How Macedonia is imitating Estonia.  If they can succeed in passing the proposed reforms, this may be the beginning of the end of violence in the Balkans:

Balkan Tiger

Meelis Kitsing

The late 1990s saw some economic reforms under the center-right government, but the onslaught of violence between ethnic Albanians and Macedonians forced any type of economic reforms to the backseat, where they remained until just last month. The outcome of elections held on July 5 gives reason to believe in the rebirth. . . .

The Macedonian Internal Revolutionary Organization (VMRO-DPMNE) has learned the right lessons. The party, headed by the youthful Nikola Gruevski, a former trade minister and finance minister in the government headed by the VMRO-DPMNE in 1998-2002, emphasized economic reform in its campaign, not Macedonian nationalism. "We believe that Macedonians want to do more than just survive -- they want to succeed. And to succeed we need a stronger, healthier economy -- one that delivers jobs and growth, that frees individuals to pursue their God-given potential with a minimum of government interference and that opens up the creative spirit in people," wrote Gruevski in the Washington Times on July 4. VMRO-DPMNE's election platform was based on a comprehensive and detailed study of reforms by other countries in the Central and Eastern Europe. Radical reformers of Central and Eastern Europe are seen as examples to be followed.

The VMRO-DPMNE promises to cut public expenditure by 2 percent of the GDP by 2010. It plans to cut red-tape by 2007, thereby enabling registration of new companies to be completed within three days. The party plans to implement a flat personal tax rate of 10 percent by 2008 - a turnaround from the current progressive income tax rates of 15, 18 and 24 percent. The tax rate on corporate profits will be reduced from 15 percent to 10 percent and, following the example of Estonia, the tax on reinvested profits will be scrapped altogether. . . .

Judging from the recent history of reform in former socialist countries as well as conventional expectations, nobody would have suspected Estonia to become a wunderkind of economic reform. Comparing Estonia (a country constantly given as an example in VMRO-DPMNE's election program) with Macedonia, it becomes obvious that 20 years ago one would have expected Macedonia to do better than Estonia. The quality of life was better in socialist Macedonia than in socialist Estonia. Yugoslavia offered more economic freedom than the Soviet Union, to which Estonia had been incorporated. Macedonians were able to travel and work abroad - even the thought alone was out of the question in socialist Estonia.

In the early 1990s the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia meant uncertainty for both Estonia and Macedonia. Both were new and unknown countries on the periphery of Europe. Many Westerners confused the Baltics with the Balkans. Estonia had a sizeable Russian-speaking minority that made up 35 percent of the population. Macedonia had an Albanian minority which was 20 percent of population in 1990 and has now increased to 25 percent. The confusion was not simply due to sheer ignorance. There were as many experts predicting doom for Estonia as there were "sovietologists" failing to predict the collapse of the USSR in the 1980s. A possible ethnic conflict or even a war with Russia was seen as likely. Despite the disadvantaged starting position and ethnic mix, combined with post-socialist politicking, Estonia emerged as a phoenix.

The reasons for Estonia's success remained invisible to the casual observer for years. While Macedonia chose a gradual, stop-and-go economic reform path, Estonia chose a radical and rapid approach by relying on the invisible hand of the market instead of on government intervention. The rapid economic development of Estonia is not just economic achievement: having benefited the Russian-speaking population in Estonia - it has contributed to social peace, as well. Good economic circumstances are less likely to feed social unrest. Indeed, Estonia has not had any large-scale ethnic conflicts, even if relations between the various ethnic groups are far from perfect.

The fact that thinking along those lines has reached the Balkans is a major improvement. Economic reforms do not offer absolute guarantees against potential ethnic conflicts but they will certainly reduce the likelihood of such conflicts. . . . .

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=082406A

Dear Hari Bansh Jha,

I am glad that you liked my articles, thank you. 

I have begun to post our conversation at my blog at Zaadz, http://flowidealism.zaadz.com/blog, as we discussed.

Please tell me more about the mission, activities, and resources of CETS so that I can understand better how my various connections might best work with CETS.  What exactly does your organization do?  How many employees?  How are you funded?  What projects would you like to do that you are not currently able to do?  What is your vision for CETS?  The more I know the more I will be able to deploy my resources and relationships effectively.

With respect to the spiritual dimension of the problem, can you explain more as well?  There are many people at Zaadz with a profound interest in spirituality, and many Americans have a tremendous respect for Nepalese culture and traditions.  In what ways do you envision communications regarding the spiritual dimensions of the problems in Nepal, or how might Nepalese act as spiritual teachers for people here?  I am completely open to considering a wide variety of suggestions, but again I need to understand more clearly what possibilities you envision.

I am very interested in wide-open brainstorming about possibilities.  It is most important to find solutions that work, but those solutions are sometimes discovered by means of round about discussions.

I am also interested in sending small amounts of funding, perhaps a couple of dollars per email, to compensate you for taking the time to engage in dialogue with me; you obviously would know of people and causes there who could use some additional support and can pass it on to them if you would like.  I would like to create a social norm here in which we had many Americans communicating with many Nepalese, and with each communication that could send a dollar or so.  A dollar is very little here, but a great deal there, and I like the idea of creating regular habits of giving that become routine.  Over time, small amounts can add up, especially if we had many people involved in sending funds.  I believe all Americans should develop the habit of just sending a little bit, regularly, to good causes that support people who desperately need help.  You have convinced me that Nepal is full of people in just such a situation.

Have you ever used PayPal or a similar on-line means of transmitting small amounts of funds electronically?  Do such systems work with Nepalese banks?

Let me know what makes sense and what doesn't.

Peace,

Michael