Create Peace and Support Democracy in Nepal

“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