English - Support to Participatory Constitution Building in Nepal ...

The Remake of a StateContradictions among the political parties on land capture and returnexist. The return of land captured by the Maoists during the conflict is apressing and politically contentious issue in post-conflict. Responding tothe failures to return the captured land, other parties are questioning theMaoist’s commitment to the peace process. Maoists fear of losing politicalsupport among part of its constituency if they ask their supporters toreturn the land. Political parties are taking dual strategy to embarrass theiropponent(s) rather than having will to settle this issue. Madhesi politicalparties simply resist land reform discussions owing to elitist nature of theleadership. They perceive land reform as an attempt of the Pahadis tograb the land in Madhes and change the demography of Madhes. Otherparties have been trying to mobilise marginalised Madhesi communities(Dalits, Janajatis) against Madhesi ruling elites. Historical alliance betweenpolitical elites (landlords) in Terai and the state, to benefit from the statusquo, clearly exists. Prevailing contradictions show that they may lead tothe rise of peasant’s movement against the Terai landowning elites infuture.4.8 Civil society in mistCivil society is a contested territory around varying interests, purpose andvalues. It is today taken as a conduit for democratisation, leadership change,economic liberalisation, good governance and peace building. Many ofthem are articulating alternative vision, perspectives, methodologies andproposals, providing information that are useful in policy formulation,implementation, evaluation and critical review and offering means bywhich people as stakeholders fulfil their legitimate needs. In many cases,Dahal (2006) argues that international support efforts and contextualunderstanding were also less forthcoming as donors were focusing moreon conventional quantity of activities on ‘democracy, human rights,good governance, decentralisation, empowerment of women and themarket economy’, rather than a qualitative discourse, encompassingthe transformation of certain dominant ideas of the hierarchical caste,class and gender relations, for a rational reconstruction of the social andpolitical order. This idea assumes civil society to be a purely instrumentalprocess whose parameters were decided by donors and which turnedmany NGOs, indigenous people’s institutions and social organisations intoprojects (Pearce 2005). There is also a love and hate relation betweencivil society and political parties when the latter is in opposition and ingovernment respectively.301