I vividly remember a high school friend who claimed to have been born on a prairie when his mother was returning home after grazing the cattle.
I thought he was faking it to make me laugh. But he was serious. Years later, as I write this article, there are still many women in the hinterlands where safe childbirth in hospitals is still a far cry. [break]
I had then compared his mother with my mother who did not have to face such challenges. When I asked if she ever tried to find some work outside home, my mother, a graduate in Home Science from Padma Kanya College, said she had so much work at home that she never thought she could handle another work outside. I could guess my friend’s mother must have had even more household chores to take care of.
Let me talk about my generation now. When I told an old friend of mine in Canada that I was a housewife, she giggled. I am not kidding. That got me thinking. I felt the urgency to find a job when she laughed at my state of affairs and said people who do not work in the West were regarded as lazybones and looked down upon.
Now I work, I mean I have a pay job outside, aside from the usual household chores. And you and I know very well how hard it is to find work in Nepal. Although thousands of youths leave the country for foreign employment every day, the unemployment rate is steady at near 50 percent, more than the war-torn Afghanistan.
And our government does nothing to create jobs at home. Worse still: they do not even talk about it, although they know very well ‘joblessness is a personal crisis because work is a spiritual event’.
A work is not just a medium for a paycheck. I have lately realized that ‘to work is to pray,’ as an old adage goes. To work is to be integrated into the daily life of the society in particular and of the nation in general. I have also realized that to work is to grow and to find out who I am and what my possibilities are.
I am sure if I were not working, I would be clueless like my mother living in the suburbs of Kathmandu who is still not used to work that pays or vindicates the years we spent learning about something in schools and colleges.
Although work carries with it many challenges, it gives a person what other things can’t. It helps develop self-confidence, gives the satisfaction of supporting oneself or the family, or of having the means to start a family. It allows one to renew life, which is part of the renewal of the civilization.
More importantly, work gives us purpose, stability, peace of mind and a unique sense of satisfaction with the present state of affairs. And so to be unable to work—unable to find or hold a job—is a kind of catastrophe.
Who else has measured the depth of the fear of being unemployed than the youths of my generation! Skeptics might ask: when unemployed and not so highly educated Steve Jobs could start his own business from the basement of his adopted family in California, why can’t Nepali youths do something on their own at home or anywhere they want?
The answers are manifold. In a nutshell: Nepali youths are taught to know, not learn. If they start imagining they would be termed as ‘insane’. They lack the opportunity to work on their own. We have a culture that rewards thugs and not workers or honest entrepreneurs. Lastly, our government does not feel it is her duty to provide security to the enterprises that pay tax. Then there are certain party sponsored organizations that ask for insane amount in donations.
These are the reasons why youths do not even try finding a space for employment in today’s marketplace.
It’s an open secret now that private sector jobs are dwindling due to threats, political instability and unfavorable business practices. The only option for educated youths are government openings which are also few. To meet the immediate demands at home, youths just quietly leave the country. Why would they spend time and wait when they have seen or read or watched the youths working and not getting paid in the factories, news industries and, you name it!
Have we ever heard of government action against those who do not pay to their employees in return of their labor? Do we even have a system or the minimum wage law that is strictly followed?
If we had a government that could protect small businesses, Rohan, my cousin, would not have sold his fancy store in Dillibazaar and flown to South Korea, leaving his darling wife and a school going son behind.
He was tired of paying the levy party protected organizations had been raising from him, even though he didn’t enjoy to pay them. If we had a system in place to press the employers to pay their employees, Susan (not his real name) would not have flown to the US on a visit visa and not returned for the position which he once held so dearly at a television company. He said he was not paid for six months and had no option but to escape.
How sad it is for the hardworking mothers and this nation that the darling sons and daughters born in the prairies leave home and serve elsewhere as they do not see the light at the end of the tunnel.
shreetidhakal@hotmail.com
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