Reality vs perception

Many prominent Madhesi leaders were gravely exposed when this paper asked them the number of Madhesis serving in the army: Almost all of them responded that there are less than 1,000 when the fact of the matter is that there are 6,500. Republica’s finding of this deep mismatch between reality and the perception of reality was not only profoundly embarrassing for the leaders, it was in many ways indicative of the fact that representatives of the Madhesi constituencies are making a mountain out of a molehill out of sheer ignorance.



The revelation also lays bare one fundamental reality of present day politics of Nepal i.e. in a bid to gain political mileage, many vital issues are being just glossed on the surface. This issue serves as a classic example of that. Neither did the Madhesi leaders ever bother to find out the real number of Madhesis serving in the army nor did the parties negotiating with them, it seems, ever try to know that. Had any individual leader or a party made the effort in this direction, the matrix of negotiations regarding including 10,000 Madhesis in the army would have been completely different. The leaders would not have wasted so much time discussing something that is not as problematic as it has been made out to be.

Now that the Madhesi leaders know the real number of Madhesis in the army, we expect them not to blow this matter out of proportion again in the future on a different pretext. They also have to understand that the army can do nothing when the desired number of Madhesis do not apply for army jobs as is often the case. It is like blaming publication houses for ‘deliberately’ filling up job positions with Brahmins and Chhetris when the reality is non-Brahmins and non-Chhetris hardly respond to their vacancy advertisements. Again, when they do, like in the army, it is mandatory for them to meet the basic minimum requirements. Sometimes, they do not.



We are not absolving the army of everything. There are areas where it needs to work on. This paper has been vociferously calling the army to come clean on many issues such as the Maina Sunuwar case. The point is that a blanket criticism is unwarranted. Any criticism has to be backed by convincing proof, facts and figures. On the case of representation in the army, the army has more often than not received flax unnecessarily.

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