B. An Army to Fight Poverty, Illiteracy and Disease By Professor Dr Brian Cobb and Navaraj Kafle Daily tolls of victims of floods and diarrhea mount, while the helicopters of the Royal Nepal Army sit idly. These expensive craft could easily be used to rescue victims and rush medicines and humanitarian aid to the scene, but the leadership lack both the compassion and the understanding that such measures would go a long way toward improving the currently nasty reputation of the RNA and winning the public support the government now lacks. Armies, with their trained, disciplined personnel and costly, sophisticated equipment, are well suited to tasks other than violent combat. The UN has shown this in a number of operations to relieve suffering populations in war torn, developing nations. Armies have tents and field kitchen supplies that could be used for those rendered homeless by disasters such as floods and landslides. They have medical personnel and equipment that could be rushed by air to the scenes of bus accidents and major fires. Health care teams could also give immediate aid in epidemics in rural, medically underserved areas. These measures can be implemented even in wartime and win the hearts of the very populace who turned to the Maoists out of frustration with the lack of government services. But what is the army to do in peacetime? Nepal is bordered only by the world’s two largest nations, India and China. Both have huge militaries equipped with high tech weapons, bomber planes, missiles and even nuclear armaments. In the extremely unlikely event of invasion by one of its gargantuan neighbors, the RNA would be of no use whatever; its necessarily inadequate defense would uselessly multiply casualties. Accordingly, the existence of an army in Nepal for protection against external attack is both superfluous and a huge waste of money in a poor country. Every bullet can kill twice: once by tearing asunder the body into which it is fired, and another by taking scarce funds away from life-saving medicines. Of course the army is currently needed to combat the Maoist insurgency and protect government officials and installations. Its role now is crucial to the survival of the nation and the defense of the population. But once peace is made with the Maoists, an event which seems increasingly unlikely in view of the Prime Minister’s pronouncements but for which the vast majority of Nepalis hope desperately, the army’s role following the demobilization and disarmament of Maoist forces will be unclear. One of the major controversies dividing the Maoists and parties from the King is control of the armed force, whose weapons make its control effectively the control of the nation. A standing armed force is always a danger to democracy in developing nations. The notorious and cruel regimes in Burma, Pakistan, Chile, Argentina, Iran and many other nations came about by military coups d’etat. Without guns and rendered nonviolent, army officials could no longer defy the Supreme Court and international law. Every country needs mechanisms of law enforcement to maintain domestic order and protect the innocent. Sadly, in today’s world weapons are needed to do the job. A well trained, disciplined, uncorrupted police force is a boon to the people and would win their support, in contrast to the sorry human rights, corruption and efficacy record of the current authorities which has again driven people into the arms of the rebels. But in peacetime, and arguably in wartime as well, the nation’s most threatening, deadly and destabilizing enemies are extreme poverty, lack of water supply, electricity, roads, education, health care and other essentials of civilised life. Combating these elements of structural violence does far more to prevent rebellion than a host of well-armed soldiers sitting idly in their barracks. Structural violence, defined as the suffering and death imposed on the population by lack of services, opportunity and employment, kills far more people than the overt violence inflicted by guns and bombs. The people of the rural districts with life expectancies of little more than 40 years, the 40,000 children who die annually in Nepal of diarrhea, the numerous women and children who die from lack of even rudimentary obstetrical care, and the majority of Nepali children who are malnourished are all victims of structural violence. Not only is this violence tragic, it is criminal because of the massive corruption that diverts donor funds from life-saving and life-enhancing projects into the pockets of greedy and immoral officials. There is no moral difference between a Maoist whose gun kills the innocent and a government official whose greed kills. Peace is more than the absence of war; it is the presence of justice. A peaceful society must eliminate both overt and structural violence. The Royal Nepal Army, now concerned exclusively with fighting overt violence, could be shifted after the Maoists join the mainstream to fighting structural violence. With over 80,000 personnel, the RNA is a huge organisation and the largest single employer in Nepal. Even a downsized army would be useless, of course, and the sudden discharge of tens of thousands of soldiers would worsen the already severe unemployment situation of the country and leave families without income. There is a solution that can preserve the jobs of those currently serving their country in the army and improve the sad lot of Nepal’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens, who comprise the majority of its population but who have gotten little actual, if a lot of empty verbal, attention from the government. Army personnel could be disarmed and re-deployed to provide essential services. Instead of its current de facto role as master of the people, the army could assume its proper role as their servant. Medical personnel, who would need to be augmented, could be stationed in health posts and district hospitals, as well as being on call for helicopter response to mass casualty emergencies. We respectfully disagree with Dr Govindra Sharma’s pronouncement, as Vice Chancellor of Tribhuvan University, that Nepal has too many doctors. A country with shamefully high maternal and infant mortality and numerous deaths due to preventable disease, and which has many districts with lakhs of people and only 1 to 5 doctors, needs more and not less medical care. Nepal’s shameful rate of illiteracy, hovering around 50%, burdens it with low productivity, low rates of economic growth and attendant severe poverty, high birth rates, exploitation and trafficking of women and children, and inability to develop true democracy due to a largely uninformed electorate. The presence of large numbers of intelligent, well-educated cadres suggests that these people could fight poor education by working as teachers in underserved areas. The pathetic transportation infrastructure, with huge areas of the country currently without roads, imposes a huge burden on the population and prevents economic development in those districts, the very ones in which resentment of governmental neglect drove desperate villagers to join Maoist forces. RNA soldiers could be put to work building roads. The RNA’s 18 helicopters could likewise be converted to socially useful work. Several could be employed by the police to enhance their capability and permit rapid response to emergencies in far-flung places. Several others could be stocked with field hospital equipment and supplies and have medical teams on-call by mobile phone to give immediate response. Others could be used to deliver food to famine-struck areas, equipment such as generators and water pumps to otherwise inaccessible locations, dental personnel for clinics in places where most people have never had such care, and other humanitarian interventions. Nepal would benefit in other ways as well. It’s very likely that donor countries would be impressed enough to increase funding for an army of peace. Nepal could declare itself a zone of peace and thereby attract more tourists and enhance the appeal of Nepalese goods abroad. The rapid economic development that would certainly occur from measures prescribed by the world’s leading economists would place Nepal on the path taken by South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia, which were as poor as Nepal 40 years ago. The excuse that Nepal is landlocked is invalid; Switzerland is also landlocked, and industrial areas of many nations are as far from the sea as Nepal. International law guarantees free passage of goods bound for third countries passage through India on its excellent rail system. Finally, Nepal could rapidly reverse its currently vile reputation as a human rights violating country and become an exemplar of the world in peace and social justice by converting the RNA to a force vigorously and bravely fighting its immense social ills. By following the examples of Switzerland and Costa Rica, neither of which maintain standing armies, the courage, industriousness, gentleness and kindness of the Nepali people would make it the world’s example of the wise precepts enunciated 2600 years ago by its most famous native, the Lord Buddha. Our proposal, although radical, is rational and morally impeccable. It deserves serious consideration.