At first glance, 67-year-old Bal Bir Biswakarma looks like millions of other Nepalis – a poor and illiterate subsistence farmer. There is nothing in his clothes, his one-room house, and the way he squats in his courtyard, to indicate what an extraordinary life he has lived.
Yet, had he been born with a different name, or in a different country, he might now be a celebrity on the speaker circuit, a successful business tycoon, or someone may have made a movie about his life.
I am meeting him to discuss how to get some benefits from tourism trickling down to his village of Lulang in Dhaulagiri Village Municipality amidst the craggy mountains of Central Nepal.
“We live in the shadow of Dhaulagiri, but tourists don’t come here,” Bal Bir explains, in a soft and dignified voice. “Several people in our village are licensed trekking guides, but they can’t find employment. A few go to Jomsom and hang around the airfield for portering work, but the competition is intense and they are paid a pittance. So they are forced to go abroad as migrant labourers.”
We chat in the veranda of his house, looking out at a vista of snow-capped peaks of Gurja Himal and the serrated outlines on forested ridges fading away one after another into lighter shades of blue in the distant haze.
“I’ve done a bit of guiding myself,” he admits, with a far-away look. Bal Bir was no ordinary guide, but a sirdar for mountaineering expeditions in the Himalaya. But like most Nepalis, he is a master of understatement and plays down his accomplishments.
As the head of high altitude porters, his job was to get expedition supplies to Base Camp and from there to the higher camps. He describes how, in the days before roads when the trek to base camps could take two weeks or more, he would be responsible for over a hundred porters and their loads. It was a major logistical and financial responsibility.
Pulling the stories out of Bal Bir is like extracting teeth. He does not blow his own trumpet. Slowly, I learn that he has been to the top of Mt Lhotse, he has climbed Tukche Peak where the foreign climber he was guiding was too tired to plant his country’s flag, so Bal Bhir did it for him.
He has climbed majestic Churen Himal visible from his village to the northwest on the border with Dolpo. There, he was caught in an avalanche and badly injured. He had to be stretchered 7 days to Pokhara (no helicopter rescue in those days) and spent three months in hospital.
The stories go on . . . I learn that Bal Bir has even been to America spending six months there at the invitation of an American climber. The highlight of his trip was not cruising down the interstate highways, but rock climbing in Wyoming.
Why is this man, who should be a national treasure for having accomplished so much, helped so many, facing a poverty-stricken retirement in a poverty-stricken village up in the mountains? Why has he not been able to capitalise on his skills and experience?
While there may be many contributory factors, the biggest stumbling block is that Bal Bir was born into a poor Dalit family in western Nepal where society is still conservative and caste-based discrimination is entrenched despite people being educated.
Growing up, Bal Bir learned about his people’s place in society, the rules he had to follow for being from an ‘untouchable’ caste. To be successful in business requires not only financial capital but also social capital (aphno manche) — the network of influential people who have decision-making power in the world of business and politics in Nepal.
Bal Bir might have been to America, but in Nepal he is a nobody. He is a Dalit, he is poor, he is from a remote far-flung village, and he is illiterate.
Lulang is not only a neglected far-away village, but its 300 households are all Dalit. Their combined financial and social capital, and self-esteem, are close to zero.
For centuries of Nepal’s feudal past, it has been a hopeless situation. Things should have changed after 1990 when Nepalis restored democracy, and the country became a constitutional monarchy. Things should have changed after the Maoists waged a war to liberate the downtrodden, and Dalits picked up the gun to join the militia, many sacrificing their lives to end the injustice to their people. But nothing changed.
Now, a ray of sunshine has broken through the clouds in Dhaulagiri Rural Municipality. What democracy and an armed struggle has not been able to achieve is beginning to happen with political devolution through Nepal’s new federal constitution.
After elections to all three levels of government in 2017, the new federal system is flexing its muscles and showing how it can sweep away the cobwebs of old power networks. People from under-served communities have begun to take charge.
The very first decision taken by Dhaulagiri municipality was to ignore the power centre in the bazar town and select the village of Muna higher up the mountain, close to Lulang. This was revolutionary because at that time Muna had no road, no telecommunication. But the site was carefully chosen because the local government was within a day’s walk of every citizen in every ward of the municipality.
To appreciate the significance of this decision to move, it is necessary to understand something of the demography and history of the cluster of villages in the rural municipality. Its population of 14,000 consists predominantly of Magar, Chhantyal and Dalit families living in scattered villages clinging to steep mountainsides, with some Chhetri, Brahmin, and others in the lower reaches.
Of particular interest is the high number of Dalit households. Overall in Nepal they represent 13% of the population, but in Myagdi District they comprise 24%, and in Dhaulagiri Rural Municipality they make up 35%.
It was the copper mines and the processing of copper ore which attracted such large numbers of Dalits to this mountainous area during the 19th century. The Chhantyal did the mining, while Biswakarma metal-workers purified the ore into ingots which were carried down to Takam, where Thakali brokers controlled the trade in the metal. When the mines closed down, the Dalit Biswakarma remained, taking up subsistence agriculture.
A second action of significance was the election of a Magar woman as the mayor of Dhaulagiri Municpality in the 2017 election. Thamsara Pun comes across as a very astute and competent woman, with a passionate commitment to her home villages. She was previously headmistress of the local secondary school here, and has the confidence and eloquence to convey her vision for her municipality.
“As a teacher I could help a limited number of people. What attracted me into politics was the thought that here I could help a far greater number,” she explains.
Thamsara feels federalism is a very strong system from a local development perspective. “Formerly the budget for one VDC (village development committee) was around 1 million rupees, but now the budget for one Ward (formerly a VDC) is 10 million rupees,” she says.
“Previously all business had to go through the district headquarter in Beni, which was a four-day walk to the east. But now we have real autonomy and can make decisions which truly favour our needs and goals. One benefit is that many more people have found local employment on our development projects. Our only concern is making sure that we keep within the budget.”
In area, Dhaulagiri is one of the largest municipalities in Nepal, covering 1,037 sq km, its terrain rising from 1,000m altitude to the 8,172m summit of Dhaulagiri I, the world’s seventh highest mountain.
The stunning scenery and its relatively unspoilt wilderness gives the region great tourism potential, and it is one of four areas Thamsara is focussing on to lift living standards and push economic development.
Here again, the clustering together of ex-VDCs under federalism, is aiding the development of a more coherent plan for tourism. Under the previous political system, each VDC was like a child isolated from its siblings, linked only through the parent at district level.
In Beni, the Myagdi District authorities neglected the inaccessible and poorer western half of the district, concentrating on the Annapurna Circuit and the tourist and pilgrim traffic to Mustang. Now, however, the former Wards are joined at the hip under the municipality and can pool their budget and develop together new trekking routes and the necessary infrastructure.
With this climbing experience, Bal Bir shares his dream to establish a Dalit-managed Guide/Porter cooperative for trekkers. Assuming this can happen, it still begs the question how to connect such an entity with the trekking market.
I put this challenge to Thamsara Pun. How could a poor Dalit man get the business necessary to run a successful trekking operation?
“Maybe in future we can establish an online booking portal for our homestays,” she answered with a hint in her voice of someone who has thought of this already, “but let’s be realistic — we are some years away from that point. Bandwidth and internet connectivity is still very poor here. For two years we had to hold our meetings in Beni because we had no building, no road, no internet, and no reliable phone communication in Muna. We must be patient and take small steps.”
Given its starting point, Dhaulagiri Rural Municipality has already made some giant strides towards better and fairer governance. For a visitor, it is a refreshing change to see so much hope and vision for the future, even in such an isolated region, and among some of Nepal’s most marginalised peoples.
Joy Stephens, author of Window onto Annapurna, and Off-the-beaten treks in Dhaulagiri
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Post-lockdown Lulang
When tourism picks up again after Nepal opens up again after the lockdown, visitors may want to venture off the beaten trek to the wilderness of western Myagdi.
This is what Nepal was like before trekking took off, and there are now efforts to build a network of homestays so the income from trekking stays in the homes of people.
Lulang, on the south slope of a pass leading up to Gurja Himal is a village made up of Dalits where families have set up homestays. One of them is Rati Maya Biswakarma, who is chair of the local Tourism Committee – a position doubly remarkable because not only is she a Dalit, but also a woman.
“People respect me more because they see that I have a steady income from my rooms,” says Rati Maya.
Most trekkers to Nepal are not aware of the caste discrimination that is still entrenched in Nepal. Dalits have not been able to benefit proportionately from tourism because they are not usually hired by trekking agencies. If they are hired, it is usually for portering.
Trekking was already a seasonal occupation, and now with the collapse of trekking, even that source of income is gone.
Fair-Tread is a mode of trekking that tries to make sure that orters are hired locally so income stays in the villages. It also puts an emphasis on respecting the local culture and the environment – similar to how the fair-trade label on foodstuff guarantees that the produce is exploitation free and is not harmful to the environment.
Nepal can move to a better normal with an improved model of trekking that benefits the most under-served communities. Post lockdown, just such a place could be the Dhaulagiri Rural Municipality and its network of homestays.
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