Spread the love

EDITORIAL

How do our political leaders define “socialism” we have no idea. At present, it has become a fashion to add “socialism” in between the name of political parties such as Unified Socialist Party, Janata Samajwadi Party, Loktantrik Samajwadi Party, etc.. UML’s political manifesto also describes socialism. Moreover, the Nepali Congress describes democratic socialism. The constitution promulgated in 2015 states, “heading towards socialism”. But are we heading towards socialism? If we talk about democracy, this is no more than a “banana democracy” and if we talk about socialism, this is no more than “tomato socialism” and in fact, there is deep-rooted Kleptocracy. 

The nation is importing agro-products worth trillions of rupees from abroad. If the government honestly comes to become self-reliant in agro-products, it is not a challenging task. Our farmers are helpless due to the anti-Nepal and anti-farmer policies introduced by the government. The present government policy is to discourage local farmers and encourage brokers and middlemen. Farmers growing cabbage didn’t get the price, therefore, they destroyed cabbage instead of sending them to the market. Just on Sunday morning, when locally produced tomatoes didn’t get market due to the dominating market of tomatoes imported from India, local farmers threw away tomatoes in the street. Sometimes, local milk producers are found doing the same and sometimes those poultry farmers are found destroying chickens and eggs in the streets. We didn’t see any sympathy or support from the government for the local farmers. 

The government is reluctant in giving subsidies to the farmers, and, it is not keen to supply fertilizer to the farmers. The main duty of the federal government, provincial governments and local governments should have been developing markets for the agro-products grown within the country but the leaders are encouraging brokers and middlemen for exploiting farmers. The tomatoes purchased by those brokers at two rupees per kg from the farmers are being sold from the retail stores at 40 rupees, which comes to 20 times more than the price given to the farmer. Instead of protecting the farmers, the government and the political parties are protecting those middlemen and brokers. It is thus not odd in defining it as “tomato socialism”.