Over the top

- By The Gadhiwalla

Historically-persecuted car drivers

A sensible driver’s response to the sensible cyclist

A ten-point agreement between a four wheeler and a no-engine two wheeler

Preamble: Might makes right

One: Despite any pretension to the contrary, on the road we are equals.

One: By convention we may be equal, but pretensions show that this is not the case, so I advise you learn to be humble.

Two: When in doubt, remember: yes, I am riding my cycle because I choose to do so.

Two: While some cyclists may be environmental idealists, I must point out that the majority just can’t afford more expensive means of transport. Either way, your higher moral ground does nothing for you on traffic’s terrain.

Three: I will leave as much space in the roadway as possible, but I will not get off of my cycle to let you pass.

Three: And I will respect your space, but not when you take more than is needed.

Four: Horns are no substitute for a) prudence, b) civility or c) brakes.

Four: But horns must be respected. Believe it or not, they are often not substitutes for prudence, civility nor brakes, rather safeguards against myopia, recalcitrance and curlicued riding.

Five: Keep in mind the fact that, in most heavy-traffic situations, I’m actually faster than you. Allowing me to go first is thus just good flow management – and I’ll reciprocate when the roles are reversed.

Five: If you wish to be treated as an equal, do not ask for exceptions. In most heavy-traffic situations, you are to wait in line the same way us larger vehicles do. And when the light turns red, you stop. Do not get off your bike to walk across the street.

Six: Based on number four, if you cut me off unnecessarily I will do everything in my power to return the favour immediately. If you’re planning on turning quickly, just wait the additional few seconds behind me.

Six: From one human to another, our equipment aside, I would advise against hot-headedness.

Seven: If you are in the wrong lane, that means that you are in the WRONG LANE – neither high speed, nor loud sounds, nor flashing lights nor generally acting like a jerk make for right of way when you’re in the wrong lane.

Seven: Ok, but on a similar note, imaginations of stealth because of your slighter size does not validate your riding in the WRONG DIRECTION. Neither are you a pedestrian, so STAY OFF THE SIDEWALKS.

Eight: Oh, you’ve noticed that I am fitter and more energetic than you are, not to mention less of a blowhard? So have I. Oh, you’ve noticed that people can stand behind my cycle and not cough and wipe their eyes? So have I.

Eight: If this is about impressing people, have you noticed my bulging bank account? And am I the one with an unfashionable helmet on by head? I don’t think so.

Nine: Take note of the fact that I am not enclosed in steel and plastic as you are – rather, I am open to the elements, and highly damageable.

"not enclosed in steel and plastic"

Nine: Contrary to what you may think, I do not want to have to deal with the nuisance of an accident – otherwise why would I have chosen the comforts that come with a car?

Ten: Not being enclosed in steel and plastic, I can hear you coming from a very long ways away – no reason to blast me with your horn, unless you’re horny.

Ten: I am no clairvoyant; therefore since you lack the essential technical aides to indicate the general direction in which you are going, I would suggest using those very able, fit and energetic arms of yours.

Bonus: We will both continue to respect the egg-delivery bicyclists as the saints of the roadway.

Bonus: And we will agree to form an alliance against the ultimate impunity pests on the city streets of Kathmandu – the motorcyclists.

-The Gadhiwalla

How James Cameron’s Avatar relates to the exploitation of Indigenous People of the world and India

By Guest Blogger Rohini Hensman

With forced expulsion and violence on their homeland, persecuted outsider-advocates, and commercial mining interest driving it all, James Cameron’s Avatar has striking parallels to events on the ground in India.

The plot of Avatar is relatively simple. In the year 2154, a colony of humans has been set up by RDA corporation on Pandora, an exotic planet inhospitable to humans but rich in a rare and incredibly valuable mineral, ironically named unobtanium. RDA is keen on exploiting this natural resource but the indigenous inhabitants, the Na’vi, are an obstacle to this goal, since the unobtanium lies beneath the forest they inhabit, with the biggest deposit beneath their ancestral Hometree. In a science fiction flourish, the humans interact with the natives through the Avatar programme, which blends the DNA of individual human beings with that of the Na’vi to create Na’vi avatars which can be controlled by the mind of the human. Through this, they can establish contact with the Na’vi, find out about them and their habitat, and try to persuade them to cooperate with the company. But should they fail, the military wing is poised to remove them by force. Our heroes, including Jake, a paraplegic ex-marine, who adopts his deceased twin brother’s avatar (which represents a sizable investment by the corporation) connect with the natives and learn to appreciate their culture. When the powers-that-be get impatient and give Jake and his colleagues an hour to convince the Na’vi to vacate their habitat, they rebel against their paymasters in an attempt to protect the Na’vi from ecological ruin and genocide.

The contemporary relevance of this film derives from the fact that, as the recent UN Report on the State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (United Nations 2010) reminds us, there are still 370 million indigenous people in the world. Many are still being subjected to displacement and dispossession, and suffer physical abuse, imprisonment, torture and even death if they try to assert their rights. Nowhere is this more true than in India’s forest belt, where the Adivasis are being displaced from their traditional habitats by the pursuit of ‘development’, of late driven mainly by commercial interests including mining. As an official report notes, ‘As tribal areas are also rich in mineral resources, the mining projects proposed such as in Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh threaten the very existence of tribal people’ (Government of India 2008).

Indeed, the heart-breaking moment in Avatar when the ancestral Hometree of the Na’vi is destroyed, and many are killed while the rest are displaced, could well be a metaphor for what is happening in the state of Chhattisgarh in Central India, where the security forces of a fascist state government, together with a state-sponsored, largely tribal militia (Salwa Judum), have driven tens of thousands of Adivasis out of their villages and destroyed them. In the process, many have been injured, tortured, raped and killed. One non-tribal activist fighting against these injustices, renowned Dr Binayak Sen, was arrested and kept behind bars for over two years on false charges; another, Himanshu Kumar, had his Gandhian ashram destroyed, and has suffered continuous harassment. Journalists and human rights activists trying to investigate and report on the situation have been assaulted physically and kept out. Inordinate effort was needed to get Sodhi Sambho, a young Adivasi woman who was witness to a massacre, the medical treatment she needed for her bullet-shattered leg; yet even in hospital she remained a virtual captive of the state police, effectively cut off from journalists and even from her lawyer in the case pertaining to the massacre. Three other witnesses were detained by the police, who are the alleged perpetrators: the very opposite of a witness-protection programme (Jha 2010; Iqbal 2010; Sethi 2010).

Some Adivasis have joined the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (also known as ‘Maoists’ or ‘Naxalites’) in order to fight the state security forces, even though the goal of the CPI(Maoist) (capturing state power) and its methods (destruction of schools and infrastructure, recruitment of child soldiers, summary execution of those labelled as informers, etc.) are inimical to the welfare of the Adivasis and their own demands (Human Rights Watch 2008). The central government is supporting a military attack on the Maoists, despite the fact that many unaffiliated Adivasis will be caught in the crossfire, even though its own report  makes it clear that so long as unchecked violations of the legal and constitutional rights of Adivasis continue, they will continue to be pushed into the ranks of the Maoists. It is probably in recognition of this fact that the government is considering legislation that will restrict mining by private sector companies in tribal areas, and take into consideration constitutional provisions for the protection of tribal communities and their rights. Mining companies are already lobbying against this proposed restriction of their access to our earthly equivalents of unobtanium. Unless there is even stronger counter-lobbying by tribal rights, human rights and environmentalist groups, it is unlikely that this legislation will ever make it to the statute books. Poor implementation of the otherwise laudable Forest Rights Act (2007) demonstrates that pressure for implementation is equally important.

The bows and arrows of the Adivasis are as ineffective against the firepower of the invaders as they are in Avatar. Yet they do have weapons that were not available to the Na’vi: legal and constitutional rights, environmental laws, international law, greater knowledge of the devastating environmental impact of deforestation and militarism, and modern information and communication technologies. Struggles in the real world are more complicated and messy than the clearcut fight between good and evil in the world of Avatar: the invaders are not necessarily White; some of the indigenous people may collaborate with them while others may join groups like the Maoists whose interests clash with their own; indigenous people belonging to different tribes may fight each other for control over the same territory; some tribal customs may be extremely oppressive, especially to women; for many indigenous people, their biggest problem may be the discrimination and exclusion they face in mainstream society; and all these actors have to share the same planet, in some cases the same country. But despite these over-simplifications, the happy ending of Avatar encourages us to hope that the surviving indigenous people of the world, including the Adivasis of India, can win sufficient control over their lives and habitats to secure freedom from poverty, indignity and violent abuse.

Rohini Hensman is a researcher and writer active in the women’s liberation, trade union, human-rights and anti-war movements in India and Sri Lanka.

by Guest Blogger Partha Banerjee

Caution: Don’t spend your time, money or patience on it. Believe me. I just did. By default, I’m now a free idiot.

Is the new-generation India so painfully dumb that it can’t understand the difference between truth and make-believe, reality and dream, or even fun and pain? Or, it’s way too complicated when it’s a new-wave Bollywood version of entertainment-awareness-social-change-cocktail served by Coke messiah Amir Khan?

When truth is layered-in with a fake cake in such a cumbersome way that you don’t really know which one to choose: cheap fun or grim reality? You want to be a part, if not protagonist, of the desperately-needed social change, but you know that something’s dead wrong in the messaging, and yet, you can’t quite figure out where the problem is. But you paid handsomely at the box office to get in, and you don’t want to come home not laughing or not crying. However hard you need to force yourself to do it, like a bad gas that simply wouldn’t pass. (Sorry, but Khan used the element plenty.)

Three hours of non-stop Hindi Blitzkrieg of dialoguing, monologuing, dancing, donkeying, monkeying, stomping, romping, jumping, kissing, pissing, sciencing, philosophizing, teaching, testing, teasing, cheating, beating, stealing, healing, sobbing, crying, tear-jerking, gate-crashing, driving, dying and birthing…you name it…just to drive on one message…like that bad gas…that it’s time the Indian supercolonial academia change…and free itself of learning by rote…and enter an era of free thinking!

Wow!

Unfortunately, every bit of masala Amir Khan and his idiots uses to cook up the story is straight from the dingiest Bollywood kitsch kitchen, where the entire purpose of filming is done around the known theme of profit by making the dumb dumber, and the dumber the dumbest. And when so many idiots are employed, free and licensed to teach free thinking to new-generation India, it’s no more a dream. It’s a nightmare.

It’s a nightmare just to sit through the three endless hours of plotting, subplotting, sub-subplotting, flashbacking and backflashing. It’s three hours of a very painful trial. Trial of your civility, social skills and patience. When completely disgusted after an hour and a half into the show, you just want to stand up, scream, kick the back of the front seat in the darkness of the theater, and leave. But you can’t. After all, you’re not really free to do that. Even an idiot wouldn’t do it.

My readers, friends, supporters and especially my critics always want to know what my problem is: why can’t I simply get some fun and be happy with fun and happy stuff? Why do I always have to be such a naysayer and badmouther at every Bollywood benchmark? After all, what’s so cool about always blasting big media and thereby making myself depressed, even more so than ever before? I did that with notable, famed and prospered big-ticket items such as Born Into Brothels and Slumdog Millionaire; I’m now web-spewing the same, predictable criticism of another big blockbuster that’s taking Indian families by storm — both in India and abroad! Why can’t I make some peace with reality, and learn to live with it?

Yeah, that’s a serious mental case, indeed.

Now, people are so tired of rave reviews, critiques and eulogies that 3 Idiots (I’m sure you’ve long figured it out) got, it wouldn’t be wise to do a shot-by-shot, sequence-by-sequence post-mortem, although one would be tempted to do it, just for the “fun.” I’d rather select a handful only for a hindsight.

1. The opening sequence of idiot Farhan’s faked illness on a just-took-off Air India plane. (Please don’t try it. You’ll be quickly arrested, beat up and jailed, maybe, even on terrorism charges). The once-wildlife-photographer-aspirant, father-forced engineering student, who’s now suddenly an accomplished photographer with a number of books out, gets a call from one Rancho, his face turns green, as if scared to death. But Rancho, they later tell us, is only his pal, his soul brother he met ten years ago — calling from some unknown place for some unknown reason. But to answer him, Farhan decides to feign a heart attack on board, and forces the pilots to turn around for an emergency landing. He then walks out of his wheelchair with a simple comic gesture, and dissolves into the street crowd.

(My critic: “But didn’t you get the fun, you wet blanket? Oh, it was so funny! Loved it.”)

2. Rancho straps himself with idiot Raju’s critically ill, paralyzed father on a scooter, and drives him to hospital for a save, thereby meeting his doctor girlfriend Pia who was also, as it turns out, daughter of the Hitler-ish college director. (Please don’t try this method to save a patient. You’ll kill them; and law will quickly get back to you. Unless you’re an Indian Amir or a member of his now-famous idiot club). In my time I’ve seen quite a few Bollywood insanities, and this one would definitely make a short list. And it’s so inhumane to the point of cruelty, only to match with Raju’s poor mother scratching his bed-ridden husband’s eczema with a roller pin and then using it to make rotis for her son and his invited friends.

(Critic: “Ha ha, was it funny! Laugh laugh laugh…giggle giggle giggle…”)

3. A climax-subclimax drama of idiot Rancho and his idiot Indian engineering gang delivering Pia’s sister Mona’s baby at the college, taking online-video instructions from Pia. (Please don’t try it, period). Other than the totally ludicrous and nonsense drama of the pingpong-tabletop-childbirthing under Rancho’s stewardship and collective laboring, the corniness is simply absurd and truly unbearable. I’ve never seen so many otherwise healthy-looking men crying so much, so pathetically.

(Critic: “You just don’t get it. It was a metaphor, a symbol, a dream scenario. Like, this is how it should be. It’s an Amir utopia. He’s making the young generation think. Love it.”)

I have another metaphor in my mind. In ten years the movie spans, no one idiot grows up. Telling, the globalized Indian generation considered. We might say, not ten, it’s twenty.

I have a feeling had one looked carefully, they could even find those idiots wearing the same stars-and-stripes underpants they wore ten years ago. The ones they flashed globally. That was “balatkar” indeed, in my opinion.

Ah…”All Izz Well.”

Partha Banerjee is a New York-based writer, teacher and media and human rights activist .

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Editor’s Note: The Jaipur Literature Festival will see a gathering of book authors and lovers at the Diggi Palace in The Pink City from Jan 21 through the 25. Keep an eye on this site: Himal will be blogging from the event as the some of the region’s, and the world’s,  most interesting luminaries speak, debate and set forth.
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-S. Anand

At this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival, as India commemorates 60 years of being a Republic on 26 January 2010, the focus is on Dalit writing. There shall be four sessions devoted to issues related to caste and Dalit writing. Despite the Constitution being piloted by Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a Dalit and one of the architects of modern India, Dalits seem to hardly figure in sectors where there is no affirmative action. Consequently, beyond representation in jobs in the government sector (which too is begrudged to them) and in politics, they continue to be shunned in the realms of culture, literature and the arts. Dalits, who constitute 17 percent of the India’s 1.2 billion population, are subjected to everyday violence and brutalities. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, every hour two Dalits are assaulted, every day three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits are murdered, and two Dalit homes are torched. Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in 2009: “Caste is the very negation of the human rights principles of equality and non-discrimination. It condemns individuals from birth, and their communities, to a life of exploitation, violence, social exclusion and segregation.”

It is from such a context of hidden apartheid that Dalit literature emerges. The opening panel in the Dalit focus, Outcaste: The Search for Public Conscience, befittingly derives its title from Ambedkar’s anxiety over the lack of a public conscience in India when it comes to the issue of discrimination against and oppression of Dalits.

In four sessions spread over five days, Dalit writers from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Delhi and Maharashtra will share platforms with nondalits who have worked on the caste question to debate issues related to identity, literature and representation. P. Sivakami, Om Prakash Valmiki, Kancha Ilaiah, Ajay Navaria, Desraj Kali, Iqbal Udasi and Laxman Gaikwad shall be the key speakers/ performers. Christophe Jaffrelot, Nirupama Dutt, S.S. Nirupam and S. Anand shall play the role of interlocutors during these sessions.

The Dalit Focus at JLF is being coordinated by S. Anand of Navayana Publishing and Namita Gokhale, founder-director of Jaipur Literature Festival. For interviews with the writers related to the Dalit sessions and further information on the Dalit focus at JLF 2010, please contact anand@navayana.org.22 Jan 2010. 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Durbar Hall.

22 Jan 2010. 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Durbar Hall
Outcaste: The Search for Public Conscience
Om Prakash Valmiki, Kancha Ilaiah, P. Sivakami and S. Anand
In a speech in 1952, Ambedkar says: “Public conscience means conscience that becomes agitated at every wrong, no matter who is the sufferer, and it means that everybody, whether he suffers that particular wrong or not, is prepared to join him in order to get him relieved… [In India] there is South Africa everywhere in the villages and yet I have very seldom found anybody belonging to the upper castes taking up the cause of the Scheduled Castes and fighting. Why? Because there is no public conscience.” This agenda-setting panel seeks to use Ambedkar’s words as a starting point to examine the “absence of public conscience”, especially among the Hindus.

23 Jan 2010. 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Baithak.
Ab Aur Nahin: An End to Suffering
Ajay Navaria and Om Prakash Valmiki in conversation with S.S. Nirupam
Introduction by Christophe Jaffrelot
This session will have readings in Hindi by Omprakash Valmiki and Ajay Navaria, with English translations. Introduced by Christophe Jaffrelot. Moderated by S.S. Nirupam.

24 Jan 2010. 2.30pm – 3.30pm. Baithak.
The Grip of Change
P. Sivakami, Laxman Gaikwad and S. Anand on caste, patriarchy and literary liberation.
When part of a literary movement that seeks to assert the humanity of the marginalized, what does it mean to be a woman, to be a ‘criminal tribe’-to be on the peripheries of the margin? Sivakami whose first novel (The Grip of Change) offers an indictment of dalit patriarchy, and Gaikwad who lays bare the anguish of being despised by the despised (Uchalya) explore the issue. Anand, anchoring the discussion, shall speak on marginality and oppression in brahmanical writings.

25 Jan 2010. 2.30 p.m. to 3.30 p.m. Baithak.
A Million Suns: A Celebration of Punjabi Dalit Literature
Desraj Kali, Iqbal Udasi, Nirupama Dutt
This session is presented by Nirupama Dutt, who will also read from the works of Lal Singh Dil. Iqbal Udasi will sing the songs of her late father, revolutionary Punjabi poet, Sant Ram Udasi. Des Raj Kali will read from his work and discuss the provocation for his art.

For more information check out the festival site, http://jaipurliteraturefestival.org/.

S. Anand is a contributing editor to Himal Southasian and is the co-founder of Navayana, an independent imprint that focuses on issues of caste inequalities.

Naresh Newar in Copenhagen

The so-called ‘historic’ UN climate conference, 15th session of the Conference of Parties (COP-15), ended in the wee hours of Saturday with a very weak deal, much to the disappointment of all vulnerable and least developed countries and the European Union.

Even as I write this from the conference venue at the Bella Centre, a full plenary session is still ongoing as there is continued uncertainty about whether a deal will be adopted by all 192 countries.

Here is the deal so far: no legally binding agreement, no firm target for limiting global temperature rise, no target years for peaking emissions.

The conference was doomed to failure from day one as we watched politics heat up between government negotiators of developed and developing nations, between the big and small developing nations, and eventually further splitting with the least developed nations. Hope of a reasonable deal became even less likely after heads of states from around the world started arriving in the city from Tuesday onwards. Then. negotiations became no longer about climate change action but more about the political muscle of big nations (including the emerging developing powers), caring little about countries’ vulnerabilities.

Towards the end, all the talk zoomed in on to two countries – China and the US – two of the world’s top carbon emitters, a situation which could have been avoided, had small and vulnerable nations been more united and followed the example of Tuvalu. Despite being the fourth smallest nation with a population of less than 12,000, Tuvalu was able to make a strong stand in Copenhagen. Most of us at Bella Centre had never heard of Tuvalu until its negotiators created quite a standstill of negotiations for several hours on 9 December, demanding a new protocol to force deeper global cuts in emissions, including by fast developing nations. Unfortunately, the proposition was opposed by many developing countries steered by India, China and Saudi Arabia.

No brotherly support
What would have further bolstered Tuvalu’s stance would have been support especially from the poorest and least developed small nations like Nepal. Unfortunately, they decided to remain under the shadow of their ‘big brother’ nations. Perhaps eminent climate scientist and expert on adaptation Saleemul Haq was correct in saying. “Now is crunch time, you have to make a choice. Are you with the vulnerable countries or with big brother. If they give in, they deserve what they get.”

Nepal, for one, lost a great opportunity to make its strong presence felt despite having one of the largest official delegates here. With almost 70 members in its official delegation, Nepal’s team was as big as that of India and China. One wonders why such a big delegation was needed, when only a handful of them were technical experts and journalists. Maybe the rest were just taking advantage of an expensive and lengthy holiday. Copenhagen is the most expensive city in Europe today. Airfare costs at least NPR 100,000 one-way from Kathmandu to Copenhagen and hotel rooms reach around Rs 6,000 per night. Add to that amount per diem, logistical expenses and other miscellaneous costs and it adds up to a hefty sum.

While it may not be fair to compare Nepal with India and China, in comparison to other small nations Nepal has also failed to do much. On the one hand, it had ample reason to speak up, especially being the home of the some of the world’s most visited mountain regions that are facing the reality of fast-receding glaciers. Here it had a chance to champion the mountain issue, so neglected and unaddressed in the previous COPs, yet instead it chose to keep a low profile and remain quiet most of the time. Only on Thursday when Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal took to the stage with the other hundreds of heads of states to give a three-minute address, did he manage to get some attention on the mountain issue.

In his speech, Nepal made some strong statements, using less rhetoric than other leaders and focused specifically on glacial melt and its effect on water resources. Nevertheless, all was forgotten after his few minutes in the limelight were over

Alternative channels
To give small nations like Nepal some credit, they had little chance to make their voices heard in the main plenary sessions in front of the big and emerging developing nations of the G-77 that included India, China and Brazil. Small nations often complained in private and off the record about how they were not getting any support from the big nations. However, they did have opportunities outside the negotiation tables, where the world’s high profile experts, thousands of youth, radical activists and journalists from the world’s best media outlets had gathered and were dying to talk to any country as long as they made a strong stand.

There were nearly 3,500 journalists and an additional 15,000 people from all walks of life inside the Bella Centre at all times. Bangladesh, for example, succeeded in promoting its profile through these means. Its senior officials and ministers were outspoken, their position bolstered by high profile climate change scientists brought to Copenhagen together with the official delegation. Bangladeshi civil society groups also managed to attract enough attention from the international media. They never shied away from criticizing world leaders in the worsening daily rounds of negotiations. Their top officials were often seen entering the jam-packed restricted media centre, where a minimum of 2,000 journalists were constantly seated.

While NGOs, media and government officials from Bangladesh collaborated well, this was not the case with the representatives from Nepal, who had not arrived with a defined strategy. NGOs and INGOs representing Nepal failed to work together with the government. Not a single Nepali official was seen entering the media centre to speak with journalists over the whole two weeks. Even Prime Minister Nepal quietly admitted that experts from NGOs and INGOs from his country were distancing themselves and he seemed quite upset about that fact.

Side events organised by the government and various NGOs were also poorly organized. The much anticipated Summiteers’ Summit failed to get much media attention. While receiving some coverage in the local Nepali media, it got a bare mention internationally except for a few online sites. Even the local Danish newspapers failed to cover the event because the organisers had decided to march in the centre of Copenhagen where no journalists were willing to go in the midst of ongoing negotiations. Nepal should have known that it takes more than just press releases or paper invitations left at the corridor of the Media Centre to create a stir, especially with the thousands of invitations displayed in that same corridor.

And where were all the Nepali youth? I had heard that there were hundreds of them who had applied for the conference. What happened to all the climate youth ambassadors? While I recall seeing a lot of youth representatives from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, and many other countries screaming through the halls of the Bella Centre, I don’t recall seeing anyone from Nepal. There were youth dressed up as green aliens, polar bears, rappers in red, indigenous people, beggars, poets, preachers. That they looked amusing is one thing, but they were successful in getting journalists’ attention to address the serious concerns of their respective countries. One would only wish that someone from Nepal had dressed up as a mountaineer with gears and walked inside the centre. Now that would be an eye catcher.

To end the session with any shine of hope, I am reminded of what one senior official told me: “We’re here just to learn. We will do better next time.”

Maybe. But we definitely lost a great opportunity here.

Naresh Newar is a radio editor for Panos South Asia.