Indefinite Strike Over
Ek Raj Sigdel
May4, 2009
Indefinite Strike
The indefinite Terai closure called by the United Tharuhat Struggle Committee has been over after 12 days. According to them since the government had ignore
d the March 14, 2009 six point agreement made between the Government and the Tharuhat Committee, the Tharu community was compelled to adopt a strong measure against the government. The strike caused multiplier effects on the people of Terai as well as mountain region. The following sections describe the impact of the strike on Western Terai Landscape Complex Project (WTLCP) working areas, such as Kailali, Kanchanpur and Bardia and its mountain regions.
Impact on Livelihood
The continuous closure crippled entire services and facilities, like transportation, industry, education, and business, banking sector and government offices. During this period, import and export of essential commodities, like sugar, clothes between India and Nepal was blocked totally. It resulted in a daily loss of huge amount of revenue to the country. Mountain people (Dadeldhuhra, Bajhang and Doti) underwent a crisis of food and other essential commodities, like sugar, salt, fuel etc. According to a local FM, because of blockade of rabies vaccines at Dhangadi, some rabies affected people in TIM hospital of Dadeldhura were struggling against the death. Diesel and petrol in Terai as well as in Mountain regions were in short supply. Many people en-route to mountain areas from India had to make continuous walk of some 100 Km in the hot summer days (400 C!). Transportation and industrial labors in market centers were facing the problems of hand and mouth.
Impact on WTLCP Work
Despite observing long strikes, because of having committed local staff members, many of the field activities of the WTLCP project were in implementation even during the strike period. As the implementing partners have been involved in the entire project management cycle, with very clear understanding of the project goal and objectives, it helped a lot to smooth implementation of the project, even in such an unfavorable condition. In addition, based on the past experiences, this time, many activities were clumped together and made a bigger seized agreement with the implementing partners, mainly community forest user groups, and committees before the strike commencement date. As a result, field activities, like fire li
ne maintenance, trench construction, solar tuki distribution, community nursery management and ground work for wetland maintenance have almost been completed.
However, district based project activities got impacted by the project. From the very beginning of the strike days, project had to discharge its activities from a close door. Even in some days, considering deteriorating security situation, the project office had to be closed completely. The deteriorating situation hampered day to day work of the project. Similarly, the strike impacted negatively to some field activities, like field monitoring, trainings, technical back up to community nurseries, transplantation of jatropha seedlings and some wetland maintaining activities.
As local community had to manage resource person and training materials from their respective district head quarters, due to unavailability of transportation facilities most of the trainings could not be organized in time. Likewise, timely unavailability of poly bags at the field has caused delay in fixing about 20% seedlings of about half million tree species. Besides, the strike hampered regular coordination and interaction meetings with implementing partners and other stakeholders. Moreover, the long transportation strike has posed difficulties to collect local land races from different parts of the country to be distributed to local farmers. Similarly, the strike has made difficulties to find appropriate sites for establishing agro-diversity blocks and monitoring of school awareness activities.
Observation
Compared to March 2- 14, 2009 strike called by the same agitating group, this strike was found less effective. We saw small number of protesting people on the road compared to the previous strike. It seems that except a few agitated people, large sections of the society were unhappy with this strike. According to them, though the issues were genuine, majority of them had disagreement with the time and way of strike.
From this closure, the protestors could have learned that the indefinite closure will always not be a panacea for fulfilling their demands. Further, the nation will have different models of strike in the days to come, which will neither hamper the daily life of local people nor obstruct smooth implementation of development work. From the development projects’ point of view, it reiterates the fact that community based activities can only be implemented smoothly even in a difficult field situation if they are involved in the entire project management cycle. Also, it is learned that there should be some flexibilities to the project to adjust planned activities according to field situations.
d the March 14, 2009 six point agreement made between the Government and the Tharuhat Committee, the Tharu community was compelled to adopt a strong measure against the government. The strike caused multiplier effects on the people of Terai as well as mountain region. The following sections describe the impact of the strike on Western Terai Landscape Complex Project (WTLCP) working areas, such as Kailali, Kanchanpur and Bardia and its mountain regions.Impact on Livelihood
The continuous closure crippled entire services and facilities, like transportation, industry, education, and business, banking sector and government offices. During this period, import and export of essential commodities, like sugar, clothes between India and Nepal was blocked totally. It resulted in a daily loss of huge amount of revenue to the country. Mountain people (Dadeldhuhra, Bajhang and Doti) underwent a crisis of food and other essential commodities, like sugar, salt, fuel etc. According to a local FM, because of blockade of rabies vaccines at Dhangadi, some rabies affected people in TIM hospital of Dadeldhura were struggling against the death. Diesel and petrol in Terai as well as in Mountain regions were in short supply. Many people en-route to mountain areas from India had to make continuous walk of some 100 Km in the hot summer days (400 C!). Transportation and industrial labors in market centers were facing the problems of hand and mouth.
Impact on WTLCP Work
Despite observing long strikes, because of having committed local staff members, many of the field activities of the WTLCP project were in implementation even during the strike period. As the implementing partners have been involved in the entire project management cycle, with very clear understanding of the project goal and objectives, it helped a lot to smooth implementation of the project, even in such an unfavorable condition. In addition, based on the past experiences, this time, many activities were clumped together and made a bigger seized agreement with the implementing partners, mainly community forest user groups, and committees before the strike commencement date. As a result, field activities, like fire li
ne maintenance, trench construction, solar tuki distribution, community nursery management and ground work for wetland maintenance have almost been completed.However, district based project activities got impacted by the project. From the very beginning of the strike days, project had to discharge its activities from a close door. Even in some days, considering deteriorating security situation, the project office had to be closed completely. The deteriorating situation hampered day to day work of the project. Similarly, the strike impacted negatively to some field activities, like field monitoring, trainings, technical back up to community nurseries, transplantation of jatropha seedlings and some wetland maintaining activities.
As local community had to manage resource person and training materials from their respective district head quarters, due to unavailability of transportation facilities most of the trainings could not be organized in time. Likewise, timely unavailability of poly bags at the field has caused delay in fixing about 20% seedlings of about half million tree species. Besides, the strike hampered regular coordination and interaction meetings with implementing partners and other stakeholders. Moreover, the long transportation strike has posed difficulties to collect local land races from different parts of the country to be distributed to local farmers. Similarly, the strike has made difficulties to find appropriate sites for establishing agro-diversity blocks and monitoring of school awareness activities.
Observation
Compared to March 2- 14, 2009 strike called by the same agitating group, this strike was found less effective. We saw small number of protesting people on the road compared to the previous strike. It seems that except a few agitated people, large sections of the society were unhappy with this strike. According to them, though the issues were genuine, majority of them had disagreement with the time and way of strike.
From this closure, the protestors could have learned that the indefinite closure will always not be a panacea for fulfilling their demands. Further, the nation will have different models of strike in the days to come, which will neither hamper the daily life of local people nor obstruct smooth implementation of development work. From the development projects’ point of view, it reiterates the fact that community based activities can only be implemented smoothly even in a difficult field situation if they are involved in the entire project management cycle. Also, it is learned that there should be some flexibilities to the project to adjust planned activities according to field situations.
posted by Ek Raj Sigdel at
May 03, 2009
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