Fatalism and Development:

By Safal Ghimire
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A good craftpersonship lies when one is perfect at merging two explicitly diverse parts of writing, viz., fact and findings. And DB Bista does so. The decade-old book 'Fatalism and Development' is still a relevant, reliable and resourceful fountain to quench the thirst of knowing Nepal and its struggle to modernization, to quote the subtitle of the same book. Development is as important and intricate topic as possible in Nepal as much as possible an intriguing issue in the developing world. Not false, the development discussed in the discourse of Bista reflects the structures and struggles of modern day Nepal. The aforementioned book has tried to re-open the eyes of the concerned stakeholders. In the same regard, this essay deals with the strengths and drawbacks of the same book and, along with doing so, tries to excavate the editorial and content-based aspects housed in the book.
The Evergreen Context
The 187 page long book by the renowned sociologist Bista discusses not only the happenings in the history but also the practices in the present day in this state. The book housing seven evenly distributed chapters depicts how the engineering of the Nepali culture has been fatalistic and 'alien'-influenced. Even though the research in the qualitative base is quite much uncomfortable to generalize, the book gives logical statements while forwarding its ideas. We can take an example of the chapter 'The Caste System in Nepal'. In this chapter, Bista has argued that the high caste Hindu Brahmins did not stayed in the high Himalayas because of the inconvenience in following cultural chores. They had, and still have, to bathe daily but it was almost impossible to do such and other daily Brahministic chores in the high Himalayas. Thus, Bista opines that they did not reside in those regions. Even it does not seem a scientific argument but the logic is very much empirical here. This is just a drop from the ocean of issues comprised in the volume of Bista. Widely, the volume talks about caste, class, education, politics, foreign aid, Hinduization, socialization and what not.
Plethora of Information
The chapters in the book are engineered in such a way that they reward the readers with plethora of information. In fact, the author is writing less but saying more. His speech can be heard between the lines, not in the lines themselves. Some subtitles deals with historical perspectives. And with this, too many facts and facets of Nepalese national reality are crammed into the elaborative details. Nonetheless, the delivery of information is systematic.
Whether people refuse or realize, the socio-political power has more to do with history. The writer has laid this historical foundation in the mentioned book. It details the shift in political and social power in Nepalese scenario. One can know about the evolution of cultural influence and skewed power relation that constituted unequal hierarchy in the social system of Nepal. This piece also portrays the realities from fatalism and sense of competence to the loss in the achievement motivation. It imparts analysis on how the exercise of fatalistic attitude influences the societal progress and prosperity. But the writer, at the same line, fails to operationally define the key concepts like fatalism, alien culture and others, which aroused debates in intelligentsia in the later days. The issues do not leave even the power relation between the so called upper class and caste group and the native settlers of early Nepal. The best thing it does is to hammer in the head of the authority that is highly based in nepotism and cronyism, a social process of hindering the development termed as 'Chakari' by the writer. In nut-shell, it is all about the unequal historical mode of struggle for modernization that Nepal is advancing sluggishly in these days. 

Review: Fatalism And Development: Nepal's Struggle For Modernization

While I was in Kathmandu on vacation, I asked the president of a local university if he could recommend any books. I felt enchanted and a little baffled by the social movements I saw around me. And ... Read full review