HOW TO DO JUSTICE TO DALITS IN NEW CONSTITUTION
A working paper presented in an international conference on “Towards a New Constitution in Nepal”

An international conference was organized in Dhulikhel Kavre by Nepal Centre for Contemporary Study (NCCS), SPDS of India, Adeanuer Konard Stiftung Germnay where Hira Vishwakarma presented a paper on the topic above.

In this paper the author has used the poetic expression of Dr. Ramesh Sunar as background and some facts figure about Dalit situation and philosophical base of John Rawls and Robert Nozik to define jusice in the context of Dalits and to what extent they have been given justice and what should be done in the next constitution.

In this paper, Hira Vishwakarma makes the following conclusion,

“While coming upto this stage of making new constitution for Nepal through constituent assembly the representation of Dalits have increased a mark level high of 8.71% with the representation of 50 parliamentarians. However, it still falls short by more than 4% as promised by the interim constitution of proportionate representation. For the second time in the history of any Dalit lawmaker elected in direct election, 7 Dalits have been elected which we consider an exception, as we could not have thought of in the normal situation of past regular elections. Through these elected and proportionately represented CA members we can expect to have better representation from issue point of view. However, if we see the performance of the 18 parliamentarians in the interim parliament then there is no reason to be satisfied. If same situation continues in the forthcoming CA then Dalits will not get justice. For that there is a need to put pressure on government and CA members in one hand in other they need to take up seriously the suggestions put forth in this document. Many of us present here know that the most powerful democracy of the world the US lags behind than Nepal in ratifying many international human rights and other conventions. Likewise, as a country Nepal seems to be very generous to formulate policies and plans as I myself had the opportunity of drafting interim plan (2007-2010) and if that plan would be implemented honestly I would not have much grievances, but I know even 25% of that plan and policies will not be implemented. If it is so then what will be the point if we will come up with a very good constitution for Dalits and not implemented. Again Dalits will be deprived of justice. Therefore, there is a need of having a very good constitution and a firm commitment to implement it with an appropriate policies and structure in place. Only then there will be justice to Dalits of Nepal. ”

The fulltext of the paper can be downloaded here >>>
HOW TO DO JUSTICE TO DALITS IN NEW CONSTITUTION