Date: Sat, 23 Sep 1995 15:19:30 CDT
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Sept. 28, 1995 issue of
Workers World newspaper
Three days after taking over from a government run by the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist), the new prime minister announced Sept. 14 he would step up pro-capitalist reforms. His first statements showed why there was a mass struggle to defend the CPN-led government.
Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress Party said, "My biggest challenge will be to bring the economy back onto the right track by reintroducing the economic liberalization policies of my party." By this he means privatizing state-owned industries, and stopping land reform that gives land to poor peasants and similar progressive policies. The Congress Party's goal is to open Nepal to imperialist investments, which would make big money for a small layer of the richest people of Nepal.
The CPN-led government had started a "Build Your Own Village" program that distributed $16,000 each to 4,000 villages, allowing them to spend it on any development project they chose. Nearly 60,000 landless Nepalis received ownership certificates for small tracts of state-owned property. Most of Nepal's 22 million people are farmers.
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