Madhesi-Pahadi Disparity In NYC

Sunday evening there was a Madhesi get together at Dr. Binod Shah's place. It is up north, outside the city boundaries, so I refer to it as Upstate. It can be called a Janakpur get together. Everyone was from the greater Janakpur region. Including his family members about 10 people were in attendance. Binodji is like the Bhishma Pitamah of the Madhesis in town. This was my first time at his place, first time seeing his wife and two children. His wife is from Darbhanga where I was born.

I drove a group from Brooklyn up there and back. This is the most driving I have done since I have been in the city. There is that feel to getting onto the entry ramp and changing lanes. The semis on the road looked so big. How do people drive such things?

It was a long, flowing, loud conversation. Many people and topics were discussed. There were four doctors in the room, two engineers, and one Other, me. Two of the doctors were new arrivals. They were going through their round of job interviews.

One topic that really got me was the numbers game and how it plays out for Madhesis. Being a Madhesi in the Nepali community in the city can feel like being in the army or the police in Nepal: there are few and far between.

Half the people in Nepal are Madhesi. But hardly 1% of the Nepali population in NYC is Madhesi, "and I know all of them," as Dr. Binod likes to say. Coming to America/NYC is a socioeconomic achievement. It is like getting a government job in Nepal. What accounts for that disparity? This discussion is important because it is important for the Madhesis in America to feel they really are not that better off than the Madhesis in Nepal, politically speaking. The numbers game disparity is still there.

How do people come to America? Student visas, DV lottery, business visas, cultural exchange visas, as athletes, to attend conferences. The student visa thing has been mostly a Kathmandu thing. And that tends to be a Pahadi thing. Few Madhesis attend the top Kathmandu schools, and those few pay a heavy emotional price. Pahadis have a near total domination of the cultural, athletic, journalistic realms. They are the big Kathmandu business types. Even with the Diversity Visa lottery thing, you have to have personal contacts in the US before you can cash a lottery you might have won. And that heavily favors the Pahadis.

Dr. Binay Shah, president of the NYC chapter of ANTA, mentioned there are 50 Madhesis he knows of in Nepal who have won DV lotteries but are lingering back because they so far do not have local sponsors in the US. Perhaps that is a project right there for ANTA. Maybe set up a two room lodge in Jackson Heights. Keep a revolving door. People stay while getting set up, and then they make back payments once they stand ground.

Last night I also met up with Ritesh Chaudhary, vice president of the NYC ANTA, and Divita Mehta, the militant Madhesi on Wall Street. Divita looked the happiest in months. She is quick on her feet. She was in the middle of making some suave moves at work. She bought me a Malaysian dinner, and the to-go part also came my way. When she talks of Madhesi issues, there is this freshness she provides because she has been in the US since when she was 13. She is not one of those Madhesis who have been numbed down because they saw it all so often, it all became part of the backdrop. Besides, she is more a New Yorker than a Madhesi, I think. But then, those are not two separate identities. That is the beauty of this city.

Ritesh made this analogy during our walk to the meeting place, a Chinatown Malaysian restaurant, that the hurdle in front of the Madhesis is this mountain of snow. Got to raise the temperature, and the snow will simply melt away. As in most of the work cut out for the Madhesis truly is among the Madhesis. Got to build the pride, got to fight the self-hate, got to unite, got to raise voice. We have got to talk up our experiences as Madhesis. There is no escaping the Madhesi identity, so you might as well wear it with pride. And why postpone the political work? You just end up giving homework to the next generation. That would be lazy.

The get-together was on the first day of the local transit strike. I saw so many people walking. The rest of NYC is catching up with me. My internet access has also been down the past few days. It has felt like the first few days of rehab.

The day before I also revised my Proposed Constitution with the idea that democracy does not automatically lead to social justice.

1. The Pratinidhi Sabha will have reserved seats for the four groups, Dalit, Madhesi, Janajati and Mahila, 10%, 20%, 10%, and 25% with some overlaps. So the half of the seats for women will cut across that of these four groups as well. For example, of the 10% seats for Dalits, 25% of them will have to be women. And the 10% for Dalits will be half in the Terai, but that is not to cut into the Madhesi reserved seats. 10, 20, 15 and 25 are half the supposed shares of the populations of these groups, to be revised each census. The reservation for a group is discontinued once its share in the Pratinidhi Sabha hits 80% of its share in the national population. When identifying the seats for the Dalit, Madhesi and Janajati, the Election Commission will seek constituencies where the groups have their largest share of populations. No three contiguous seats may be reserved seats.
   
2. Other than the specified groups, the Muslims will get 2%. The Newars will get one seat in the Kathmandu valley.

The conversation is on.