Designing Nepal from behind the veil

From the hills of Pokhara to the esteemed halls of Harvard, my journey has been one of gratitude, yet it is persistently shadowed by a profound question: What if my circumstances had been different? This contemplation, of lives lived in less privileged villages or families, has driven my pursuit of political philosophy and led me to the work of John Rawls. His framework for a just society, particularly the thought experiment of designing principles from behind a 'veil of ignorance'—where one lacks knowledge of their own social standing, gender, or background—offers a rigorous lens through which to examine Nepal's current condition.

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What a just society ought to look like is one of the prime questions in political philosophy. Having read across the works from Plato to Marx,ത്ഥ Rawls and his magnum opus, A Theory of Justice, whose framework I find most rigorous and most honestly applicable to Nepal’s present condition.

Applying Rawlsian principles to Nepal reveals systemic inequities. Consider the citizenship law, which historically disadvantaged children born to Nepali mothers and foreign fathers. Such a law, which dictates access to fundamental rights like opening bank accounts or attending public school, would be unthinkable if designed from a position of true impartiality. No one, unaware of their own birth circumstances, would agree to such a biased rule. Similarly, the stark disparity in per-capita development expenditure between provinces like Bagmati and those like Madhesh and Karnali, with resources concentrated around Kathmandu, demonstrates a failure to ensure fair opportunities for all Nepalis.

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Only from behind this veil, Rawls argues, we arrive at principles that are genuinely fair, because only then are we designing institutions we would be willing to inhabit from any position within them.

The Kathmandu Post, as a publication deeply invested in Nepal's progress, believes that internalizing Rawls's ideas is crucial for our policymakers. The civil service examination, administered primarily in Nepali, further erects a structural barrier for the significant portion of the population whose mother tongue is not Nepali. This policy, like others, reflects a system designed by those who already know their position, rather than by those seeking genuine fairness. The question for Nepali policymakers must be: If I were born in a remote village in Karnali, would this policy offer me a fair chance? Only by asking this can we begin to design institutions that truly serve all citizens, ensuring dignity and opportunity regardless of the accident of birth.

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Would anyone, not knowing the circumstances of their own birth, agree to a rule that handed out these possibilities based on which parent happened to be Nepali? No rational policymaker would accept such a rule.