The ‘Nepal government,’ adopting a bigwigs-make-decisions path, has allowed smugglers and black marketers to take full control of markets. Most of the smugglers and black marketers are the greatest fund-givers of political parties that promise to protect their interests.
Smugglers and black marketers, the biggest tax evaders, have a high degree of influence in both political decision-making and in government administrative mechanisms. This is the primary reason why the Nepali consumers of all sorts suffer enormously from massive exploitation and corruption, primary factors contributing to national poverty.
Amidst the recent price hikes, such an influence can be apparently seen as consumers have been forced to pay more unscientific prices monopolized by unethical monetary mentality; politicians seem to have lost their political control over such matters.
It is evident that well-regulated businesses follow the nation’s laws and regulations while smugglers and black marketers, by nature, tend to violate them. Open violations have become possible because of their nexus with politicians. Impunity has become a transparent consequence of nontransparent activities promoting impunity.
In such a condition, a strong consumer movement is a prerequisite for the protection of people’s interests. The working class people are eager to participate in the consumer movement. But due to their political and socio-economic deprivations, they nave to access to media power and intellectual resources. As the middle class intelligentsia and the business-dominated mass media have not internalized the severe sufferings of the working class people, the development of consumer movement has been a difficult thing in Nepal.
Moreover, the ‘Nepal government’ has not been able to implement the consumer acts made more than a decade ago. The reason is clear: the government works in favor of the moneyed class in the name of people and democracy.
The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the strongest political organization so far, has appeared quite weak in providing input, insight and guided for the country’s movement.
Similarly, journalists, lawyers and human rights workers have equally fallen behind regarding the implementation of human rights instruments concerned with consumer rights.
However, continuous exploitation of people and the formation in people of submissive mentality will terribly and all-pervasively scale up impunity. To cope with demonic anarchy in the markets and to prevent severe consquences, a consumer movement under the guidance of working class ideology is essential.