Dr. Baburam Bhattrai
The present century is of knowledge and science. The country cannot progress without ignoring the organizations that produce knowledge and disseminate it. There will be a drought of knowledge production in the country as long as there are politicians who become leaders by gossiping about knowledge, bureaucrats who take contracts for policy making based on their one-sided expertise and administrative status, university leaders who keep going on salary for three hundred days in three years and scholars who seek the leader’s door in search of benefits.
We must change that situation. What should we do? Our irony is that think tanks like yours have not yet developed a situation in Nepal where they can do their work independently. You have to fight for your existence, for your autonomy and presence. Organizations that produce knowledge and conduct policy research must be freed from bureaucratic control and interference. Their formation process, operation, resource assurance and autonomy should be guaranteed by law. I have full support for that.
Nepal, which can give new consciousness and knowledge to the world through Buddhism in the early era of gradual development twenty-five hundred years ago, can produce many ‘new Buddhas’ who will produce new knowledge in the Asian century where this knowledge is highly developed. There is a need for visionary political leadership, collective national determination and proper resource mobilization and management. Come, let’s start that agreement from this Intellectual assembly. The last period of my life will be dedicated to this.
(Thoughts expressed at the anniversary of the Institute of Policy Research on Sunday, September 25, 2022)