What it means to be a "Headquarter"
For my geography lessons in school, along with my classmates, I memorized headquarters of all 75 districts.
I knew pretty well what it meant to be a "capital" as I was studying in the "capital" city where my parents brought me while still young so that I could have a "better education".
Capital meant having roads, vehicles, electricity, kerosene or gas stoves, lots of people in all sorts of clothes, shapes and sizes, having countless schools, and hospitals, having colleges, electricity and so many shops that it was impossible to count them.
The difference between my village and capital was that, it had none of these things - no hospital, no electricity, no vehicle, no roads, firewood instead of stoves, only one high school and no colleges, only one shop, neither such throngs of people but people who I knew who wore pretty much similar clothes with layers of chimney smokes and mud.
But what did it mean to be a headquarter? What really was the difference between a headquarter and a remote simple village as mine? I knew the headquarter of Khotang, my district, was Diktel. But that was it.
I had no idea because until then in my head, Diktel too didn't have any of these except may be a college. But all the people I met went to other cities for their further studies so I really never gave thought to Diktel having a college. It also apparently had lots of other things that my village didn't have, but my half day or less visit to it in my childhood was insufficient to make me realize this fact.
As I frequent my district more and more, I'm beginning to learn what it means to be a headquarter.
While returning to the capital, I rise up before the sun and sweat for 3 hours long trek to reach Hurlung where I can catch a bus headed for Kathmandu. I cannot stop for rest, or for breakfast because I might be late and miss the bus. No one will wait for a lone passenger coming from the "boondocks". Where is the first stop of the bus? Diktel of course.
Residents of the headquarter-Diktel-can luxuriously wake 2 hours later than me, and they dont have to sweat it out in the morning at all because they do not have to walk anywhere to get to road. They have it right there on their door step. So this is what being a headquarter means.
People of my village still recall those terribly hard days they spent digging the road from Hurlung upto our village, sleeping in temporary camps, eating badly cooked rice and laboring until the wee hours of night - in hopes of seeing roads come to their doorstep. They did succeed in taking the road to their doorstep, but it didn't mean that vehicles would follow these roads dug with much anticipation and perspiration.
The Diktel people had it far easier. They sat in their houses while roads were dug out along their doorstep and vehicles came to them.
They already had main line electricity transmissions while people of my village have spent a fortune installing a micro-hydro scheme. We still are yet to be connected to the national grid. It has been a decade and more since Diktel had the main lines and we are still living in shadows of the poles. We were bypassed the electricity lines as after distributing to neighbouring VDC Hounchur, it had to come to us but it passed up a hill and went to another VDC. Khotang is bypassed by many other districts in many service distribution, but once the service comes to Khotang, no one and nothing can bypass Diktel. It is their right and privilege, by default. But we the remote villages, can be bypassed and overlooked, so oftentimes. Its a surprise if we are not. So this is what it means to be a headquarter. You are never bypassed, it's always you who is the natural privilge holder.
Now that there's functional road network connecting Khotang with the "capital" and the Terai, there are lots of trucks and transportation vehicles doing the rounds. Except a few trucks owned by locals of somewhere else, all these goods are transported to Diktel. How convenient. But it is as is supposed to be, because that's what being a head quarter is all about. All the resources are yours to store and use, be default.
While it took us almost 8 years to start a community hospital in our village, a district hospital was already there in Diktel for as long as I remember. In my village, people have contributed labor, their wages, salaries, wood and what not to start this hospital and yet we stumbled back for two years because we couldn't transport many heavy materials required, we couldn't put enough pressure to transport operators and other stakeholders. Even after giving our blood and sweat 24/7, this was not enough to start the hospital. Small things like masons refusing to come to such remote corners to work, vehicle owners refusing to carry such loads to such a far away place than the headquarter, and the administration refusing to move our files further because we were "nobody" held us back for years. This hospital idea was borne out of the need to always go to Diktel or other cities in case of emergency medical issues, which was cost-intensive and also delayed treatment which resulted in so many casualties. In the last two years, I myself know of two heart wrenching cases, in which the victims committed suicide because of unbearable pain and lack of medical support.
We had to move heaven and earth to start a 15-bed hospital because we were situated far out from the headquarter in a remote corner, while the people of Diktel already had a district hospital and so many private health clinics while again, they just sat and watched.
Now development has started to trickle down to this remote Eastern district, I see that more and more of it is directly going into the headquarter. All the educational services, media related offices, stocks of food and grain, all the vehicular routes, all the major movers and shakers-everything is by default of Diktel - the head quarter. No one questions it because it is the norm. The headquarter gets it, and it will "distribute" the services to the satellites. This is how its done.
So now I am beginning to understand what it means to be a "headquarter" in a "centralized" system that we have. I've been hearing the rant of "decentralization" ever since my rote learning days, but I have yet to feel it. I am someone who hails from a remote corner, far from the capital, far from my own district head quarter, and I am still waiting for that day when the words "capital" or "headquarter" will not make me feel like "कुना को मान्छे" - someone with no privileges!
I knew pretty well what it meant to be a "capital" as I was studying in the "capital" city where my parents brought me while still young so that I could have a "better education".
Capital meant having roads, vehicles, electricity, kerosene or gas stoves, lots of people in all sorts of clothes, shapes and sizes, having countless schools, and hospitals, having colleges, electricity and so many shops that it was impossible to count them.
The difference between my village and capital was that, it had none of these things - no hospital, no electricity, no vehicle, no roads, firewood instead of stoves, only one high school and no colleges, only one shop, neither such throngs of people but people who I knew who wore pretty much similar clothes with layers of chimney smokes and mud.
But what did it mean to be a headquarter? What really was the difference between a headquarter and a remote simple village as mine? I knew the headquarter of Khotang, my district, was Diktel. But that was it.
I had no idea because until then in my head, Diktel too didn't have any of these except may be a college. But all the people I met went to other cities for their further studies so I really never gave thought to Diktel having a college. It also apparently had lots of other things that my village didn't have, but my half day or less visit to it in my childhood was insufficient to make me realize this fact.
As I frequent my district more and more, I'm beginning to learn what it means to be a headquarter.
While returning to the capital, I rise up before the sun and sweat for 3 hours long trek to reach Hurlung where I can catch a bus headed for Kathmandu. I cannot stop for rest, or for breakfast because I might be late and miss the bus. No one will wait for a lone passenger coming from the "boondocks". Where is the first stop of the bus? Diktel of course.
Residents of the headquarter-Diktel-can luxuriously wake 2 hours later than me, and they dont have to sweat it out in the morning at all because they do not have to walk anywhere to get to road. They have it right there on their door step. So this is what being a headquarter means.
People of my village still recall those terribly hard days they spent digging the road from Hurlung upto our village, sleeping in temporary camps, eating badly cooked rice and laboring until the wee hours of night - in hopes of seeing roads come to their doorstep. They did succeed in taking the road to their doorstep, but it didn't mean that vehicles would follow these roads dug with much anticipation and perspiration.
The Diktel people had it far easier. They sat in their houses while roads were dug out along their doorstep and vehicles came to them.
They already had main line electricity transmissions while people of my village have spent a fortune installing a micro-hydro scheme. We still are yet to be connected to the national grid. It has been a decade and more since Diktel had the main lines and we are still living in shadows of the poles. We were bypassed the electricity lines as after distributing to neighbouring VDC Hounchur, it had to come to us but it passed up a hill and went to another VDC. Khotang is bypassed by many other districts in many service distribution, but once the service comes to Khotang, no one and nothing can bypass Diktel. It is their right and privilege, by default. But we the remote villages, can be bypassed and overlooked, so oftentimes. Its a surprise if we are not. So this is what it means to be a headquarter. You are never bypassed, it's always you who is the natural privilge holder.
Now that there's functional road network connecting Khotang with the "capital" and the Terai, there are lots of trucks and transportation vehicles doing the rounds. Except a few trucks owned by locals of somewhere else, all these goods are transported to Diktel. How convenient. But it is as is supposed to be, because that's what being a head quarter is all about. All the resources are yours to store and use, be default.
While it took us almost 8 years to start a community hospital in our village, a district hospital was already there in Diktel for as long as I remember. In my village, people have contributed labor, their wages, salaries, wood and what not to start this hospital and yet we stumbled back for two years because we couldn't transport many heavy materials required, we couldn't put enough pressure to transport operators and other stakeholders. Even after giving our blood and sweat 24/7, this was not enough to start the hospital. Small things like masons refusing to come to such remote corners to work, vehicle owners refusing to carry such loads to such a far away place than the headquarter, and the administration refusing to move our files further because we were "nobody" held us back for years. This hospital idea was borne out of the need to always go to Diktel or other cities in case of emergency medical issues, which was cost-intensive and also delayed treatment which resulted in so many casualties. In the last two years, I myself know of two heart wrenching cases, in which the victims committed suicide because of unbearable pain and lack of medical support.
We had to move heaven and earth to start a 15-bed hospital because we were situated far out from the headquarter in a remote corner, while the people of Diktel already had a district hospital and so many private health clinics while again, they just sat and watched.
Now development has started to trickle down to this remote Eastern district, I see that more and more of it is directly going into the headquarter. All the educational services, media related offices, stocks of food and grain, all the vehicular routes, all the major movers and shakers-everything is by default of Diktel - the head quarter. No one questions it because it is the norm. The headquarter gets it, and it will "distribute" the services to the satellites. This is how its done.
So now I am beginning to understand what it means to be a "headquarter" in a "centralized" system that we have. I've been hearing the rant of "decentralization" ever since my rote learning days, but I have yet to feel it. I am someone who hails from a remote corner, far from the capital, far from my own district head quarter, and I am still waiting for that day when the words "capital" or "headquarter" will not make me feel like "कुना को मान्छे" - someone with no privileges!
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