The Elites and Kathmandu's Urbanization

We notice the process of rapid and unplanned urbanization in Kathmandu, which indicates that urbanization does not have as its basis a willingness to make everyone live and work equally comfortably. Urbanization is a political-(monetary)-economic issue. Urbanization is the result of policies as conducive to the short term interests of elites. And what is the primary interest of the elites in this regard? What is the chief motive propagating urbanization in Kathmandu? To balance the power of the entrepreneurial class, meaning that, to make only a certain level and intensity of politics and political access available to the entrepreneurs. Historically, the local elites, perhaps from advice of their foreign counterparts, succeeded on one count: to separate the political class and the entrepreneurial class. To maintain such a separation of business and politics is obviously in their interest, since the elites do not only want to keep a hold of their wealth, but also of their political power. And the urbanization phenomenon is constructed so that it figures into an appeasement and an aggravation of the entrepreneur's political potential.

At the center of this relationship between the elite and the entrepreneur is money. Money is able to shorten the gap between the elite and the entrepreneur: the entrepreneur wants money in order to start his business, and the elite is willing to give it to him/her because money appeases the entrepreneur and buys his depoliticization. The flows of money is, in many ways, able to counter the gap between the elite and the middle class felt culturally, and felt in the field of other assets such as land. The transaction of money between the elite and the entrepreneur signifies that both are equal insofar as they both trade in money. Whereas money equalizes, on the side of the elite is land and on the side of the entrepreneur is politics, which cannot be traded as conventionally as money and goods valued with money. Today, politics does not have as much a price tag as land does (even when politicians can be bought and sold, this type of transaction is deemed a 'corrupt' practice and therefore becomes a secret and marginal practice), which signifies that the entrepreneur is gaining in power and ascendancy with the decline of elite feudalism. Feudalism was nothing other than the resistance of land towards monetary valuation. (The movement from land onto money is much smoother, and hence the transition from feudalism to post-feudalism was smooth, whereas the movement from land directly to politics, that is, the politicization of land, is much more violent, as is demonstrated by the Maoist struggle for land occupancy. As such, it seems the Maoists do not care for money ideologically, but want to occupy land directly as a expression of their political orientation, and this, for them, is true post-feudalism. And how can we begin to equate the Maoists with entrepreneurs? Because of their 'inventiveness' and 'innovation,' for one, which transmit from economic concerns to political ones.) 

The elites are the ones with the money available for investment and loaning. This is their monetary value, but they have a form of power as well, which is controlling the amount of money available for the entrepreneur. When the elite has his wealth in money, it becomes available to the entrepreneur. When money is available from the elites, the entrepreneur becomes depoliticized and interested in his business and in making more of his own money. This helps the elites cement their power. But, to make the picture more nuanced, in the short term when the money supply is reduced, the entrepreneurs are involved in the act of trying to persuade the elites to make more money available. There is, in the short term of the reduction of the money supply, a politicization favorable towards the elites. The elites can entrench their power further in the short term. But, in the longer term, there is inevitably unrest and more radical politicization when money is not available. With the supply of money low, the entrepreneurs attempt to take power from the elites, to take the land itself from the elites.

Thus, in Kathmandu, the politics surrounding land and money makes urbanization not a straightforward issue of people moving into the cities for better opportunities etc. People have been made to move into the cities by the power play; the land brokers are in the pockets of the elites, and so are the builders etc. The quality of life in the city is degrading, not just in Kathmandu, but in Beijing and Paris as well (pollution being the indicator)...The continuous growth of unplanned urbanization points to the fact that the elites are now more so than ever interested in reducing the supply of money in the market and transacting wealth in land, and the inevitable result will be widespread politicized unrest from the entrepreneurial class. The question is, why do elites want to restrict the supply of money when they know it causes political unrest? As will be elaborated in the next paragraph, this has to do with the fact that, because of 'wealth loss,' the elites are now not only in the process of preserving their wealth, but also of attempting to become really wealthy again. In this case, political unrest is the outcome of an political-economic incentive of creating more wealth to cement power.

Why is there such power play? What makes urbanization a phenomenon of recent history? In older times, the elites had significantly more wealth and power such that they could provide the entrepreneur population with money while maintaining other wealth as land. Today, the elites do not have as much wealth to go to all members of the much higher number of entrepreneur population. Some wealth is in the form of 'slippery' money, while other wealth is in the form of more sturdy land. Therefore, the elites play with the supply of money in the market, not to determine the amount of money available to all the entrepreneurs, but to determine the access of such money to a select few. To reiterate, the short term outcome will be more appeasement towards the elites to persuade them to give more, but in the long term there will be politicization and unrest.