Baburam Bhattarai

Baburam Bhattarai,VC of Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

Dr. Baburam Bhattarai is a communist politician and former Finance Minister of Nepal. He was born on 26 May 1954 in Gorkha district of Nepal and is perceived by many Nepalese people as a highly intellectual politician. He is a senior Standing Committee Member of the Politburo of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which began fighting a revolutionary People's War in Nepal in 1996 that changed the political system in Nepal from a monarchy system into republican system. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly from Gorkha in 2008 and became Finance Minister in the Cabinet formed after the election.

Baburam Bhattarai was born in a village called Belbas in Khoplang VDC of Gorkha District. He was born in a low - middle class peasant family. He has three siblings; one elder sister, one younger sister and one younger brother. He completed his secondary school education from Amar Jyoti Janata Secondary School in Luintel, Gorkha, also known as Luintel School. In SLC-2026 BS/1970 AD, he scored the highest marks in Nepal among total examinees. After his SLC he joined I.Sc. in Amrit Science Campus, Kathmandu. In this level also he had been an outstanding student and topped the board again. After his brilliant performance he was awarded a Colombo plan for his further study.

Bhattarai was also a brilliant chess player. He used to say that chess was to Communists what water was to ducks, and tirelessly pointed out that Lenin was also a chess enthusiast.When the then FIDE president Max Euwe gave a simultaneous exhibition in Kathmandu, Bhattarai played against him and beat the former world champion in 23 moves with a brilliant queen sacrifice. Afterwards, Dr. Euwe was reported in local media as aying, "Alekhine lives in Nepal

Academic Life

(Honors)in 1977 from Chandigarh under the Colombo Plan Scholarship. “He had been an outstanding student,” says Lieut-Col I.J.S. Bakshi (retd), Principal of the college. It was during this time he became the founding President of All India Nepalese Student's Association. This organization ended up becoming his first step towards building his academic interests outside the field of architecture.

Bhattarai went to the Delhi School of Planning and Architecture for an M.Tech degree. This is where he fell in love with Hishila Yami, daughter of a former minister of Nepal Dharma Ratna Yami,and married her."

He completed his PhD degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi)in 1986. His Ph.D. thesis was later published as a book "The Nature of Underdevelopment and Regional Structure of Nepal- A Marxist Analysis" on Economics.

Political career

Dr.Bhattarai became politically active during his student days in India. In 1977, he founded the All India Nepalese Students Association. He became active in the Communist Party of Nepal (Masal). As a prominent leader of CPN(Masal) he was the spokesperson of the United National People's Movement during the 1990 uprising. In 1991 he and a group around him broke away from CPN(Masal) and joined the Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre).

Dr. Bhattarai then became the head of the Samyukta Janamorcha Nepal (United People's Front Nepal) - the political front of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre) - in the parliament. When CPN(UC) split in 1994, Bhattarai sided with the hardline section (which later took the name CPN(M)), and he became the leader of the parallel SJM led by the Maoists.

In early 2005, Bhattarai was reportedly demoted within the Maoist ranks as a result of an internal party dispute about the prominence of Chairman Prachanda. Although he did not use the phrase, the substance of Bhattarai's complaints were that Prachanda was building a cult of personality around himself. Prachanda countered that Dr.Bhattarai was merely resentful of the decline of his own prominence However, in July the same year, he and Prachanda reportedly worked out their differences and Baburam's position was restored. Bhattarai was the Head of the International Department of the Party for a time and Convener of United Revolutionary People's Council, Nepal, an embryonic Central People's Government Organizing Committee.

In the April 2008 Constituent Assembly election, Bhattarai was elected from Gorkha constituency-2 by an overwhelming margin; he received 46,272 votes, almost 40,000 votes more than his nearest rival. http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2008/apr/apr12/news17.php "Dr Bhattarai wins in Gorkha-2 with largest margin"], Nepalnews, April 12, 2008.</ref> When a government, headed by Prachanda, was eventually formed following power-sharing discussions, Bhattarai was appointed as Minister of Finance and sworn in on August 22, 2008.

Publications

Bhattarai has contributed a number of published works, including The Nature of Underdevelopment and Regional structure of Nepal: A Marxist Analysis (Adroit Publishers, Delhi, 2003) which is a cursory rewriting of his PhD thesis. Other works include Politico-Economic Rationale of People's War in Nepal (Utprerak Publications, Kathmandu, 1998), and Nepal! krantika adharharu (in Nepali) (Janadisha Publications, 2004). His books and articles were able to attract the attention of all the people of Nepal and abroad as well. Among his many well read newspaper articles is "Let’s Give No Legitimacy to the Beneficiaries of the New Kot Massacre" written in the aftermath of Palace Massacre of 2001. Similarly, it is widely believed that he is the principal author of the most successful Election Manifesto brought out by Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) in March 2008 in preparation of the Constituent Assembly Election held in April 2008.

See also

• Marxist analysis