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20
EXCLUSIVE Llamas in the Himalaya # 15 3 - 9 November 2000 20 pages Rs 20 Kathmandu shopping guide 9 Sports: Sanat Jayasuriya 17 Under My Hat 20 Editorial page 2 EASY TIMES Its never been easier to subscribe to Nepali Times. Just dial this number and leave your address. Himalayan Kings 2 From the Nepali Press 6 Economic Sense 8 Get NPR 968/- (15 hrs.) worth of Internet surfing CD FREE with every one year subscription of Nepali Times. 1 yr 52 Issues NPR 968 Subscription Rate Special Offer Special Offer 543337 RAJENDRA DAHAL T hey joked, they drank tea and they shared biscuits. Deputy Prime Minister Ram Chandra Poudel was in a relaxed Tihar mood. He quipped that he used to be the leader of a communist student union. Across the sofa, the Maoists Kathmandu commander, Rabindra Shrestha slapped his knee and laughed out loud, saying: How strange, I used to be with the Nepal Students Union (the students wing of the Nepali Congress)! The maverick activist and career-mediator, Padma Ratna Tuladhar, who brought the two men together for the first ever face-to-face talks between a government minister and the Maoists, poured more tea and sat back to let the two sides size each other up. The bonhomie helped. After two hours of talks, a beaming Tuladhar dropped Poudel off at the Ministers residential quarters in Pulchowk in a sleek metallic beige Corolla sedan. So, they dont look like monsters, do they? Tuladhar asked Poudel in the car. The Deputy Prime Minister agreed. A week later, both the government and the Maoists seem to have sensed the overwhelming wish among the Nepali people that this fragile beginning for talks should succeed. After nearly over 1,600 deaths, mayhem, destruction and bad blood, public opinion is against more violence. Even Maoist leader Comrade Prachanda said in his 28 October statement that his movement was responding to the peoples wish for dialogue. This perhaps is the reason why the positive vibes from last Fridays talks were so palpable, and the politicians made sure it got maximum coverage. In fact, it all seemed too good to be true. To be sure, the road ahead is bumpy. But peace talks will be more difficult the longer the conflict drags on. As we have seen from mediation processes in Northern Ireland, from the Israel- Palestinian conflict, or Sri Lanka, violence has an in-built mechanism for escalation at its own inexorable momentum. If it goes on long enough there will be enough people who profit and benefit from it, and who will not want it to end. The Maoist insurgency in Nepal has not yet reached that stage, and we are at a point in time when domestic public opinion, the debate over the armys role, the constructive role played by the Royal Palace and international pressure have all converged to prepare the ground for talks. This window of opportunity will not last. As things stand, there are four basic scenarios of where things can go from here in a good to bad sequence: Rapid progress in informal talks, both sides negotiate in good faith, government promptly meets Maoist demands, and a ceasefire is agreed upon. Maoists come up with demand for safe passage, there is prolonged haggling over agenda for official talks. Partisan interests try to prevent agreement. Government and Maoists get dragged into a propaganda war, Congress infighting gets worse, Maoists refuse talks, attacks on police resume. All talks deadlocked, government refuses to release detainees, Maoists launch nationwide attacks, paramilitary force is armed, army is deployed fully. Nation heads towards civil war. Prachandas latest deadline for the government to meet its pre-conditions, a response to the killing of three rebels in Kalikot district =BJAH the Poudel-Shrestha meeting, expires today (Friday). And from what we know of these conditions, they are not insurmountable. The government should have no problem acceding to them, and it must understand that if he does not produce results Prachanda will be under internal pressure from the Maoists themselves. At the talks on 27 October when Rabindra Shrestha reiterated the demand that Maoist leader Dinesh Sharma be released, Ram Chandra Poudel is reported to have exclaimed in English: Done! Poudels goal at the talks was to assess if the Maoists were genuine. Talks could be a Maoist ploy to buy time, impress the domestic public, donors, and the international community that they are reasonable revolutionaries. Poudel appears to have been persuaded that they were genuine. The Maoists, for their part, inquired after the fate of Sher Bahadur Deubas committee, and asked that the government appoint an official negotiator. Its funny the Maoists should ask that, since the ruling party should have done at without anyone asking. But we all know what the problem is: it is the Nepali Congress chronic infighting. Koirala and Deuba cant stand each other, and there is factional competition to take credit from future peace talks. Ram Chandra Poudel seems to be an acceptable compromise, and he will need to be given the space and the mandate by his party to negotiate. Deuba, meanwhile, has been sulking and taking rearguard action, and we hear even lobbying with foreign embassies to get himself reinstated in the peace committee. In an interview in September (# 9) Deuba told us it didnt really matter who talked to the Maoists, since the credit would go to the party. It is time for him, in the nations interest, to show the same magnanimity now towards Poudel. Because if the government and the party do not end their bickering soon and sit down to prepare for talks they could end up helping the Maoists re-justify calling off talks and going back to war. What is intriguing is why the Maoists, who are winning the psychological, military and information battle against the government, agreed to talks at this point. After all, as an ideologically- motivated guerrilla force with a long-term plan for the capture of state power, time is on their side. They dont lose much by talking, they can go back to jungle any moment by saying the government is not serious about meeting their demands. And these are demands we dont really know much about anyway: is Dinesh Sharma just a red herring, or are there more serious hidden demands about constitutional changes? We may finally know, for instance, if the Maoists really want to abolish the monarchy and turn Nepal into a peoples republic. In the end, even the Maoists need to gauge public opinion. Political power may come out of a barrel of a gun, but it is the people who will keep them there. So far, the gun has taken precedence over hearts and minds. The Maoists may have won many battles, but they havent yet won the public opinion war. Dunai, for instance, may have been a tactical victory, but it was a strategic turning point. It overturned many givens: it galvanised government resolve to partially deploy the army; the prime minister and king were forced to clarify each others positions; and the present talks got their impetus. Whatever may be Prachandas reason to come to the table, the government has no alternative but to negotiate. The Maoists have shown their flexibility by removing some of their early pre- conditions, successfully throwing the ball in the governments court. The ruling party needs to show similar adaptability. That is why these things are called negotiations: you give as well as take. The Maoists have not yet declared that the talks are a substitute to the war, nor have they shown signs that they have slowed mobilisation. What the government needs to do is to hold on to the Maoists expressed desire to come to talks and create the conditions where they will keep talking. Otherwise the blame for failure will be laid squarely on the feckless ruling party, and the inability of its leaders to look beyond the tip of their noses. J PEACE KEEPERS CURRENT NEPALI TIMES READERSHIP FREE MOUNTAIN FLIGHT PANORAMA 19 10-11 Mobile licence The Khetan Group and India’s Modi Telestra won the financial bidding for a mobile phone licence on Wednesday. The team offered Rs 24.11 billion for the entire package, which includes licence and renewal fees and a four percent royalty. The one- time licence fee offer was Rs 210 million, and the renewal charge— payable once after 10 years and then every five years for up to 25 years was Rs 20 billion. The four percent royalty payable comes to Rs 3.9 billion. At a 12 percent discount rate, the net present value of the offer made by the top bidder comes to a whopping Rs 9.27 billion, which rival participants at the bidding said was a “stupendous” sum. Now, all we want to know is this: will mobile phones become cheaper next year? Radisson shares The Oriental Hotels Limited has allocated over 30,000 shares to applicants collecting what would amount to Rs 150 million. An investigation on the entire public issue reveals many questions that are still unanswered. Financial analysts say the July sale of shares, which was over-subscribed seven times took place without complete financial disclosures. The Security Exchange Board which regulates the stock market, says it has done its best to protect shareholder interest. The issue manager is also confident the issue has benefitted both the hotel and the shareholders. …………..pg 4-5 Congress at arms Just as you expected, the Nepali Congress infighting is not over. It heated up again with dissident Sher Bahadur Deuba dashing off a stiff statement accusing the Koirala camp of not keeping its word on the vexing party membership issue. All this, and the cabinet reshuffle, is distracting the ruling party’s attention from the much more important recent question of resolving the Maoist issue through dialogue. SUBHAS RAI

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Page 1: Nepali Times - Digital Himalayahimalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/nepali...Mustangi Raja and the King of Bhutan, seem to wear their crowns with unease. The Mustangi Raja

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(��$,�,$+�!+�The Khetan Group and India’sModi Telestra won the financialbidding for a mobile phonelicence on Wednesday. Theteam offered Rs 24.11 billion for

the entire package, whichincludes licence and renewal feesand a four percent royalty. The one-time licence fee offer was Rs 210million, and the renewal charge—payable once after 10 years andthen every five years for up to 25years was Rs 20 billion. The fourpercent royalty payable comes toRs 3.9 billion. At a 12 percentdiscount rate, the net present valueof the offer made by the top biddercomes to a whopping Rs 9.27billion, which rival participants atthe bidding said was a“stupendous” sum. Now, all wewant to know is this: will mobilephones become cheaper nextyear?

��"$���!� ����The Oriental Hotels Limited hasallocated over 30,000 shares toapplicants collecting what wouldamount to Rs 150 million. Aninvestigation on the entire publicissue reveals many questions thatare still unanswered. Financialanalysts say the July sale ofshares, which was over-subscribedseven times took place withoutcomplete financial disclosures. TheSecurity Exchange Board whichregulates the stock market, says ithas done its best to protectshareholder interest. The issuemanager is also confident the issuehas benefitted both the hotel andthe shareholders. …………..pg 4-5

��!�����������Just as you expected, the NepaliCongress infighting is not over. Itheated up again with dissident SherBahadur Deuba dashing off a stiffstatement accusing the Koiralacamp of not keeping its word on thevexing party membership issue. Allthis, and the cabinet reshuffle, isdistracting the ruling party’sattention from the much moreimportant recent question ofresolving the Maoist issue throughdialogue.

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Page 2: Nepali Times - Digital Himalayahimalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/nepali...Mustangi Raja and the King of Bhutan, seem to wear their crowns with unease. The Mustangi Raja

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Nepali Times is published by Himalmedia Pvt LtdMailing address: GPO Box 7251 Kathmandu NepalEditor: Kunda Dixit Desk editors: Deepak Thapa, Samuel Thomas [email protected], circulation and subscriptions: (01) 543333-7 Fax: (01) [email protected] www.nepalitimes.comPrinted at Jagadamba Press (01) 521393

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government and the new constitution.The two Jigmes in the book, the

Mustangi Raja and the King of Bhutan, seemto wear their crowns with unease. TheMustangi Raja comes across as a simple,likeable man who is comfortable with hisstatus in the “kingdom within a kingdom”.Yet, there are rumblings. Mainly from thebulldozers building a new road from theChinese border to Lo Manthang. He doesn’tlike the road, but has no power to stop it.

Gregson goes to Bhutan twice in searchof the classmate he played tag with and istreated, well, royally. He doesn’t thereforeprobe too deeply into the real reasons for theBhutanese refugee crisis, and lets King Jigmeoff the hook when he is told that theLhotsampas voluntarily left Bhutan attractedby the free food and lodging in the refugeecamps in Jhapa. International observers ofBhutan who like to think King Jigme is beingpushed by hardliners in his fold, and that themonarch himself is a moderate, will find hisstatements a revelation. The king repeats theradical Bhutanese position of blaming Nepalfor the crisis. What is it about Bhutaneseofficials that they can only say how well theircountry is doing by putting Nepal down?Gregson falls into this trap, too, and in hispraise for exclusive $200-a-day tourism,snobbishly trashes Thamel and Nagarkot,glossing over the enormous benefit trekkinghas been as employment generation andincome to the Nepali countryside.

Gregson gives a hint about which sidehis sentiments lie when in the epilogue, heconcludes: “...in certain stages of a country’sdevelopment, a benign king is preferable tothe overhasty adoption of an alreadycorrupted version of democracy.” So, nowwe know: the author is from the “Singaporeschool”. Gregson seems to have done hishomework on recent Nepali history, so heshould have known that we did try the“guided democracy” model for 30 years, andthat didn’t work either. Nepal’s democrati-cally-elected leaders after 1990 havesquandered their own hard-earned freedoms,they have insulted the Nepali people byfrittering away the gains. But it is also truethat many of the roots of abuse were laidduring the Panchayat years. Let’s not blamedemocracy for the misdeeds of venal and self-serving politicians. Unless Gregson is tryingto say that democracy is not good for poorcountries, and is meant only for rich ones inEurope which have had two centuries ofpractice. �

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hen writer Jonathan Gregson wasborn in India, there were fourHimalayan kingdoms: Tibet,

Bhutan, Nepal and Sikkim. And fromchildhood, Gregson had a fascination for thesemountains, a fascination nurtured by theNepali orderlies who talked about home, bysummer holidays in Darjeeling looking out atthe mountains of Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan,and by a boyhood friendship with PrinceJigme Singye Wangchuk at school in Calcutta.

What Gregson has tried to do inKingdoms Beyond the Clouds: Journeys in Searchof the Himalayan Kings is pick up vestiges ofthis allure for all things Himalayan and find achord that runs through them: the god-kingsof the Himalaya. Fifty years later, only two ofthese kingdoms remain: Nepal and Bhutan.The geopolitical might of the region’s twosuperpowers, India and China, had obliteratedSikkim and Tibet. Gregson, meanwhile, hadturned into a travel writer, trotting around theworld doing postcard journalism to fill thepages of papers back home.

Kingdoms Beyond the Clouds is a 500-pagesaga of Gregson’s search for constitutionalmonarchs, shy kings revered as gods by theirsubjects, and the descendants of others whosekingdoms have disappeared. But trackingdown these kings (even his former classmatewho by now is King of Bhutan) and thenpinning them down for interviews, however,seemed as difficult as trying to find the yeti.But here they are: the Dalai Lama, KingBirendra of Nepal, King Jigme SingyeWangchuk of Bhutan, ‘Prince’ Wangchuk,the present ‘Chogyal’ of Sikkim, and last butnot least, the Mustangi Raja Jigme DorjePalbar Bista.

Inevitably, given Gregson’s background asa travel writer, Kingdoms Beyond the Cloudsbelongs to a genre of semi-journalistic trave-logues in the half-way world between seriousresearch and a piece in the travel section ofthe Sunday Independent. Although Gregson isnot as bad as some of the others, we reallycan’t seem to get away from these patronisingparachute essayists who expose theirethnocentrism. For example, how doesdescribing Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and KingBirendra as “looking like Tweedle Dum andTweedle Dee” because they are both dressedin daura suruwal, coat and topi give us anyextra insight into Nepal’s constitutionalmonarchy? But it has to be granted that someof Gregson’s barbs at King Birendra’ssecretaries are richly deserved, and his descrip-tion of their devious obtuseness hits the mark.

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The Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal 2047 (1990) has beencriticised by a vocal minority on all sides of the political spectrum. Theright claims it is against Nepali nationhood because the divinepowers of the king have been curtailed. The left says its ambiguousprovisions are open to manipulation by traditionalists andreactionaries. Extremists ridicule it as a document that compromisedthe real interests of the people after the Jana Andolan.

To be sure, this first decade has been a roller-coaster ride: threeparliaments, ten prime ministers, two local elections, improbablecoalitions, perennial infighting, break-ups of political parties, and atendency to polarise. No wonder some call the system of governmentin Nepal today “constitutional anarchy”.

But there have been achievements: the supremacy of the law wasproven when the Supreme Court restored the second PratinidhiSabha in 1995, even though it had been dissolved earlier on therecommendation of the prime minister. Taking advantage of theunfettered freedom of expression and organisation, there has been atransformation in social activism, media and civil society. Given thepersisting stranglehold of superstition and fatalism in this country(not necessarily confined to the illiterate), this is no mean feat.

Apart from all that, the 1990 Constitution made a dramatic breakfrom the past—it transferred sovereignty from the crown to the people.The symbol of Nepali nationalism and unity is now the Constitution.So what’s so great about that, you may ask. Well, it puts the onus ofbuilding our future on our own shoulders. We can no longer blame iton fate, or callous rulers. If our leaders turn out to be crooks, we havethe power to vote them out.

There is an opportunity to start anew as we prepare to mark thefirst ten years of our constitution. Informal talks were held last weekbetween the Deputy Prime Minister Ram Chandra Paudel, and therepresentative of a group that doesn’t believe in the presentconstitution and has adopted a violent struggle to have it changed.Hopes have been raised that there is now light at the end of this darktunnel. All right-thinking Nepalis in their heart of hearts are convincedthis is the way to go. The sooner the Maoists use the political spaceafforded by the same constitution they revile to enter the mainstream,the better it will be for them and for the Nepali people. But after livingby the bullet, do they have the political will to face the ballot? TheNepali people have such a low opinion of political leaders who haveruled us so far that the Maoists may be pleasantly surprised to win thenext election.

Sceptics have already begun to rubbish the informal talks as aMaoist propaganda ploy. But if they are sincere, and we have PadmaRatna Tuladhar’s word that they are, perhaps they discovered itsusefulness only after the possibility of the army coming under theconstitutionally formed government of the day became imminent.Nepalis now have to show they are mature enough to control theirdestiny. After all, they are in charge.

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OK, everyone, back to work. The fun andgames are over for now. Or, are they? By thelooks of it, we are headed for another four-dayforced holiday, 16-20 November, to protest thefuel price hike. With a work ethic like that, it isa wonder that this country hasn’t completelydisappeared off the face of the earth.

Even at the best of times, official officetime is nine. You saunter in around ten,nobody even notices because none of thecolleague is there to notice; they come in ateleven. Just in time for the first round of teaon the terrace, to reminisce about the Tihar

winnings. Or bitch about local transport: the stinking three-wheelersthat run on kitchen gas, the diesel buses that run on kerosene, theBajaj whose meter gallops faster than a four-wheel taxi, a microbusthat is packed like a sardine can, the high-handiness of transportcartels.

An office is where the Nepali civil servant goes to relax, to get awayfrom the tedium of housework. It all becomes a bit suspicious whensomeone is seen to be actually working these days. Why is he in hisoffice, poring over files? What’s in it for him? Why the motivation. is heon the take? The only honest civil servants these days may be theones out on the terrace having tea. It’s better than working for a living.

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The three chapters in Kingdoms Beyond theClouds that deal with Nepal will be rewarding forNepali readers because of the rare glimpse it givesinto the inner workings of the Royal Palace inKathmandu, and perhaps also into the mind ofthe monarch himself. (See facing page.)

Gregson is intrigued about how KingBirendra, vilified during the Jana Andolan forvacillating on restoring democracy, has now re-earned the respect of the Nepali people. “KingBirendra has reinvented himself as the modelconstitutional monarch,” he writes, “…Whatreally puzzled me was how to reconcile thebenign, ever-smiling monarch I had just met withthe bogeyman depicted in so many accounts ofthe 1990 Revolution.” He goes on to say that bytaking a step back from the political arena, themonarchy is no longer held responsible forNepal’s disorderly transition to democracy. Heconcludes: “Perhaps for these very reasons, (themonarchy) is better loved…the system ofmonarchy is so deeply entrenched that it wouldtake a far greater upheaval than the Jana Andolanto turn most Nepalese into republicans.”

It is about the Jana Andolan itself thatGregson has some unconventional views. Heconcludes that the scale of the uprising wasexaggerated, it was confined to Kathmandu andthat the anti-monarchist turn of the demonstra-tions was not spontaneous but “carefullyorchestrated”. Then he goes on to say thatcompared to most other popular revolutions, “theJana Andolan was a pushover. It was almost tooeasy a victory.” Compared to what, Jonathan,Tiananmen Square? There is really no need tocompare Kathmandu 1990 to Rangoon 1988 orBeijing 1989. By Nepali standards, these wereunprecedented street demonstrations, withunprecedented and seriously escalating violence.It is to King Birendra’s credit that he saw thewriting on the wall and began the process ofconsultations that led to the transitional

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It is a lie that former Kath-mandu district president ofthe Nepali Congress,Prakash Man Singh, did notgive memberships toCongress stalwarts as youclaim in ‘NC readies for partyelection’ (#14). They havenot been excluded at anytime from active member-ship. The reason for thiscontroversy about activemembership has more to dowith the whims and fanciesof the party president whodissolved the democraticallyelected Kathmandu DistrictCommittee and 17 otherdistrict committees on 12April. He knew that these 18committees would notslavishly toe his line at the10th General Convention.

Ram Prasad ShivakotiKathmandu

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Your “Roman Nepali PhoneticGuidelines for emails andchats” (# 11, p.12) is veryconfusing and likely tomislead readers evenmore. You establish ‘aa’ as inpaani = ‘water’, and ‘a’ as inpani = ‘also’, and then go onto transcribe the Nepali wordsfor ‘waterfall’ and ‘garden’ as‘chhahar’ and ‘fulbar’.Secondly, chiso = ‘cold’should be ‘ciso’, andchhahara should be‘chaharaa’. Thirdly, there isno labio-dental [f] in Nepali,and ‘fulbar’ should be‘phulbaari’. Fourthly, thedistinctions you makebetween ‘d, dd’ and ‘dh, ddh’ are not phonetically accurate. The same applies to ‘s, sh,ssh’. These are normallyrepresented as ‘d, D (or small‘d’ with dot under), dh, DH (or

‘dh’ with dot under); s, S (or ‘s’with an acute accent mark)and s (with dot under).

There is a full list ofinternationally acceptedtransliteration symbols for theDevanagari vowels andconsonants used in publica-tions worldwide. I cannotreproduce them here as theemail font does not have thenecessary diacritics. You can,however, refer to Asian andHimalayan Journals likeKailash or Contributions toNepalese Studies for theRoman transliteration sym-bols.

Tej R KansakarDepartment of Linguistics

Tribhuvan University

Dipak Gautam is a bit toohasty in congratulating you onyour Nepali phonetics (“ThankGhew”, Letters #14). If ghew is

pronounced like chew, thenwe’re in trouble because ourfavourite dollop of bad choles-terol will end up being “ghoo”.The correct spelling may haveto be ghiu.

K ShresthaKathmandu

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Artha Beed has a point in hisEconomic Sense (#13) aboutNepal’s “1.6 syndrome” vis-à-visIndia. I would say that 1.50would be a good start to gettingthe ratio down. I’m not aneconomist, but your columnistseems to have done hishomework.

D SharmaKathmandu

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I read “We wanna go toAmerica” (#13) with mixedemotions. Saddened by thefact that the Nepali men in

he king rose from his seat and advanced to shake my hand. He wasdressed in white, the loose shirting and tight cotton trousers orsuruwal worn by most Nepalese men. On his head was a typical

Nepali topi, again mainly with a muted grey-and-pink pattern. His heavy,dark-rimmed spectacles were as in all the official photographs I had seen,but his face was thinner than it had once been and his moustache wastrimmed to a shadow of its former, more luxuriant self. I wondered whetherthe weight loss was connected with the king’s recent heart problems.

I was asked to sit on an upright, white upholstered chair, while KingBirendra returned to his black leather armchair opposite me. The room waslarge and rather impersonal, its furnishings dating from the 1960s or 70swhen Narayanhiti Palace had been refurbished. A leopard skin half-hiddenbeneath a glass-topped table and a pair of elephant tusks above the bookcase were the only hints of oriental exoticism. Otherwise all was plain andfunctional. The king put his hands together in front of him, forming a bridgewith his fingers.

“So what do [sic] want to ask me?” He smiled.And so began a long and broad-ranging conversation, the main theme of

which—whether one liked it or not—was the limitations of what KingBirendra can speak out on in his role as constitutional monarch. Wetouched on many topics: the changing role of monarchy; Nepal’s delicateposition wedged in between India and China, which the king’s ancestorPrithvi Narayan Shah bluntly described as being like “a yam between twoboulders”; Birendra’s own proposals that Nepal and the Himalayan regiongenerally be declared a ‘Zone of Peace’. But every time we seemed to begetting somewhere the trail went cold and we entered an indeterminateregion of possibilities and options, with the king proposing any number ofalternative ways of looking at the question without coming up with any

clear opinions of his own.To begin with I found all this rather baffling. The whole conversation

had an Alice in Wonderland quality to it. For just as it seemed that the kingwas on the point of reaching a firm conclusion, he would introduce twoother points of view; and, like Alice, I was left wondering which hole theWhite Rabbit had run down.

On the other hand, I was left in no doubt that Nepal’s ruling monarchhas an agile mind with a strongly analytical bent—an approach which, likethe slightest trace of an American accent, may well go back to the time hespent at Harvard. As he worked his way around a subject his whole bodyshifted from side to side, as though this would facilitate his acquiring a freshviewpoint on the matter at hand. The large square glasses which he alwayswears swivelled like TV monitors that seemed to focus upon some midpointin the air where he could best conceptualise his latest argument. In hismannerisms he reminded me more of an academic than a power-broker. Andyet I was very much aware that for nearly two decades King Birendra hadexercised close to absolute power over his twenty million subjects.

I must confess to experiencing real difficulties in following some of theking’s arguments. Maybe this is because I am not sufficiently quick-wittedto appreciate all the subtle nuances. Or maybe it is because he has adopteda new rhetoric to fit in with his new position as constitutional monarchwithin a multi-party democracy.

One of the cardinal rules of this ‘palace-speak’ is the avoidance of anystatement that might be construed as an official line on policy, since thiscould be taken as infringing on the domain of the duly elected government.And given how recently the Palace was effectively running the country,locking up pro-democracy leaders and shutting down opposition newspa-pers, it is only natural that the current generation of politicians remainshighly sensitive to anything that smacks of royal intervention in policy-making. The end result is that King Birendra is unable—or unwilling— tomake an unequivocal statement on just about anything. For if he were to doso, he would almost certainly be criticised for acting unconstitutionally.

To give some idea of how palace-speak has evolved during the 1990s,here are some of the king’s formal replies to my questions.

Q. What were your overriding thoughts at the time of your coronation?A. I have always endeavoured to abide by the aspirations of the people

in the best interest and welfare of the nation. Some of my primaryconcerns during that time were consolidating the sovereign integrityof Nepal and safeguarding the liberty of every Nepali whileenhancing their welfare and building the necessary institutions sothat all Nepalese could live in justice, peace, security, happiness andfreedom.

Q. Shortly thereafter you proposed that Nepal and/or the Himalayan regionbecome a Zone of Peace. Do you think the concept still has validity? Orgiven the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region, is it an ideawhose time has now come?

A. There is a wide consensus on the fact that the need toinstitutionalise peace is even greater today than ever before. Therecan, of course, be differences of opinion on how best to go aboutachieving it.

Q. What do you consider the principal benefits conferred by the monarchicalsystem, as opposed to republican or other forms of government?

A. Every nation has to evolve a political system which is best suitedto meet its requirements. In Nepal, the monarch has alwaysbeen guided by popular will and the relationship between themonarchy and the people is traditionally based on mutual trustand confidence in each other.

I could go on, though I doubt one would be any the wiser aboutwhat the King of Nepal actually thinks on such weighty matters. Hisreplies, both formal and informal, more closely resemble an elaboratekind of verbal fencing, the main purpose of which is to avoid making anystatement that could be judged unconstitutional rather than an attemptat a ‘full and frank response’.

That King Birendra does have strongly held views on all these issuesis certain. The role of monarchy, the direction of the country, foreignpolicy issues, the importance of traditional culture— all of these wereexpounded in extenso during the eighteen years he presided over thePanchayat system of government. Then came Jana Andolan and thecountry’s adoption of multi-party democracy. Since then there has beena resounding silence from the Palace. And although, through persistenceand luck, I became the first foreign writer to be granted an audiencewith the king under the new dispensation, I cannot claim to havepenetrated the palace’s in-depth defences whose very purpose is toshield from public scrutiny what are the king’s real views on matters ofpublic interest.

Such self-imposed restraint applies to all constitutional monarchs.Imagine the public outcry in Britain if Queen Elizabeth II were to makeany statement that clearly favoured one political party over another, oreven seemed to endorse a policy other than that approved by the electedgovernment of the day. It is almost unthinkable precisely because Britainhas had a constitutional monarchy for so long. And although leftunwritten, the basic ground-rules of what may or may not be said havebeen observed punctiliously from one generation to the next.

This is not the case in Nepal, where less than a decade has elapsedsince the monarchy stood at the very centre of government. True, the1991 constitution redefines the king’s role with some precision. Butthere has not been sufficient time for its provisions to become acceptednorms, nor for their observance to be taken for granted. And some areasremain rather loosely demarcated. For instance, while I was waiting inKathmandu to see the king a controversy arose over whether the threeroyal appointees to the Upper House could vote as they deemed fit, orwhether they should always support the elected government. Somemembers of the majority Nepal Congress Party went so far as to accusethe Palace of acting unconstitutionally because the royal appointeesvoted against their party.

A residue ot suspicion remains between the Palace and the mainpolitical parties. Sensitivities are such that even the slightest issue mightspark off accusations that the king has exceeded his consitutional role.Which is why the king does not normally talk to the media, and whenhe does is careful to steer clear of any contentious issues. �

(Excerpted from Kingdoms Beyond the Clouds: Journeys inSearch of the Himalayan Kings, Macmillan, London, 2000,£14.99. Available at Mandala Book Point, Kantipath.)

America misled so manyNepali didis and bahinis. But Ialso felt that the article wasbased on a few bad experi-ences. I understand the mainconcern, but can yougeneralise?

Matinavia Internet

After reading “We wannago to America” on your internetedition (#13) I wished you hadtried to balance the story bygetting the US Embassy’sside. That way some of yourvisa-pursuing readers wouldalso learn what it is theconsular section actuallywants out of them before itgives them a visa. Let’s hopethe situation improves.

Deepak KChicago, USA

In “We wanna go to America”Durga Pokhrel has given a true

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picture of what is going on outthere. But she highlighted onlyone part. What about Nepalisliving good, decent lives in theUnited States? And what iswrong with working in aslaughterhouse to affordschool, and living together tobe able to minimise ex-penses? Can she writeanother piece about thestruggle of Nepalis inAmerica?

Pramesh KCvia Internet

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In Happenings (#14) thepicture showing the primeminister arriving at theMillennium Summit and ItsRelevance To Nepal sympo-sium was organised by theUnited Nations Association ofNepal and not as erroneouslystated in the caption.

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wo years ago a newKathmandu hotel issuedshares to raise Rs 160

million. By the time the public issuehad closed it had requests for Rs 260million worth of shares. To accommo-date the rush, Taragaon RegencyHotels Limited retained 20 percentmore shareholders than it had initiallyplanned.

The scramble for shares wasre-enacted this year when OrientalHotels Ltd (which owns theRadisson property in Lazimpat)went public three months ago.Oriental wanted to raise Rs 125million. There was a rush to subscribeand by the end more than 94,000 hadrequested shares. To accommodatethe high demand, Oriental wasallowed to retain 20 percent moremoney than what was initiallyannounced.

But there is a growing group ofaccounting and financial professionals

who question the method in whichthe public issue of the Oriental shareswas handled—particularly theincomplete financial information thatpainted a false picture about the truestate of the business vis-à-vis itsoutstanding loans. Sources blameregulators and the company for notproviding adequate information to thepublic buying the shares.

“The financial information in theprospectus is incomplete, evenprofessional accountants find itdifficult to assess the investment,”a financial analyst told us.

At first it was onlyKathmandu’s close-knit circle ofchartered accountants , financialanalysts and stock dealers who becamesuspicious after uncanny similarities inthe share issues of both the Hyatt andRadisson were noticed:• Both hotels had hired thesame financial consultant, anIndian chartered accountant, toprepare the financial analysis in

their prospectus, which wassketchy and incomplete;

• both hotels hired the same issuemanager and there was a similarinformation flow pattern—wherenews of over-subscription of sharesfound its way to the media withinthe first week of the issue; and

• eventually both hotels managed toretain more capital than what theywanted to raise.After Oriental announced its

public issue, one alert investoreven wrote down his concerns andapproached the SecuritiesExchange Board (SEB) withquestions. The unnamedapplicant was worried that therewas a deliberate attempt to coverup the real face of the business.The applicant had questioned thevaluation of assets, including theRs 170 million worth of sharesallocated to the owners for a propertywhich stands on less than 14 ropanisof land (in comparison, Hyatt’s 150

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ropanis of land and development atChabahil was valued at Rs 220million). In the absence ofchartered engineers to valuateland, valuation has always remainedcontroversial, especially when ithas been used as collateral forbank loans.

Other concerns relate toinadequate financial disclosures inthe prospectus. “In manycountries this would haveimmediately triggered a thoroughinvestigation before the issue wasapproved,” a chartered accountanttold us. “But in Nepal we have thislackadaisical yo Nepal ho attitude.”

But since public money isinvolved, the public has a right tofull financial disclosure. It hasnow emerged that even theregulator, the Securities and ExchangeBoard (SEB) was not satisfied with anotice in the Nepali daily, Kantipur, of19 July, and it promptly askedOriental to correct the disclosure. The

hotel complied, but got away bytaking the unusual step of publishingthe corrected version in a newspaperwith a much lower circulation, NepalSamacharpatra. Potential share buyerswho read only Kantipur were thereforeunaware of the correction.

Four banks, 17 financialcompanies, and the issue manager,NIDC Capital Markets, seem tohave been unconcerned ordecided to look the other wayrather than question whatprofessional accountants now saywere holes in the disclosure andaccounting statements made publicbefore the issue. For instance, theprospectus for buyers came with abalance sheet for a year, without theprofit and loss schedules. It had abalance sheet for 1998-99 showing aprofit of Rs 1.54 million, but withouta profit-loss statement for the sameyear.

We have obtained a copy ofthe hotel’s audited accounts forthe same year and theaccompanying profit-loss accountschedule, showing Rs 1.54 millionas profit. But it does not show anyallocation made for employeebonus, as required by law. Insteadthere is also a note that says:“Since the hotel has come intotrial operation only, provisions forbonus and staff housing have notbeen made.”

Potential investors rarely havetime to pore through complicatedfinancial documents, and anywaymost wouldn’t understand themeven if they did. That is why theyrely and trust the regulators to dotheir homework in vetting aprospectus. By law and also SEBdirectives, the issue manager isexpected to check the books of thecompany it is selling. In Nepal,because the general public is evenmore illiterate about financialstatements, the role of regulatorsbecomes so much more important.But in the case of the Oriental issue,neither the regulator nor the issuemanager seems to have fulfilled theirrole. The SEB approved the prospec-

tus, which highlights on its front coveran “operating profit”, an accountingterminology that tells little aboutactual profitability. The issue manager,NIDC Capital Markets, went aheadwith the issue. What they should haveinsisted on was disclosure of “netprofitability”.

Oriental used a loophole in theCompany Act, which does not specifywhat kind of profit figures should bedisclosed. A financial consultant whohas studied the Oriental issue told us:“Any hotel can have an operatingprofit if you don’t make provisions forinterest and depreciation—the twomajor costs in the industry. If thehotel had indeed made a profit itshould have also paid bonus toemployees.”

Other players in any publicissue are underwriters who arepaid a fee for guaranteeingpurchase of shares not taken bythe public. Oriental advertisedthat its underwriters had“immeasurable trust” in thehotel’s shares. It is unclear whoregulates the underwriters becausethey function under the NepalRastra Bank. Going by the trend,underwriters in Nepal rarely haveto worry about actually having tobuy shares they vouch for. Theyknow all too well that in a countrywhere interest earned on savingshas remained lower than the rateof inflation, the public would notwaste time studying the projectbefore rushing to line up for theshares.

Commercial banks have thecapacity to scrutinise projects butagain they have their own secrecyrules. For many banks, public issue ofshares of borderline projects to whichthey have lent money means there is abetter chance of payment ofinstalments on the interest andprincipal. In fact, the lending terms ofmany banks in Nepal are so stiff thatmost borrowers, including five-starhotels are forced to default. That iswhen they raise public money throughissues, and that is why banks keepmum.

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I read with much interest Dubby Bhagat’s thought-provoking story“Paradise? Lost?” about an international development project in Nepal.Bhagat astutely illustrates that sometimes, development—introduced fromabove and without consultation with local people—can easily haveunintended and even disastrous consequences. Cultural sensitivity requiresone to stop, to pause, and to listen to the knowledge and needs of people.

But there is a danger in generalising too far too fast, and inromanticising “paradises” rife with poverty, malnutrition and suffering. Wemust not forget that a fresh well which relieves women from walking hourseach day for water, can, especially in less scenic spots, transform their livesand those of their families.Fresh water can restore dignity and joy to life,and help prevent dehydration, diarrhoea and disease.

Development can sometimes harm the very environment it was intendedto protect, but that does not mean all development is dangerous. Usuallylack of development is far more dangerous to the poor.

Shashi TharoorDirector of Communications and Special Projects

Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, NewYork

Dubby Bhagat’s piece, “Paradise? Lost?” is interesting, though I don’t agreewith it at all. Right from the title down, there is a presupposition that it issomehow obligatory on the part of the rural poor to keep their environ-ments rustic and undeveloped so that the rest of us can have our quaint andpicturesque “paradises”. It totally ignores the proven fact that that the lifeof “the noble savage” is nasty, brutish and short. This approach polarisessociety into classes: US, who are presumably smart enough to handle thebenefits of basic technology such as piped water and electricity and THEM,who are not. I think this is a very dangerous trap to fall into, particularlywhen you turn television (a disseminator of information, which is indeed thecornerstone of knowledge) as one of the villains.

The article skirts too close for comfort to the attitude of the upper

classes and the clergy throughout history who understood only too well thatknowledge is power and used it to suppress entire populations throughquestionable means like the Spanish Inquisition. At the time whenGoldsmith was lamenting his “Deserted Village” and long before that too,rural folk in Europe were getting disenchanted with their lives of lack andflocking to live in appalling town slums. They were trying to get away fromwhat they perceived as the greater evil of what we romantically call apastoral life, but which was back-breakingly hard work linked to thehideously unsanitary conditions which caused annual epidemics like theBlack Death to rage through Europe.

It is important not to romanticise the terrible lives our rural poor lead.The “error” in both your stories was not that of technology, it was oftechnology being bestowed as a “gift” from a genie (and we all know thatevery such gift has loads of strings attached!), instead of being understoodand evolved by the rural people themselves. For the latter to happen, asustained educational campaign needs to be undertaken, particularly aimedat women in order to empower them, and here TV can be a primaryteaching aid.

The idea can never be to keep people in the Middle Ages while we waxlachrymose about “Paradise Lost”, but to bring them forward into the lightof the new day dawning so that they can gain the benefits without enduringthe stings of the double-bladed sword of technology. If this is not done, it isshame on the US class, because we are perpetuating a repressive stereotype.We deserve no Paradise.

Bunny SuraiyaNew Delhi

Dubby Bhagat’s cautionary tales about the consequences of unreflectiveadoption of new systems and ideas provides an interesting counterweight tomy views. Change cuts both ways. But believers in the system of democracytake as an item of faith that good drives out bad. Where the people have theright to choose, be it among ideas, goods, parties or political systems, theywill, in time, end up choosing well. To believe otherwise reflects a deeppessimism about the human condition.

The catch is “in time”. Development and freedom don’t come over-night. Many Nepalis expected immediate gratification upon the advent ofdemocracy. Now they are realising that Nepal is only at the beginning of a

long, hard road, and that realisationcontributes to the prevailing souropinion on the State of theKingdom.

But that long, hard road willlead in the right direction if thepeople are educated, informed, andfree to choose their leaders—andtheir water pumps.

John ChildKathmandu

Is it sometimes better to just letthings lie, as they are—undis-turbed—while we pause at theimplications of what we are aboutto do?

This is by no means an easychoice. Philosophically, the Gitatells us that the more things appear

to change the more constant they are. But in the real world of developmenteconomics, the limited choice is really one of catching up with the Jones’.The alternative is continued deprivation. Many would argue that notknowing how the Jones’ live is in fact a blessing in disguise. Unfortunately,television denies us this luxury. The rapid shrinkage of global space throughthe communication revolution has ensured that all of us know what goodliving is all about. Materialism and demand for more and more has becomethe order of the day. Change is seen as being synonymous with living likethe Jones’ and thus, a better life.

A lot of the old and the traditional will become extinct like the cheetahand the dodo. Television ensures that globalisation cannot be held backbecause change is the essence of life and everyone wants a ‘better’ life. Moremoney, bigger houses, acidity and ulcers.

Do tell us: can we have change if we must but along with continuity. Orare they incompatible?

Amit DasguptaKathmandu

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soaltee ad

That thinking is reflected on page24 of the 6th annual report of theEverest Bank Ltd, one of the eightbanks in the consortium that put upRs 770 million (as reported in theprospectus) into Oriental. The Bankreported an income of Rs 6.37 millionfrom the hotel as interest even thoughthe payment had not been made. Itadded that the interest income wasshown because the hotel had given itsword in writing that the money wouldbe paid after the share allocations weremade.

The present status of theloans remains unclear, and apartfrom overdue interest payments,the prospectus does not tell howmuch of the Rs 770 million loansis capitalised interest (which isinterest that is merged with theprincipal and which indicates thata company is not meeting interestpayment commitments). Only theauditors of the hotel and itsfinancial consultants may be able

to explain these highly technicalaccounting questions. Butsomeone will have to ask them onbehalf of the investors.

By the end of the week of 25July, when Oriental Hotelsopened the public issue, the presswas already reporting breathlesslyon how it had been oversub-scribed many times over. Onlythose that were counting thechange—in this case the issuemanager—could have had thatinformation. Yet, the informationfound its way to the mediadespite a written directive fromthe SEB against that, and theissue manager, NIDC Capital Markets, admits providing the presswith tentative estimates of thecapital subscribed “in the name oftransparency”.

One early news report said75,000 applicants had requestedshares worth Rs 860 million.Word of the over-subscription

soon spread and many whoremained undecided joined thebandwagon. By the time the issueclosed, there were a total of95,708 investors were ready toinvest Rs 942 million in Oriental.The hotel then went back to theregulator seeking permission toretain 100 percent of the over-subscription—with a recommen-dation from the issue manager.The regulator refused totalretention, but it did allowOriental to keep an additional 20percent.

Now the hotel is richer by Rs150 million in cash, but anincrease in shareholder numbersmeans that future profits will nowhave to be distributed to a largerpool of shareholders. The hotelalso did not point out in theprospectus that it could exercisethe option to retain more moneyby accommodating more share-holders.

A notice on the new alloca-tions was published in NepalSamacharpatra on 13 October.The notice details the new capitalstructure and changes made in thecomposition of the board ofdirectors to take into account thenew changes. But all of thathappened only after the 94,000people had applied for the shares.

We asked Damber Dhungel,chairman of SEB, what was goingon and he told us that his officehad made all efforts to safeguardshareholder interest. He expressedhelplessness saying, there’s verylittle a regulator can do when somany financial institutions,including banks that invest inprojects, screen and even under-write the issues. “We felt thedisclosure was inadequate so we

asked it to make more informa-tion available,” Dhungel said.“We don’t have adequateintermediate mechanisms topunish anyone for non-compliancewith our directives, and sosometimes implementationsuffers.”

Clearly, the regulator hasproblems implementing the law,but that is little consolation tothe retail investors among thepublic who may be surprised howlong they may have to wait fortheir money to start yieldingreturns. Dhungel also told us thatit was his office that had askedthe hotel to add footnotes to itsbalance sheet to clarify itsprofitability.

We tried to talk to Oriental’sfinancial consultant about theshare issue but he asked us to talkto NIDC Capital Markets. Therewe were told that the detailedfootnotes in the prospectusprovided perhaps more informa-tion than any issue the companyhas handled. “Oriental may be theonly company that has detailedwhat made its operating profit,”says Sunanda B. Shrestha,manager, merchant bankingdepartment, NIDC CapitalMarkets.

“As far as scrutinisingaccounts is concerned, we areforced to rely on assessmentsmade by banks and other financialinstitutions.” We worked on theOriental issue for about a year,Shrestha says, adding, althougheverything may not be perfect, noeffort has been spared to ensurethat both the shareholders andthe hotel get the best deal. Somebelieve at least the latter half ofthis is true. �

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����&�������+�������+The new chief of police, Pradeep Sumsher Rana, has admitted tothe Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that his organisation hadmade a “mistake” in an agreement with the Indian Oil Company(IOC) for the exclusive supply of branded lubricants to the policeforce. The products are sold through a gas station (standingbeside the main entrance to the police headquarters and whichwas constructed by the IOC as part of the agreement) managedby the Police Welfare Fund (PWF), a charity for former policemen.

The PAC had summoned the police chief to answer questionsrelated to the agreement that is valid for 15 years. Members of thePAC subcommittee looking into the deal—MPs Prakash ChandraLohani (RPP), NP Saud (NC) and Krishna Lal Maharjan (UML)—say that the PWF has already begun implementing the agree-ment, which gives the IOC the right to accept or reject anyamendment. According to them, the IOC, which is both a party tothe agreement and the final arbiter in the case of any dispute, maynot be amenable to any changes suggested retroactively by thePWF. They also pointed out another faulty clause in the agree-ment which lays out that the Nepal Police and the PWF would payfor the supplies.

The police has been maintaining that the PWF is anorganisation independent of the police. But PAC members differarguing that its office bearers are ex-officio high-ranking policeofficials, instead of being elected under a separate constitution asis the case with NGOs.

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���������������.���The PAC, which is also investigating a recent lease agreementbetween the Royal Nepal Airlines Corporation (RNAC) andAustria’s Lauda Air, has decided to summon the Minister forCulture, Tourism and Civil Aviation to a hearing next week.

Executive Chairman of RNAC Hari Bhakta Shrestha andseveral high officials of the ministry took to the stand to explain theleasing process done through a quotation and negotiationsrather than open bidding. Royal Nepal has agreed to lease a 12-year-old aircraft from the charter airline. The officials told thecommittee that the council of ministers had approved the decisionand that RNAC had already sent $1 million to Lauda Air to lock thedeal. Shrestha added that RNAC had gone for direct negotiationsafter failing to lease aircraft through open bidding, which hasalways been controversial. PAC will continue the hearing nextweek.

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��#�������&����������������The truce brokered between the warring sides in the rulingCongress Party has begun to unravel. The two factions are backwith what has become their favourite pastime: accusations andcounter-accusations. Now it is the election committee formed tohold party polls at the next convention. A dissenting minority in thecommittee suspect that the membership lists prepared by theparty could be faulty and has begun asking that the list bescrutinised by the committee before sending it to the districts.Defeated by majority vote in the committee, which said that thatwas beyond their authority, two members representing theBhattarai camp, Bimalendra Nidhi and Gyanendra Bahadur Karki,went to the press.

Adding fuel to the fire came the resignation of Hari NathBastola a member of the active membership investigationcommittee. Bastola accused the committee of not following thedecisions of the central working committee (CWC) and theexisting rules while preparing the membership list. The listcomprises of over 105,000 NC members who will elect delegatesto the 10th party Convention to be held in February in Pokhara.

On 1 November four prominent dissidents, Sher BahadurDeuba, Chiranjivi Wagle, Khum Bahadur Khadka and BijayGachhedar, took up the case of Nidhi, Karki and Bastola tocastigate the Koirala camp for not abiding by the CWC’s decision,and called on their supporters to rally against the “impendingdivision of the party”.

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����!�����!�/�$��Chandra Kumar Rai and Jivan Thapa, two Nepalis serving life-sentences at Bangkwang Central Prison in Thailand, continue tolanguish in jail denied of the basic facilities allowed to foreignersin Thai prisons. The two were convicted about eight years ago oncharges of drug trafficking, for which they have pleaded not guilty(see Nepali Times # 9, 13-19 September).

Their request for just treatment and application for royalpardons and transfer to Nepal has fallen on deaf ears in bothNepal and Thailand. “We are denied the right to choose whetherwe want to work instead we are forced into labour. We are noteven given the rations that foreigners are entitled to,” wrote JivanThapa in a letter posted to Nepali Times with the help of prisonvolunteers.

We also received copies of handwritten letters the two havesent to people of rank in Nepal. These include Foreign MinisterChakra Prasad Bastola, Permanent Representative of Nepal atthe United Nations, Murari Raj Sharma, and the general secretaryof the main opposition CPN(UML), Madhav Kumar Nepal (allthree applications are dated 5 October 2000). They have alsosought help from two Nepali human rights organisations, but theyhave received no response so far.

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Maoist Problem Solving...High-Level...Recommendation CommitteeHimal Khabarpatrika, 1-15 November

When the army had been mobilised to disarm the Khampas (in 1972), the entire area had been declared a military zone, and allsecurity agencies were under the army. The administration also worked with the army. (That is why despite)...reports of armymobilisation in some districts today, we cannot in truth call it mobilisation of the army.

—Sachit Sumsher Rana, former Commander in Chief of the Royal Nepal Army, in Jana Astha, 25 October.

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The politburo of the Communist Party ofNepal (Maoist) has called for a dialoguesaying that only dialogue can resolve thegrave problems faced by the people.Comrade Prachanda had called for adialogue immediately after the successfulattack in Dolpo. As a response, thegovernment tried to build a consensus onhow to deal with the “People’s War”through a forum convened by the Speakerof the House of Representatives. To keephis corrupt government in power and tosuppress the just protest of the people, theprime minister is even prepared tomobilise the army. To some extent thishas failed to materialise. All parties (exceptthe Girija faction) are in favour of dialogueas was made public at the all-partymeeting convened by Sher BahadurDeuba. All parties and people havestrongly opposed the stand taken by thePM which shows that the PM has lost themoral authority to continue in power. Thegovernment is clearly in a minority. Thegovernment which had a policy ofexcluding and finishing off the Maoists isnow isolated. In spite of this, thegovernment, true to its reactionarycharacter, is now preparing for civil war.The government thinks it will be able tosolve all domestic and internationalproblems of the country by mobilising the

handed over to the new generation. It wasin this belief that I contested for the post ofparty president at the 9th convention. Ibelieve that Koirala’s leadership has alreadybeen tested and another five years havepassed. Now we are preparing for the villageconvention. After the village and townconventions, the regional conventions willbe held, which will be followed by thedistrict conventions. Only then will thenational convention be held. To talk aboutleadership issues at that time would beideal.

Q: Isn’t your demand of handing power to thenew generation going to create problems for youin the cabinet reshuffle that is going to takeplace soon?A: I am not going to be in any difficulty. Idon’t know if it is going to be a problem forothers. In the working committee meetingheld last Sunday, an agreement was reachedamong us. Now the implementation of thatagreement is the most important issue.There should not have been such a big hueand cry over the names of the partyworkers. This sort of problem never occursin any other party, only in the NepaliCongress.

Q: What is the next issue after this? Earlier the

issue of free and fair elections at the conventionhad cropped up and you had asked for aseparate system.

A: For this an election committee has beenformed. The meeting of the workingcommittee discussed this too. A five-member election committee has beenformed, with two representatives from ourside and two from the opposing side. The5th person is Mukunda Regmi, who isneutral and is the chief of the party electioncommission. That the commission will takecare of all issues regarding the election hasbeen agreed to at the meeting. But the issueof party members is likely to crop up andthe issue of representatives and observers isalso important. For this, my friends and Ihad asked that these be resolved as per theregulations of the party. Representatives andobservers will be sent only after a consensushas been reached. After this, the possibilityof having fair elections is very high.

Q: You were a candidate for party presidentearlier. Were there irregularities then?Otherwise why are you raising the question offree and fair elections?A: Everyone learns from history. I don’twant to get into how the elections wereheld earlier. The present central committeehas dissolved 16 or 17 district committees.Many of the district committee presidentshad voted for me at the 9th convention. Allof them have been removed. This shows

that the central committee wants peoplewho would toe their line. This is why wedoubt the fairness of this election. Thecontroversy over the party grassrootsmembers has raised further doubts. That iswhy we have raised the issue of fairness ofthe elections. The party president has toguarantee that the elections will be fair. Wehave established multiparty democracy, vitalto which are free and fair elections. We haveestablished the system of free and fairelections in the country and this has to befollowed in the different parties too. Wewant a system of free and fair election notonly in the Congress but also in all politicalparties of the country.

Q: Why are you holding your convention whenmurder and loot are taking place in parts of thecountry? Why don’t you take steps to solve theMaoist problem before the convention?A: The responsibility to solve this problemlies with all of us. The ruling party and theopposition are responsible. But the greaterresponsibility lies with the government inpower. Yesterday Bhattarai was ingovernment and the responsibility was ours,today Koirala is in government and theresponsibility lies with him.

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����������������������Ghatana Ra Bichar, 1 November

Dinesh Sharma, the Maoist leader who hasbeen in police custody for some time now, isalive, says a home ministry source. TheMaoists have been demanding that thegovernment declare his whereabouts.Another Maoist leader, Matrika Yadav, is inpolice custody too but the whereabouts ofthe wife of Dinesh Sharma, Kamala, andothers like Milan Nepali, Dandapadhi is stillnot known. It has been assumed that theywere killed when Govind Raj Joshi washome minister. The rebels have alwaysdemanded that Dinesh Sharma be released.Sharma, who was earlier the chief of theTrade Union Federation, is now a memberof the central committee of the CPN(Maoist). People feel that the capture ofSharma and Yadav has not affected theactivities of the Maoists in any way. Politicalanalysts have felt that if the release of thetwo is going to bring the Maoists to thenegotiating table and stop the massacrestaking place now, then it would make senseto release them immediately.

THIS PAGE CONTAINS MATERIAL SELECTED FROM THE NEPALI-LANGUAGE PRESS.

army and starting a civil war. The fascistgroup in the Congress was sidelined at theall-party meeting.

The government media which is run onthe hard earned money of the people andsome private papers close to the fascistgovernment have been spreading therumour that it was only after thegovernment decided to mobilise the armythat the Maoists agreed to a dialogue. Theysaid that the Maoists were frightened by themobilisation of the army, which actually is avery base remark and one that amounts tolying to the people. The truth is thatComrade Prachanda had called for dialogueimmediately after the Dolpo incident. Thatwas when the Girija camp beganexpounding its “new principle” that theMaoists were scared. That it was thegovernment that was scared and imploredfor help from the palace and the army issomething that cannot be hidden if onewanted to.

What is the reason for the Maoists topropose talks? The answer is realisation oftheir responsibility towards the people.What do the Maoists think about war?Responding to a question of an Americanreporter, Mao had once stated, “As far aswe are concerned, we do not want to fightfor a single day, but if circumstances forceus, we will fight till the decisive hour.”

The CPN (Maoist) has from thebeginning advocated peaceful means toresolve the problems of the country andpeople. Again after the Dolpo incident,Comrade Prachanda, in the belief thatlogical thinking and rationality wouldprevail in the government, had proposedtalks. To consider this offer as a sign ofweakness of the Maoists is nothing new tosome sections of the PM’s supporters.Whether the country heads into civil war ornot will depend on whether the governmenttakes or rejects the advice of such idiots.

If to suppress the people’s voice thePM uses the army, people with even theleast humane and religious sentiments willtake notice. If the army is mobilised, thecivil war that will follow will result in athousands repeats of the Khara incident(where the police is said to have torched anentire village). Everyone knows this. But isit justifiable to sacrifice thousands of humanlive to save the necks of his corruptcolleagues and his ‘corruptocracy’ (notdemocracy)? The Maoists have called fordialogue to avoid such severe consequences.Is it justifiable to call this a sign ofweakness or fear? The government may seebenefits that can accrue from a civil war.They know that maximum kickbacks canbe got on weapons purchases. It will also beeasier for them to suppress the revolt in the

Congress and to control the opposition bydeclaring army rule. Even foreign powersmay be backing the fascist government torun down the Maoists. But the fact is thatdialogue seems to be the best way throughwhich the country’s problem can beresolved and a civil war can be averted.

In such a situation can a civil war beavoided? Before fighting the fascist powersin his country in 1945, Mao had said, “If allpeople become united and increase theirstrength, a civil war can be avoided.” Forthese very reasons, the Maoists have calledfor the formation of a ComprehensiveUnited Front without any preconditions tofight the fascist government and weregetting positive feedback on that call.

The government itself is helping to formthis Front to a great extent. By increasingthe price of petroleum products recently,the government has made enemies of thepeople and the opposition and encouragedthem to revolt. By destroying the agreementreached between the government and thenine left parties, the RPP, the UML and theNSP, the government has pushed all theseparties toward the Front. Some MPs closeto the PM have labelled Deuba a Maoist, sopeople from the Bhattarai-Deuba camp willalso be inclined toward the coalition.

Chiang Kai-Shek had once said thatMao should be thanked for helping theChinese villages to develop. Mao had saidthat Chiang Kai-Shek should actually bethanked for oppressing the communists inthe city and driving them to the villages and

indirectly helping to establish base areasin the villages. In the same way, the PMhas pushed them closer to such a Front.

The CPN (Maoist) has said that thepresent government cannot be trusted.Why is this so? The PM has violated allagreements he has made with all politicalparties. He has broke agreements reachedwith the Bhattarai-Deuba camp. He hasnot been keeping his word. Therefore hehas lost the trust of everyone.

Another reason is that thegovernment alone cannot resolve theproblems faced by the people and thecountry. For all problems to be solved,the Maoists believe, dialogue must beheld with all parties. All political partieshave started taking positive steps towardsthis.

Even in such circumstances thegovernment has not taken any steps tobuild an environment conducive to talks.Even Deuba said that the whereabouts ofDinesh Sharma and other Maoists incustody should be made public, but noaction has been taken on this front.While a dialogue between Deuba andMaoists has been taken positively by allpeople, a certain section of the fascistCongress still thinks it is a conspiracy.This is all because of their lust for power.

(The author, a central committee member ofthe CPN-Maoist, held talks with DeputyPrime Minister Ram Chandra Poudel on27 October.)

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���� ������ ���!�"������#Nepal Samacharpatra, 1 November

The Energy Research Centre of theInstitute of Engineering organised adiscussion on the implications of the recentchanges in fuel prices in which expertswarned of severe consequences on theeconomy.

Director of Nepal Lube Oil Ltd, AmritNakarmi presented a 20-year data series onprices of petroleum products in Nepal,arguing that the Nepal Oil Corporation(NOC) stood to earn a profit of Rs 520million a year even if it sold kerosene at Rs19 per litre (instead of the present rate of Rs26). Nakarmi, a former general manager ofthe NOC, argued that petroleum priceswere raised due to NOC’s inability to takeprecautionary measures becauseinternational prices were already headedupwards in late February 1999. “Thepresent crisis could have been prevented ifthe NOC had carefully studied the marketand prepared long-term plans for domesticconsumers accordingly,” he says.

Nepal’s annual per capita consumptionof petroleum products is 35 kg, comparedto the US’s 3,170 kg, Canada’s 2,835 kg,Japan’s 2185 kg and India’s 82 kg. In Nepal

the sale of petroleum product has beenincreasing by 12.41 percent each year. Butmost of Nepal’s energy is obtained fromtraditional sources—88 percent fromfirewood, nine percent from petroleumproducts, two percent from coal, and onepercent from hydroelectricity. Nakarmiadded that only the mechanisms of a freemarket could correct the inefficiencies ofthe NOC, and lead to more realistic prices.

At the same meeting, Deputy Directorof NOC Rudra Bahadur Khadka clarifiedthat the corporation cannot always fix pricesbased on the market situation only, addingthat the government decision to subsidisefive litres of kerosene per family per monthwould lead to annual losses to the tune ofRs 2.4 billion.

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(���� �� �&������&"%Budhabar, 25 October(Excerpts from an interview with ChiranjibiWagle, Nepali Congress dissident leader.)

Q: You contested against Koirala for partyleadership at the 9th party convention. How areyou preparing for the forthcoming 10thconvention?A: I believe that the leadership should be

� �����������)���������� �'��'����Rabindra Shrestha in Kantipur, 19 October

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he government’s recent decision towithhold registration of newpassenger vehicles for the

Kathmandu core city area may have madeenvironmental activists happy, anddisturbed operators, manufacturers andadvocates of electric vehicles, but it remainsto be seen how it will affect the transportsituation in the capital.

The decision followed a governmenttaskforce report that the number of motorvehicles plying in the capital has alreadycrossed the bearing capacity of the roadshere. According to the report, if all the248,000 vehicles registered in the valleywere to come out on the valley’s 740 km ofmotorable roads, Kathmandu’s traffic wouldcome to a standstill. The report recom-mends that no new passenger vehicles beregistered until Kathmandu’s trafficmanagement is considerably improved.

“We will soon formulate a policy thatwill allow only environmentally friendlyvehicles to ply in Kathmandu, we alsorecommend development of a mass transitsystem,” says Director General of theDepartment of Transport Management,Krishna Murari Sharma, who was also amember of the taskforce.

This is not the first time that “environ-ment-friendly vehicles” and a “mass transitsystem” have been advocated forKathmandu. Back in 1996, the NationalPlanning Commission (NPC) had made thesame suggestion. The following years sawthe government offer import tax cuts andVAT (value added tax) relief to entrepre-neurs who wanted to operate non-dieseland non-petrol vehicles. At the same time,rather than follow the NPC recommenda-tion that a mass transit system be devel-oped, the official policy encouraged smallvehicles like low-capacity micro-buses and

electric and LPG (liquefied petroleum gas)three-wheelers (tempos).

The number of commuters inKathmandu has been rising by an estimated7.2 percent every year, and an uncheckedinflux of a large number of small capacityvehicles could lead to more traffic head-aches. That was one reason why the NPChad suggested the gradual phasing out ofsix-seater tempos (which, in 1991, made upmore than half of the 12,386 daily servicetrips in the valley) which would drop thetraffic volume by 53 percent. Presently, 12-seater electric and LPG tempos andmicrobuses have replaced most of the six-seaters, but their effect on public transporthas not been studied.

The 1996 NPC report stated thatefficient transport management was thesolution to the city’s traffic problems. Its‘origin-destination’ survey of total tripsmade by public transport on various routes

showed that traffic delay caused by badmanagement ranged from 21 hours to 299hours per day. Increasing the efficiency oftraffic flow by 33 percent could haveaccommodated the annual growth ofcommuters up to 2001 without anysignificant increase in the 238,063 vehiclesregistered till that year.

Both the NPC and the taskforce reportsstress the need to encourage more ‘clean’vehicles, but as the idea is to develop a masstransit system, the battery-operated three-wheelers are not even considered. “We arecapable of manufacturing four-wheeled largecapacity electric vehicles of 20-22 seatcapacity,” claims Ashok Pandey, generalmanager of Nepal Electric Vehicle Industry(NEVI). “But first the government has tocome up with a favourable policy.”

Under present rules, only manufacturersof electric tempos (popularly known as safatempos) are provided tax cuts on importedparts. But they say that the government’spolicy of waiving VAT for electric and LPGtempo imports is hampering the Nepalitempo industry. Presently, there are fiveelectric tempo manufacturers in the countryand they produce two tempos per day on anaverage. But since they depend on VATpayable imported parts like chassis andbatteries, they do not have the priceadvantage over the electric or gas tempos,

�� ������� � by DANIEL LAK

riends from India, Singaporeand other beehives ofindustry and workaholism

often remark on how little I seemto do these days. I tell them thatI’m a great believer in observingthe pace set by society. And inNepal, we move, amble perhaps,at our own pace—a very sensibleone. Take the past month offestivals and holidays and pujas. Ihad a wonderful time, again aspart of an exercise in being intune with local sensitivities. Ilearnt this the hard way.

A few years ago I rang acolleague in Kathmandu, grandlyannouncing that I was arrivingthe following week with mycamera crew and I needed a list of

things done in preparation for myvisit. My colleague laughed andsaid it was impossible. “Nothingis impossible, let’s get cracking,”was my somewhat tart rejoinder.“But Dasain is next week, thenDeepawali, then Bhai Tika andwe take about a month off toobserve all the festivals. Thegovernment does too, so your listof interviewees will all be toobusy, having too much fun, to seeyou.” I sputtered in outrage.“But, but, don’t they know whowe are (we were giants ofinternational television journal-ism, or so we thought)? Theycan’t just take all that time off.We have identified a time tocover Nepal, and that’s it.” My

�����������What’s the point, I ask myself,staring out my office window atthe Ganesh Himal. Well, for onething, to avoid being devoured byall those who have a differentoutlook on time.

Those without it don’t steal itfrom others; they try to deny thetime-rich the opportunity toenjoy their wealth. And theyusually succeed. Take theexample of Ladakh, an outpost ofJammu and Kashmir in India.Like Mustang, it’s a proudenclave of Tibetan Buddhismprotected by soaring mountainsthat only the hardiest of tradersand explorers ever passedthrough. The arid landscape ispockmarked with oases of greenaround the mighty Indus riverwhere intricate and ancientirrigation canals water the paddyand barley crops. Visit Ladakh insummer and people toil as ifthey’re driven by demons. Comeback in winter, and it’s differentstory.

The cold season in Ladakh isone long party, punctuated withperiods of contemplative silence,with plenty of afternoon naps.People do nothing for weeks at atime and they enjoy themselvesimmensely. Their larders are full,there’s chchang brewing in the

bowl and thetoil of summeris a distantmemory. Evennow, withLadakhpromotingyear-roundtourism and cybercafes springingup everywhere, people still relishtheir long winters of nothing todo but enjoy life’s passage. AndBiharis do the labouring,Kashmiris run the shops andhotels and the Ladakhisincreasingly become spectators intheir own land. It’s tragic andinevitable. Someone should dosomething to stop it, but ofcourse no one will. They’re alleither too busy doing somethingelse, or doing nothing at all. Butthat’s not exactly true. Ladakh isgoing through yet another bout ofanti-outsider violence that doeslittle but make things worse forthe very people it’s trying to help.

Sad thoughts to end a lovelyfestival season, but in the end Isuppose I’m trying to urge myselfto get back to work and startusing up some of this time on myhands. if only some dotcom whizkid somewhere would come upwith a way to sell time on a website.... �

One long party in Ladakh

��������������which are imported with only 1 percentimport tax, but do not pay VAT. Thetempo companies have applied for licencesto manufacture chassises in the country, buthave so far been denied permission on thegrounds that the government lacks policies.

Safa tempo entrepreneurs have alsoshown willingness to reduce their rates oncethe government agrees to provide subsidieson the purchase of batteries and inelectricity tariff. The Clean LocomotiveEntrepreneurs’ Federation of Nepal (CLEFN)recently announced a cut in electric tempofares on some routes, and has promisedreductions on other routes “soon”.

“The government should treat usdifferently because we are environmentallyfriendly and we do not depend on fossil fuelsthat are a drain on the national coffer.Instead the government earns Rs 30 millionannually from us,” says Devi Prasad Limbu,CLEFN president. He said that for acountry that is going to see an electricitysurplus by the second half of next year,electric vehicles are the only answer to citytransport.

All the general public can do is wait andsee what kind of policy the governmentcomes up with when the government finallyopens new registrations, and, moreimportantly, if it makes public transport anybetter. �

����������������������������������������������������������� �!��"���#��$�!�����#�%�!"!����%����%���#���&�������������� ����$ ������������$���� �����$#�'�����������������������&

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colleague’s gentle but unbendinginsistence that I was doomed tofail if I insisted on my schedulewon out in the end. I came later,at Nepal’s convenience and had avery nice trip indeed. Productivetoo.

There are quite simply toomany demands made on our

limited time in this cyber-driven,obsessive web-based world we livein. In other parts of the world,people are rich in material goods,technology and the latest ofeverything, but they have no time.No time for reflection,contemplation, medication,vegetation or an afternoon nap.

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Page 8: Nepali Times - Digital Himalayahimalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/nepali...Mustangi Raja and the King of Bhutan, seem to wear their crowns with unease. The Mustangi Raja

������������� 3 - 9 NOVEMBER 2000 ����������

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[email protected]

6 months 1 year

SAARC countries US$25 US$48

Other countries US$40 US$75

�����������������

Market is excessively liquid and it is expected that theaverage rate of 91 day T/bill will come under severepressure due to aggressive bidding by government banks.Maturity of T. Bills bought by banks in the secondary marketwill also put additional pressure on the rate. Expected rangefor coming weeks 5.0 to 5.25.

AG/USD CURRENT * WK/AGO %CHG

OIL(Barrel ) 32.70 33.38 - 2.08

GOLD(Ounce) 272.80 276.75 - 1.43

GOLD ( NPR *) 7150 7150 + 0.00

EUR 0.8675 0.9004 - 3.65

GBP 1.4190 1.4619 - 2.93

JPY 106.23 105.85 + 0.36

CHF 1.7804 1.7240 + 3.27

AUD 0.5575 0.5763 - 3.26

INR 45.59 45.71 - 0.26

*Currency bid prices at 12.45 p.m. on 11/9 - Source Reuters

CURRENCY UPDATE

NEPALI RUPEE CURRENT% PREVIOUS%

Call Money Avg. 5.25 5.10

84 Days t/bill 5.00 5.10

91 Days t/bill 5.21 5.32

365 Days t/bill 6.18 6.16

Repo rate 5.80 5.80

INTEREST RATE UPDATE

USD EUR GBP JPY CHF

LENDING 9.50 6.25 6.00 1.50 5.25

LIBOR (1M) 6.62 4.70 6.07 0.40 3.35

FOREIGN CURRENCY : Interest rates

BANK RATES(DEPO/LENDING) Mkt Hi/Lo Mkt Avg

S/A NPR 6.0/3.5 5.30

F/D 1 YR 7.5/6.0 6.81

OVERDRAFT 15.5/12.5 13.54

TERM LOAN 14.5/13.0 13.49

IMPORT LN 13.0/10.5 11.52

EXPORT LN 13.0/10.0 10.96

MISC LOAN 17.5/13.5 15.13

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Currencies : The US dollar enjoyed broader gains againstmost of the currencies, climbing to multiyear peaks againststerling, Euro and Swiss France. The Euro fell to its lowest inits 20 month life as sentiments turned increasingly sour overthe single currency's prospect amid conflicting commentsfrom ECB officials. The British pound tumbled to seven-yearlows from the effect of the Euro's steep decline, along withexpectation that U.K. interest rates had topped out. The dollarstabilized against the Yen after falling initially on news thatJapan's April-June gross domestic product grew 1.0 pct fromprevious quarter, slightly exceeding expectations for 0.7 pctgrowth.

INDIAN RUPEE OUTLOOK : The Indian rupee traded firm lastweek as market sentiment on rupee is slightly positivefollowing the OPEC decision and bunched dollar inflows. Therupee is now a little over one percent higher than its lifetimelow of 40.08 hit on August 11. However, it is 4.7 percentweaker than its January level. Foreign exchange reservesrose by $ 17 million to $ 35.619 billion in the week toSeptember after eight successive weeks of declines.

������ �� � by ARTHA BEED

Oil : OPEC ministers on Sunday agreed to raise oil supplyby 800,000 barrels daily in a bid to tame runaway crudeprices and avert a consumer scare over fuel bills.

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��������������� !"�����Competition is brewing up for the Rastriya Beema Sansthan and the National Life andGeneral Insurance Company, the two companies that have so far monopolised the lifeinsurance market in Nepal. The Insurance Board has received applications from fourorganisations seeking permission to set up life insurance companies. These four arebesides the American Life Insurance Company (ALICO), which has already been giventhe go-ahead to open a Nepal branch. (Its entry has, however, been delayed due to a casefiled by a group of Nepali lawyers with the Supreme Court arguing that ALICO is not aNepali company.)

The four new applicants are Nepal Life Insurance Company Ltd, Laxmi Life InsuranceCompany Ltd, Kantipur Life Insurance Company Ltd and Global Life Insurance CompanyLtd. Among them, Nepal Life Insurance has already been approved for licensing.

Nepal’s insurance market is growing by about Rs 40-50 million annually, says LabaRaj Sharma, chairman of the Insurance Board. A study conducted by the Board showsthat there is room for five more companies to join the life insurance business apart fromthe two already operating. Nepal has an eligible but uninsured population of about 11.7million people, of whom less than two percent of the eligible population is insured.

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�������� ������ �� �� ��� ��� �������Overall tourist arrivals by air declined by 12.7 percent in the first nine months of this yearcompared to the corresponding period in 1999. According to the Nepal Tourism Board,the number of tourists flying into the country till the end of September was 250,957, whileit was 287,768 last year. The decrease came about largely due to Indian tourists whostayed away in large numbers in the aftermath of the December 1999 hijacking of anIndian Airlines flight from Kathmandu. But present trends are encouraging. After slumpingby 54 percent in January, Indian tourist arrivals increased by almost by almost 38 percent-age points in June, when Indian Airlines began flying to Nepal again. The largest numberof Indians (14,902) came in June, though this figure was much higher in June 1999.Meanwhile, there has been a steady improvement in the number of tourists from coun-tries other than India, though the figures for September are still about seven percent lessthan the numbers last year.

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� � ��������"��Shoichiro Toyoda, a confirmed Nepalophile and the honorary chairman of Japan’s ToyotaMotor Corporation, arrived in Kathmandu Wednesday for a three-day visit during which heis expected to visit some of Nepal’s best-known tourism destinations.

Toyoda, who flew into Kathmandu in a private jet, will be visiting Pokhara and Lumbiniin addition to stops at Tukuche and Ghandruk on the Annapurna circuit, and a brief stop atLangtang. Toyoda is also scheduled to meet Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala.Toyoda, who had joined the Toyota Motor Company in 1952, became its chairman in1992. He has been the company’s honorary chairman since June 1999. He is alsopresident of the Vehicle Road and Traffic Intelligence Society, Chairman of the FiscalSystem Council (of the Finance Ministry) and Chairman of Japan’s Economic Council theEconomic Planning Agency, among others. Toyoda flew in from Hamburg in his private jetand is flying back to Italy, spending an estimated Rs 8 million during his stopover inNepal. Toyota's net worth is $ 45 billion and its research and development budget aloneis equivalent to 60 years of Nepal's budget. There are said to be 60 Japanese and Asianbusiness leaders in Kathmandu this week to meet Toyoda while he is here.

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#��$ ����������!���%��$&��Hong Kong’s Dragon Air resumed flights to Kathmandu on 29 October eight years after ithad stopped flying the route. Initially the airline will fly twice weekly—on Sunday andThursday—between Hong Kong and Kathmandu. Dragon Air, which flies an Airbus 320 toNepal, comes just in time to make the best of the peak tourist season.

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'����� ����$�� ��Nepal’s flag carrier began flying to Bangalore, an emerging pilgrimage destination forNepalis headed for a darshan of Sai Baba at his two ashrams of Whitefield and PrashantiNilayam. Royal Nepal Airlines is to fly twice weekly to the south Indian city which is alsoIndia’s leader in multimedia and information technology. Besides, Bangalore, RoyalNepal has regular flights to New Delhi, Calcutta and Mumbai in India. A roundtrip-ticket forthe roughly two-and-a-half hour flight costs Rs 16,800.

s the rocket's red glare andthe bombs bursting in airrent the night sky this

Tihar, Artha Beed’s thoughtsturned once more to the familiarsubject of corruption. Why wouldfirecrackers remind anyone of graft?Good question. In case you didn’tknow, firecrackers are actuallyillegal in this country. They arebanned; they’re contraband. Butgoing by the sound of explosions inKathmandu this year, you’d havethought there was a civil war goingon. Anyone caught smugglingcrackers into the Valley has hisconsignment seized at the Thankotcustoms post. From there, the stufffinds an underground conduit tothe bazaars of Asan almostovernight. Says one trader, whenasked who his suppliers are: “Youwant me to tell you? It’s like thedance restaurants, the cops havethe monopoly over the firecrackertrade.”

Corruption stinks more thanthe garbage heaps that keepbuilding up outside my house. Ithas become an acceptable way oflife, and the more one thinks of itthe more difficult it seems touproot from the system. Crises arecreated for corruption to thrive. Itcould be the sugar shortage, or thehoarding of petroleum products.The business-bureaucracy nexusthrives on creating artificialscarcity. The government official

�&�����%�� %�$��%�

and the businessmen settle theirdeals directly, be it the profit of atruck of sugar or a tanker of petrol.Of course, the payment terms arestrict, delivery of money in cash onthe day the goods are delivered.

Tihar gifts have developed asanother interesting way of returningfavours. Boxes of whisky or a velvetbox containing unspecified jewelleryhave replaced boxes of sweets. Orgift vouchers to sari and jewelleryshops. These vouchers can beencashed at the designated shops, allof which show how we are refiningthe art of corruption. Any day now,car keys will change hands. We haveused cultural and religious events tosanitise a transaction which is inessence stealing, and thereforebreaks the Fourth Commandment ofjust about every religion. These newdevelopments have made the ferryingof passengers by white licence platevehicles on bhai tika seems abso-lutely insignificant.

The fact that gambling issynonymous with Tihar has alsoprovided a perfect platform forostentatious displays of wealth.People play stakes that are some-times several times their annualsalaries, and at the end of everythingthey might have just won or lostmoney that is equivalent to what anaverage middle-class Nepali would

have to work for a couple ofhundred years to earn. Black moneylights up Tihar, and the goddess ofwealth has never complained.

Corruption rules, be it indetermining what flies in the air orwhat is driven on the roads. Two-stroke motorbikes are trying tomake a comeback, pending certainclandestine transactions. Three-wheeler electric and cooking gasvehicles have been banned frominside the Ring Road, andmicrobuses seem to be makingmacro-linings to some pockets.Why choke the valley roads withpublic transport it cannot copewith? The purchase and lease ofjets by the national flag carrier hasbecome the national emblem ofcorruption, and now parliament hasdecided to take over.

Enough lip service and hollowgestures. We have the institutionsto deal with graft, but the positionof Chief of the Commission for theInvestigation on Abuse of Authority(CIAA) has been lying vacant forthe last nine months. Will someonebe appointed if enough is paidunder the table? Someone has tomake a start somewhere. Are youup to it, Suryanathji?

Readers can post their views anddiscuss issues at [email protected]

� ���"�� �������(���������!������&���%����� )��� ��&����������&���������)��� �� ���� ���(A

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*�!���&���������+�,-Hem Bahadur Malla, the man responsible forsingle-handedly improving the IQ of millionsof Nepali children by managing salt-iodisationand distribution in Nepal died of cardiacarrest at a New Delhi hospital on 28 October.Over the past 20 years, iodisation of saltdistributed in Nepal has reduced endemicgoitre, cretinism and other disabilities relatedto the shortage of this micro-nutrient. Mallawas president of Salt Trading Corporation

(STC) which supplied salt under the Goitre Prevention Project. It wasMalla’s single-minded energy that helped make the distribution effective,one reason why iodised salt is available today all over the country. The STCnow has six iodisation plants where the iodine content in salt is checkedand augmented, where needed, before supplying it to the market and thegoitre-prone districts.

Malla, 62, was STC’s the first general manager, and later went on to bethe CEO and finally the president. In his 24 years at the corporation, Mallaalso pioneered the establishment of Nepal’s first modern factoriesproducing flour and banaspati ghew (hydrogenated vegetable oil), and theGorakhkali rubber tyre factory in Gorkha.

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����������� 3 - 9 NOVEMBER 2000����������� ��

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t is the last quarter, and the urgeto splurge is back. Everyone canshare in the mood: visiting

tourists looking for souvenirs,expats planning to go home forChristmas, those staying back andlocals who are looking for ethni-cally-chic but functional items forthe home. We’ll let you in onKathmandu’s best-kept secret: itis a bargain hunter’s paradise forexotica. Between Hauz Khas andBanglampu, Kathmandu offersyou the best choice for shopping

traditional handicrafts, weaves,jewellery, sculpture, woodwork,music and art. And the prices herewill beat both India and Thailand.In fact, Banglampu now has a wholealley full of Nepali shopkeepersselling Made in Nepal cloth jholasand lost-wax sculptures for aboutthree times the prices inKathmandu.

Thamel might not give youthe real picture of a “typical”Nepali lifestyle, but it does offer youa great deal to whet your craving forshopping. Hand-woven carpets,

pashmina shawls, silver jewellery,bronze and brass work, dolls andpuppets, T-shirts and funnyfootball fan hats, traditionalmusical instruments. You name it,and there is a shop specialising init. Basantapur and New Road arealso definitely worth a raid,although these places are lesstraditional and more trendy. And ifyou care to cross the BagmatiBridge at Thapathali to Patan,Kupondol and Mangal Bazar haveloads of tempting goods on display.These shopping tracts are close tothe fascinating Durbar Squares inPatan and Kathmandu, and willnot mean a big revision of plans fortourists out on a sightseeing trip.

The details and artisticperfection of thanka and paubha artmight appeal to you. A piece cancost you anything from Rs 200 towell over Rs 80,000, depending onquality, artistic excellence, thetheme of the painting and whopainted them. If you are among theabout 10 percent of buyers who goin for works of the masters, youmay have to pay much higherprices. Even smaller and less-complicated pieces by world-renowned artists like Uday CharanShrestha and Prem Man Chitrakarwill cost you around Rs 20,000 atthe least and well over Rs 100,000for the grand larger paintings.

Lama thankas painted by lamasfrom the Buddhist monasteries canbe good bargains—they areartistically rich but less expensivebecause they do not carry world-renowned signatures. Works ofBuddhist Tamangs fromRamechhap, Sindhupalchok andKavre, for whom thanka painting isa traditional occupation ratherthan an artistic endeavour, are alsoavailable for lower prices.

These unknown Tamangpainters lost out when expansion oftourism in the capital encouragedthem to mass produce paintings,thus forcing them to forego theattention needed to create greatpaintings and also defying therituals that go with thankapainting. Tradition demands longdevotional rituals and prescribes alimit to a day’s painting time toless than four hours so that intenseconcentration on detail is possible.The artists painting thankas forpurely commercial purpose in thevalley’s surrounding districts aresaid to be working for more than16 hours a day at a stretch.

There is a wide range of silver,bronze and copper statues availableto choose from. Metal statues fromIndia are also sold alongside Nepalicarvings—the Indian ones look likeNepali carvings at first glance but acloser look will show the differ-ence—Nepali statues have singlemoulding while the Indians onesare twice moulded. The Nepalisculptures are heavier and arenotable for their fine craftsman-ship. Price-wise, Nepali statues arecostlier than the imported ones. “ANepali sculptor might haveconfined himself to his workshopfor months at a stretch to make thestatue. His devotion and hard work

should be paid superior value tocommercially manufactured statues,”says Sunil Krishna Shrestha ofPicasso, a souvenir shop.

Another speciality of Nepalisculptures are their uniqueness—they are moulded from mud devicesthat are destroyed after eachmoulding, while the Indian statuesare mass produced from multi-usemetal moulding devices. Massmanufactured Nepali statues are alsoavailable, but after adding the profitmargins of 10-15 percent maintainedby trading houses and further byretailers, the price of a mass-manufactured statuette and a uniquestatuette collected directly from aPatan sculptor by a retailer may notdiffer much. However, the quality andvalue of that piece of work certainlydoes.

Bronze statues are least expensiveand a copper statuette of the sameweight can cost you twice as much. Asimple silver statuette of Buddha issold at Rs 500 to Rs 600 per tola (atola is equivalent to 11.664 gram),but others can cost you moredepending on the craftsmanship. Acomplicated one-thousand-arm AvaLokeshwora, or a Mahakali orBhairav statue in the mudra position,with ornaments and instruments intheir numerous arms, can cost youRs 600 to Rs 1000 per tola.

Then there are the Nepalicarpets, which are popular withNepalis travelling abroad as gifts fortheir foreigner friends and for

personal use for those who havesettled there. Chinese, Pakistani,Indian and Afghani carpets are alsoavailable and some might bemachine made though they lookotherwise. Nepali carpets areheavier, thicker, become morelustrous with use and are availablein all sizes you fancy. “Nepali hand-knotted carpets are available in theEuropean markets also, but a largevariety are available here for lowerprices,” claims Hari Pandey of NewDragon Carpet Centre. A 60-knotNepali hand-knotted carpet cancost you about Rs 1,700 per squaremetre, a 80-knot around Rs 2,400per square metre and a 100-knotcarpet would be approximately Rs4,800 per square metre.

Some carpet entrepreneurs haverecently ventured a contemporarytouch to Nepali carpets. Thoughthey still rely on the traditionaltechnique of carpet knotting, theircreations are a departure fromtradition in colour and design.“Carpet making is like painting.You should dare to experiment withcolours and designs to be able tocommunicate better to yourclients,” says Pradeep Shahi ofCarpet House.

Apart from these top sellersthere are paper and metal handi-

���������Gandharbas are believed to be themusicians of gods in heaven.Nepal’s oldest professionalsingers are concentrated in thewestern part of the country. Playingthe sarangi and relating historicalevents in song are their traditionaloccupation. Seen in the photo-graph is Bukun Gandharba whocompleted a sarangi tour ofEurope last year and earnedinternational acclaim. Proud of hismusical tradition, Bukun sellsNepali instruments like sarangi,

madal and bamboo flutes at Thamel. He also teachesforeigners to play this instrument at his Himalayan Melodiesmusic shop. Bukun is seen playing a sarangi he himselfmade, in strict accordance with all the traditions involved insarangi making, which is a rare buy in Kathmandu.

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crafts, silver jewellery, gems andTibetan plastic beads, puppets anddolls in Nepali traditional costumes,clay ware, hand-knit woollens,furniture and house decorations. Ifyou are going to further extend thetraditional Tihar shopping binge, ahand-weave dhaka topi for men anda dhaka shawl or sari for women aresuggested. Recent successes ofNepali fashion designers with dhakacloth have proved that the textilecan be tailored into anything fromevening gowns to casual wear.There are hand-loomed row andsoft silk that cost between Rs 600to Rs 900 per metre.

Pashminas in three varieties ofcotton cashmere (about Rs 1,500for a 36 x 81 inch shawl), silkcashmere (Rs 2,300 to Rs 2,500)and pure cashmere (about Rs 3,500)are available. Also available arehand-loomed cashmere shawlswhich cost more than the machine-loomed, while the famous ringshawls cost something between Rs8,000 to Rs 12,000.

Then there is music to celebrateyour Nepal memories. MeditativeNepali classical music by well-known masters and popular folksongs, made familiar by thehumming of porters during a trek,are available in CDs. Nepal is acountry of festivals and pujas, andthere are CDs available withtraditional music to commemoratethe festivals. “Its only due to thelack of publicity that Nepali musicdoes not sell internationally. Frommy experience, one good concertand the lucky musician sells like hotcakes,” says Bhaskar Shrestha ofDexo Music Centre.

Window shopping is also fun inKathmandu. “Salespersons acceptyour ‘no’ gracefully with a bigfriendly smile,” says Americaninsurance agent John Marshall Lee,who was doing his rounds. So goaround, take a good look and makethe best of your shopping trip. �

All photo credits: Min Bajracharya

������������ �!These jewellery boxesmight look similar at firstglance but vary in cost.The one on the left is amass-produced Indianproduct that costs aboutRs 150 while the otheris a Nepali product,totally hand made, andcosts about Rs 500.

�"�����"The government-runCottage Industries andHandicrafts Emporiumat New Road is recom-mended for poorbargainers. Handicraftsfrom all over the country,from ‘Palpali’ dhakas to‘Chainpure’ karuwas

and ‘Bhojpure’ khukuris, are available here unlike theprivately owned shops that sell only those made around thecapital. The emporium also offers a range of wood carvingsand brass ware, the favourite buy of Nepalis as gifts for theirfriends abroad.

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An excerpt from an account by Dag Hammarskojld, the former UN Secretary General, of hisMt Everest flight 40 years ago.

After sunrise the next morning, the haze had gone and the sky was without a cloud.When we came down to the airstrip, the icy summits of the closest mountains stood outsharply over the green hills around the valley.

We flew through the valleys in the direction of Gauri Shankar and Everest. Even if wehad never come to these mountains, it would have been a great experience just to see thebeauty of the valleys and of the hillsides in the early morning light, the structure of thelandscape, and the picturesque way in which cultivation and villages have developed. Theplane in which we were flying was a DC-3, nonpressurised and without oxygen. Thatnaturally set an altitude limit for the flight, we flew at a height of twelve to fifteen thousandfeet. Our route took up first under the overwhelming south wall of Gauri Shankar, with itsbeautiful double summit consecrated to the two Hindu deities that give the mountain itsname. At our altitude we needed to approach it at mid-height. Its vast size gave theimpression that we were even closer to the mountainside than we were.

Forbidding in its bold, sculptural structure, it was a world far beyond humancomprehension and of the harsh purity we are accustomed to find in the miniature world of crystals. But here it met the eye inproportions that reduced our human world to a microcosm. Everest wore a plume of snow, made by strong northwesterly winds…ithad a special rank and position marked with a truly regal ornament.

(From the National Georgraphic, January 1961)

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FOR BOOKINGS

AIRLINE PHONES AIRCRAFT

Buddha Air 542494, 437025 Beech 1900DCosmic Air 241053, 244955 SAAB 340Gorkha Airways 436576,436579 Dornier DO-228Mountain Air 489065 Beech 1900CNecon Air 480565 ATR-42Shangri-La Air 439692,416028 Beech 1900CYeti Airlines 421294,421215 EMB-120 (from 10 Nov)

(Note: Fares may vary depending on the travel agent, but the airlinefare is $109 for all tourists, except Indians who pay IRs 3,000 andNepalis pay Rs 4,800)

Makalu mis-identified as Everest in the article.

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The question of compulsory insurance for Nepali high-altitudeporters/climbers came to the fore once again this season afterthree Sherpas accompanying two Korean expeditions to ChoOyu (8201m) died in an avalanche.

Prior to leaving for the mountains, mountaineering teamshave to provide the Ministry of Tourism with signed affidavits ofeach climbing member and high-altitude support staff, togetherwith insurance details. The Nepali government’s mountaineeringregulations require porters and high-altitude Sherpas to beinsured for a minimum of Rs 50,000 and Rs 150,000respectively.

However, unknown to the ministry, the Koreans, who wereclimbing as one team, had hired three Sherpas up in themountains citing lack of manpower. “They say they hired theSherpas to carry supplies up to base camp only. Butinvestigations showed otherwise,” says a ministry official.

“The expedition said they tried to inform me by phone abouttheir decision to hire extra people,” said Ang Karma Sherpa,managing director of Windhorse Trekking, the company thatmanaged the expedition. The Korean climbers, who abandonedtheir attempt after the accident, face the possibility of beingblacklisted, banned or fined by the tourism ministry.

The ministry ordered the teams to pay Rs 180,000 to thefamilies of the three deceased. Other climbing Sherpas on theKorean teams were insured for Rs 500,000 each. “The pity is thefamilies of the dead won’t get the same amount,” said Sherpa.

“It happens rarely but sometimes teams try to save money byforming small expeditions. Then they realise that they don’t haveenough manpower and hire staff who may be untrained,inadequately insured and outfitted,” said a ministry official withlong experience as liaison officer to expeditions. “Whathappened on Cho Oyu is nothing new. It is only that theseincidents are not reported and trekking companies hush upmatters and pay off the families of those killed on the mountain.”

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Page 13: Nepali Times - Digital Himalayahimalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/nepali...Mustangi Raja and the King of Bhutan, seem to wear their crowns with unease. The Mustangi Raja

����� 3 - 9 NOVEMBER 2000 ������ ����

London - When Milosevic fell in the same week that fighting broke outbetween Israelis and Palestinians, was it merely a matter of the coinci-dence of bad news and good news that always marks human affairs?What are we to make of this arrival of peace in one place and loss of it inanother? In the one case, flawed policy just barely achieved a kind ofsuccess, and, in the other, flawed policy has led to a tragic failure. Theflaws, too, were of a similar order—policy driven by domestic pressures,policy that paid too little attention to the factson the ground, and policy too wary of difficul-ties and costs.

A decade that began in an atmosphere ofgreat confidence in many countries and acrossthe political spectrum has ended with a sharpreminder of limits and an unmistakable lossof momentum. The sense of foreboding arisesat this moment in part because this was BillClinton’s decade and in part because hispresidency is finishing with such a defeat inthe Middle East. Clinton’s departure willmark the end, if not of an era, at least of atime when America had extraordinaryopportunities which are unlikely to reoccur. This was becauseAmerica had a capital of influence and power when he took overwhich is now much drawn down. Much of the world was awed,ready to listen, and, up to a point, ready to be persuaded.

But America under Clinton did not use its influence to the fullor to the best effect, whether in the Far East, south Asia, Russia, orin the Balkans. Above all, in the Middle East it was by turns seriousand timorous in its campaign to isolate and bring down SaddamHussein and it was slow and often partial in its mediation betweenIsraelis and Palestinians. The daily bombing of Iraq, now an activityentirely divorced from any coherent strategy, is one index ofAmerica’s failure. The savage daily encounters between Israeli andPalestinian young men, boys who grew up during these Clintonyears, is another. Perhaps American power to change the MiddleEast—to the point of largely excluding other outside powers—was

not as great as it seemed.If these were the years in which America failed to live up to its

potential, that was also true of Europe, which notoriouslymishandled the crisis in former Yugoslavia. But America and Europetogether did, in the end, adopt policies that halted the Serbiancampaign in Bosnia and later forced a withdrawal from Kosovo,which in turn contributed to Milosevic’s fall. A new report by an

independent international commission charts howKosovo was allowed to fester to the point whereSerbian suppression of rebellion provoked NATOintervention. It allows that this intervention was“illegal but legitimate”. In its broader conclusions,it states in a measured way the need for earlyengagement in the kind of situations which couldproduce violations of human rights on a scale thatmay later give grounds for a humanitarian militaryintervention. If, as a last resort, such interventionbecomes necessary, it proposes “a principledframework” for it, which it would like the UnitedNations to take up in some way.

What is striking about the Kosovo report, likethose others, is their essential optimism. They look to a managedworld, in which most disasters are headed off by preventative action,and others are dealt with, when they have to be, by the judicious useof force. In any case, the potentially grave regional crises which theworld could face, such as a further breakdown in the Middle East, aconfrontation between nuclear armed India and Pakistan overKashmir, or a clash between China and Taiwan, are of an order inwhich humanitarian expeditions are irrelevant. It is only in thecontext of the containment of these larger conflicts that these lesser,internal problems may be amenable to solution.

One lesson that has been understood is that such quarrels aremore obdurate than is sometimes lightly assumed. The past 10 yearsshould have been a time when the US and Europe, the two wealthi-est and most developed regions, took a strong grip on affairs. Insteadthey have come perilously close to losing it. t (The Guardian)

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������������� IN LONDON

n today’s world, 826 millionpeople are hungry—792 mil-lion in 98 developing count-

ries and 34 million in the Westdon’t get enough food to leadnormal, healthy lives. And despitea global pledge to cut the numberof undernourished in the world byhalf by 2015, the United Nations’Food and Agriculture Organi-sation (FAO) now claims theworld is nowhere near this goal.

The FAO’s newly-releasedThe State of Food Insecurity inthe World shows that there hasbeen no improvement in the fightagainst hunger. The problem isnot lack of food: there is enoughto feed every man, woman andchild. It is about access to food,and some argue that a growingtrend toward economic globalisa-tion—especially in agriculture—isto blame for a lack of progress infighting global hunger. FAOassistant director-general Hartwig

de Haen argues that otherfactors—‘low food supply’,natural calamities, economic woesand conflict—have had a greaterimpact during 1996-98, the latestyears for which hunger data isavailable.

Some regions are doing betterthan others: South and East Asiaare on track, while Sub-SaharanAfrica remains far from the 2015target. Latin America falls some-where in between. This year’sreport examines how hungry thehungry are by measuring thedepth of hunger with ‘fooddeficit’—how many fewer caloriesthe hungry are getting comparedto a well-nourished person. Interms of sheer numbers, Asia andthe Pacific have more chronicallyhungry people, but Sub-SaharanAfrica has the greatest depth ofhunger. In nearly half of theseAfrican countries, the undernour-ished are getting 300 kilocaloriesless than what they need to be

healthy. In Asia and the Pacific,16 percent of countries suffer thislevel of undernourishment. FAOadvocates four measures to fighthunger: reducing conflict; boos-ting economic growth; establish-ing a social net for the poor; andimproving agricultural produc-tion.

But not everyone supportsthese suggestions. Tim Lang,professor and food expert atLondon’s Thames ValleyUniversity, believes FAO ispursuing the wrong strategy tofight world hunger. “At the end ofthe 20th century it was clear thatfor the last half century in whichthe FAO was around the worldadopted a productionist, high-tech investment strategy to solvinghunger,” Lang says. “Without adoubt this had importantsuccesses, such as increased cashflow and increased production,but it has done this at immensesocial costs: driving people from

the land, externalising costs ofefficient production, destructionof environment … it has done itby waste.” Lang says the FAO is“in love with” big agriculture, bigbusiness, large-scale food produc-tion and a high-tech investmentstrategy. What is needed, he says,is a “bottom-up, community-ledagriculture” approach.

The UK-based InternationalSociety for Ecology and Culture, anon-profit organisation workingon ‘locally-based solution’ toglobal problems, blames hungeron globalisation and economicchanges sweeping through theworld’s agricultural sector. “Themajority of the people in the so-called Third World are inagriculture, living on the land,”ISEC director Helena Norberg-Hodge says. “Economic policiesthat destroy their livelihoods andoffer them no substitute are themain culprit behind hunger.” Shesays local farmers are being drawnaway from growing food for localneeds by producing commoditiesfor export thereby putting theirlivelihoods at the mercy ofinternational markets. Such ‘cashcrops’ include tobacco, rubber,tea, coffee, cocoa and flowers.

“The imposition of tradepolicies worldwide is forcingfarmers to grow larger and morespecialised crops in order tosurvive … it’s merge or die,”Norberg-Hodge says. “Butmillions of farmers in the ThirdWorld are small farmers, they arenot able to compete.” ISEC notesthat while threats to food securityonce came chiefly from naturalcircumstances—crop failures dueto drought or an unexpected frost,for instance—farmers hooked intothe global food system todaycontinue to face those same risksplus many others of a purelyeconomic nature. � (Gemini News)

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Two weeks ago, when Al Gore’s presidential hopes appeared to beslipping with each new poll, he took a call from his boss, thepresident. Otherwise shut out of his deputy’s campaign, Clintonurged vice-president Gore to watch a Saturday Night Live parody ofhis television debates with his Republican rival.

After first resisting, Gore acceded to Clinton’s almost unerringpolitical instinct. The tape revealed the public’s perception of thecandidate and his media-genic shortcomings that no pollster or focusgroup could have bettered. Clinton touched on one ofthe few political realities of thiscampaign—that televisioncomedy has become one ofthe few clarifying elements ofa political discourseobfuscated by hours ofpunditry, spin and anti-spin.

As Americans tune outfrom serious politicalcoverage and analysis, they are gettingmore of their election news from late night talk. A recent survey foundthat 47 percent of people aged between 18 and 29 often gleanedinformation from these programmes, along with a quarter of alladults. “So much coverage in the mainstream press is dishonest andmanipulative,” says Columbia University journalism professor CraigWolff. “To me, the humorists are in some ways presenting the mosthonest coverage.”

Politics as television comedy is hardly new and has been gainingmomentum since Richard Nixon appeared on the 1960s televisioncomedy show, Laugh-In. What’s new is just how blurred the linebetween politics, news and entertainment has become. Late-nightcomedy talk shows such as those of Jay Leno and David Lettermanhave become political essentials, both as barometers of how thecampaigns are playing and through appearances by the candidatesthemselves—a way of personalising their brand.

To former Texas governor Anne Richards, it’sbecome important forcandidates to show a sense ofhumour than demonstrate agrasp of issues whendebating their opponents. Agood joke can be incrediblyeffective in getting yourmessage out, she says,

“because people repeat it”. Andthat’s invaluable for politicians because with

an electorate disenchanted with politics and an election said to hingeon a small number of swing voters, humour has become one of thefew ways of gaining attention.

But while Gore has appeared on Letterman and Leno, and Bushhas kissed talk show host Oprah Winfrey on Oprah, and had anunhappy (and un-repeated) experience on Letterman in March, noneof the current crop of candidates besides Gore’s democrat runningmate Al Lieberman have dared venture on to The Daily Show onComedy Central. The programme, hosted by Jon Stewart, hasemerged as America’s sharpest satire. First broadcast in 1996, TheDaily Show captures the absurdity not just of the US political processbut of the media that cover the news and the pundits that interpretand re-interpret it. In a show presented as a seemingly real newscast,Stewart and his team of correspondents spoof what increasinglyfeels like unreal news. As the 37-year-old Stewart himself liked toquip during coverage of the political conventions in the summer:“We’re a fake news organisation covering a fake news event.” Butthat didn’t stop the game (and very funny) senator Bob Doleappearing as the programme’s desk-bound political pundit, orRepublican John McCain agreeing to be interviewed by Stewartfaking a real interview.

In creating a comedy show that looks like a news broadcast, TheDaily Show’s formula is to satirise every element of the politicalprocess, from the pretensions of the candidates themselves to theover-heated pronouncements of pundits. Stewart, who started out asa stand-up comedian, understands exactly what it’s about: “Thelonger I’m doing this I’m coming to learn that entertainment, politicsand the media are really just juggling the same balls. We’re all goingfor ratings, so we function by the same rules. What’s a political pollother than a focus group for a television show?” MadeleineSmithberg, co-creator of The Daily Show, dates comedy’s newimportance to the political process from the occasion when Clintonwent on the Arsenio Hall show in 1992 and played the saxophone.“That signalled a whole new ballgame,” she says. “This year there’sthis huge emphasis on entertainment and whether the candidatescan be funny.”

But as the hunt to find and win over the crucial but possibly non-existent “undecided voter” peaks before the 7 November vote, UScomedians know they have a golden opportunity. To Smithberg, thequest for the undecided voter is itself absurd. “It’s ironic, because theundecided voter has become the most empowered voting block.We’ve somehow given this most important decision over to the idiotswho can’t make a decision! We’ve empowered the fools.” If, by somestrange fluke, Smithberg’s fools are also the ones who watch TheDaily Show when it beams out of New York on weekday nights at 11pm, then late-night comedy might indeed prove to be the decidingfactor in the election. (The Guardian)

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Page 14: Nepali Times - Digital Himalayahimalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/nepali...Mustangi Raja and the King of Bhutan, seem to wear their crowns with unease. The Mustangi Raja

������� 3 - 9 NOVEMBER 2000 ����������

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������������ IN NEW DELHI

he forthcoming ‘addition’ ofa new province to India tobe carved out of the central

Himalayan foothills in northern UttarPradesh state, will satisfy a decades-old demand of the hill folk in thatregion. Uttaranchal will be one of thethree new Indian states to be born onthat day, which are being created outof three big states—Uttar Pradesh, itseastern neighbour Bihar and MadhyaPradesh to its south.

While the setting up ofUttaranchal, with a population ofabout eight million people, marks thesuccess of a six-year-old masscampaign, a tough job awaits therulers of the new state. Their goal is totackle a unique form of underdevelop-ment.

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��������� � ���� IN BEIJING

he Chinese government will begin facing up to the hidden millions whohave eluded its “one child” policy on family planning, as it embarks Nov 1on the largest population census undertaken anywhere in the world. An

army of six million census workers will knock on doors throughout the countrynext month, carrying out a 500 million yuan ($60 million) plan to count thenumber of people in a country home to one-sixthof the world’s population.

This will be China’s fifth national census, butthe first in which census workers will be equippedwith computing devices. Hoping to get anaccurate picture of China’s population, thegovernment has promised households who havenot registered their “out of planning quota”children to apply for permanent residence duringthe census. Beijing claims that its draconianfamily-planning policy launched in 1980 hadsucceeded in lowering the population growth rateby one percent a year in the 1990s. Last month,the China Youth Daily said the “one child” policywas responsible for preventing 250 million birthsin the past 20 years. The policy stipulates thateach couple living in the cities should have onlyone child, unless one or both of the couple arefrom an ethnic minority or they are both the onlychildren. In most rural areas, a couple may have asecond child after a break of several years.

Yet despite the policy’s strict rules, familyplanning targets have been loosely enforced inmany of the poorest regions. Nowadays it is common to find couples in thecountryside—where 80 percent of the population live—with five, six or evenmore children. In the 1980s, local officials often forced couples to undergosterilisation or abortion, and if a couple exceeded its quota of one or twochildren, officials might confiscate property or levy a heavy fine. But in recentyears, family planning authorities have halted coercive measures and called for amore flexible approach in the countryside.

As a result, many rural couples have learned to get around the law bysending the pregnant woman to stay with relatives until the baby is born, orclaiming the newborn baby was adopted or belongs to a friend or relative.This loose enforcement of birth quotas, combined with the traditionalChinese preference for boys, has led to a population explosion in rural areas.According to official statistics, China’s population reached 1.259 billion at theend of last year. However, some demographers believe that as many as 200

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-$'��������� �����#�����million people could be unaccounted for.

Judging by the publicity accompanying the current census, it seems that thegovernment is preparing to encounter the large number of extra people dubbedthe “black population”. The government has appealed to people to co-operatewith census-takers, and promises no illegal charges would be allowed during thepopulation survey. “Information collected during this census would not be used

to punish anyone for their past mistakes onpopulation-related matters,” assures ZhangWeimin, director general of the State StatisticalBureau. He says each of the six million censusworkers recruited to carry out the registration hasreceived special training. “They were told to becareful when asking questions which people feelmight embarrass or endanger them,” explainsZhang.

By some domestic media accounts though,when pilot interviews were carried out in thesummer, many people refused even to open theirdoors to census officials. Even in the cities, wherethe “one child” policy has generally worked,people felt fearful about the census. “We don’tworry about having “black children” (unregis-tered children),” says Zhao Linzhi, a middle-agedBeijing woman who works with a foreign familyas a domestic help. “But if census workers wantto know about our income, this might get us intotrouble with the tax authorities.”

Zhang from the State Statistical Bureauadmits that many economic elements have been

added to this census’s questionnaire. “We want to know about employment andfind out the number of people out of work,” he says. “We also want to knowabout the housing situation—this would help us determine the pace of housingreform.” “Yet we won’t be asking about income levels,” he promises. “We justhope to catch on the social welfare conditions of households.” To quell fearsabout the census, the government has launched a campaign to raise conscious-ness. In the run-up to the census, signs were posted throughout Beijing askingresidents to faithfully report their family situations.

During the 10-day census that starts Nov 1, census takers will work fromdoor to door, visiting about 350 million households. Initial results would beannounced in February next year. Zhang would not however comment onofficial estimates of the hidden population that has eluded previous census. “Wewill have to wait for the results and compare,” he says. “The central governmentexpects that the figure in this census would be below 1.3 billion.” � (IPS)

Uttaranchalhas one of India’shighest levels ofadult literacy andeducation, butdecades of neglectare blamed for thecontinuingdownhill migrationof residents from aregion that still hasa subsistencefarming-basedeconomy. It wasthis feeling of beingneglected by the

federal government and the rulers ofUttar Pradesh based in the distant statecapital Lucknow that had fired thedemand for a new state. Its pictur-esque river valleys, flanked by snowtopped mountains, make tourism amajor source of income for the region,but not much has been done todevelop this in ways to benefit the localeconomy. Uttaranchal, with its majorHimalayan rivers, also has tremendouspotential to generate hydro-electricity,but this is not easy in the highly seismicand ecologically fragile mountainregion. Fruit and flower cultivation alsooffers much scope for job and incomegeneration. However, Uttaranchalcontinues to be a ‘money-order’economy, where generations of malemigrants have supported families backhome with monthly postal remittances

from the big cities in the plains ofIndia.

The creation of the new state isexpected to result in better attentionto these priorities. But that will haveto wait for the resolution of politicalproblems that have cropped up evenbefore Uttaranchal is born. Manyamong those who agitated for aseparate home for the hill people arenow complaining of serious flaws inthe administrative shape of the newstate. They are unhappy with thedecision to make the major hill townof Dehradun, some 250 km north ofthe Indian capital, the ‘interim capital’of Uttaranchal.

The problem has arisen becauseUttaranchal is made up of the twoculturally different sub-regions ofGarhwal and Kumaon. Dehradun ispart of the former. The relativelyobscure, but strategically located townof Gairsen, which straddles theGarhwal and Kumaon areas, has longbeen suggested as a ‘compromise’capital. “There is too much uncer-tainty over vital issues,” says HarishRawat of the Uttarakhand SanyuktSangharsh Samiti, one of the groupswhich campaigned for the new state.

There are also fears that the kindof development promised by thepoliticians may lead to furtherenvironmental damage to thehills. Studies have found that so-called development work in the area

has only worsened environmentaldegradation, adding to women’s work,by making them walk longer to fetchfuel wood and water. According toSachidananda Bharati of theDudhatoli Lok Vikas Sansthan, apeople’s group working inUttaranchal, the continuingneglect of the hills has hurtwomen the most. The migrationof men to the plains has meantnot only loneliness for the womenbut also forces them to take uphard physical work on farms.

The creation of a new state isalso expected to draw in more realestate developers from India’s bigcities. In recent years, propertydevelopers from the Indian capitalhave bought up picturesque hillslopes from local farmers to buildholiday homes for rich peoplefrom the plains. “This racket ishappening with the connivance oflocal level officials,” says NathuBegum, the president of an electedvillage council in Dehradundistrict. Nobody is complainingtoo loudly because the racket iskeeping land prices up, she adds.Demands have been raised thatthe new state follow the exampleof other Himalayan states likeadjoining Himachal Pradesh,which have strict laws, banningoutsiders from buying localland. � (IPS)

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��� �� ��� ���������� ���� �+�Geneva - The feuding parties in the Afghan civil war have repeatedlyhad confidential talks in Switzerland in 1999 and March this year.Representatives of the Taliban regime which is not internationallyrecognised and forces loyal to Ahmed Shah Masood had met in theAlpine republic. The meetings were organised by the Swiss foreignministry, but failed to kick-start proper peace talks. The Swissnewspaper Le Temps reported Wednesday that a Taliban viceminister and a minister of Masood’s Northern Alliance had discussedheath care issues at a meeting in March in the presence of theInternational Committee of the Red Cross and United Nations repre-sentatives.”In an internal conflict like this one has to open up a contact andfurther dialogue between the parties which is often very difficult,Berne foreign ministry official Raimund Kunz told the paper. There hasbeen renewed fighting in Afghanistan since last August when theTaliban, which rule 90 per cent of the country, launched a newoffensive against Masood’s forces in the north. Last month alonesome 28,000 people fled the war-torn and drought-stricken country toPakistan. (dpa)

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.#� ��������� �����/ ��� ����+���Kuwait City - Kuwait has agreed to end a bar on workers fromBangladesh, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said. SheikhHasina said her Labour Minister Abdul Mannan has signed anagreement with Kuwaiti officials on lifting the year-long restrictionwhich was imposed after a Bangladeshi worker allegedly killed hisKuwaiti employer and then fled the emirate. Meanwhile, the twonations were discussing a draft extradition treaty that could affect theongoing murder case, she told a press conference in Kuwait City atthe end of a three-day visit. The labour bar “was lifted yesterday,”Sheikh Hasina said. She said that the original measure had been anadministrative procedure and not an official ban.

Kuwait had put a stop to processing work permits forBangladeshis after the alleged killing. Sheikh Hasina said the suspectwas in custody in Dhaka and that her government has been providingKuwait with information about the case which is pending trial. ”Ifnecessary” she said, Bangladesh was ready to send the suspectback to Kuwait.

Further exchanges of information about the killing were needed,however, and a proposed extradition treaty still had to be enacted.Bangladesh and Kuwait officials discussed the shaping of a mutualextradition law during her visit, Sheikh Hasina added. Registeredworkers from Bangladesh in Kuwait number about 160,000 but someestimates of the total have been put at around 200,000. Most areunskilled and are among the lowest paid labourers in the Gulf. Theending of the bar was expected to increase badly needed incomesent home by Bangladeshis annually. (dpa)

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� �! � � ���&�������������� ��� ����New Delhi - A week after India’s Supreme Court rejected theircase against the Narmada dam, activists opposing the scheme havebegun what may well be the final battle by the country’s best knownpeople’s movement. Famed anti-Narmada dam campaigner, MedhaPatkar, entered the tenth day of her hunger protest Thursday in thecity of Bhopal, the capital of central Madhya Pradesh state. The stateis the home of most of the quarter million, mainly indigenous people tobe displaced by the four billion-U.S. dollar Sardar Sarovar dam. Forwell over a decade, Patkar, who has won the Swedish ‘Right toLivelihood Award’, also described as the alternative Nobel Prize, hasled hundreds of anti-dam rallies, been beaten up and arrested severaltimes by the police. She almost died of dehydration, during a similar22-day hunger protest nine years ago. Patkar’s protest has been accompanied by a series of publicdemonstrations against the court ruling, held across the country aswell as in North America, West Europe and South Africa. The SardarSarovar, being built in the western coastal state of Gujarat, adjoiningMadhya Pradesh, is to be the first of 30 big and hundreds of mediumand small dams planned on the Narmada, which flows westwardacross central India into the Arabian Sea.

While the NBA’s campaign is backed by a number of well-knownpersonalities like famous Indian author Arundhati Roy, the pro-damlobby does not lack for big names. These include former top journalistB.G. Verghese and prominent development economist YogendraAlagh, a former federal government minister. (IPS)

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�������� �!���� � ������������Jakarta - Recent attempts by parts of Indonesia’s military toflex its political muscle are a challenge not just to PresidentAbdurrahman Wahid, but to the country’s bumpy transition to democ-racy. Since becoming president a year ago, Wahid has taken severalsteps to assert civilian rule over the military—a major lever of politicalpower for more than 30 years during Suharto’s presidency. Among others, Wahid has replaced many high-ranking militaryofficials known to be Suharto loyalists, moved to cut the soldiers’influence at the village level and told them clear their actions withcivilian authorities. But getting the military to accept the changes inpolitical culture brought by the end of the Suharto era has not beeneasy. Juwono Sudarsono, former minister of defence under Wahid’sadministration, warns that civilian politicians must seriously developthe democratisation process in the country. ‘’If they fail to set up ademocratic political system, the military then will make a comeback,’’Sudarsono, a political professor at University of Indonesia, wasquoted by local media as saying earlier this month. ‘’So, civilian leadersmust set up a political system that paves the way for civilian su-premacy,’’ he said. (IPS)

�

T

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NE

PA

L

Uttaranchal

Bihar

Jharkhand

������ 3 - 9 NOVEMBER 2000 ������������

From 3rd - 12th November7pm to 11:30 pm

Chef Noor Khan the ultimate Khansama from the Palace of theNizam of Hyderabad

brings

The Hyderabadi Food FestivalTo

Far PavilionRBrilliant BiriyanisRSucculent Kebabs

RInviting Vegetarian CuisineAnd

RHyderabadi Specialities likePathar ka Gosht, Bagaire Baingan, Mirchi ka Salan,

Khubani ka Meetha, Haleem

And the Favourite Anand Karki The Sizzling Sheetal Pun

And our very own Chef Siddiqi

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������� ����

quarter of a century afterSikkim became the fourthIndian state to share

borders with Nepal, two newIndian states are soon going toappear as its neighbours: to thesouth, a truncated Bihar, andalong its western border,Uttaranchal.

The two new states haveresulted from New Delhi and theparent states finally recognisingand acceding to voices frombelow. Their emergence has beenmet with some degree of scepti-cism in other larger states inIndia. But the confusion and

�� ��������������������������������������������������������� ����������������� ��������������������� ��� ��������!����������� �����������!������������� �������������������!!��� ������○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Top left, Bihari migrants congegratenear the Bagmati bridge atThapathali; below, Nepali porters toilin Uttaranchal.

noise is mainly among people whothink that this is the beginning ofthe disintegration of the Indianunion. Supporters of the newstates say these fears are clearlyunwarranted. They argue thatthese regions are vastly differentfrom the centres of power thatdetermined their developmentsince independence and earlier,and hence the separation is withjust cause.

There are implications forNepal to having these two newneighbours. The adjoining Biharis going to be even poorer thanbefore—with its resource-richsouthern half breaking off to form

Jharkhand with its capital inRanchi. Bihar of proxy chiefminister, Laloo Prasad Yadav, isthe vote base of his RastriyaJanata Dal and therefore wherehis strength lies. However, therump Bihar is where land reformshave had little impact, and thepolitics of caste warfare is rife,the marginal poor are amongstthe poorest in the country. Thepoorest regions of India’s pooreststate are in northern Bihar nextto Nepal, and economic migrantsfrom these areas have tradition-ally moved to the tarai plains andKathmandu Valley in search ofjobs.

The newstate of Uttaranchal iscoming up in the Garhwal andKumaon regions that theGorkhali conquistadors hadcaptured and ruled ruthlessly

(a fact that is resented eventoday) around the turn of the18th century only to lose it tothe British in the 1816 Treatyof Sugauli. And it has problemsvery similar to Nepal’s. Thepeople are ethnically andtemperamentally closer to thewestern hill Nepalis than tothe plainsfolk down south. Theeconomy is largely dependenton tourism; there is large-scalemigration of menfolk to theplains to work (who send backmoney and bring back AIDS aswell); and the state has highhydroelectric potential.Economic disparities too arelarge and glaring, and thepoverty in the hills is strikinglysimilar to Nepal’s own.

Here too there is cross-border migration, but this timeit is one that goes from Nepalto the hills across the Mahakaliriver. While the population ofthe poverty-stricken hills ofwestern Nepal migrates tocities all over India, there isquite a number that hike acrossinto Uttaranchal, whose ownmenfolk migrate to Delhi tofind better work. InUttaranchal, Nepalis (calledDotiyals) serve as porters inhill stations like Nainital andMussoorie and carry loads forpilgrims—and the pilgrimsthemselves—at holy places likeGaumukh and Kedarnath.

The point to be made hereis that all these regions andpeoples are victims of relentlesseconomic marginalisation.Economic refugees, and SouthAsia has loads of them. Thereis also increased hostilitytoward migrants these days andmay better explain whyBangladeshi refugees are hatedin Delhi by other refugees from

Bihar and elsewhere, or Nepalimigrant workers find it increas-ingly difficult in Bangalore andother cities, or why the madhesi(plainsfolk from Bihar, Orissa,Uttar Pradesh and Nepal’s own

tarai) is much looked downupon in Nepal’s hill

country. Thereis enough

inter-

naldisplacementdue to underdevel-opment, and theoutsider is clearlyunwelcome.

The lessoncan be takenfurther. Even ifnot faced withthe demandfor greaterautonomy orstatehood,there are lessonsin administeringdistant regions thatNepal could welllearn. The poverty ofthe far-flung areas is instark contrast to the affluence ofthe capital. It is the strikingdisparity that forces people to fleeone place for another, seekgreater control over their livesand resources like theJharkhandis, and cause Maoists tobe as active in Bihar as in Nepal.Whether it is the Bihari comingacross the open border or theNepali going to the plains or theincreasing human pressures onKathmandu, it is the same forcesat work. And the same quiet

desperation to get away.The clamour for autonomy is

not merely a product of linguisticor cultural chauvinism, althoughthe organisation of states in Indiawas largely on linguistic lines andhad to give way some day. It hasto do with development andunderdevelopment. For too longthese regions were treated as“internal colonies” and remainedin various stages of underdevelop-

ment, while the moneyearned

from theresource base fledto the centres ofpower. It is theclamour fordevelopment

that createsfissiparous

tendencies. Himachal Pradesh isan example of how a state wasable to successfully adopt its owndevelopment model since itsseparation from a larger Punjab.There are other demands as well,and some believe that aGorkhaland is not a distantpossibility. �

�����"������#���������������� �� ���������������$�������������!�%��!�����������������&������������'���&����

A

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���������� 3 - 9 NOVEMBER 2000 ����������

o put it in short, it was adisgraceful performance bythe Indian team in a title

clash. Even this would sound anunderstatement. Losing is one thing,succumbing without a hint of a fightis quite another. Without takingaway any credit away from thewinner, the Lankans would neverhave expected to have it so easy.

In all my years as a cricketer,coach and a critic, I have nevercome across a side giving in soeasily. Being an Indian, it was aheartbreaking sight to watch onebatsman after the other, departing asif in a daze. One is sure that millionsof fans across the country wouldhave felt the same.

If a side’s approach is going tobe like this, no coach whether he isfrom India, abroad, or even from theheaven, can make a difference. Whatwent wrong? Everything. Thebowling lacked purpose for mostpart, vital catches were put downand the batting was shocking to saythe least. Was this the same outfitthat had defeated Australia andSouth Africa only days earlier inback-to-back matches? Those headyvictories seemed a distant memory.But then, a side that lacks consis-tency is not going to make anyheadway in the long run.

What separates the successfulsides from the also-rans is thestrength of character. That will tobuck the odds, that self-belief insight of a challenging task. Sadly,

during the final in Sharjah,this very essential qualitywas conspicuous by itsabsence in the Indianteam.

It is also time thatthe media and the othercommercial interestsstop playing up somecricketers after a

couple

of performances.Players have to bejudged over a periodof time, withconsistency beingthe key indicator.One does feelthere is toomuch hypeabout the gamein the country.The selectorstoo shouldstop cateringto regionalinterests and

should sit down and pick anINDIAN team. These parochialconsiderations have caused enoughharm to Indian cricket.

Look at the Lankans. They are

�����������������������

simple cricketers whobelieve in performing onthe field of play. SkipperSanath Jayasuriya’s bighundred, during which hetook the game away fromIndia after a slump in themiddle overs, was amasterpiece in terms ofstroke production. AfterVivian Richards, he has tobe the most explosivebatsman when in the mood,yet there is no hype aboutthis humble man even in hisown country. And Lankahas always produced betterpacemen despite pitchesbeing placid in that part ofthe world as well. One doesnot have to go beyondChaminda Vaas and NuwanZoysa who blew the Indiansaway to see the point.

Last season was a badone for India. The waythings are going, this couldturn out to be even worse.Bold steps are the need ofthe hour and the men whomatter should have the

courage to take them. �(The Hindu)

K. Srikkant is a fromer captain of theIndial cricket team.

��������������������� ������ �����������������!������������������"�#������$���������������������������������������������� ������������%������������������"

#������ by KRISHNAMACHARI SRIKKANTH

Sanath Jayasuriya:single-handed demolition.

T

���������������&���������Dhaka - Former Sri Lankantest cricketer Roy Dias istipped to become coach ofBangladesh’s national cricketteam, according toBangladesh Cricket Boardsources. Dias’s name wasproposed to Bangladesh bythe Sri Lankan cricketauthorities recently. Theretired star cricketer willreplace South African coachEddie Barlow, who suffered astroke last April and is unableto complete his two-yearcontract.

Barlow, the former SouthAfrican all-rounder, wasappointed after West Indiesopener Gordon Greenidgewas fired as coach last year.Bangladesh, which achievedtest-playing status fivemonths ago, have beenfrantically looking for aneffective international coach.

Bangladesh is scheduledto play their inaugural testmatch against India in Dhaka10-14 November. Sri Lankahad also proposed the nameof Roshan Mahanama whohad retired from internationalcricket last year, but herefused the Bangladeshioffer. Dias served for sometime as coach and managerfor the Sri Lankan side afterquitting active cricket.

After the recent brilliantsuccesses in Sri Lankancricket, demands for coachesfrom the island have soaredin Bangladesh. Three otherSri Lankan coaches havebeen appointed byBangladesh to train juniorcricketers of different agegroups. (dpa)

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��'������'��������������(�����With the end of the Dasain and Tihar festivities and the onsetof winter, the Valley’s sportsmen are gearing up for anotherround of sports tournaments. From lawn tennis to golf tocricket, the racquets, clubs and bats are out of the closets andbeing readied for battle.

With leaders of the tourism industry trying to establishNepal as a sports destination, the theme seems to be wellunderway. Golf especially seems to be catching up with thecapital’s upper class. In the month of November aloneNepalis golfers will be putting away at three major tourna-ments and one amateur game. The first in the series is thefamous Grouse International Shotgun Foursomes GolfTournament to be played on the 4 November at the LeMeridien Gokarna Golf Resort. Organised in honour of QueenAishwarya’s birthday, the tournament will have amateurgolfers teeing off to make it to St Andrews in Scotland, theMecca of golf for the next Famous Grouse. The annual eventis being sponsored by Highland Distillers Brands Ltd,Scotland. Favourites are last year’s winner Tashi Ghale andrunner-up Pradeep B. Rana.

Professionals have set their eyes on a different course.Surya Tobacco Company, in its effort to promote golf in Nepal,will be holding three major tournaments. The first in line is theSurya Nepal Western Open to be held at the Himalayan GolfCourse in Pokhara on 10-11 November. Next is the SuryaNepal Eastern Open to be held at the Dharan Country Club on17-18 November. These two tourneys are only open to Nepalipros and carry a purse of Rs 50,000 each. The last in theseries is the Surya Nepal Masters carrying a prize money ofRs 1.2 million, to be held from 22-25 November at theGokarna Golf Club. Around 100 professional golfers including16 from Nepal and 80 from India are expected to participate inthis mega event. The favourite is last year’s winner, RohtasSingh of India.

On the cricketing scene, Soaltee Crown Plaza along withSurya Tobacco Company, Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN),and Zee Sports Channel is organising the Soaltee SuperSixes 2000 to be held from 3-5 November. This tournamentwill bring together board members of big corporate houses,along with diplomats from the embassies of Britain, India,and Pakistan, as well as our own hardy British Gurkhas. Thetournament in its distinctive six-sided format designed by CANis being held for the second year in a row. The British Em-bassy and Kantipur Publications are the defending champi-ons and runner-up respectively.

Tennis fans too have a tournament to look out for. The AllNepal Lawn Tennis Association, in collaboration with Carlsberg,is coming up with the 3rd Carlsberg Open Tennis Tournament2000. The matches will be held 18-26 November at theSatdobato Sports Complex. The total prize money is Rs 92,905,with the men’s singles winner taking home Rs 16,940.

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�������������������� '����������Stuttgart, Germany - Men’s tennis supremo Mark Miles saidhe was unsure about the sport’s future at Olympic Gamesafter some problems around the Sydney Games. But the ATPTour chief executive officer Miles also said there were noimmediate plans to withdraw tennis from the 2004 Games inAthens: “At the moment we are in.” He said talks on the issuewere planned with players, the International Tennis Federa-tion (which runs the event) and the International OlympicCommittee.

“It is a tough call. There are valuable reasons to be in theOlympics,” Miles said. Tennis became an Olympic sport againin 1988 when the IOC opened the Games for professionalathletes. But many top players have snubbed the Olympicsbecause they don’t fit their calendar in which the Grand Slamsnormally rank highest. World ranking points were awarded forthe first time, but the absentees in Sydney were led by PeteSampras as the event took place just two weeks after the U.S.Open. The situation in Athens is even graver as the Olympicswill be just before the New York Grand Slam. Miles also saidthe ATP was “close to serious problems” in the run-up toSydney “to conform the rankings with the Olympic culture”regarding the entry list. (dpa)

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�������������%���� ����Buenos Aires - Former Argentine football star Maradona saidhe would like a “farewell game” for the national side wearinghis old number 10 shirt. “I would be the happiest man in theworld if I could play a farewell game in the Argentine shirt withthe number 10,” he said. Maradona celebrated his 40thbirthday into the early hours at a night club in Buenos Airesalong with 500 guests. The former World Cup star hasreturned to the capital to take over as general manager of thefirst division club Almagro following a months-long course oftherapy in Cuba for drug addiction and weight problems.Overweight and suffering a heart problem, Maradona admittedthat he was close to death after collapsing in January. “I willthank God if I reach the age of 50,” he said.Maradona intends to return to Cuba to continue his drugstreatment, planning to return to Argentina at Christmas. (dpa)

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������� 3 - 9 NOVEMBER 2000���������� ��� ��������� by DESMOND DOIG ����������� by MANJUSHREE THAPA

he lovely cityof Patan is so old its

origins are largelyforgotten. Legend has

the Buddha visit it with hisbeloved disciple Ananda. Thegreat Mauryan emperor Ashokabuilt four stupas about the cityto testify to its blessedness.From Patan, almost certainly,went the Princess Brikuti tomarry the famous Tibetan kingTsrong-Song-Gompo. It is saidthat she took with her as her soledowry the begging bowl of theBuddha and through her ownindomitable faith causedBuddhism to take firm roots inTibet. She comes down to usthrough history as the charmingGreen Tara, subject of countlessstatues and paintings.

To the Nepalis, Patan wasLalitpatan or Lalitpur, city ofbeauty. To Tibetan traders itwas Ye Rang, which meanseternity itself. The beautyremains, despite the passing ofcorroding centuries, destructiveearthquakes, wars and theattention of vandals whosacrilegiously have wrenchedsome of its finest detail from themagnificence that still remains.Down every lane, in everycourtyard and in the greatsquares are jewel-like memoriesof the past which, I like tothink, serve as inspiration to thelarge number of artists andworkers in wood and metal whoinhabit the city. They wereknown to be there, feeding aflourishing Indo-Tibet traderoute, when whatever there wasof the ancient city was rebuilt byKing Veera Deva in the year AD299. It is not known whether he

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Thanks to the current resurgence of pride in ethnic identities andlanguages, there are, now, an increasing number of (largely male)writers from minority ethnic groups. Dalit authors, however, stillremain almost wholly unheard from in our literature. The low literacyrate—and negligible rate of higher education—among Dalits, issurely one reason for this. Nepal’s scattered Dalit population, whichby some accounts constitutes twenty percent of the nationalpopulation, has yet to be freed from centuries’ long economicexploitation and social discrimination. Only now are crops ofeducated Dalits emerging from colleges; only now will Dalit voicesbe heard in literature. Yet the exclusion of Dalit voices in literaturecannot be chalked up to the Dalits’ lack of privilege alone. FromBhanubhakta’s days to the present time, Nepal’s literature has beenthe bastion of ‘upper-caste’ men—which, given the priority placed oneducation by the priestly caste, effectively means Bahun men.Newar writers, with their extensive and excellent Nepali and Nepal-bhasa compositions, are the only group to seriously rival Bahunmen’s dominance over our literature. One can only hope thisinsularity will end—soon—so that Nepali literature may speak inNepal’s many different voices.

Chakra Man Biswakarma brings to Nepali literature arefreshingly down-to-earth perspective. He is founding member ofthe Dalit Sewa Sang and the Dalit Gair Sarkari Sanstha Mahasang.The best of his slim first collection Dalit Bastika Suseliharu (TheWhistles of a Dalit Settlement) accomplishes what all goodprogressive literature aspires to: to speak of the masses and to themasses, with art and instruction both. The first poem below speakseloquently of the lingering inequality that sharply contradicts Nepal’sclaims to democratic nationhood:

��� ��������������������In places, hungry stomachsIn places, unfarmed fieldsFor some here, employmentis mandatory to support lifeFor others here, employmentcounts for mere pocket changeThe learned people saythis country is a garden of all castesBut for Dalits who are told: don’t pollute this and don’t pollute that;who are barred from touching the taps, wells and templesnear their own homes and courtyards;who can’t risk revealing their casteseven in a settlement of scholars—the nation’s capital;who preserve Nepal’s culture by playing sarangi and sahanaimelodieswho have made Nepal’s renown as a country of the braveby fashioning khukuri knives;for them, even after democracy—oh hajoor!—this country remainsa patch of stinging nettles

The second poem is more personal; and yet it expresses anunfulfilled longing which is not just universal, but which comes frommigrations caused by the economic and social discriminations thatare specific to Dalit communities:

�����������In solitude, I keep remembering youmy heart pierced by bitter recollections…When clouds start dancing in the skywhen cuckoo birds start singing in the springsomehow I feel that your own sweet voice is ringingand I feel much love for you in my heartI see your own ardour hiddenin spring flowers reaching their primeYou must be playing hide and seek, teasing the moonyou must be smiling, jesting with your own youthfulnessyou must be roaming the hills and cliffs cutting fresh grassyou must be singing, sinking in melancholyThe waterfalls must weep to hear your songsEven if you’re in great sorrowdon’t stop loving me for going abroaddon’t stop loving me because our love is out of casteIf not in this realm I’ll come to you in another realmif not as a living corpse I’ll come in the guise of a butterfly

Dalit Bastika Suseliharu speaks without guile of the material andemotional suffering of Nepal’s most discriminated againstcommunities. Sophisticated readers will be facile to look down onthe simplicity of language that the collection adopts: for the factremains that the majority of Nepalis can access literature only if it iswritten, as this collection is, in the everyday language of speech.Anyone committed to a literature which speaks of and to the massescan learn much from CM Biswakarma’s simple yet elegantexpressions. This is the kind of literature which can thrive, as allliterature should, outside exclusionary literary circles. Dalit BastikaSuseliharu—and similar writings from Nepal’s underrepresentedcommunities—should be made widely available for the burgeoningpost-literacy readership all over the country.

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built the wall about the citythat remains only in thebriefest snatches orwhether it was therealready, a bastionnot only againstinvasions butnocturnal intruders.The city also had theprotection of a river,more holy thanprotective since thereare seasons when it isalmost dry.

It is across thissacred river, at theconfluence of theBagmatiand theManahara,thattradersandvisitorsfrom the north came,over a medieval bridge ofstout wooden beams, brickand earth. It still is easy toimagine their awe and amaze-ment at first sight of the citywith its piled pagoda roofs,golden finials flashing in thesun, its stupas and templesacross the river. If they had ateller of tales travelling withthem, or met a priest from anyof numerous temples crowdingthe ghats, they would have beentold that gods and goddessescame to bathe unseen at theconfluence known asShankhamul. One knew theywere there when the watersuddenly stopped in its glidesouthwards and sometimes evenreversed direction. A couple ofyears ago an adventurous trucktried to cross the ancient bridge.

I was assured by a garrulouspriest that it must have chosenjust the moment of the celestialdip to profane the happening.The old bridge fell apart inanguish and no one has botheredto put it together again.

Dominating this particularapproach to Patan—there isanother downstream where anew bridge and highwayobliterate the old crossingbetween Kathmandu andPatan—is the temple of JagatNarayan, nineteenth centurynew, and not very attractiveexcept for four powerful imagesthat face its entrance. Three ofthem, massively carved in stoneas if they intend to sit out thecenturies, are under metalcanopies. They representGanesh, Garuda in his humanform, and Hanuman. I have yetto find someone who will datethese images that to me appearmuch older than the templewhose courtyard they occupy.Perhaps they were already there,open to the elements, addingtheir blessings to the sacredconfluence. Perhaps they graceda far older temple long sincedestroyed and swept away. For,to me, they have the samequality as the colossal statues ofGaruda and Bhairab inKathmandu. Behind thekneeling Garuda, atop a tallstone pillar supported on theback of a stone turtle, is a gildedGaruda, bird-faced and hornedand wearing a plume of flames.He crouches, which is unusual,giving the impression ofimmediate flight on goldenwings. A small boy who watchedme sketch and claimed that his

name was AmitabhDharmendra, seemed to havethe same idea. As I drew theperched Garuda he clapped hishands and shooed loudly as hewould a wayward chicken. “If heflies away,” he said, “you cannotsketch him.” If he flies away, Isaid in reply, we will both die ofshock. The boy ran off to sharehis joke with a group of otherchildren, no doubt calledZeenat, Hema and Mithun.

The temple was built byColonel Jagat Shumshere JungKunwar Rana, brother of thefamous Prime MinisterMaharaja Jung Bahadur, in1860. Ten years ago he hadaccompanied his brother toEngland and Europe and bydoing so had disregarded thetaboo of crossing the kala pani.Some believe he built thistemple to Narayan to atone forhis sin, while others see it as anattempt to keep up with hisfamous brother who wasplanning to build a temple atKal Mochan in Kathmandu.Perhaps he was merely gifting toPatan a new temple as theculmination of a great deal ofbuilding and rebuilding he haddone in the area. Several smallertemples and an imposing stretchof burning and bathing ghatsowe their origin to the piouscolonel, whether easing a guiltyconscience or attempting toimmortalize himself. Certainlythe four handsome images willperpetuate his name. �

(Excerpted with permission from Inthe Kingdom of the Gods,HarperCollins, 1999)

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The four powerful images of Ganesh,Garuda in his human form,Hanuman and the gilded Garudaatop the pillar, as they stand today.

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������� 20 - 26 OCTOBER 2000 ����������

For inclusion in the listing send informationto [email protected]

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1 Donahue in Manila? (4)5 O! A poem (3)8 Golf beverage? (3)11 Not always to tie shoe (4)12 Ex-federal? (3)13 Look at summit (4)14 Tell it in Israel (4)15 Bureau of 12 across (3)16 Wag this story (4)17 Boom in sound (5)19 LA university (4)21 Microgram (3)22 Slow musical in lent? (5)24 But it’s a vat! (3)27 Miss Piggie said (4)28 Untie or merge? (5)30 Sacrifice this Indian? (6)33 A ton of penitence (6)34 Mohammed was a boxer, not

an…(5)35 Identical victory? (4)36 Excavate an infra? (3)37 Loot the implements (5)39 Central spooks (3)42 What 39 across would do? (4)43 Chase dog (5)

Terms and conditions1 The contest is open to everyone, except employees of Himalmedia Pvt Ltd and Infocom Pvt Ltd.2 In case of more than one correct entry, the winner will be decided by lucky draw.3 Entries have to reach Himalmedia, by 5 pm,

7 Nov, Tuesday.4 The winner will be announced in the coming issue.5 The prize has to be collected from Himalmedia within a week of the announcement. Please

come with an ID.

Name......................................................................................................Ph.........................................email..........................................................

To send in your entries, please fill in the details below and fax to 977-1-521013, or email [email protected]. Entries can be dropped off at Himalmedia Pvt Ltd, Patan Dhoka, Lalitpur.

45 Second video in Greek? (4)48 Fight over who moves oar? (3)50 Drag a senior student? (4)51 Adjoin a backside? (4)52 Munched with tea? (3)53 Jay may say no (4)54 Nepal Biscuit Enterprises? (3)55 Has in the past (3)56 Paradise garden (4)����

1 Proto, a lump of (5)2 Chaos (5)3 Cold top on cake (5)4 Jeans in a veil? (4)5 Disconnect (3)6 Expose as junk? (6)7 Ed’s decree? (5)8 Jumble 52 across (3)9 Lee’s sea food (3)10 Squeeze a living (3)13 Parents and teachers (3)18 Customers (7)20 Stupid-ish (7)23 East northeast (3)24 Push this in the tower (3)25 North American native (3)26 Ed’s sleeping here (3)

27 And only (3)29 French no (3)30 An ad for this place (3)31 Sting like a bee (3)32 Big guy with hair? (3)33 Tool for owl? (3)35 Car man in Nepal this week (6)38 At the opera with her (5)39 Made well again (5)40 In a silly one (5)41 Addition (3,2)42 Munch (3)44 Olga’s look? (4)45 Nab a censor (3)46 Recede (3)47 Before Wed (3)49 Marry on this day (3)

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The most convenient and economic way to surf the internet

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Out of 17 entries, there were nocorrect answers.

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Basanti - Plaza IIChautari - Ashok, Krishna (470090)Dhukdhuki - Bishwo Jyoti (221837), Ganga Chalchitra, Prithvi, Goon (Kha)(520668)Mailee - Goon (Ga) (520668), Ranjana (221191)�� �� ��

Deewane – MetroDhadkan - Sri Nava DurgaDhai Akshar Prem Ke - Gopi (470090)Fiza - RadhaHindustan Ki Kasam – ShivadarshanJis Desh Mein Ganga Rehta Hai - Kumari (414932), Goon (Ka) (520668)Josh - PadmaMission Kashmir - Tara (476092)Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani - Manakamana (225284)Shikari - Plaza 1

�������� ������ ����Video documentary Qoyllur Rit’i: A Woman’s Journey, produced by HollyWissler and directed by Gabriela Martinez Escobar. Seventy percent of theproceeds will go towards the continued education of Rajen Rai, the 10-year-old son of a porter who died in a trekking accident in 1993. IndigoGallery. 6 pm, Friday, 3 November. Rs 300. 413580 [email protected]

�������Jazz sessionYak & Yeti warms up for the winter with its annual autumn event the“Kathmandu Jazz and Food Festival.” A fundraising dinner “All that Jazz”with Kathmandu’s premier jazz band Cadenza starting off. This will befollowed by a special appearance by French bass guitarist Daniel Givone,solo guitarist Jean Claude Givone, and rhythm guitarist Christine Givoneand their gypsy jazz inspirations. Last act will feature the band Chakra.Madhuban Garden, Yak & Yeti Hotel. 7 pm, 10 November

��UnpluggedLive unplugged performance by Sabu Lama at Las Kus RestaurantCourtyard, Kathmandu Guest House, Thamel, 6:30 pm onwards. 413632.

��Piano and PercussionPiano, Drums and Double Bass performance by Budaprithi Trio band from7-9:30 pm everyday except Mondays at the Juneli Bar, Hotel De l’Annapurna, Durbar Marg. 221711

��PopFilipino band Spice and Ice playing at the Gurkha Grill, Soaltee Hotel.7:30 pm. Everyday except Monday. 272555

��ClassicalMusicians from Nepal and abroad perform on 11 November at KiratesworTemple, Pashupatinath. 4-8 pm. Free entrance but charges may apply forspecial guest appearances. Organised by Kirateswor Sangeet Ashram.492139

��JazzLive jazz by Cadenza and friends at Upstairs Restaurant, Lazimpat. EverySaturday 7:30-10:00 pm.

����������������� Mountain Bike Championship Second phase of International ClassMountain Bike Championship. 11 November, Saturday. Registration opentill event eve. MTB theory and practice workshop follows after the champi-onship by international cyclists. Surf www.bikingnepal.com or contact PeterStewart, Race Director at Himalayan Mountain Bikes, Thamel. 427427

KATHMANDU Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue

27-09 26-09 26-08 26-08 25-07

The glorious weather of the past week was the result of northerly windson the fringes of the Bangladesh cyclone that grazed Kathmandu, andbrought some rain to eastern Nepal. These winds have now shiftednorthwest and will bring clear weather for another week or so. Theremay be some fast-moving high altitude clouds from the west over theweekend, but these will quickly pass. The wind and holidays were alsoresponsible for clean air in Kathmandu Valley. Unfortunately that wastoo good to last, expect the morning mists to return as night tempera-tures fall to 7 degrees next week.

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3 - 9 NOVEMBER 2000��������������

A oil-lamp procession taken out by a local community in Kathmandu on the occassion of theNewari New Year 1120 on 27 October. The banner wishes all Nepalis a Happy New Year.

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Autumn is here, and with it glorious weather and unobstructed views across Kathmandu Valleytowards Ganesh Himal. In the foreground is the increasingly congested skyline of Kathmandu,with (from l to r) Swayambhu, the Taleju temple and Dharahara, as seen on 1 November .

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Captain Nicolli Didier makes an inaugural paragliding jump from Chhayau Danda east ofKathmandu Valley to exhibit this new adventure sport in Nepal. The event on 28 October wasorganised by Mt Pumori Adventure Treks and Expedition and Hotel Mount Monastery.

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hree years ago, five alpacasstepped off the cargo hold ofa Lufthansa jet at Kathmandu

airport. They literally breezed throughcustoms and were whisked off to theirnew home. At last count theynumbered eight, are housed on a farmat Thaiba near Godavari, and haveadapted well to the Kathmandu clime.

Now, what on earth is an alpacaone might ask? They belong to thesame family as the llamas and wereonce endemic to the rugged Andeanmountains where they have beenfarmed for over 6,000 years. They areprized for their wool, which has a finesilky quality like cashmere. Theancient Incas treasured alpaca wooland the finest fleece was preserved fortheir royalty.

At Thaiba the alpacas grazeabout totally at home in their newsurroundings owned by Hartmutand Pramila Bauder, who mayactually have pioneered theintroduction of these animals toAsia. The German-Nepali couple(who were also the first to intro-duce olive farming in Nepal) werestruck by the idea on one of theirtreks. “We thought of ways inwhich people in the high-altituderegions could supplement theirincome. After a feasibility study, wedecided to introduce alpacas inNepal,” say the Bauders.

The reason they chose the

alpaca is “because of their lowmaintenance, their eco-friendlynature (animals like goats stripevery green off plants), a longproductive life of around 20 years,and because they are intelligent,quiet, gentle and hardy”. Thecouple has already extracted around15 kg of their fleece, which they sayis “a token quantity”. An alpacanormally yields 3.5-4 kg of woolevery year, which fetches a goodprice in the international marketand is free of the fluctuations thataffect traditional sheep-wool.

Bringing the animals into Nepalwas surprisingly very easy. “Wewere impressed by how everyone,starting from the ground staff at theairport to those in the Ministry ofAgriculture, showed curiosity andlent a helping hand,” says Pramila.

Interestingly, the alpacas thatwere once indiscriminately

slaughtered and almost wiped outby Spanish invaders to make roomfor sheep are now staging acomeback and replacing sheep inmany countries. Because of thegrowing industry of items madefrom their wool, farmers all over theworld are replacing their sheep withalpacas, which are hence in greatdemand. The Bauder couple had topay almost Rs 500,000 for each ofthem.

Alpacas are gentle and docile bynature, and love being in herds.Because of their gentleness, they arealso easy to handle. “We haven’tfaced any problems—they some-times spit at each other when theydislike their partner’s actions butthey never fight or bite or kick,”says Hartmut. The spit of thealpacas is known to smell so vilethat a partner at the receiving endcannot taste anything for more than

an hour due to the overpoweringodour.

Here in Godavari the alpacaslive on green grass, hay and cerealfeed. Alpacas don’t leave theirdroppings all over the place. Liketrained pets, they always go at thesame place. “Keeping alpacas is verycost effective. They are efficientruminants and digest almosteverything they eat,” says Hartmut.

For now, the couple plan toraise at least 50 more after whichthey might finally let Nepali farmershave them, beginning with thegovernment yak farm in Khumjung,just north of Namche Bazar. Thecouple is impressed by the AnimalHusbandry Department’s interest inalpaca farming. If all goes well, itmay only be a matter of time beforeBuddhist lamas in Nepal’s remotemountain regions will have Andeanllamas to keep them company. �

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����������� 3 - 9 NOVEMBER 2000����� �� ���

Ambassadorwhiskey

All prices are in US dollars, collected from informal sources, and are only indicative.

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he manager of the Rastriya Banijya Bank is onecompletely frustrated man. He has nearly givenup fighting corruption, and now he is going to

(and I quote) leave it to God. It could be that the bankchief is on the right track. Even our god-fearingprime minister has now said he has onelast weapon up his sleeve to fightcorruption: religion. At least we nowseem to have a National Plan ofAction. Subcontracting theCommission to Investigate the Abuseof Authority to the Almighty is onehelluva move. Basically, our leadershave passed the buck on to theSupreme Being and they are going to letGod fight it out with the Devil. We’ll justsit back and enjoy the show.

God created us all. So in the end, Heis responsible for the greedy thoughtsthat enter a customs officer’smind when he sees a migrantworker returning from Qatar.After all, He made the migrant worker, He made thecustoms officer, He made Qatar, and He even made theDevil. I see some restless hands in the audience, and Iknow what you are dying to ask me. You want to knowhow I know that God is a He. The simple answer tothat is that at the present stage of our investigations wehave no idea which gender, if any, God is possessed of.And don’t ask me if Satan is a man or woman.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see just how Godis going to go about fighting corruption, which inNepal has been honed over the years into a fine artform. Does He/She have a plan? Or is It just going toprovide lip service, and make speeches that go:“Honourable Ministers, Honourable Members of theHouse, His Excellency the Devil, Esteemed Bandits,Respected Crooks, Venerable Smugglers, Gentlemenand Ladies. It gives me great pleasure today toinaugurate this new Anti-Corruption Temple Complex

dedicated to fighting graft. As we know, themain opposition led by the Devil has beentrying to sabotage our divineprogramme to ensure a clean andefficient bureaucracy, setting backour effort to bring relief to thepeople in this period of crisis forthe country. There can be no twoopinions that the Number Onechallenge for the Nation today is tofight this scourge that is eating intothe vital statistics of our society. Solet me assure you that We will leave

no stone right-side up ingetting to the bottom ofthis sinful, sinful act.”

God could start byannouncing a Zero Tolerance campaign so that thoseon the take will be awarded draconian punishments onthe spot. Ripping off the nation on hydropower deal:Eternal Damnation in the Kingdom of Hades.Kickbacks on jet lease: Slow roast in Hell-fire. Mixingkerosene with diesel: Shovelling coal in Perdition.Harassing Qatar returnees: Serve as a peon to theDevil’s advocate. �

f ever Kathmandu’s elitechattering classes had acafé culture, then the

beginnings of one can beseen at Chez Caroline atBaber Mahal. Writers, poets,artists gather in the verandasetting in an ambience that isso Mediterranean in its feelthat it could be situated on theLeft Bank of the Seine.

Just pronouncing itsofficial name, Chez CarolineSalon de the‘ Café Restaurant,is a mouthful. The Carolinecomes from CarolineSengupta who first came toNepal in 1969 at a time whenKathmandu was goingthrough its hippie era. But

�������������� �

Caroline was no flower childhanging out on Freak Street.India had always been on hermind, and Caroline took painsto learn Hindi in Delhi. Later,she began leading tourgroups to different parts ofIndia and eventually to Nepal.

“Things happen whenthey have to happen,” shesays, and Caroline’s destinyled her to meet her husband-to-be, Utpal Sengupta, at thebar of the Shangri-La Hotel inLazimpat in 1979. Carolinewas there with a tourist groupand Sengupta was GeneralManager of the hotel. A yearlater, they were married andCaroline Dominique added

Sengupta to her name, bid aurevoir to the glitz and glamourof her hometown of Paris, andsettled down here. Althoughshe still takes time off to travelto Paris every now and then,Caroline says, “I can’t imagineliving anywhere else.”

Caroline has beeninvolved in different activitiesfrom leading tourist groups todecorating the Shangri-LaVillage in Pokhara. She’s evenhad a brief fling with journal-ism. All this changed whenthree years ago her husbandcame up with the ChezCaroline and asked her to runit. “I don’t do it for the money,”she says. “I wanted to providea clean, hygienic andaffordable place where peoplecould come and just relaxeven if it’s just a cappuccinothey want.”

What makes the placespecial is what Carolinebreathes into it, and thecomplete harmony andunderstanding betweenCaroline and her team of 16Nepali workers. “We workmore like colleagues ratherthen employer andemployees. If you give peoplepride in their work the perfor-mance is bound to be good,”she says. The positive vibesemitted by the team may bejust one reason why herclients keep coming back—not to forget the deliciousassortment of her familyrecipes of salads, soups, andcakes. �

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