India has the British to thank for its extensive nationwide rail network. China is now foremost in the world for fast trains. In between, Nepal is stuck in the slow track, and has let its historical railway lines in the Tarai rust away. An interesting subject for research by students of history can reveal how railway lines linking Nepal to British India shaped the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/nepals-political-economy">political economy</a> and social life of the day. &nbsp; The British built tracks to log <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-tarai-s-shrinking-forests">Nepal’s Tarai forests</a> for teak sleepers needed for new railway lines across India. But the train tracks also opened up Nepal to the world. And to itself.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250214070240_ea9e5986631d43d82b60fcfb8631f08fcc9c1f18d5087f8d98850857ac60cb15.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20250214070240_ea9e5986631d43d82b60fcfb8631f08fcc9c1f18d5087f8d98850857ac60cb15" data-rendition-name="original" width="800" height="450" loading="lazy" alt="Luxury carriage"> <figcaption>A luxury carriage that brought British hunting royalty at Bhikhna-Thori station in the early 1900s. Photo: MADAN PURASKAR PUSTAKALAYA</figcaption> </figure>  <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/india-nepal-rail-diplomacy">Nepal helped build India’s rail network</a> with raw material, but only built two short lines of its own. Railways were introduced to India in 1886 by the British, not long after the invention of the steam locomotive. The rail network spread rapidly till 1914, a time when the demand for railway sleepers soared and the Tarai forests were mined for logs. The border town of Raxaul inaugurated its railway station on 1 March 1899. Once Raxaul was connected, it became easier for people from Kathmandu travelling to various parts of India, or even to other parts of Nepal, to take trains. India’s railways therefore also connected Nepal. When the Rana regime finally built train tracks, they were limited to the Raxaul-Birganj-Amlekhganj and Jayanagar-Janakpur-Bijulpura tracks for goods and passengers. Much later, train tracks were also built to ferry stones and logs during the construction of the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-kosi-s-sorrow-and-scope">Kosi Barrage</a> in 1958-1962.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250214070244_9f32a67c6443031b9e1535bb0c39ccd4007e66cdd3169bd8420ef32cf5ce96b2.png" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20250214070244_9f32a67c6443031b9e1535bb0c39ccd4007e66cdd3169bd8420ef32cf5ce96b2" data-rendition-name="original" width="1432" height="896" loading="lazy" alt="Nepal Government Railway"> <figcaption>Nepal Government Railway in Amlekhganj in 1927. Photo: DIRGHA MAN CHITRAKAR</figcaption> </figure>  &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250214070248_720e22e1707010b91d5554d39dcc2586941557919e22ef0d266d77a9f75db928.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20250214070248_720e22e1707010b91d5554d39dcc2586941557919e22ef0d266d77a9f75db928" data-rendition-name="original" width="736" height="490" loading="lazy" alt="Janakpur railway"> <figcaption>The steam engine of the Janakpur Railway that was commissioned in 1929.</figcaption> </figure>  Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/latest/nepal-railways-janakpur-test-drive?fb_comment_id=3554227181262227_4263866616964943">Nepal Railways Janakpur test drive</a> It was only after the completion of the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/on-the-fast-lane-to-expressways">East-West Highway</a> in the 1980s that the reliance of Nepalis on Indian trains was reduced. Until as recently as a decade ago, there was no alternative to taking an Indian train to get from one Tarai district to a neighbouring one, or even to travel within a district in Nepal. Indian narrow gauge train stations near the border became everyday names in Nepali conversation because of their importance to domestic connectivity: Galgaliya, Jogbani, Katihar, Nirmali, Kunaili, Bairgania, Dheng, Ghodasahan, Thutibari, Nautanwa, Badhani, Gorakhpur, Sunauli, Gonda, Bharaich, Murtiya, Tiukunia, Gauriphanta... Even today, as feeder roads join Tarai towns, some of these stations are still used extensively by Nepalis. One of them is the border village of Thori on the west of Parsa district. People in Thori used to take an Indian railway train at the Bhikhna-Thori to travel to the district capital of Birganj via Raxaul. In fact, the station catered almost exclusively to passengers from Nepal, and once the road joined Thori with Birganj, Bhikhna-Thori railway station fell into ruin.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250214070236_3180dfc6b2f7740674c84f99f5a25b1bc8b0395ae93093569320c533132b9861.png" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="20250214070236_3180dfc6b2f7740674c84f99f5a25b1bc8b0395ae93093569320c533132b9861" data-rendition-name="original" width="2234" height="1536" loading="lazy" alt="Bhikhna-Thori"> <figcaption>Bhikhna-Thori station today is a desolate place with the fare board still stuck to the wall. Photo: CHANDRA KISHORE</figcaption> </figure>  The Bhikhna-Thori station was built in 1906, and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-duke-of-edinburgh-in-nepal">British royalty</a> and the Governor General from Calcutta used to take it for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/centennial-of-hunting-diplomacy-in-nepal">hunting expeditions organised by Nepal’s Rana rulers</a> in their honour. Similar rail links joining the Nepal border to the Indian rail network were built in Gauriphanta to connect Dhangadi (1914) and Kanchanpur to Tanakpur (1912). Gauriphanta was closed because Dudhwa became an Indian national park, and Tanakpur was converted to broad gauge.&nbsp; The importance of Nepali travelers to Indian railways can be gleaned from the name of Rupediya station, which is still officially called ‘Nepalganj Road’ Station.&nbsp; Similarly, there is a ‘Janakpur Road’ Station along the Samastipur-Narkatiaganj line in Bihar state, even though the name of the town itself is Pupari. The reason for this could be so Indian pilgrims headed to Janakpur would know where to get off.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250215030236_f232e817ef8fadcc7663360a2086b45f96e4bb72598336eab8072a4ff85ce3e9.jpg" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="20250215030236_f232e817ef8fadcc7663360a2086b45f96e4bb72598336eab8072a4ff85ce3e9" data-rendition-name="original" width="487" height="410" loading="lazy" alt="Close up map"> <figcaption>Closeup map showing how Nepalis travelling from Chitwan to Birganj had to go via Indian railway before the road through Nepali territory.</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025021607024_0819ee002685375d1d6485c2ff3cadc3937f77257fb479024482ad8f115b5ef5.jpg" data-media-id="editor_13" data-image-id="2025021607024_0819ee002685375d1d6485c2ff3cadc3937f77257fb479024482ad8f115b5ef5" data-rendition-name="original" width="1328" height="914" loading="lazy" alt="Nepal India railway"> </figure>  The crossborder railway was essential not just for passengers but also Nepal government administrative work. Not only were the mountains roadless, but even Tarai towns were not connected by motorable roads. After Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal became the first to climb an 8,000m peak when they summited Annapurna in 1950, they walked from Base Camp for weeks to the Indian border at Sunauli, took the Indian trail to Raxaul, connected to the Amlekhganj train and then trekked up the mountains to Kathmandu to meet Prime Minister Mohan Shumsher &nbsp;Rana.&nbsp; Herzog made the journey in the heat of the Indian summer. His frostbitten toes and fingers were turning gangrenous and had to be amputated in the train.&nbsp; <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-train-project-struggles-to-stay-on-track">Lack of connectivity in Nepal</a> and the presence of Indian train stations at the border meant that Nepal’s socio-economic life and political orientation was to the south. It was only after connectivity within Nepal improved starting in the 1970s that the periphery could go directly to Kathmandu without routing via India. This change had a profound impact on education, health, trade, and even in the mindset of Nepalis. In his book, Regionalism and National Unity in Nepal, American scholar Frederick H Gaige says that the basis of the early industrialisation of the Nepal Tarai towns was that they were connected to the Indian rail network. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/putting-nepal-on-the-right-track">Putting Nepal on the right track</a>, Arnico Pandey Gaige argues that the expansion of its railway network to the Nepal border was also linked to India’s own economic growth trajectory northwards in the 19th century as markets for agriculture surplus from the Nepal Tarai. Traders from the Madhesi community prospered because of the presence of these stations, and some invested their profits in property there. It was a sign of great prestige for traders from Nepal to own assets in Indian railheads. India’s railways even influenced Nepal’s political awakening, starting with the 1950 anti-Rana movement. Being able to coordinate protests across Nepal was only possible because of the ease of travel by rail via India. Even during the 1980 referendum, anti-Panchayat reformists found refuge in rail stations across the border. Finally, there was also the social impact. Connecting various parts of Nepal, even the mountain districts, with each other made it possible for families from eastern Nepal to marry their children to those from the west – something that would have been difficult, if not impossible, had they not been able to travel on Indian trains. Nepal was a closed kingdom in those days, but Indian trains also opened the eyes of Nepalis to the world outside: Calcutta, Banaras, Bombay and beyond. &nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/india-china-rail-race">India-China rail race</a>, Shristi Karki

India’s border trains that connected Nepal

Bottom

With its wide range of attractions, varied landscape and moderate weather, <a href="https://blog.turkishairlines.com/en/category/destinations/turkey/">Türkiye</a> is fast becoming a favourite holiday destination for travellers worldwide, including Nepalis.&nbsp; Direct air links, easy visa processing and even free stopover offers, the country that straddles two continents is just a hop away from Kathmandu. It could be as accessible as Bangkok and Bali, the traditionally preferred holiday destination for Nepalis and Nepal-based expats. Increasingly, Türkiye has also become an affordable and more convenient half-way meeting point for South Asian families including Nepalis with relatives in North America and Europe, especially as visa restrictions tighten. Türkiye was the sixth biggest global tourism destination last year, with 51.2 million visitors in a country of 85 million people. Tourists are drawn by its rich heritage, culture, cuisine as well as shopping.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250411120444_8c8ec84b12138d59a404b456b974d7a2e47fa3c0e91a430f11ae77fc0e8fb9d5.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250411120444_8c8ec84b12138d59a404b456b974d7a2e47fa3c0e91a430f11ae77fc0e8fb9d5" data-rendition-name="original" width="2270" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Istanbul"> <figcaption>Istanbul. Photos: SERKAN BAŞAR</figcaption> </figure>  And there are some unforgettably iconic destinations like the Bosphorus that divides Asia and Europe, Cappadocia, Konya, Antalya, Mardin. More and more Nepalis who are looking for Instagram posts of places other than Bali’s Kuta beach or Thailand’s Koh Phi Phi may want to inquire about tours to Türkiye. “Everyone knows and wants to go to Istanbul, but there are also some very popular destinations like Cappadocia with its hot air balloon rides in summer, and skiing in winter,” says Serkan Başar, General Manager of Turkish Airlines in Nepal. “Then there is Konya, the historical city famous for its Sufi heritage and a big annual festival with dance, music, poetry and food.” Konya is the final resting place of the renowned 13th century Persian poet, scholar and Sufi mystic, Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī. The annual Şeb-i Arûs festival which translates into ‘the night of reunion’ commemorates Rumi and is famous for Türkiye’s hypnotic dancers, called the dervish.&nbsp; Apart from its sporting attractions, Cappadocia, is known its unique soft-stone landscape featuring cone rock formations, cave churches, fairy chimneys, rock houses, and entire underground cities. ‘Cappadocia is a geological oddity of honeycombed hills and towering boulders of otherworldly beauty,’ gushes Lonely Planet guide. Travellers can choose to stay in one of the several cave hotels the town offers as they explore the fresco-adorned rock-cut churches of Göreme Open-Air Museum and the subterranean refuges of Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı. Türkiye is a perfect holiday destination as it serves different types of tourists: those on a limited budget, and those who want a premium experience. Turkish Airlines flies to over 300 destinations and is the only European airline serving Nepal, operates <a href="https://www.turkishairlines.com/en-int/flights/flights-to-istanbul">direct flights between Istanbul and Kathmandu five times a week</a>. The timing is convenient: departing Kathmandu at 7:30 AM, passengers arrive in Istanbul at noon after a 7-hour flight. The resort city of <a href="https://www.turkishairlines.com/en-int/flights/flights-to-antalya">Antalya</a> on the Mediterranean coast is famous for its beaches and coastal scenery and is gaining a reputation for destination weddings. Water sports is popular in the crystal-clear Mediterranean coast astride the golden sands of Lara and Konyaaltı beaches.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250411120448_6ba4835e67ae90c70ae04e10cdfd01c3693fcfede17c1c5ffd7f6c7f583e1ec1.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250411120448_6ba4835e67ae90c70ae04e10cdfd01c3693fcfede17c1c5ffd7f6c7f583e1ec1" data-rendition-name="original" width="960" height="1280" loading="lazy" alt="Antalya"> <figcaption>Antalya. Photo: SERKAN BAŞAR</figcaption> </figure>  Mardin is a treasure trove for those wishing to explore heritage and archaeological sites, with ancient ruins, castles, mosques and churches dating back to Biblical times. Also known as the city of golden stone because of golden yellow limestone buildings on its strategic location on a rocky hill, Mardin is an open-air museum.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250411120448_438e0cfd2378aac4b0d45f56a11342500291c034c23da8afb06113ee04e92662.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20250411120448_438e0cfd2378aac4b0d45f56a11342500291c034c23da8afb06113ee04e92662" data-rendition-name="original" width="1280" height="960" loading="lazy" alt="Mardin"> <figcaption>Mardin. Photo: SERKAN BAŞAR</figcaption> </figure>  Istanbul tour and stopover Turkish Airlines offers transit passengers with 6-24 hour layovers a free hotel stay through its <a href="https://www.turkishairlines.com/en-int/flights/fly-different/touristanbul">Touristanbul</a> service. Those interested can select one of the six tours offered as per their itinerary and will be picked up, and driven back to the airport. The airlines also offer a <a href="https://www.turkishairlines.com/en-int/flights/stopover">Stopover</a> in Istanbul package for passengers with a connection period of at least 20 hours wherein they can stay free of charge in program-contracted hotels as they explore the city. Economy Class passengers get one night in a 4-star hotel while Business Class passengers get two nights in a 5-star or boutique hotel.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250411120440_8b4914a026c2d43a15c12d5468475a5539dbe606e4c553846dbb7d8a31fc82b6.png" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="20250411120440_8b4914a026c2d43a15c12d5468475a5539dbe606e4c553846dbb7d8a31fc82b6" data-rendition-name="original" width="600" height="424" loading="lazy" alt="Turkish stopover"> </figure>  Nepalis going to Europe, the UK, and the US with a visa validity of 180 days and more are eligible for Türkiye evisa at $37. Others can apply for <a href="https://dtvgroup.com.tr/">a tourist visa via VFS office</a> in Chaya Centre in Kathmandu which will be processed in 10-15 days. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Go Türkiye

The Asian Development Bank expects Nepal’s economy to grow 4.4% in fiscal year 2025, up from the 3.9% estimated for FY2024. They put the improvement down to increased domestic demand, private sector reform, and a revitalised tourism industry.

Economy to grow

Turkish Airlines Legal &amp; Compliance Department was recognised as the best legal team in the Transport &amp; Logistics — Team category at the Lexology European Awards 2025 in London. “The company’s forward-thinking and dynamic strategy has played a crucial role in shaping a strong and impactful legal department,” said Berkant Kolcu, Turkish Airlines Senior Vice President of Legal and Compliance.

Turkish awards

The past, the present, and the future are really one: they are today. -Harriet Beecher Stowe  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024122609120_5c63a3201a7231b9334f98a3a1af867acfc1264e29fc3081810a565a270bde6f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2024122609120_5c63a3201a7231b9334f98a3a1af867acfc1264e29fc3081810a565a270bde6f" data-rendition-name="original" width="2700" height="2700" loading="lazy" alt="Miss Moti #1241"> </figure>

The past, the present, and the future are really one

A high-level meeting between the energy secretaries of Nepal and India last month agreed to build six high-voltage cross-border transmission lines to facilitate the export of up to 18,000MW of electricity by 2035. The government’s recently-approved Energy Development Roadmap and Action Plan envisages exporting 15,000MW to India and Bangladesh within the decade, and generating 28,500MW by 2035. At present Nepal has agreements to export 941MW to India and 40MW to Bangladesh. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/blueprint-for-nepal-india-electricity-trade">Exports to India </a>happen only during <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/monsoon-deluge-in-nepal">the monsoon </a>when there is <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/an-energy-windfall-for-nepal">surplus energy</a>, and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/from-the-nepali-press/more-than-half-of-nepal-s-electricity-imported-from-india">Nepal imports power</a> during the dry season. This month, Nepal is generating only one-third of its installed capacity of 3,400MW because of low river flows.&nbsp; Generation will exceed 4,000MW by year-end, and another 3,906MW of projects are under construction with more projects worth 3,899MW in the pipeline after <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=10871">power purchase agreements</a>.&nbsp; That Nepal is now capable of generating and exporting <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-precious-electricity-going-waste">surplus electricity</a> has been seen as a significant development for a country that was <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/how-they-kept-nepal-in-the-dark-ages">plagued by power cuts</a> for up to 18 hours daily until just eight years ago.&nbsp; In the past 20 years, many energy strategies were formed to power growth through exports. As regional countries look for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/right-climate-for-nepal-s-energy-transition">clean energy to meet climate targets</a>, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-first-hydropower-from-a-glacial-lake">Nepal’s hydropower</a> could be in high demand. Electricity exports can also help offset the country’s huge <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/balance-of-power">trade deficit</a> with India. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/balance-of-power">Investment</a>, or the lack of it, stands as the biggest hurdle in achieving Nepal’s ambitious energy export targets. Generating 28,500MW of electricity would cost Nepal $46.5 billion — four times the annual budget. Capital investment could come from <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/home-is-where-the-heart-is-yqkvf5vx">overseas Nepalis</a>, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/sacking-of-nea-chief-exposes-cronyism">the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA)</a>, the private sector or from<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/business/green-bond-option-for-climate-finance"> ‘green bonds’</a>. But even if investment is forthcoming, there is no guarantee that the energy will find a market at an acceptable price. India has increased its quota every year to allow the NEA to sell 941MW of electricity produced by 28 projects under the competitive market and medium-term power sales agreements. It does not buy power from projects with Chinese involvement, and has a strategic monopsony status.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025032710034_ac849c5d570b132afcdb2e4ba432a423dc40bb80ad9f900e0d1a26eed1a5dbec.jpg" data-media-id="editor_14" data-image-id="2025032710034_ac849c5d570b132afcdb2e4ba432a423dc40bb80ad9f900e0d1a26eed1a5dbec" data-rendition-name="original" width="997" height="784" loading="lazy" alt="Hydrocarbon to hydropower NT"> </figure>  The country exported more electricity than it imported for the first time in 2023/24 fiscal year, selling electricity worth Rs17.06 billion to India. But this is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the country’s total trade deficit. Nepal imported goods worth Rs1.59 trillion, while exports were only Rs152 billion in the same fiscal year. The amount earned from exporting electricity was just 1.2% of Nepal’s trade deficit. While this could increase in future, it will not go up by much. As it stands, Nepal buys electricity from India at almost the same rate as it sells. Indian state-owned companies are <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/decentralising-hydro-power">developing hydropower projects</a> with a combined capacity of 8,000MW, mostly on the Arun basin. The agreements give 21.9% of the electricity from these plants for free for 25 years before they revert to Nepal. Hydropower experts have long argued that Nepal should increase domestic consumption for value added manufacturing rather than exporting raw power. This means <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/securing-nepal-s-electric-future?%3D">making electricity affordable and accessible</a> for household appliances, transport and industries. To be sure, proactive government policies on tax rebates for electric vehicles have seen remarkable results. Until January of this fiscal year, Nepal imported 6,256 electric four-wheeled vehicles in comparison to 2,662 petroleum ones. Nearly 70% of all EVs sold were from China. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/blueprint-for-a-net-zero-nepal">Blueprint for a net-zero Nepal</a>, Sonia Awale&nbsp; Continuous <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/ev-year">increase of EV imports </a>will eventually reduce Nepal’s <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-s-energy-policy-in-2023-and-beyond">dependence on India for fossil fuel</a>, which currently makes up 18% of all imports and the largest item. Promoting <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/charging-nepal">electrical appliances </a>and manufacturing them in the country would reduce the increasing <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/what-s-cooking-in-nepal-besides-politics">dependency</a> on LPG, which is heavily subsidised. Only 0.5% of Nepali households use<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/people-power/nepal-turns-on-the-electric-switch"> electric stoves</a>, if 5.6 million households were to use induction stoves for three hours every day, the country would use 825MW of electricity, displacing LPG consumption entirely, also reducing <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-doubles-its-carbon-footprint">Nepal’s carbon footprint</a>. But all this requires a better transmission and distribution system in the grid so that they reach the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/life-and-livelihood-in-remote-nepal">remotest areas</a> to double <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/power-to-the-people">electricity consumption</a>. Scaling up fast charging stations for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-journey-to-electric-public-transport">battery-powered transportation</a> would meet the growing demand for EVs. Extending tax rebates to also include large electric buses would reduce <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=17315">diesel demand</a>, which has also been growing. Nepal also has to look beyond conventional hydropower to solar-powered <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/pump-water-store-energy">pump storage to generate electricity</a>, which would be cheaper and faster to build. Such schemes would also be less destructive to the ecology of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/geopolitics-of-nepal-s-rivers">the country’s rivers</a>. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/the-climate-crisis-is-a-water-crisis-in-the-himalaya">The climate crisis is a water crisis</a>, and Nepal must plan for a future in which the Himalayan icecap will be further depleted. Rivers are not just a source of energy but ensure equitable <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-needs-to-plan-for-plenty-and-scarcity-of-water">water supply for irrigation</a>, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/aid-rarely-aids-agriculture-in-nepal">agriculture</a>, and household use. &nbsp; Ramesh Kumar

Hydrocarbon to hydropower

At 11:56AM on 25 April 2015, the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/rebuilding-new-structures-using-old-traditions,2827">ancient Newa town of Bungamati </a>on the southern fringes of Kathmandu Valley suffered more damage than most-- it was completely razed.&nbsp; Some 700 buildings collapsed and at least seven people were killed. The iconic Bungadyo temple dedicated to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/the-red-god-rises-again-in-patan">the rain god Machindranath</a> collapsed in the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/11-56-25-april-2015-wkc9q2an">7.8 magnitude quake</a>. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ten years later, Bungamati was rebuilt. But the original architecture of two-storey houses with tilted tile roofs have been replaced with modern concrete boxes, their façades still gleaming with fresh paint.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250409040432_d7083d8b65119dd1f989c17eaab1f837a067e14d4a55a22fb67d4cbb2ceff138.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250409040432_d7083d8b65119dd1f989c17eaab1f837a067e14d4a55a22fb67d4cbb2ceff138" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="667" loading="lazy" alt="Bungamati builds back"> <figcaption>All photos: SUMAN NEPALI</figcaption> </figure>  The Bungadyo complex at the heart of the town, however, is being restored to its original grandeur as it prepares for this year’s <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/delayed-machindranath-festival-resumes">Machindranath chariot festival.</a> For many residents here, the horror of that day is still fresh in their minds. They remember narrow escapes, losing loved ones and the numerous <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/after-the-aftershocks-the-survivors,3006">aftershocks</a>. The survivors took refuge in tents and had just started drifting back to their damaged homes when the 7 May aftershock hit. “We got exactly one tent,” says a local Kamala Tuladhar, 40, of the earthquake rescue and relief, recalling the financial strain of rebuilding. “We rebuilt everything by ourselves, that money could have gone to our children’s education.” Some families in Bungamati received financial aid of up to Rs50,000 for reconstruction but most families here say that they never got any help and rebuilt on their own. Jogmaya Maharjan, 52, received only Rs20,000 from the Red Cross despite<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/broken-promises-reconstruction,3627"> government promises of reconstruction grants</a>, and had to sell a plot of land to build a new house. “Everything is new now, which is good for progress, but it doesn’t feel the same,” she says, adding that she misses the cosy warmth of her old mud-mortar house.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250409060416_3f2810530af9c5f1bbfd2e113485444e0ff1771e6f4cac04c089e2e46de92345.jpg" data-media-id="editor_7" data-image-id="20250409060416_3f2810530af9c5f1bbfd2e113485444e0ff1771e6f4cac04c089e2e46de92345" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="667" loading="lazy" alt="Kamala Tuladhar"> <figcaption>Kamala Tuladhar</figcaption> </figure>  Kamala currently runs a small eatery in the town and says almost everyone now has <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/A-concrete-future,2251">concrete houses</a>, as well as increased awareness about <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/be-prepared">earthquake safety</a>. “We have a concrete house now, it is stronger but we lost our ancestral building,” she adds. Ratnaman Maharjan’s five-storey Bungamati Homestay offering a panoramic view of the Valley to the north is a popular lodging destination for tourists looking to stay over the weekend.&nbsp; “Without the earthquake, Bungamati would have remained a sleepy town that few people visited,” he says. “The earthquake was a tragedy, but it forced a much-needed change.” Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/khokana-and-bungamati-strive-to-save-heritage">Khokana and Bungamati strive to save heritage</a>, Prabhas Pokharel Bungamati has always embodied a quintessential Newa ambience of the kind that had steadily disappeared from <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/preserving-patan-post-earthquake">Patan</a> or Kathmandu. It is a compact and densely-packed town sitting on higher ground with vegetable and paddy terraces below.&nbsp; This <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=1885">unique urban-rural symbiosis</a> was the hallmark of the Kathmandu Valley culturescape. Despite its proximity to Kathmandu, Bungamati was essentially a <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/migrants-return-home-to-do-commercial-farming,3929">traditional farming village</a> — but <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/rebuilding-kathmandu-after-the-1934-quake">after the earthquake </a>it has transitioned into a modern suburb.&nbsp; The rebuilding of the Machindranath temple has been a rather long and arduous journey, and is only now nearing completion. Unlike in Kathmandu, Patan and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/bhaktapur-2-0-d8m66qhb">Bhaktapur</a>, there were no aid agencies to help rebuild the temples here. The local chair of the reconstruction committee also died by suicide, further delaying the process.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025040904048_7adb77af2fad4d4f9b389649c20a945e5d2534fea02dc03c7a4c02a3d3f7791e.jpg" data-media-id="editor_16" data-image-id="2025040904048_7adb77af2fad4d4f9b389649c20a945e5d2534fea02dc03c7a4c02a3d3f7791e" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="667" loading="lazy" alt="Bungamati builds back"> <figcaption>Amir Shakya</figcaption> </figure>  “In the immediate aftermath, it was all about survival, so gods and religion were the last thing on our minds,” recalls Amir Shakya, chair of the rebuilding committee for Rato Machindranath. But as the dust settled after the earthquake, it became clear that unless the community took charge, the temple would never be built. The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) formed a rebuilding committee, officially putting efforts in motion. Restoring the temple was no easy feat, particularly during <a href="about:blank">the Covid-19 pandemic</a>. Even transporting construction material was a logistical nightmare while prices skyrocketed. The community had to arrange for highly specific materials and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/a-portal-into-patan-s-past-and-present?%27%22=">intricate craftsmanship</a>, both of which were not readily available in the market.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250409040444_925c58caffe447f392818e75de7851c17d47db1461447bc2ccc7c18016c89de8.jpg" data-media-id="editor_19" data-image-id="20250409040444_925c58caffe447f392818e75de7851c17d47db1461447bc2ccc7c18016c89de8" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="667" loading="lazy" alt="Bungamati builds back"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250409030456_163d1aeabf3918541f9196b91a0c85cf3a97ed0bb7c8015295543234b8c85e53.jpg" data-media-id="editor_20" data-image-id="20250409030456_163d1aeabf3918541f9196b91a0c85cf3a97ed0bb7c8015295543234b8c85e53" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="563" loading="lazy" alt="Bungamati builds back"> </figure>  “Rebuilding had to be meticulous and precise to truly preserve the cultural essence of the old Machindranath temple,” adds Shakya. “We lost more than just structures, we lost the very heartbeat of our heritage. Even now, it feels like we are still struggling to recover, and despite the reconstruction, something is still missing.” Ward chair Sagar Tuladhar says that the situation remained dire until the 2017 local elections, when the elected municipal council finally stepped in. The European Union provided help for mapping and technical support. "Before the earthquake, most families lived in ancestral homes—structures built using raw bricks and mud. In hindsight, we realise this was a major reason why so many of them collapsed,” says Tuladhar.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025040904048_5eb476e0f3a722ae7c114e7d9f7a96abba44a85a8503cfe2dd7a993866280a6b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_21" data-image-id="2025040904048_5eb476e0f3a722ae7c114e7d9f7a96abba44a85a8503cfe2dd7a993866280a6b" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="667" loading="lazy" alt="Bungamati builds back"> <figcaption>Sagar Tuladhar</figcaption> </figure>  But today, while houses are stronger and more reliable, the challenge of balancing structural resilience with <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/dapcha-s-old-world-charm-awaits?fbclid=IwAR0EtIozNL7a0xiKnQSpHSxsoCACXltEUQj1xd2Fo7dRLUiqPMKt4c029ik_aem_AYAPWpOme51Fm9ZIGgneMuZKanrc3Y1IwEfpKmg7oxGwFoxjp0So1_xDNzkuA1acRYc">the preservation of traditional settlements</a> remains. There is also a danger of substandard concrete buildings which will not be able to withstand<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/lessons-not-learned-from-2015-o2etq6zu"> stronger earthquakes in the future</a>, becoming death traps. In response, regulations have been introduced to prevent haphazard building as well as to safeguard <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/the-history-of-heritage">cultural integrity</a>. &nbsp;The cultural resettlement map design was approved after the earthquake, and requires the maximum height of buildings to be no more than 35m.&nbsp; “Many resist restrictions on the number of floors and construction materials,” admits ward chair Tuladhar. “Despite <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=16161">modern housing trends</a>, we have also made every effort to uphold the distinct Newa architectural identity. Residents are not allowed to install shutters, use iron reinforcements, or plaster over traditional façades.” He adds that nearly all the homes and heritage structures have now been rebuilt, with only a few remaining to be completed in the next two years. Concrete structures stand where mud-brick homes once did, yet the soul of Bungamati endures in its traditions and its people as it prepares for next month’s Machindranath festival. &nbsp;

Bungamati builds back

Every earthquake, even a minor one, shakes <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/clash-of-cultures-in-bhaktapur">Bhaktapur</a> more severely than other parts of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/time-capsule-of-kathmandu">Kathmandu Valley</a>, and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-traditional-seismic-resistant-designs">seismologists</a> attribute this to its soil structure. It was no different<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/lessons-not-learned-from-2015-o2etq6zu"> in 2015 when a 7.8M earthquake rocked central Nepal</a>. Brown dust from collapsed buildings blanketed the town like a sand storm. Even 10 years later, the scars of that disaster are all around, even though most of the monuments have been rebuilt.&nbsp; At the entrance to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/clash-of-cultures-in-bhaktapur">Bhaktapur Darbar Square</a> is the Rameswar temple, where workers are lifting bricks to repair the damage. The Vatsala Durga temple inside the palace complex collapsed, but the all-stone structure has been masterfully restored.&nbsp; The Yaksheswar Mahadev temple is encased in a bamboo scaffold. Piles of bricks and tiles &nbsp;are stacked below it. Some workers are on top of the temple, while others work on the ground mixing mortar. To the north of the Darbar Square is the Fasi Dega temple which has been rebuilt. The 55-window palace and the art museum which were damaged have also been repaired.&nbsp; The <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nyatapola-alight">five-storey Nyatapola</a>, which survived both the 1934 and 2015 earthquakes, just underwent a $6.3 million renovation. In Taumadhi Square below, the Biska Jatra chariot is under construction for upcoming festivities. Some tourists are on it, posing for pictures.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250407090432_8da447f3cf32a67ba22eedda74af74a6636cd001b544a303eb8e5f8adf3115e3.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20250407090432_8da447f3cf32a67ba22eedda74af74a6636cd001b544a303eb8e5f8adf3115e3" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1284" loading="lazy" alt="Bhaktabur rebuilt 10 years after Nepal earthquake NT 1"> <figcaption>All photos: AJAY HAKAJU</figcaption> </figure>  Read also: <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/Monumental-loss,2215">Monumental loss</a> At Pottery Square, three workers sit atop an under-construction structure whittling away with chisels. Nearby houses are still supported by wooden beams. Dattatreya Square was also damaged during the earthquake, but has been renovated.&nbsp; <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/born-again-after-the-earthquake">After the earthquake</a>, the international community rushed in with offers of help. Kathmandu’s Hanuman Dhoka was restored by the Chinese, Gaddi Baithak by the Americans and various countries ‘adopted’ other monuments. But Bhaktapur declined assistance. UNESCO wanted to be involved since Bhaktapur had been a World Heritage Site since 1979. Germany wanted to help with a €10 million grant, since it had spearheaded the Bhaktapur Development Project 40 years ago.&nbsp; “We believed that we should be able to reconstruct our monuments ourselves,” says Ram Govinda Shrestha, an architect with the municipality. Indeed, Kathmandu Valley has historically rebuilt after every major earthquake with its own resources. Architect and conservationist Rabindra Puri says, “It is shameful to let someone else come in and do the reconstruction for us, especially since the manpower and material would be ours anyway. Why use money from elsewhere?”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250407090436_7f19bc8a185c9f71404db44fba086438d6c29a3acb63a63d027cbdd4053e1b4f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="20250407090436_7f19bc8a185c9f71404db44fba086438d6c29a3acb63a63d027cbdd4053e1b4f" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1123" loading="lazy" alt="Bhaktabur rebuilt 10 years after Nepal earthquake NT 1"> </figure>  The budget for reconstruction came from the government, town entry fees, taxes, and donations. That was the easy part. But this was followed by multiple discussions between the municipality, the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), the Department of Archaeology, and multiple stages of proposals, designs, estimations, and building. New committees had to be formed at every step. “Part of the reason why there were so many steps is because we have to let the government know that we were working as frugally as possible,” recalls Shrestha. It cost more than $200 million to rebuild the 116 heritage structures that were destroyed and damaged.&nbsp; Nevertheless, Bhaktapur stands as a model of locally sourced reconstruction in every way. Community people themselves got their hands dirty along with domestic workers and learned various aspects of reconstruction. “We showed what is possible when locals feel a strong sense of responsibility,” adds Shrestha. Read also: <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/tourists-trickle-back-to-Bhaktapur">Bhaktapur is waiting for you</a>, Peregrine Frissell But while the monuments were rebuilt, it was not the same with residential buildings. Many of them still have cracks running down their brick façades, and some neighbourhoods are still in ruins with small trees and bushes growing from the rubble.&nbsp; More than 300 people were killed and over 2,000 wounded in house collapses in Bhaktapur. There were some dramatic rescues, including of a baby Sonish Awal who was rescued by an APF team 24 hours after being buried under the rubble.&nbsp; Sonish is now 10 years old, and his house has been rebuilt. The government vowed to ‘Build Back Better’ as fast as possible, by removing bureaucratic hurdles and grant Rs300,000 in three instalments, as well as access to loans at low interest. But things did not go smoothly.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250407090436_d503e5c966f33978abf99a0fa8307369d81bcc6a6e5d768cf88b7dee273cb6cf.jpg" data-media-id="editor_11" data-image-id="20250407090436_d503e5c966f33978abf99a0fa8307369d81bcc6a6e5d768cf88b7dee273cb6cf" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1123" loading="lazy" alt="Bhaktabur rebuilt 10 years after Nepal earthquake NT 1"> </figure>  “Bhaktapur is very dense, so there was a lot of confusion about where property lines ended, and where walls were,” says Biswanath Sujakhu, a municipality engineer. There were also disputes in families with multiple sons who had stakes in the house, as the act treated them as a single household.&nbsp; Many of the disputes have not been resolved yet, which is why there are so many ruins. &nbsp;Homeowners who chose to remake their houses to look traditional were promised further subsidies of up to Rs300,000, but even that was not enough to pay for the Rs5 million or so needed to build a multi-storey cement structure.&nbsp; Banks weren’t giving loans easily, and multiple changes to the NRA chief meant the grants were not easy to access. Many residents took high-interest loans from local cooperatives. Or they were forced to undersell their land plots. “Bhaktapur also had restrictions about the styles and height of buildings, but many houses didn’t comply as people could only work with the money they had at the time,” adds Sujakhu. Nepal Vocational Academy, established by Rabindra Puri two years before the earthquake in 2013, played a crucial role. The academy produced enough masons, woodcarvers, and stone carvers so that there wasn’t a shortage. The students were also involved in <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/guest-editorial/guest-editorial-better-late-than-never,891">reconstruction efforts</a> across the country. Puri has just one gripe: “A lot of old houses that were perfectly fine were torn down for no reason. Those houses are 200-300 years old and could have been restored instead of being reconstructed.” &nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/in-with-the-old-in-nepal">In with the old in Nepal</a>, Shriluna Shrestha

Bhaktapur 2.0

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Throughout human history, civilisations have been named after the rivers along which they flourished: Indus Valley, Nile, Tigris-Euphrates. Many of these cultures later collapsed, partly because they could not manage their water needs properly. Three recent books about Himalayan rivers look at their history and geography, and how they nourished civilisations downstream. The rivers gave birth to the world’s major religions, their waters and the mountains from which they sprang were revered. Mythology and geology converge in High Asia. Mt Kailash is holy to the Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Bon faiths as the centre of the world and the abode of the gods. Indeed, from its vicinity emerge Asia’s great rivers: the Indus and Sutlej, Ganga and the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) and Karnali (Mapcha Tsangpo).&nbsp; Legend has it that Kathmandu Valley was once a primordial lake drained by Manjushree who cut a mountain with his flaming sword. There is scientific evidence that the paleo lake was indeed emptied in stages starting 40,000 years ago after a tsunami unleashed by a major earthquake epicentred in Langtang. The Bon faith describes the Tibetan Plateau being pushed up from a roiling primeval sea, confirming current evidence about the orogenesis of the Himalaya. In local lore, supernatural lha (animal deities) and lu (serpents, naga) moved from sea to land, just as the theory of evolution explains the emergence of early amphibians and land creatures. In <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Rivers-of-the-Asian-Highlands-From-Deep-Time-to-the-Climate-Crisis/Gamble-Tan-Xu-Beavis-Maurer-Pittock-Powers-Wasson/p/book/9781032490595?srsltid=AfmBOopjkpgcN1_7t1jTI_Z1_27yRthBTbdHA15OWcE9Ge3S409jhUX3">Rivers of the Asian Highlands: From Deep Time to the Climate Crisis</a>, Himalayan historian <a href="https://scholars.latrobe.edu.au/rgamble">Ruth Gamble</a> and co-authors begin by tracing the genesis of the Himalaya, citing evidence that the Tibetan Plateau pre-dated the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates 50 million years ago. Asia’s main rivers co-emerged with the mountains, their waters cutting canyons through rocks as they were uplifted. The gigantic pileup acted as a moisture trap for the proto-monsoon, the rain and ice sculpting peaks as they rose. But so strong were tectonic forces that the uplift outpaced erosion on the Tibetan Plateau. These dynamic processes are still at work, but in many places across High Asia there is a new factor at play: modern infrastructure (like haphazard road-building in Nepal) is increasing erosion faster than the uplift rate.&nbsp; ‘This is an example of human action overcoming tectonics,’ write the authors in Rivers of the Asian Highlands, in which the chapters look at Himalayan rivers from a planetary scale, their socio-cultural histories, to present-day engineering to regulate them. An ongoing dam-building spree and anthropogenic climate breakdown combine to bring about the most rapid change the Himalaya and their rivers have seen for millions of years. One example is the Medog Hydropower Station being built on the Yarlung Tsangpo at a bend on the Brahmaputra before it enters India. The river drops 2,000m within a 50km stretch, the gradient allowing it to generate 60,000MW — the biggest single hydroelectric plant in the world. Gamble and the authors of Rivers of the Asian Highlands highlight the Gravitational Potential Energy (GPE) of the Himalaya that allows falling water to be converted into electricity. But GPE also unleashes landslides, rockfalls, avalanches, Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) and Landslide Lake Outburst Floods (LLOFs), the risks posed by them magnified by climate change and seismicity. <blockquote>The Asian Highlands’ abundance of Gravitational Potential Energy (GPE) can support the region’s energy transition, but it needs to be produced in much less hazardous and less environmentally and socially impactful ways. The best means of doing this is through off-river, pumped-storage hydropower stations that back up solar and wind energy generators. Smaller projects such as this would also involve less risky tunneling and displacement.</blockquote> Rivers of the Asian Highlands: From Deep Time to the Climate Crisis by Ruth Gamble, et al. There is geological evidence that megafloods on Himalayan rivers are more responsible than mass wasting in weathering down the mountains. One big LLOF, for example, could ‘move 1,000 times more sediment than would otherwise be transported over millions of years’. Permafrost melting in the Tibetan Plateau and inside moraines caused recent back-to-back GLOFs in Chamoli in the Indian Himalaya, Melamchi in Nepal, and the South Lhonak in Sikkim — all deadly disasters that together destroyed billions of dollars worth of infrastructure downstream. Rivers of the Asian Highlands travels from deep time to the present climate crisis, taking readers through neatly divided chapters titled Mountain Rivers, Climatic Rivers, Frozen Rivers, Living Rivers, Human Rivers, Territorializing Rivers, Agricultural and Pastoral Rivers, even NGOs and Rivers.&nbsp; Although the book’s title is about the ‘Asian highlands’, it <a href="https://www.himalmag.com/comment/eastern-himalaya-cradle-ethnogenesis">focuses mainly on the Dri Chu (Yangtse)</a> and Yarlung Tso (Brahmaputra). Readers looking for references to Nepal’s rivers will be disappointed, although there is quite a bit about Bhutan. This is surprising because 70% of the annual flow in the Ganga is from tributaries in Nepal, some of them rivers like Karnali, Arun or Bhote Kosi that traverse the Tibetan rimlands. As demand for water and energy grows in the large and increasingly affluent population of north India, and climate breakdown melts Himalayan glaciers, storing monsoon runoff on reservoirs in Nepal is going to be the geopolitical issue of the next decades.&nbsp; The chapter on NGOs and Rivers also fails to cite the work of Nepal’s civil society groups like the Alliance for Energy that built international solidarity in 1995 against the Arun III project on a river that starts in Tibet and flows into Nepal. Ultimately, the World Bank pulled out of the project and the Nepal government invested in smaller decentralised plants. Today, a cascade of power plants are being built by Indian companies on the Arun which do not seem to have taken into account the <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads2659">2023 Sikkim GLOF</a> that swept away the $1 billion dollar Teesta III and destroyed other infrastructure. The World Bank itself is back with the Upper Arun project located directly below expanding glacial lakes in Tibet.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250222020256_f2b33e60e6b386308bdf59b58b59e116e90e2e4466a06200faf76fd851f53505.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250222020256_f2b33e60e6b386308bdf59b58b59e116e90e2e4466a06200faf76fd851f53505" data-rendition-name="original" width="5712" height="3213" loading="lazy" alt="Teesta"> <figcaption>The Super Trisuli project in Nepal has ruined the most scenic and ecologically sensitive part of the river to generate just 100MW of power. Photo: KUNDA DIXIT</figcaption> </figure>  Despite geographical gaps, Rivers of the Asian Highlands reads like an encyclopedia of Himalayan rivers. The authors look at them not in isolation but as interconnected systems which need a multidisciplinary approach to study the geological, religio-cultural, infrastructure, climate and ecosystem services aspects of catchments.&nbsp; Mt Kailash (Kang Rinpoche) is a case in point. It is fascinating to think that it was part of a mountain range even before the collision of the continents that formed the Himalaya, and was probably buried in ice 3km thick till 15,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025022203020_23c02ec4671f5c3c561fa6b450c1f209720a25794e067b9bb5db0f4649b1b6dc.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="2025022203020_23c02ec4671f5c3c561fa6b450c1f209720a25794e067b9bb5db0f4649b1b6dc" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Mt Kailash"> <figcaption>Mt Kailash. Photo: NABIN BARAL</figcaption> </figure>  Lake Mansarovar and Mt Kailash are also the subject of the new Nepali language book छालबाटो (Road by the Waves) by environmental journalist <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-and-china-to-study-trans-himalayan-railway">Ramesh Bhushal</a> in which he walked, rafted and drove from the source of the Karnali in Tibet, right through 500km of western Nepal, and on to India <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/dancing-with-the-river">where the river meets the Ganga</a>. In his entourage is activist, <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/Comment/rivers-fighting-back,993">Megh Ale</a>, who is on a campaign to stop dams and infrastructure on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/dams-and-dreams-a-journey-down-the-karnali">Nepal’s longest and only free-flowing river</a>. The book profiles his lonely upstream struggle to conserve the country’s rivers. “We worship rivers, but we don’t love them,” laments Ale. Bhushal’s book is as much about the landscape of this transboundary river as it is about the people he meets along the way, and their relationship with <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/climate-denial-in-the-himalaya">a river that most regard as a curse </a>keeping them poor because they believe it flows out of Rakshas Tal (Lagngar Tso) in Tibet, regarded as a lake of demons, unlike the sacred Mansarovar nearby. The expedition is out to prove that the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/a-karnali-portrait">Karnali River</a> actually starts in the mountains 50km southwest of the Mansarovar (Mapamyu Tso) at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ9Za5QDkvY">Peacock Falls (Mapchu Khambap)</a>. The Indus is called Sengge (Lion), Sutlej is Langchen (elephant) and the Brahmaputra is Tamchok (horse), all starting within 60km of Mansarovar but flowing out in different directions. <blockquote>“I have visited hundreds of rivers around the world, but for some reason I have never seen a river as beautiful as the Karnali. One day I would like to visit its source.”</blockquote> River conservation activist Megh Ale quoted in छालबाटो by Ramesh Bhusal. But all this reverence for the mountains and rivers may not be enough to save the region from the impact of climate breakdown. Heat stress in the Subcontinent will coincide with a shortage of water in the coming decades.&nbsp; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/opinion/himalayas-mountains-dams.html">Sunil Amrith</a> in his 2019 book, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-monsoon-and-nature-s-arithmetic">Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s History</a> takes a broader look at how geotectonics, geopolitics, colonialism and nationalism have determined the relations between human beings and rivers. The Himalayan water cycle starts from monsoon moisture that precipitates with orographic uplift along the mountains, atmospheric rivers unleash cloudbursts, ground water emerges from springs that join up to flow down to rivers and the ocean. The Third Pole is the biggest repository of fresh water stored as ice after the polar regions. But it is a hotspot both because of the climate crisis and geopolitical tensions, which impacts on river basin cooperation, early warning data sharing, and ultimately in mitigation of greenhouse gas emission and planning for new risks faced by infrastructure. After independence, India adopted the colonial extraction model for rivers. Inaugurating the Bhakra-Nangal Dam in 1953, Jawaharlal Nehru called it “a temple of &nbsp;modern India … worthy of worship’. Gamble also alludes to this in her book about the European attitude about rivers as a resource to be ‘enclosed, extracted, scrutinised, commodified’. <a href="https://dialogue.earth/en/water/review-unrully-waters/" target="_blank">Amrith</a> profiles the work of Sir Arthur Cotton who was building canals linking rivers in British India at about the same time his contemporaries like botanist <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/republic-of-nepal-s-animal-kingdom" target="_blank">Joseph Dalton-Hooker </a>were exploring the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/saving-kangchenjunga" target="_blank">Teesta and other rivers</a> in the Himalaya to catalogue new plant species. India's current National River Linking Project that would join 37 rivers with 9,000km of canals builds on Cotton’s early work. <blockquote>If there is one consistent lesson in Unruly Waters, it is that water management never has been, and can never be, a purely technical or a scientific question; neither can it be addressed on a purely national scale … the battle continues to understand the monsoons and mountain rivers that shape Asia.</blockquote> Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s History by Sunil Amrith And in Nepal, hydropower has become the holy grail as the government unveiled an Energy Development Roadmap to generate 28,500MW by 2035 at a cumulative cost of nearly $50billion. This means no river in Nepal will be left free-flowing. The Trisuli along the Prithvi Highway is being dammed for only 100MW of power, destroying the most scenic part of a river that has rapids famous internationally for white water rafters. Even before it was completed, the dam site suffered Rs200 million in damage in last September’s flood.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025022203020_d9610a11bccb593d32bf4d214479caa17dfbdd6cdfe5e8c38fdcb8eb752fc0ec.jpg" data-media-id="editor_18" data-image-id="2025022203020_d9610a11bccb593d32bf4d214479caa17dfbdd6cdfe5e8c38fdcb8eb752fc0ec" data-rendition-name="original" width="4032" height="2268" loading="lazy" alt="Trisuli"> <figcaption>Boulders and sediment 80m deep were brought down by the Teesta after a GLOF destroyed the $1 billion Teesta III plant in Sikkim in 2023. Photo: KUNDA DIXIT</figcaption> </figure>  In Sikkim, there is strong <a href="https://india.mongabay.com/2025/02/political-stir-follows-expert-panels-approval-to-rebuild-teesta-dam-in-sikkim/">local opposition to rebuild Teesta III</a> but investors are looking at the huge economic windfall from the river as it drops from 5,000m below Kangchenjunga to 300m within 80km — one of the highest Gravitational Potential Energy of any river in the world. Besides Nepal and Bhutan, the ‘watersheds’ of the Himalaya are turning into ‘powersheds’ as India and China compete for hydro-hegemony. India is said to be planning to dam the Brahmaputra to offset the disruption caused by China’s Medog Dam upstream (see map, below).&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025022203024_37c60bd2a45a32cd23928c900615b6c7045b2e0265050c4761c3749361181999.png" data-media-id="editor_20" data-image-id="2025022203024_37c60bd2a45a32cd23928c900615b6c7045b2e0265050c4761c3749361181999" data-rendition-name="original" width="1918" height="668" loading="lazy" alt="Himalayan rivers map"> </figure>  The thread running through all three books is the need to recognise the ecosystem services that the inhabitants of High Asia provide by protecting our rivers. Not all rivers need to be monetised, conserving rivers and the cultures they retain protects a nation’s natural wealth into the future as the humans of High Asia try to survive climate breakdown. The highlands will be under even more pressure in the coming decades as people in the plains migrate en masse to higher latitudes or higher altitudes to escape deadly heat and ocean expansion.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025022203028_524a74bf65111db3826bfd246576329c45cd4bd0a48b15024b6a520582bbf05a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_21" data-image-id="2025022203028_524a74bf65111db3826bfd246576329c45cd4bd0a48b15024b6a520582bbf05a" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="River of Asian Highlands cover"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025022203028_20c17a9b92b11c8bb33df5f2fc2781498464288533c310ccd61e1245e709d99c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_22" data-image-id="2025022203028_20c17a9b92b11c8bb33df5f2fc2781498464288533c310ccd61e1245e709d99c" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Unruly waters cover"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250222030212_649cc2ba02e806da2b128fccaf5de2e5c830e10646ba0b43d56da39f65a70f9f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_23" data-image-id="20250222030212_649cc2ba02e806da2b128fccaf5de2e5c830e10646ba0b43d56da39f65a70f9f" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Chaalbato cover"> </figure>

Saving what is left of Himalayan rivers

Nepal’s diverse culture uses the bamboo plant for birth, death and all rituals in between. The <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=4149" target="_blank">versatile plant</a> is also used for construction, to make musical instruments, to carry things, to write with, even to eat. Now, bamboo groves are being used to protect villages near Chitwan National Park that are prone to frequent flooding due to climate breakdown. It is the smaller streams that are dry in winter that are the most destructive during the monsoon. So, farmers in the village of Madi are planting bamboo forests along the banks of streams that block floods and stop soil erosion. “Once the rainy season starts, we are afraid to close our eyes at night,” says Shanti Chapai, 58, who lives near the Patare Khola stream that burst its banks last year.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250131050140_921fabc56d34ec46d63c9e2c959ae6c8e0fb8f713c817263bba23b8167d31331.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250131050140_921fabc56d34ec46d63c9e2c959ae6c8e0fb8f713c817263bba23b8167d31331" data-rendition-name="original" width="2237" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Versatile bamboo reduces climate risk NT"> <figcaption>Google Earth images show the greening the floodplain of the Patare Khola over 15 years. Photos courtesy: ABARI</figcaption> </figure>  On a recent visit, the Patare Khola was just a small stream, it is hard to imagine that it would become a raging river in the rainy season, bursting its banks and threatening farms and settlements. Despite bamboo having everyday use for <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/basket-case-pahari-badikhel,3340" target="_blank">fencing, furniture and an important cash crop</a>, farmers here were initially opposed to the idea of using it for flood control. They thought bamboo was an invasive species, and sucked up all the groundwater.&nbsp; But for the past 15 years, the architects at ABARI (Adobe and Bamboo Research Institute) have been experimenting with a thorny bamboo species like Bambusa bluemeana and Bambusa balcooa to restore degraded land and control floods. The area is now a dense bamboo grove greening the floodplain of the Patare Khola.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250131050140_5be5c23532b33a9b6edceabc91dbac03eb9009d6d50a271fccc5854cdce337a4.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250131050140_5be5c23532b33a9b6edceabc91dbac03eb9009d6d50a271fccc5854cdce337a4" data-rendition-name="original" width="1787" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Versatile bamboo reduces climate risk NT"> <figcaption>Thorny bamboo species planted in Madi. Photos: PINKI SRIS RANA</figcaption> </figure>  Sediment from last monsoon’s floods are deposited at the foot of the bamboo trees, proving that the plants stabilised the banks, protecting the surroundings by reducing the velocity of flood waters. Madi’s villagers are now convinced that this is an effective bioengineering solution to floods. Bamboo is also fast-growing, and is ideal for reclaiming the eroded banks of rivers. Nepal has more than 50 species of bamboo, most of them found in the wetter eastern plains and foothills. But some species grow at altitudes of up to 4,000. “Bamboo is a misunderstood plant in our culture because it is used for funeral rites and has a negative connotation,” says Nripal Adhikary ABARI, which builds bamboo and rammed earth buildings in Nepal. “It took a while to convince locals of its benefits.” Monsoons in Nepal have always been synonymous with disasters, but extreme weather events caused by climate breakdown have made landslides and floods worse. Poor construction of roads, unregulated quarrying of sensitive watersheds, and encroachment along floodplains increase the risk.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250131050140_348bd5586ddfa1444699535bcbeb98420c42645e796fb896d609bbb3d2e82ee3.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250131050140_348bd5586ddfa1444699535bcbeb98420c42645e796fb896d609bbb3d2e82ee3" data-rendition-name="original" width="1793" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Versatile bamboo reduces climate risk NT"> <figcaption>Porcupine structured embankments provide protection in flood prone areas. </figcaption> </figure>  But here in Madi, villagers have seen with their own eyes the direct benefit of bamboo for flood protection. Says farmer Phadendra Bhattarai: “Even though there was heavy rainfall, the extent of flood damage this monsoon was considerably less. The bamboo acted as a barrier and did not let the floods destroy our crops.”&nbsp; This tried and tested bamboo plantation can be replicated and upscaled across Nepal, and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/nepal-villages-cope-with-climate-induced-floods" target="_blank">farmers in Kanchanpur</a> in the western plains have also planted bamboo, napier and elephant grass along the banks of a river that unleashed destructive floods in 2018. A thick strategic bamboo plantation can be made into a fence of porcupine structured embankment to provide protection in flood prone areas. Floods in September in central Nepal killed<a href="https://www.bipad.gov.np/uploads/publication_pdf/SitRep_2_-_2024_September_Floods_and_Landslides.pdf" target="_blank"> 224 people</a> with southern Lalitpur and Kavre being hardest hit. The<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/a-flood-of-tears-on-the-rosi" target="_blank"> Rosi Valley</a> in Kavre was devastated, and settlements swept away entire slopes. But an area in the vicinity with bamboo plantation remained intact (pictured below).  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250131050140_edad071950f688ab95ff67450168a147f0f5f6d902cc8f468fc5bc540a912951.jpg" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="20250131050140_edad071950f688ab95ff67450168a147f0f5f6d902cc8f468fc5bc540a912951" data-rendition-name="original" width="1784" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Versatile bamboo reduces climate risk NT"> <figcaption>Photo: SAILESH RC</figcaption> </figure>  Dhaneswar Baikiya Community Forest in Kavre is half a hectare of plot bamboo planted by the government in a pilot project in 2007 to study and research the moso bamboo Phyllostachys pubescens. It has been 17 years and the Ministry of Forests and Environment’s Forest Research and Training Center had long forgotten about it. “Although no research has not been done here specifically in the plot, it is precisely this bamboo forest that saved villages down the mountains from major destruction,” says Badri Adhikari, custodian of the Community Forest. “Their expansive and entangled roots hold the soil firmly, protecting the slope’s stability.” This plot may have been overlooked but there have been other efforts. All 12 districts of Lumbini province<a href="https://kathmandupost.com/province-no-5/2021/07/01/lumbini-turns-to-bamboo-to-tame-rivers" target="_blank"> have initiated a bamboo plantation campaign</a> to prevent erosion and flooding.&nbsp; Traditionally, too, bamboo is believed to control landslides, and it is not uncommon to see villagers along the mountains reviving depleted bamboo groves once they see its benefits. Bsides landslide protection, the bamboo also has many other uses. Says Badri Adhikari: “The bamboo tree grows upwards in height during the summer and its roots expand in the winter. So, winter is the right time to prepare for the next monsoon of damaging floods.” This article is brought to you by <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/" target="_blank">Nepali Times</a>, in collaboration with <a href="https://inpsjapan.com/en/" target="_blank">INPS Japan</a> and <a href="https://sgi-peace.org/" target="_blank">Soka Gakkai International</a>, in consultative status with UN ECOSOC.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250131060116_30c3782f9c09219bf1c249b51483a3cfb7a53a06d117d2aebd23ca7080d12758.jpg" data-media-id="editor_13" data-image-id="20250131060116_30c3782f9c09219bf1c249b51483a3cfb7a53a06d117d2aebd23ca7080d12758" data-rendition-name="original" width="680" height="103" loading="lazy" alt="SDG logo"> </figure>

Versatile bamboo reduces climate risk

Despite countries amassing huge atomic arsenals, one reason deterrence has worked since the end of World War II, according to proponents, is that all-out nuclear war is so unthinkable.&nbsp; Yet, with no end in sight to fighting in Ukraine and West Asia, a new Cold War that pits US vs Russia and China, and the second coming of an erratic American president, have all made nuclear conflict thinkable in 2025 and beyond. Russia has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine and last month fired a new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at the Dnipro. And it has put into orbit a new <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/12/05/opinion/nuclear-weapons-space.html" target="_blank">prototype satellite</a> that can knock out other satellites with a nuclear explosion in space.&nbsp; Donald Trump and Benjamin Netyanyahu have reportedly spoken about a joint strike on Iranian nuclear installations. North Korea has been testing long range missiles for its nuclear warheads. Tensions remain high between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. These dangers come on top of signs of accelerated climate breakdown with weather extremes, record-breaking heat, and rapid melting of polar icecaps and Himalayan glaciers. ‘The world-ending potential of nuclear weapons looms over populations around the world,’ writes Cameron Vega in <a href="https://thebulletin.org/2023/11/the-climate-blind-spot-in-nuclear-weapons-policy/" target="_blank">Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists</a>. ‘Climate change is a slower-moving catastrophe, but it openly threatens every community.’  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241226081236_8ebdd11d4d252d449b0347548372e1649de3637e1947f75609909bbf26d00555.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20241226081236_8ebdd11d4d252d449b0347548372e1649de3637e1947f75609909bbf26d00555" data-rendition-name="original" width="800" height="533" loading="lazy" alt="Thinking the thinkable NT"> </figure>  The Bulletin’s <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/" target="_blank">Doomsday Clock</a> was reset to 90 seconds before midnight (from 100 seconds) in January this year due to ‘ominous trends that continue to point the world toward global catastrophe’. The minute hand on the Doomsday Clock has been reset 25 times since 1947, and it is most likely be brought forward to less than a minute in 2025. &nbsp; Both climate breakdown and nuclear war are human induced, but while one is heating up the planet the smoke and dust from explosions of the other will cool it. Either way, both threats are inextricably linked.&nbsp; Even the tactical use of battlefield nuclear weapons would have a climate impact. And climate-induced disasters, crop failures, water shortage, mass migration and ensuing socio-political unrest could spark wars that go nuclear. This is without even considering the long term effect of radioactive fallout on land, water and sea. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0" target="_blank">Research at Rutgers University</a> recently projected that even a one-week nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would cause the collapse of food systems worldwide, killing 2 billion people from starvation. Prevailing winds would carry the fallout to the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau, irradiating glaciers that feed into all of Asia’s main rivers. An all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia would cause a nuclear winter lasting more than 15 years, the study showed, unleashing a global famine that would kill 5 billion people.&nbsp; Anti-nuclear activists now challenge the security paradigm based on nuclear deterrence, and have instead pushed for a ban on nuclear weapons. At a meeting on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations in New York last December, members declared that the doctrine of deterrence used by nuclear-armed states and their allies was a threat to human security and an obstacle to nuclear disarmament.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241226081236_407d70a5620963d36f53e2c5718e0e12aad446374f358fb4b574701ee1f03e14.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20241226081236_407d70a5620963d36f53e2c5718e0e12aad446374f358fb4b574701ee1f03e14" data-rendition-name="original" width="667" height="726" loading="lazy" alt="Thinking the thinkable NT"> </figure>  The meeting heard that deterrence is an unproven gamble and based on the implicit threat to use nuclear weapons which itself is playing brinkmanship with nuclear annihilation. “Deterrence is unacceptable,” stated Melissa Parke of <a href="https://www.icanw.org/people_and_structure" target="_blank">ICAN ((International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons)</a>. “It is based on the threat to wage nuclear war which would kill millions outright and lead to a nuclear winter and mass starvation that would kill billions of people.”&nbsp; ICAN was awarded the <a href="https://www.icanw.org/nobel_prize" target="_blank">Nobel Peace Prize in 2017</a> for its activism against the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of atomic weapons, and its work to push the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.&nbsp; It has been 50 years since the discussions on a draft of the <a href="http://www.un.org/disarmament/WMD/Nuclear/NPTtext.shtml" target="_blank">Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)</a> was first held in Geneva. The NPT entered into force in 1970, and has the membership of <a href="http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/npt" target="_blank">191 States</a>, with mandatory obligations on disarmament and non-proliferation.&nbsp; However, these commitments are now threatened by a new Cold War and increased global tensions. Nine nuclear weapon states have total stockpiles of 14,500 warheads, many of them on missiles ready to be launched. Three countries in Nepal’s immediate neighbourhood (China, India, Pakistan) have nuclear weapons, and they do not share good relations.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241226081236_cb12ff19e7ad0691773a0cc4a74b4f2b699832495aa90e5dc21462a287f11dcb.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="20241226081236_cb12ff19e7ad0691773a0cc4a74b4f2b699832495aa90e5dc21462a287f11dcb" data-rendition-name="original" width="1232" height="513" loading="lazy" alt="Doomsday clock"> </figure>  Of the five regions around the world that have declared themselves nuclear weapons free, three are in Asia: Central Asia, Mongolia and the South Pacific. The <a href="https://www.unrcpd.org/about/" target="_blank">United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific (UNRCPD)</a> is located in Kathmandu and helps countries to meet disarmament goals. A report titled <a href="https://www.ippnw.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/ENGLISH-Nuclear-Famine-Report-Final-bleed-marks.pdf" target="_blank">Nuclear Famine</a> by the group <a href="https://www.ippnw.org/programs/nuclear-weapons-abolition/nuclear-famine-climate-effects-of-regional-nuclear-war" target="_blank">International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War</a> sounds a sobering alarm: even a limited nuclear war using only 100 weapons anywhere in the world would disrupt the global climate and agricultural production, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89_d9AFmk9Y&amp;t=83s" target="_blank">put 2 billion people at risk of starvation</a>. Coincidentally, 2 billion is also the number of people who would be affected by the melting of glaciers in the mountains of High Asia, according to the <a href="https://hkh.icimod.org/hi-wise/" target="_blank">International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)</a>. Given the twin global threats, climate activism now has to go hand-in-hand with the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons.&nbsp; Kunda Dixit This Editorial is brought to you by <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/" target="_blank">Nepali Times</a>, in collaboration with <a href="https://inpsjapan.com/en/" target="_blank">INPS Japan</a> and <a href="https://sgi-peace.org/" target="_blank">Soka Gakkai International</a>, in consultative status with UN ECOSOC.

Thinking the thinkable

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Philanthropy will never replace<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/uk-aid-for-nepal-s-covid-affected-mp4ab6lw"> public aid</a>, but it can be a powerhouse if we use it right. With global development funding under strain, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/e75-million-eu-aid-to-nepal-for-covid-19-ckmyfbkq">European aid</a> budgets being redirected toward defence and rearmament, and the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/how-usaid-cut-affects-nepal">United States rethinking foreign assistance</a> altogether, the aid community has been left scrambling.
The reactions so far have been of two kinds: calls for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/philanthropy-in-the-time-of-pandemic">philanthropy</a> to fill the gap, and moralising statements shaming governments for stepping back. Unfortunately, the first is unrealistic, and the second is ineffective.&nbsp;
Private donors cannot solve systemic <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/12-full-opinion/our-uncommon-future">global challenges</a> alone, and telling politicians that they are morally bankrupt generally does not bring them around to your side. Instead, we need to meet policymakers where they are, sharpen our arguments, and focus on what actually works. The hard truth is that most <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/foreign-aid-policy-to-balance-infrastructure-investment-with-social-sector-investment">government aid</a> is not even designed for effectiveness, because it prioritises processes over results. Nor has philanthropy been immune to this impulse.
In early years at the Eleanor Crook Foundation, we funded holistic, multisectoral programs that tried to tackle all causes of malnutrition simultaneously. But the results were underwhelming. The approach looked good on paper, but produced no measurable improvements in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-epidemic-of-hunger">malnutrition</a>. So, we learned from that failure and changed course. Now, we direct our funding where the evidence is strongest and the results most immediate.&nbsp;
At the recent Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in Paris, we announced a $50 million commitment, alongside $200 million from other donors, to scale up one of the most cost-effective interventions in global health: prenatal vitamins – known as multiple micronutrient supplements (MMS). This funding will go toward a $1 billion roadmap to ensure access to MMS for pregnant women no matter where they live.
The science on this issue is unequivocal. MMS replaces outdated iron and folic acid (IFA) tablets still given to many pregnant women in low-income countries. With MMS, women receive 15 nutrients, instead of just two, leading to a dramatic reduction in maternal anemia, stillbirth, and low birth weight. The estimated economic returns are $37 for every $1 invested while infant mortality is reduced by nearly one-third.
The global inequities in maternal health are profound. In London, a pregnant woman routinely has access to comprehensive prenatal vitamins. In Lagos, she might receive IFA, or nothing at all. The difference reflects a gap in will, not knowledge. Ending such disparities does not require a scientific breakthrough, just greater investment in already proven solutions.
More than two decades of research, three Lancet studies, and multiple World Bank investment cases have identified roughly ten nutrition interventions that are consistently underfunded despite their proven efficacy. These are not flashy, multisector, utopian initiatives. They are targeted, evidence-based programs that can be implemented immediately to deliver measurable results.
Solutions like breastfeeding support, Vitamin A supplementation, prenatal vitamins, and ready-to-use foods for severely malnourished children belong to a package of interventions that could save at least two million lives over five years if scaled up in nine high-burden countries. Such life-changing results would cost just $887 million per year.
Malnutrition is now the leading driver of <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=16505">child mortality</a> globally, contributing to some three million deaths in 2023 alone. These are not mysterious tragedies. They are predictable and in many cases cost little to prevent. In a world that routinely sends tourists to space, we obviously can afford to ensure that all <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/saving-one-nepali-mother-at-a-time">pregnant women</a> have access to a $2 bottle of vitamins.
This year’s N4G Summit may be the last of its kind. It was part of a summit series linked to the Olympics, which will next be hosted by the US. With the current <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/trump-s-second-coming">US administration </a>already signaling that it will not continue the tradition, recent commitments made in Paris have gained new urgency. Vague pledges and political posturing will no longer do.
We are not asking governments to spend like they used to. Rather, we are urging them to look at the evidence and use their remaining budgets for official <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/small-is-bountiful?fbclid=IwAR0wRoEdhgYO9qATGiukFQvK2fE6N8rCDZ4CBJBdkTC6_Es-6_mdVHldlic">development assistance</a> to scale up proven, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/small-is-still-possible">cost-effective solutions</a>. A modest investment in MMS – representing less than the cost of one week of G7 countries’ defense spending – could save 600,000 lives.
Even with constrained budgets, we have a chance to save millions of lives. But only if we stop trying to do everything, and focus instead on what is the right thing to do.
William Moore is the CEO of the Eleanor Crook Foundation and Chair of Stronger Foundations for Nutrition.

Philanthropy in an era of declining development aid

Transport is one of the biggest and fastest-growing sources of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-doubles-its-carbon-footprint">carbon emissions </a>in Nepal where private cars and motorcycles make up 87% of the registered vehicles and 37% of the total emissions.&nbsp; Meanwhile, freight and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/public-transport-back-on-kathmandu-roads">public transport </a>make up a small share of registered vehicles, but contribute 36% and 27% respectively to Nepal’s emissions. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/green-sticker-green-light-to-pollute">Transport emissions </a>have risen six-fold in the last two decades after the end of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/14-years-after-conflict-no-closure-in-nepal">the Maoist conflict</a>.<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/from-a-fossil-past-to-an-electric-future"> Petroleum and vehicle imports </a>have widened the country’s <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/balance-of-power">trade deficit with India</a>. Ambient<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/air-pollution-is-more-dangerous-than-smoking"> air pollution</a> is a major <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-tb-cases-grossly-underestimated">public health risk</a> directly causing the deaths of 12,700 Nepalis in 2021, according to the State of Global Air. Nepal is preparing the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC 3.0) as required by the Paris Agreement, and must set ambitious and robust targets to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/decarbonisation-needs-to-begin-today">decarbonise</a> transportation.&nbsp; This is not so much to save the planet, given the country’s negligible carbon footprint, but to reduce our dependence on imported petroleum, increase consumption of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/right-climate-for-nepal-s-energy-transition">clean hydropower</a>, and improve <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/why-is-the-air-in-bhaktapur-so-bad">air quality</a>. The government needs to phase out vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE), starting with a ban on their import and sale by 2030. Heavy commercial vehicles can be exempted for now. The federal budget of 2021/22 did include a policy to phase out fossil fuel vehicles by 2031, and by 2028 from the urban centres of Bagmati Province. The government banned the registration of new ICE taxis in the capital, showing that regulatory measures can be cost-effective, sustainable, and transformative. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/blueprint-for-a-net-zero-nepal">Blueprint for a net-zero Nepal</a> Norway has an even more ambitious target to ban ICE vehicle sales by end-2025. The EU adopted legislation to reduce 100% of carbon emissions from 2035 for new cars and vans. Over 20 vehicle manufacturers, representing over 90% of car sales in 2023, have set targets for EV production, with many setting a goal to achieve 50–100% of electric vehicle production or sales by 2030–2035. EV sales in Nepal will likely increase even without government effort. Already, battery powered vehicles make up 75% of all new car sales in Nepal. But our focus should now shift to the<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/rev-your-car-and-charge-it-too"> electrification of public transport</a>. Transforming the transport system requires it to be inclusive and equitable. Electric public transport such as buses provide the greatest emission reduction potential and wider social and economic benefits from equitable access to mobility to meet Nepal’s energy security. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-public-in-public-transport">The public in public transport</a>, Sonia Awale  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250327100316_de83a26005595b4d20f9a32bb4243ed53097ae413de0aa2788e287c195e51fbb.jpg" data-media-id="editor_14" data-image-id="20250327100316_de83a26005595b4d20f9a32bb4243ed53097ae413de0aa2788e287c195e51fbb" data-rendition-name="original" width="877" height="613" loading="lazy" alt="Transforming transport in Nepal NT"> </figure>  This means <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/why-invest-in-nepal">investment </a>and financial incentives from the government, and not just tax rebates, to be extended to other electric or <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/net-zero-is-not-zero">zero-emission </a>public service vehicles, such as taxis and cargo trucks. Enabling more people to walk and cycle safely is also a quick, affordable, and reliable way to help reduce transport emissions by as much as 50%. Public transport is a public service, and the onus lies squarely with the government. It cannot be left entirely to the private sector as is the case at the moment. To be sure, Nepal has some policies on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/business/green-bond-option-for-climate-finance">sustainable</a> transportation on paper but government agencies are working at cross purposes.&nbsp; For example: no federal budget has been allocated for a public bus system and pedestrian and cycling infrastructures this year.&nbsp; Almost the entire transport budget goes into <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-building-a-highway-to-everest">building roads </a>and widening <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/nepal-needs-wildlife-friendly-highways">highways</a>. There is little hope of transformation unless the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport sets new priorities.&nbsp; The Department of Roads has not moved beyond its focus on roads and highway construction, while continuously failing on <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/traffic-accidents-continue-to-increase-worryingly-in-Nepal,2799">road safety</a>. The Department of Transport Management on the other hand acts solely as a vehicle registration and licensing agency. These departments need to be overhauled with a mandate for sustainable public transportation. The jurisdiction over all roads, other than <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/roadkill">national highways</a>, should be devolved to local governments. The federal government can then ensure that the biggest slice of the transport budget flows to sustainable public transport projects. Decarbonising and transforming transport require a whole-of-government approach with a strong commitment to reforming the sector, and not just paying lip service to it.&nbsp; But while one arm of the government plans to increase <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/right-climate-for-nepal-s-energy-transition">clean energy generation </a>and achieve<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/charging-nepal"> net-zero</a>, the other is drilling for oil and building petroleum pipelines. &nbsp; Prashanta Khanal is an independent climate and transport policy researcher.&nbsp;

Transforming transport in Nepal

US President <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/trump-s-second-coming">Donald Trump</a>’s decision to<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/how-usaid-cut-affects-nepal"> dissolve USAID and effectively cut American assistance</a> to countries across the world, including Nepal, has forced many aid-supported programmes and projects to shut down, directly impacting Nepalis across the country who benefit from <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/aid-rarely-aids-agriculture-in-nepal">aid-funded services</a>.
USAID-funded projects have provided direct budgetary support to projects in key sectors including health, education, agriculture, infrastructure, economic growth, humanitarian aid and women and children empowerment.&nbsp;
The aid cuts have meant that people directly or indirectly employed in USAID-funded projects have found themselves without jobs, while its impact has reverberated across those that have indirectly benefitted from spillovers of American aid, such as the hospitality business operators,<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/kathmandu-s-unreal-real-estate-prices"> real estate</a> owners, transport providers, and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-airlines-privatisation-still-stuck">airlines</a>.&nbsp;
The abrupt shutdown of the largest bilateral aid agency in the world has significant impact and far-reaching consequences.
Historically,<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/Connecting-dots/aid-back-basics,929"> foreign aid </a>has been the focus of intensive public debate both globally and in Nepal. Critics in donor countries—particularly those from the political right—view it as antithetical to their <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/national-interest-or-nationalism">national interests</a> and a waste of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/the-taxman-looteth">taxpayer resources</a>.&nbsp;
Meanwhile, those in the ideological left in recipient countries view it as help that comes with strings attached, a tool of neo-colonialism. Many are of the opinion that such assistance enriches people associated with the aid system rather than intended beneficiaries. So much so that Nepalis cynically refer to the aid-NGO complex as ‘डलरको खेती’ ( dollar farming).
Nepal’s leadership across the political spectrum have not pulled any punches in their criticism of aid institutions— <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/14-years-after-conflict-no-closure-in-nepal">the Maoists</a> have called them ‘agencies of imperialism’, while nationalist discourses from the political right draw connections between foreign aid and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-britain-mark-centenary-of-1923-treaty">Nepal’s sovereignty</a>.&nbsp;
Aid is, of course, essentially political—not just in terms of how it has been instrumentalised by donors, but also how it has been appropriated and used by the beneficiaries— governments, employees, consultants, NGOs, the private sector, and communities. However, viewing aid solely from its imputed political intentions is as naïve as it is counterproductive.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/missing-links-in-nepal-s-mcc-debate">Missing links in Nepal’s MCC debate</a>
While there is no denying that foreign aid is an instrument of soft power that comes with conditions, it has facilitated access to public services, generated direct and indirect<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/foreign-employment-revival"> employment </a>and livelihood opportunities and empowered <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-marginalised-on-the-margins">marginalised communities</a> that have fallen through the cracks of the establishment.
Indeed, foreign aid has contributed significantly to the Nepal’s rapid socio-economic change over the last seven decades, such that the country has arguably become accustomed to and dependent on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/e75-million-eu-aid-to-nepal-for-covid-19-ckmyfbkq">international funding</a>. USAID was by no means the only source of grants and loans that provided Nepal with resources for numerous government and non-government programmes, projects and personnel.
But while the volume of aid has varied historically, Nepal had so far been immune to such ‘aid-shocks’ that compelled the government and people to imagine and work in a context with little or no international assistance. &nbsp;
And it is not just the US that is pulling up stakes, other donor countries are similarly reconsidering their positions on bilateral aid. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced a reduction in foreign aid from 0.5% of its GDP to 0.3%—primarily to accommodate an increase in the country’s defence spending.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-great-game-2nd-half">The Great Game, 2nd Half</a>, Sonia Awale
More donor countries will follow suit as their taxpayers—particularly those on the populist right—demand their government increasing spending on their own domestic public services, the military, and the private sector. The shrinking pot will directly impact multilateral agencies that rely heavily on funding provided by western donors to support their programmes across the world.
Some see the western world’s retreat from foreign assistance as an opportunity for emerging powers like China to fill the vacuum and expand their sphere of influence regionally and beyond. Nepal has been receiving aid and development assistance from <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/stemming-asia-s-democratic-decay">Asian regional and global powers</a> like India, China and Japan over the past decades.&nbsp;
However, the nature, priorities, and the modality of aid from Asian powers has been notably different to that of western donors. It is therefore unlikely that China or India will offer aid to Nepal using western liberal frameworks, or be able to displace Western donors completely.
If nations in the region are successful in completely replacing western donors in Nepal, this will denigrate possibilities for the country to either bargain better and ‘forum-shop’ for aid that aligns with its national interests, or diversify sources of aid.&nbsp;
As such, it might be time for Nepal to reevaluate its reliance on foreign aid, not just from the US, but from global and regional powers. So, the ‘end of aid’— if it comes to that— need not be end of development in Nepal.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/trump-shock-wave-hits-nepal">Trump shock wave hits Nepal</a>, Sudiksha Tuladhar
Data from the government of Nepal shows that foreign aid’s relative share in the national budget has been declining over the decades. In comparison, Nepal earns overs $30 million in remittances a day. Much of Nepal’s development is directly supported by <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/the-new-equaliser">migrant remittances</a>, which remains under-acknowledged.&nbsp;
Decreasing its reliance on foreign aid could mean that Nepal’s leadership is obligated to rethink its development priorities. &nbsp;The government could increase its fiscal capacity to fund development programmes that are critical to its development objectives, demonstrably cost-effective and meet the real needs of communities.&nbsp;
Additionally, there could be increased efforts to raise revenue from wealth and income taxes, attract foreign direct investment, and cut back on ‘white elephant’ projects—symbolic gestures designed to feed the egos of political leadership but serving little purpose or public good.&nbsp;
All of this would ultimately be to the benefit of the Nepali people, reducing waste and corruption, encouraging a more responsible approach to government expenditure, and promoting a more careful husbandry of the country's own resources.&nbsp;
To be sure, this change will not happen immediately. &nbsp;It will be a slow and deliberative process, one that is likely to reset the development contract between Nepali state and citizens.&nbsp;
Some have likened the flow of aid to the rush of heroin— something that provides a high and a momentary sense of extraordinary well-being but it is addictive and damaging. And like any debilitating dependency— being made to quit its reliance on foreign funding cold turkey will be challenging for Nepal.&nbsp;
As things stand, it remains to be seen if as a result of President Trump’s cost-cutting rampage, Nepal might emerge as a leaner but fitter state after recovering from a painful period of withdrawal from its reliance on foreign aid.&nbsp;
Jeevan R Sharma is a Professor of South Asia and International Development at the University of Edinburgh, and has authored publications on migration, development and social change in Nepal. David Seddon is Director of Critical Faculty, and is author and co-author of various publications on Nepal.&nbsp;

The end of aid

The Korea Employment Permit Scheme (<a href="https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/684731537420880821/pdf/130020-P156586-Korea-report-F-singles-web.pdf">EPS</a>) is one of the most sought-after bilateral labour mobility programs for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/a-long-way-to-europe">Nepali workers</a>.&nbsp;
Many prospective workers prepare hard for the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/business/ielts-on-screen">language tests </a>like their “life depended on it” or “like studying for the civil service exam”. EPS is not just <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/On-the-way-up/Still-silently-crying,1060">survival migration</a>, but one that is financially rewarding.
One worker said migrants <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/speaking-the-language-of-overseas-work">referred</a> to the Korean Dream as दुई गुणा अन्ठाउन्न — referring to the Rs200,000 monthly salary over a 58-month period, a transformative amount.&nbsp;
“Anyhow, कोरिया जौँ,” was a popular slogan while cramming for the language exams (Read Diaspora Diaries, across). South Korea has also benefited from foreign workers, and the rapidly aging nation will continue to rely on expanding its foreign worker intake to offset its <a href="https://www.piie.com/publications/working-papers/2024/migration-or-stagnation-aging-and-economic-growth-korea-today">demographic drag</a>.
A recent entrepreneurship <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15VemgEV6W/">initiative</a> targeting current and former <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/in-the-minds-of-nepal-s-migrant-workers">Nepali migrants </a>in Korea funded by <a href="https://www.koica.go.kr/sites/nepal_en/index.do">KOICA</a> and implemented by the group <a href="https://en.thebridgeint.com/en/">Bridge International</a>, demonstrates how the Returnee Innovator for Nepal (RIN) program can be made even more rewarding by maximising not just financial, but also <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/not-just-financial-but-social-remittances">social remittances</a>.
The program is unique because the support begins not once workers arrive in Nepal, but in Korea itself. Selected candidates attend classes on basic <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/nepali-entrepreneur-turns-trash-into-cash">entrepreneurship</a> while in Korea and to work on their<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/hurdles-come-with-the-terrain-in-nepal-s-fashion-industry"> business ideas </a>which they can further 'localise' once back in Nepal.
They also get linked to mentors from Korea-based companies from their area of interest to brainstorm, refine ideas, and get practical real-world guidance. In some cases, these can grow into business ties.
Santosh Timalsina runs a successful coffee machine repair business Jumli Cafe in Pokhara, and was connected by Bridge International with a Korea-based coffee entrepreneur who trained him. Even though his EPS jobs entailed making golf balls or car parts, he took advantage of whatever free time he had to prepare for return by taking up coffee machine repair.&nbsp;
“Even now I rely on my Korean trainer for guidance and to access spare parts that are not available in Nepal,” says Timalsina.
CEO of Bridge International Jinsol Hwang says the next cohorts will also be provided the option of using business plans that Korean entrepreneurs may have for those workers who are unsure about what to invest in once they are back.
The <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-plans-to-reintegrate-returning-workers">returnee program</a> is in its early phases, and has just called for the second cohort, but demonstrates that labour mobility programs can be made more impactful. The return stage also merits as much attention, including from host country agencies like KOICA, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-moves-from-aid-to-enterprise">social enterprises </a>and even employers.&nbsp;
Jinsol says migration was part of Korea’s growth story in the 1970s with workers headed to West Germany as miners and nurses and to the Middle East as construction workers. The <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/nepal-s-remittance-villages">remittances </a>and skills acquired abroad were critical in Korea's transformation.
The role of returnees as entrepreneurs in creating jobs and contributing to the economy was a way to level the playing field. It provided access to capital, networks and skills they may not have otherwise had.
The second winning team at the recent Returnee Innovators Showcase of the RIN program was Hankook Meat Mart. It is a profitable effort by three Korea returnees to provide high quality meat products that they source from another Korean returnee who runs a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/pigs-fly-and-fish-climb-trees">pig farm</a>.&nbsp;
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/bringing-korea-s-prosperity-to-nepal">Bringing Korea’s prosperity to Nepal</a>
The approach is to build a supply chain using high quality <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/meat-money-and-the-middle-class">meat production</a>, and diversifying to small complementary businesses such as a tiny but profitable Korean restaurant, and small factories making Kimchi and rice-cakes.&nbsp;
Dil Bahadur Tamang from Hankook successfully pitched his business, saying programs like RIN are useful to learn formal business management practices, for networking and exposure. The financial award it won was helpful for business expansion as it launches a second branch.&nbsp;
“Those of us who go to work in Korea are not from a business background, so the switch from an employee to becoming self-employed is difficult especially in a country like ours,” Tamang says. “Start-up failure rates are high globally, if we don’t understand the market and launch businesses without proper preparation, the chances of failure will be high and we lose our hard-earned money.”
There are returnees who rush to businesses and subsequently fail. In the <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uR6pzwfR91KAezRODgDIz2FWI6m2xjPL/view">Diaspora Diaries series</a> in this newspaper, one consistent advice, based on their <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/diaspora-diaries/finding-a-niche-in-nepal">own failures</a> in some cases, has always been to take time just to understand Nepal's market before rushing into a business even if it is a sector they have years of overseas experience in.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/overseas-job-seeker-now-creates-jobs-in-nepal">Overseas job-seeker now creates jobs in Nepal</a>, Mahesh Sah
The decision ‘to return to Nepal or remain overseas’ for current migrants is perhaps tougher than the decision youth face to ‘migrate or stay in Nepal’. Migrants with the intention to return, whether by choice as they have stayed overseas enough, or because their contracts are ending, need more support with developing their plans back home.&nbsp;
This includes workers from the Middle East and Malaysia who inevitably return, not just EPS workers from Korea. In the Philippines, the Technical Education and Skills Development (<a href="https://www.tesda.gov.ph/">TESDA</a>), offers an <a href="https://e-tesda.gov.ph/course/index.php?categoryid=467">online</a> self-based business entrepreneurship program targeting current overseas Filipinos.&nbsp;
Such resources would also be useful for<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/50-diaspora-diaries-in-nepali-times"> Nepali migrants</a> who are trying to decide whether to return and what to do after returning. &nbsp;
Upasana Khadka heads <a href="https://www.migration-lab.com/">Migration Lab</a>, a social enterprise aimed at making migration outcomes better for workers and their families. Labour Mobility is a regular column in Nepali Times.

Social remittance

Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the first official <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/reaction-to-wang-yi-s-nepal-visit-in-chinese-media">foreign visit </a>of the commission in her second term would be to India. On the same day, Marco Rubio held his first bilateral meeting as US Secretary of State with India’s minister of external affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Washington last month confirmed his country’s rising international profile. The visit ended with the promise of what Modi called a US-India “mega partnership.” He has committed to double trade with the US by 2030, increase <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/half-full/A-carbon-neutral-Nepal-is-possible-clean-Nepal,1064">oil and gas imports</a>, and expand US military sales to India.
India is now the fastest-growing major <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/how-nepal-can-avert-an-economic-crunch">economy</a>, with the IMF forecasting a 6.5% increase in GDP this year. India is expected to overtake Japan and Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2030.&nbsp;
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/india-s-election-and-its-economic-future">India’s election and its economic future</a>, Raghuram G Rajan
Despite its <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/missing-out-on-nepal-s-tourism-potential">vast potential</a>, India has long been overlooked by the West, both <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/ukraine-crisis-hits-nepal-economy-hard">economically</a> and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-geopolitics-of-nepal-s-politics">geopolitically</a>. But a fundamental global realignment is now underway. America’s ‘unipolar moment’ has given way to an era of great-power competition that, unlike during the Cold War, features demands by emerging and developing economies for a more <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/making-nepal-accessible-to-all">inclusive </a>and representative multilateral system.&nbsp;
In this multipolar age, both the US and Europe see India, a neutral <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/no-binary-foreign-policy?fb_comment_id=3583384368393672_3586424038089705">foreign-policy </a>actor and dynamic<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=18861"> emerging economy</a>, as vital to the future of their strategic priorities.&nbsp;
A founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, India has plenty of experience navigating precarious moments in <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=4896">world affairs</a>. During the Cold War, it skillfully balanced its policies toward <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/america-nepal-and-the-royal-coup-qedzifz9">the US and the Soviet Union</a>.&nbsp;
When it engaged with <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/so-far-so-good/the-vagaries-of-fate">the Soviet Union</a>, from which it received considerable <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/civil-military-synergy-in-disaster-management">military assistance</a>, it calibrated its approach to offset US support of Pakistan, without taking sides in the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/the-rich-get-richer-and-more-powerful">great-power competition</a>.&nbsp;
India has since maintained this pragmatic balancing act, adapting its foreign policy to a shifting geopolitical landscape. Today, that means recognising its potential to shape global affairs, including by playing a leading role in building an efficient, realistic, and inclusive multilateralism.&nbsp;
This is reflected in Modi’s pursuit of a more assertive, internationalist foreign policy. Beyond building new partnerships and strengthening old ones, Modi has sought to increase <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/india-s-hindutva-politics-influencing-nepal">India’s influence </a>in traditional and emerging multilateral fora. In 2023 alone, India held the presidency of both the G20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (a Chinese creation, comprising nine Middle Eastern and Asian countries).&nbsp;
India plays a leading role in the BRICS, and is characteristically nuanced: whereas Russia and, to a significant extent, China see themselves as disruptors of the existing order, India views itself as a reformer. This enables it to maintain strategic flexibility as it advances its interests.&nbsp;
<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/india-china-rail-race">India’s relationship with China</a> is complicated by other factors. While the countries work together in some fora, they are also locked in protracted<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/india-bangladesh-border-talks-have-lessons-for-nepal"> territorial disputes</a> and a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-race-for-shital-nibas">competition for leadership</a> in the so-called Global South.&nbsp;
India’s growing global clout, including its appeal to Western powers, stems in large part from its ability to act as a counterweight to China. It is indispensable to the Quad alliance with Australia, Japan, and the US, a grouping that is officially focused on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/the-quad-maritime-security-and-climate-change">maritime security</a> and economic cooperation, though its members clearly seek to provide a buffer against China in the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/between-two-oceans">Indo-Pacific region</a>. It is thanks to India that the Quad is not viewed as just another Western vehicle.&nbsp;
Modi has sought to bolster India’s Southern credentials, including by highlighting its status as the “mother of democracy”. By framing <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/is-democracy-too-expensive-for-nepal">democracy</a> as intrinsic to Indian civilisation, rather than a colonial legacy, he aligned India with ‘middle powers’ seeking to redefine global governance on their own terms.&nbsp;
To be sure, Modi has moved India away from the secular and pluralistic values that had flourished after <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-goal-is-empowerment-and-independence-of-women">independence</a>, in favour of assertive <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/unconventional-convention">Hindu nationalism</a>. So many international indices have downgraded India’s democratic status that he is now seeking to create his own.&nbsp;
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/borderlines/demodification-of-india">Demodification of India</a>, Chandrakishore&nbsp;
Modi is the second leader of independent India (after Jawaharlal Nehru) to be elected to three consecutive terms, and remains a dominant force in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/india-s-faith-in-politics">Indian politics</a>.&nbsp;
And at a time of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-geopolitics-of-nepal-s-water-and-electricity">rapid geopolitical change</a>, he is committed to leveraging his position, and India’s profound strengths, to turn it into a global player. India has long had the potential to be an active shaper of international affairs. It has now arrived. &nbsp;&nbsp;© Project Syndicate
Ana Palacio, a former minister of foreign affairs of Spain and former senior vice president and general counsel of the World Bank Group, is a visiting lecturer at Georgetown University.

India has arrived

Rameshwor Bhaiya was a mailman and a chowkidar rolled into one. He was stationed at Loreto College, Southfield in Darjeeling for many many years, until he retired.
I learned the other day from a WhatsApp group that he recently passed away at a hospital in Siliguri after battling throat <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-other-pandemic-cancer">cancer</a> for a long time. I had forgotten all about him until I saw the message.&nbsp;
Rameshwor Bhaiya was a petite, agile man, always taking mails to the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/is-nepal-entering-the-post-post-office-era">post office </a>and fetching them back. He was always busy, walking with brisk, soft steps, sometimes stopping in the lunchroom for a glass of water, the last one sitting down to eat because the mail had to be done in the first hour.&nbsp;
For his physical stature, I cannot recall how he managed his guard work as a chowkidar, but he must have been good at that too, because he kept some 500 girls safe everyday.
Rameshwor Bhaiya always wore his hair oiled and combed back with a side parting, neatly. His postal bag slung over his shoulder, the strap falling across his chest was bulky on some days and some days it would be shriveled up and swinging in the air with the lack of weight.&nbsp;
He wore gray or khaki sweaters mostly and a jacket the same tint. His trousers were in the same shades too, and once in a while, he would spot a colourful shirt -- there was a maroon one with a fading collar. The V of one of his V-neck sweaters had come undone and looked like a Y with a short tail instead and I don’t remember that he ever fixed it.
I do not even remember his full name. But we all understood from a way of understanding caste and religion in South Asia that he was a Hindu, North Indian man who had moved to<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/Connecting-dots/Darjeeling-and-the-idea-of-Nepal,944"> Darjeeling</a> for work. We never understood where his family was because he lived on campus.
The Southfield building was known to have once been the summer palace of a Maharaja of Burdwan, and by then had become Rameshwor Bhaiya’s home. He lived in a small room on the ground floor of the building, close to the lift. Sometimes, he would point at the lift and explain how the pulley worked. It had to be pulled by men to move the lift users up and down the two-storey durbar. But as chowkidar, Rameshwor Bhaiya was the sole nighttime occupant of that house.
In the morning, he woke up to the nuisance of monkeys from the Mahakal temple right above Southfield. And the morning would get noisier as the cleaners came in and then the girls and the teacher would start to trickle in, first slowly and then in quick steps and in full numbers as the bell for the first class went off.
My roommate Meenu and I were sincere letter writers. We wrote to parents, to friends, to admirers sometimes. Sometimes, to boys we crushed on. (I mean, I did.) Meenu was always more careful about how she put her feelings out there. But she was the one always doing couriers home. Her mother would send her parathas and achar and ladoo by courier, all the way from Phuentsholing, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/small-bhutan-dreams-big">Bhutan</a>, our midnight snack. So, Meenu maintained a cordial relationship with Rameshwor Bhaiya.
Our hostel was at the Convent in Springfield and we were only allowed outings on weekends, which meant mails had to often wait a whole week until Saturday. On Sundays we couldn’t mail. That was when Rameshwor Bhaiya would come to our rescue. If we needed to send a mail to the post office or courier something on weekdays, we would give it to him and he would make sure it was done. For us, the Indian postal service’s efficiency thrived on Rameshwor Bhaiya’s existence.
When we returned to hostel life from our holidays, some of us would bring little gifts to the staff. I used to bring pustakari from Nepal for Rameshwor Bhaiya. He said once that it hurt his mouth to suck on them but he still enjoyed it. He was more of a connoisseur of paan, but he appreciated the gesture.
The campus was always bustling with staff, but when I think of Rameshwor Bhaiya letters instantly come to mind. There was the post office and the smell of mail and the feeling of rippling open an envelope and thrusting the fingers into it to reveal its content to the self.&nbsp;
Once or twice, I had surprise letters from a secret admirer and I was worried they would be discovered. No, having a boyfriend was not encouraged. In fact, we were often pre-emtively reminded of the student who went on a walk to the mall road with her boyfriend and was gang-raped by strangers, an incident Late Peter J Karthak records in one of his novels.
So, we led sheltered lives. Mama’s girls and Daddy’s girls, all huddled together in classrooms, heads buried in textbooks, but our minds wondering who to borrow the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/14-books-to-read-gift-love-this-valentine-s">next romance novel</a> from. Cloistered, free of the world’s strings, we bubbled with hope for all kinds of things. Mostly, for what our <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/scoring-a-better-future-for-nepals-soccer-girls">future as women</a> in the real world would be like.
And in his own little way, Rameshwor Bhaiya made lives possible for us because he brought us letters, documents, exam results, notices from the University of West Bengal.
“Is there a letter for me, Rameshwor Bahiya?” Sometimes he would joke and say no even if there was one. Usually there was no mail for me at Southfield. But there was always Rameshwor Bhaiya with his postal bag -- the bag of hope.
Suburban Tales is a monthly column in Nepali Times based on real people (with some names changed) in Pratibha’s life.

The man who came bearing letters

Nepali Times (11-17 April 2025)

Il y a d’autres Annapurnas dans la vie des hommes

The <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/time-capsule-of-kathmandu">Kathmandu Valley civilisation</a> can also be called a hydrological culture where sophisticated<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-needs-to-plan-for-plenty-and-scarcity-of-water"> water management</a> allowed densely-packed settlements to co-exist with intense <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/back-to-the-future-of-farming">agriculture</a> on the fertile soil of the former lake-bed. Both needed plenty of water, but <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/geopolitics-of-nepal-s-rivers">the Valley’s rivers </a>are not snowfed. So, the rulers of the kingdoms sourced them from the surrounding hills in an elaborate <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/kathmandu-s-ancient-water-spouts-still-functioning">network of canals </a>that did not just provide water for irrigation and fill ponds that recharged ground water, but also ensured urban supply through sunken spouts called hiti.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025032705030_4e0cf8c700f36086c3ea12917b03f2ae1f5224db3c9eac61c02b9a2a0d3ba91a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="2025032705030_4e0cf8c700f36086c3ea12917b03f2ae1f5224db3c9eac61c02b9a2a0d3ba91a" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1227" loading="lazy" alt="Hiti "> <figcaption>Photo: HAYLEY SAUL</figcaption> </figure>  The fact that the hiti system is still a vital source of water for the residents of inner city <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/a-green-city-is-a-smart-city">Kathmandu</a>, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/patan-for-beginners">Patan</a> or <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/clash-of-cultures-in-bhaktapur">Bhaktapur </a>despite rapid urbanisation is a testament to the engineering and planning expertise of our ancestors dating back to the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/losing-loose-change-in-nepal">Lichhavi period</a> (400–750 CE) and later expanded during the Malla era (10th–18th century CE). ‘The Liquid Landscape of Kathmandu Valley: Hiti Pranali Water Heritage’ is a new exhibition at<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/patans-museum-piece"> Patan Museum</a> to pay tribute to this <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/culture-cannot-be-an-afterthought">cultural heritage</a> and explores recent archaeological research that offers solutions to not just their preservation but also to maintain them to supplement modern systems.&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/saving-nepal-s-hiti-heritage">Saving Nepal’s hiti heritage</a> The research by Hayley Saul of Heritage for Global Challenges Research Centre and PhD scholar Anoj Khanal at the University of York in the UK entailed using Ground Penetration Radar (GPR) to generate electromagnetic waves to map underground water conduits. Collaborating in the research was engineer and author of the seminal book Hiti Pranali, Padma Sunder Joshi of the Madan Bhandari University of Science and Technology. “We used GPR to explore if we can find filtration systems or functions that allow for the flow and control of water and its distribution,” Saul explained. Although many of the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/in-with-the-old-in-nepal">historical monuments of the Valley</a> that were destroyed in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/lessons-not-learned-from-2015-o2etq6zu">the 2015 earthquake </a>have now been rebuilt, there has been minimal work in finding out about underground water conduits that may have been damaged, and in their restitution. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/a-portal-into-patan-s-past-and-present">A portal into Patan’s past and present</a>, Prakriti Kandel GPR technology can be used to map the main canals (raj kulo) and their branches, explore how they were designed and built in the first place, without having to carry out expensive excavation -- which would be difficult anyway because much of the Valley floor is now built up.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025032705038_c51c4e9e1a59d413f652d10f78b1ea7ee49a6c02e4ca01dff29c1ed79df10796.jpg" data-media-id="editor_16" data-image-id="2025032705038_c51c4e9e1a59d413f652d10f78b1ea7ee49a6c02e4ca01dff29c1ed79df10796" data-rendition-name="original" width="14888" height="10627" loading="lazy" alt="Hiti GPR results"> <figcaption>Photo: HAYLEY SAUL and ANOJ KHANAL</figcaption> </figure>  Local governments can now use the data collected by the researchers to map out the network canals, enforce building restrictions if needed and to maintain them.&nbsp; The hiti of Kathmandu were not just functional, but sacred and served as social and spiritual hubs. They provided water for drinking, laundry, household use, rituals, while also serving as gathering places for communities.&nbsp; With the<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/water-for-the-ages"> introduction of modern water mains </a>from the late 19th century onwards and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/cost-of-living-in-a-big-city">rapid urban growth</a>, many hiti have fallen into disrepair or dried up. Of the at least 573 stone spouts once counted in Kathmandu Valley, many are lost, damaged, or no longer functional due to neglect, pollution, and encroachment of ponds and canals that feed them. Joshi explains that<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/thimi-s-urban-tissue"> Kathmandu’s ancient urban planners </a>developed the hiti network after the kingdoms located to higher ground to leave the lower areas for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/aid-rarely-aids-agriculture-in-nepal">agriculture</a>. It forced them to devise ways to bring water through a network of canals fed by aquifiers, and use the gradient to sunken hiti stone spouts for distribution.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025032705034_ae12c7503ea6717c4a727a1c14a500f964e0e86668f9f923950cfb8a6c907d81.png" data-media-id="editor_21" data-image-id="2025032705034_ae12c7503ea6717c4a727a1c14a500f964e0e86668f9f923950cfb8a6c907d81" data-rendition-name="original" width="890" height="677" loading="lazy" alt="Hiti map"> </figure>  The exhibition at Patan Museum also demonstrates that the hiti system incorporates space for living beings, making it a self-functioning <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/people-tigers-trees-and-rivers">ecosystem </a>in itself. The existence of plants such as ferns and algae, and snakes and frogs indicate a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/orchids-of-godavari-phulchoki">healthy ecosystem </a>in the sunken spouts. Absence of such biodiversity today indicates that the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/saving-the-waters-of-life">water systems</a> have been degraded or <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/too-little-too-much-or-too-polluted">polluted</a>. “The<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/nepal-must-keep-water-on-its-land"> ponds </a>were used to collect water and recharge groundwater and aquifers,” explains Joshi. “They were primarily used for farming ducks which needed the algae in the ponds as food.”&nbsp; Every June just before <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/managing-the-monsoon">the monsoon</a>, Kathmandu Valley’s <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/kathmandu-marks-ihi-with-a-difference">Newa community </a>ritually cleans wells and other sources of water to maintain drainage and ensure that they serve as effective storage systems. Which is why Kathmandu’s hydrological culture is such an important part of its civilisation to this day.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250327100320_02d01e05c3f8aa3cde1f5af1569e8e09bf84dee88ebda76bb68ee0e0df669c80.png" data-media-id="editor_29" data-image-id="20250327100320_02d01e05c3f8aa3cde1f5af1569e8e09bf84dee88ebda76bb68ee0e0df669c80" data-rendition-name="original" width="1339" height="634" loading="lazy" alt="Kathmandu hiti NT"> </figure>  Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/the-water-emergency">The Water Emergency</a>, Ajaya Dixit The underground network of water canals also showed advanced engineering skills, and the system was so well built that it has lasted centuries, even though local communities may have lost the skills needed to build and maintain them. Says Anoj Khanal, “The wisdom from the past must be preserve and used. The technique and knowledge must be adapted to the modern times.” The York University team used the GPR technology at 33 hiti sites in Patan, and now hope to do similar research in Kathmandu.&nbsp; The hiti system thrived because it worked in balance with nature which has been disrupted with modern pressures as over-extraction of ground water and the disappearance of recharge ponds. Pollution from septic tanks and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/blueprint-for-a-net-zero-nepal">industrial waste</a> contaminate aquifers, while <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/climate-breakdown-linked-to-thame-flood">climate breakdown</a> alter rainfall patterns. Many hiti that once flowed year-round are now dry even during <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/soon-monsoon">the monsoon</a>.&nbsp; The hiti exhibition showcases the intricate <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/the-history-of-heritage">heritage of Kathmandu Valley</a>’s water supply network and how <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/tech-and-transition-in-nepal">modern technology</a> can help restore them. It is also a call to action to preserve the canals, spouts, ponds and the catchment areas on the Valley’s rim.&nbsp; Says Khanal, “It is possible to revive the hiti using the maps of water conduits underground to figure out alternate routes where water can flow. It is better late than never.” The Liquid Landscape of Kathmandu Valley: Hiti Pranali Water Heritage Until 30 March Patan Museum

Kathmandu’s liquid landscape

Deepak Rauniyar’s third feature Rajagunj is currently in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-qfx-cinema-needs-a-happy-ending">cinemas</a>, and should be seen for many reasons: it is a solid nail biter, a kidnapping whodunnit, a political thriller with two unconventional, heart wrenching, love stories.
It is also a sharply observed commentary on<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/race-against-time"> race relations</a> that refrains from being overly didactic — a common fault in many political films that alienate the viewer instead of enlightening them.
Internationally aired as Pooja, Sir, the film premiered in 2024 at the Orizzonti section which runs parallel to the main competition at the Venice Film Festival. It has since made its way through the festival circuit to finally open in Nepali cinemas.
However, it suffered a glitch at the hands of the Censor Board which has a history of choosing conservatism over wisdom in what they want to edit out, treating viewers like juveniles and attempting to subvert reality by demanding that real events be redacted.
Thankfully, the film is not hurt much from this interference, though concentration is required to follow the twists and turns of the plot. Without giving too much away, the story involves the seemingly cold-blooded kidnapping of two young boys in the eponymous Rajagunj.
It plays out against the volatile backdrop of the deadly real life protests in 2015 that killed dozens in the Madhes over fury regarding the inadequacies of the new <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-s-contentious-constitution-day">Constitution</a>.
Pooja Thapa (played by the formidable Asha Magrati), a detective inspector from Kathmandu, is sent to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-tarai-s-shrinking-forests">the Tarai</a> in the blistering heat to investigate. One of the young boys is the son of a prominent, local Madhesi politician, the other child is his friend and the offspring of the house-help. One can guess which victim necessitated the dispatch of a high ranking police officer from Kathmandu.
From the beginning Pooja is a compelling enigma, she is forthright and committed, keenly intelligent and a force of nature. She is also stubborn, and occasionally not very sympathetic to her fellow Madhesi colleagues.
There is little humour in the way she is written, the nuances appear thanks to Magrati’s calibrated performance. Pooja is also a lesbian which is hinted at from the very first scene with a shot of her from the back that emphasises her short boy-cut.
Her sexual orientation is further underscored by a slight but intimate scene in the kitchen with Rama, her partner, before she has to leave for Rajagunj.
Rauniyar’s social conscience and investment in the woes of Nepali society has been evident from his first film, Highway (2012) which, while messy, showed he had both heart and brains as he grappled with multiple characters, each conveying a particularly complicated aspect of the everyman’s struggles.
His second feature White Sun or Seto Surya <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/must-see/White-sun-seto-surya-movie-review-2016,3420">(previously reviewed in this paper</a>) came out in 2016, cementing his place as an independent filmmaker and a politically conscious auteur.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/min-bahadur-bham-s-cinematic-quest">Min Bahadur Bham’s cinematic quest</a>, Abishek Budhathoki
Rajagunj shows how far this director has come with a story of a woman who finds herself in an alien city and culture, racing against time to locate two helpless kids, even as she navigates the intensely charged protests in the Madhes as a Pahadi herself, with prejudices further compounded by her own queerness.
There is much that happens in this gritty, urban film that for once does not romanticise or exotify <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/expressing-culture-and-nature-in-eco-art">Nepal’s culture and natural landscape</a> for viewers internally or abroad. There are no rose-tinted lenses or filters here.
The cinematography is matter of fact, precise, brutal when it needs to be, hewing to a script with excellent, natural dialogue that was written by Rauniyar, Magrati (Rauniyar’s partner in life), and David Barker.
Certainly, there are moments when the film seems to have jumped a scene or failed to impart a crucial piece of information, but the acting is moving, and the subject matter so affecting that it is easy to forgive these occasional, technical lapses.
While Magrati’s brave performance anchors the film there are several other substantial performances. Reecha Sharma, plays Sabita Koirala the fair, Pahadi, upper caste wife of the Madhesi politician, and mother of one of the kidnapped boys.
She is also the headmistress of the local, but now suspiciously shuttered, school. Veteran actor Dayahang Rai, also an executive producer of the film, does a fine job portraying Madan, the seemingly mild mannered police captain who oversees Rajagunj.
Nikita Chandak is completely engrossing in her portrayal of Mamata Gupta, a complicated junior Madhesi police officer who slowly comes into her own under Pooja’s rough but wise tutelage.
Politics is ever at work behind and infront of the scenes in Rajagunj, and not everyone is as they initially seem. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/untold-stories-of-unsung-heroes">Women are heroes</a>, anti-heroes, villains, mothers, lovers, and fighters.&nbsp;
Multiple personal and<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/Political-theory-versus-reality-federalism,4061"> political realities</a> are portrayed, sometimes simultaneously, and while there are some bizarre leaps of logic, Rauniyar’s virtuoso gift is evident throughout, particularly in set pieces like the one where Pooja and her other trusty sidekick, Inspector Amar, are following Mamata who is forced to stand in for Sabita’s timorous maid as she bravely delivers the shockingly high ransom.
As the people from the region protest their frustration over the inadequacy of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/share-rule-and-self-rule">the new Constitution</a> that was supposed to enshrine the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-s-chance-on-transitional-justice">rights of all Nepalis</a>, not just the fairer skinned ones, Pooja and Amar struggle against the tide of shouting protestors, desperately trying to keep track of Mamata.
Pooja has to do an animal mask to hide her Pahadi origin, Mamata is dressed in a red sari (to imitate the maid) that drapes around her head to hide her face. The atmosphere is tense, pregnant with violence, and our dread is further keyed up by Pooja’s mask, which renders her figure ghoulish, lending the scene a nightmarish quality which is entirely appropriate given the hellish subject matter.
Nepali cinema has evolved over the years, but from the trailers that plied us before Rajagunj and during the intermission, that evolution is still flailing somewhere in-between <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Lights-camera-copy-paste,1146">Bollywood</a> melodrama and skilled, thoughtful verisimilitude, erring mostly toward the former.
Rajagunj is not a perfect film, but it is an admirable one, and will stay with you long after it finishes. It is an important stepstone, one could go so far as to say a vital one, in the journey towards better, more <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/kimff-2019-p8070ipt">meaningful filmmaking</a> in this country.
While this reviewer firmly believes in the power of cinema for pure, unaffected, even silly, mainstream entertainment, cinema is also an <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/a-flowering-artform">art form</a>, and Rauniyar’s film has moments of pure art, motivated by an undaunted spirit, and bolstered by the filmmaker’s own humanity.
Sophia L Pandé is a writer, art historian and filmmaker. She is Director of Development at the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust and Founding Director of The Kalā Salon.

Powerful movie upacks questions of identity

On the morning of 25 April 2015, as shocked residents of Kathmandu were sifting through the rubble of collapsed homes and temples, there was thunder in the air. Many thought it was another earthquake. A formation of six Indian Air Force MI17 helicopters were flying low over the Lalitpur to land at the airport. Soon after, the Chinese Air Force dispatched its own MI17s, flying over the Himalaya. In the week that followed, the US Marines flew in V-22 Ospreys from Okinawa with mid-air refueling along the way. Then C-17s landed in Kathmandu with UH-1L helicopters in their bellies. Singapore, Israel, Japan, Thailand sent military aircraft with relief and also evacuated their nationals. The Nepal Army only had three small helicopters at the time. So, the most urgent need after 25 April was air support to lift injured people out of remote areas, fly in relief supplies, and conduct aerial surveys of the most affected regions.&nbsp; “The international response was commendable. It was immediate and overwhelming,” recalls &nbsp;Sagar Shrestha of the Nepal Red Cross Society. Indeed, it may have been too overwhelming: the airport soon ran out of apron space as heavy jets started coming in one after another.&nbsp; Despite the intensity of the shaking, there was no damage to the runway and terminal building and the airport was immediately operational. This meant that within 16 hours of the earthquake, a Turkish Red Cross emergency response team had already landed in Kathmandu. The Nepal Army set up a command and control centre at its hangar at the Airport to coordinate relief and conduct medevacs from affected areas. Army personnel accompanied the helicopters to navigate in high terrain. But in the immediate aftermath, it was local communities that sprang into action to dig survivors out of the rubble. Since most of the collapsed buildings in Kathmandu were not concrete high rises, it did not need specialised equipment.&nbsp; Before long, the Nepal Army, Armed Police Force (APF) and the Nepal Police came together in the search efforts, carrying out most of the rescues, pulling babies out alive after 22 hours. “The APF was responsible for search and rescue and the army had the job of transporting wounded people,” recalls Govinda Raj Pokhrel, vice-chair of the Nepal Planning Commission at the time.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250412150420_444da7500f04cad6cb37e728d5dbc09d358e0a08e35ede82b6900dfe416cc41c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20250412150420_444da7500f04cad6cb37e728d5dbc09d358e0a08e35ede82b6900dfe416cc41c" data-rendition-name="original" width="1778" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="It better be better next time NT"> <figcaption>A Turkish seach and rescue team arrived the very next day after the earthquake because Kathmandu airport was not damaged. Photo: WIKIPEDIA</figcaption> </figure>  The government declared a state of emergency and requested international help within 3–4 hours of the earthquake, and relief flights started arriving immediately. In parts of Kathmandu where concrete structures had collapsed like Gonga Bu, their carbon dioxide life detectors and listening equipment helped locate buried survivors.&nbsp; But it was old fashioned pick and shovel and sniffer dogs that sufficed in most collapsed structures in Bungamati, Bhaktapur, Sankhu and other badly-affected towns. Local first responders and the APF and Army were responsible for most of the rescues. Lack of information to international relief agencies meant that most arrived with equipment that was not really needed. There was also duplication with foreign search and rescue teams stepping on each other’s toes in ruined neighbourhoods. “The government launched coordinated rescue efforts, assigning specific responsibilities to each ministry. For instance, the Ministry of Forests was tasked with managing helicopters arriving from foreign countries to ensure smooth logistics,” adds Pokhrel.&nbsp; Sushil Koirala who was the prime minister at the time, coordinated with the ministers and assigned them responsibilities. The government was slow to coordinate international assistance, and when it finally took charge, it insisted aid go through a ‘one-door policy’ to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund.&nbsp; This was heavily criticised on social media by Nepalis and foreigners alike, and actually dissuaded many wishing to help to either withdraw or delay providing monetary and in-kind support. The other government decision that was ridiculed was an over-enthusiastic Customs Department that wanted to tax relief material. Although some of the clothing, food and home repair supplies were low quality or inappropriate, obstructing help during an emergency was not a good idea.&nbsp; “There were issues at the airport as large numbers of foreign aircraft were flying in. And the one-door policy for donations to be through the prime minister’s fund became a problem,” admits Pokhrel, adding, “the government was in full control though, which is required during such large-scale disasters.” Pokhrel helped organise an international pledging conference within two months after the earthquake. Even while aftershocks rocked Kathmandu, international donors from 34 countries responded generously with promises of $4.4 billion. However, some of that money was calculated in the help already sent, and much of the pledges never materialised.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250412150420_9d9cde1aad5ed3233702719394f1ca01c99d7c6e4dd8fb12d4bed97bb14b7183.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250412150420_9d9cde1aad5ed3233702719394f1ca01c99d7c6e4dd8fb12d4bed97bb14b7183" data-rendition-name="original" width="640" height="640" loading="lazy" alt="It better be better next time NT"> <figcaption>Most of the rescue of survivors was carried out by Nepal Army and APF. Photo: NEPALI TIMES ARCHIVE</figcaption> </figure>  &nbsp;“Some foreign assistance did come in, but there was no clarity to mobilise and coordinate the relief, which should have come from the government,” says Sagar Shrestha of the Red Cross. The earthquake struck just as Nepal was preparing to promulgate a new Constitution with controversy about its provisions. Unhappy with it, India blockaded border checkpoints for six months, relief supplies was stuck, and there were shortages of food, fuel and medicines. “Nepal was in political transition, so some lack of coordination was understandable, but given the circumstances we did as much as we could,” says Pokhrel of the post-disaster period. Nepal also could not say no to international offers to rebuild monuments which it could have done itself. Large flags of American, Chinese and other countries were painted at reconstruction sites of destroyed monuments.&nbsp; Help comes with strings attached, and it was obvious some countries were deriving propaganda value from it. Because of Nepal’s strategic location, the presence of so many aircraft from India, China and US gave the impression that this was more of a military exercise — especially near sensitive northern border regions. Ten years later, there are lessons to be learnt that will be useful when the next disaster strikes, as it surely will in future. Foreign assistance was robust and rapid, but coordination struggled with logistical, political, and capacity constraints. There was also a glaring need to upgrade urban search and rescue capacity of the security forces — especially for collapsed multi-storey concrete structures because next time we may not be so lucky. &nbsp;Pneumatic drills, rotary rescue saws, concrete cutters, chipping hammers, hydraulic shoring, and life detectors like thermal, CO2 and snake-eyes have to be prepositioned in various parts of the country. Nepal Army also needs more heavy helicopters and station them in bases in Surkhet, Pokhara and Dharan for rapid deployment. The rescue of people from a fire on a high-rise in Itahari earlier this month needed a helicopter to fly all the way from Kathmandu, and that may have been too late if the fire was more serious. Raging forest fires in the past two weeks all over Nepal has also exposed a woeful lack of aerial firefighting capacity, a gap which the Nepal Army could fill with water dropping equipment. This is important because the next earthquake could also be followed by uncontrolled urban fires. Says Sagar Shrestha of Nepal Red Cross Society: “The biggest lesson is that there needs to be better communication about what is needed after a disaster and coordination between Nepal’s agencies and the internationals to make relief flow smooth.”&nbsp;

It better be better next time

82 in २०८२

Besides multiple <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/republicans-and-royalists-on-nepal-s-streets">street demonstrations </a>that gridlocked Kathmandu’s traffic for the past weeks, public discourse in Nepal has also been dominated by dangerously <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/air-pollution-is-more-dangerous-than-smoking">high air pollution levels</a>. Caused mostly by hundreds of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/wildfire-season-starts-early-in-nepal">forest fires </a>raging across the country, the smoke contains suspended soot particles that harms <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/playing-with-poison">human health</a>. Thursday’s rain have cleared the air somewhat, and many people will soon forget how bad the air quality was. But the time to address the roots of next summer’s fire season is now.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250411060440_d1a119716a9031aadfdd611d299348d436842d376a03e664b8d773957a237524.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250411060440_d1a119716a9031aadfdd611d299348d436842d376a03e664b8d773957a237524" data-rendition-name="original" width="502" height="540" loading="lazy" alt="Wildfires"> <figcaption>EXTINGUISHED: Forest fires raging all over Nepal in the week after 3 March (above) reduced air quality, creating a public health hazard in Kathmandu and across the country. Each red dot is a fire detected by infrared sensors on the NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) satellite. But the rain on Thursday doused most of the fires (below) with more rain forecast over the weekend.</figcaption> </figure>  The reason everyone was talking about air pollution was because the<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-is-going-up-in-smoke"> smoke from wildfires</a> was visible. But much more toxic are the invisible and odourless <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-doubles-its-carbon-footprint">gases from vehicular and industrial emissions </a>which have always been there. The theme of World Health Day on 7 April this week was ‘Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures’ dedicated to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/saving-more-mothers-and-babies">preventing maternal and newborn deaths</a>. It is estimated that in Nepal, 30% of neonatal mortality can be blamed on air pollution. But that is only part of the story. Harmful as fine particulate matter is to human health, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ground-level ozone and other gases in vehicular emissions are more hazardous to health. While the concentration of suspended particulate matter tinier than 1.5 microns (PM2.5) is closely monitored, these toxic gases are invisible, not measured much, and the public is not aware about the dangers they pose. Surface ozone is produced by the interaction of various gases found when <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/fossil-fuels-poison-air">burning fossil fuels</a>. Besides being poisonous, ground level ozone contributes up to 0.23°C to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-mountains-are-melting">global warming</a> because it is also a greenhouse gas. A new policy brief by the Clean Air Fund titled The Case for Action on Tropospheric Ozone blames surface ozone for a half a million premature deaths every year, 54.8% of which are in South Asia. Ozone also stunts plant growth and reduces crop yields by 26% globally, and 11% loss in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/economic-benefits-of-saving-the-ecology">forest productivity</a>, the report adds.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250411060456_aa02a923f8b27544ae54d0220162678f5bbb5eeb8fc3c466173c22c49b3e9a85.jpg" data-media-id="editor_11" data-image-id="20250411060456_aa02a923f8b27544ae54d0220162678f5bbb5eeb8fc3c466173c22c49b3e9a85" data-rendition-name="original" width="998" height="724" loading="lazy" alt="Gas Chambers"> </figure>  Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/bad-air-and-polluted-politics">Bad air and polluted politics</a>, Sonia Awale Ground-level ozone is not emitted directly into the air like other gases, but is formed when oxides of nitrogen (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released from automobile tailpipes or industry smokestacks react chemically with each other in the presence of sunlight. The main source of carbon monoxide in Kathmandu Valley are its 1.2 million two-wheelers. “Usually the concentration of carbon monoxide is 200-500 parts per billion (ppb), this has increased up to 3,000 in Kathmandu. Meanwhile, ground-level ozone has gone from 70-80 ppb to 150 ppb,” says Ravi Sahu, regional air quality specialist with the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).&nbsp; Sahu says <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/no-smoke-without-fire-p7vb9dcj">rampant forest fires of the past weeks</a> have also added to carbon monoxide and ozone in the air, not just the fine particles that make up the visible smoke. He adds, “There isn’t much awareness about <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/poisoning-the-air-we-breathe">ground-level ozone and carbon monoxide</a>, we need to urgently look into it.” A distinction must be made between good and bad ozone. Stratospheric ozone protects living beings from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun.&nbsp; Tropospheric ozone can again be separated into two types: ozone in the free atmosphere which is a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide, and ground-level ozone which has adverse impacts on health and agriculture. ‘Cutting tropospheric ozone presents a unique challenge as it requires smart and fast action across multiple greenhouse gases and air pollutants, as well as multiple economic sectors,’ notes the Clean Air Fund's policy briefing. ‘It is a growing and neglected problem that needs an integrated approach on both a local and global level to tackle climate change and air pollution together.’ Dying young There was a time when Nepal made it to international news bulletins only if there were fatalities on Mt Everest. Now, Kathmandu’s bad air frequently makes headlines all over the world. This past week, the concentration of PM2.5 that harms human health was up to 40 times the WHO recommended guideline — adding to the poisonous gases already present from vehicle emissions. The Department of Environment says 40% of the pollution in the past weeks was from wildfires sparked by nearly 6 months without substantial rain over central Nepal. Most of the rest is from vehicular and industrial emissions from Kathmandu itself and across the southern border. NASA’s Fire Information and Resource Management System (FIRMS) which issues daily maps of fires, showed hundreds of blazes raging across Nepal on Wednesday, mainly in Chitwan, Parsa and along the East-West Highway.&nbsp; “If we look at the figures for the last few years, it is clear that wildfires have become the biggest source of air pollution, they are seasonal but have overtaken vehicular emissions,” says urban planner and environmentalist Bhushan Tuladhar. “Forest fires, stubble burning, and open burning of garbage are the bigger problems now. Nepal, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are at risk every year, we shouldn’t further delay in finding solutions,” warned air quality expert Bhupendra Das during an event on air pollution organised on 7 March by the Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists (NEFEJ).&nbsp; Indeed, studies have shown that in winter 60% of the air pollution over Kathmandu is transboundary from the south, and in November it is compounded by smoke from crop residue burning by farmers in India and Pakistan blown in by prevailing winds. Forest fires are a regular pre-monsoon occurrence in Nepal, often intentionally set by farmers and herders to stimulate new grass growth for livestock. Winter rains have failed for eight of the past ten years, and this means the fires often spread out of control. The other reason for the increase in wildfires is the doubling of forest fires to 46% of the country’s area in the past 25 years. But this has happened simultaneously with outmigration, with some mountain districts losing 30% of their population between 2011-2021. With less pressure on forests for fodder and firewood, the undergrowth of community forests is loaded with dry fuel just waiting for a spark. The bowl-shaped topography of Kathmandu, Pokhara and other valleys further concentrates pollutants as they are trapped by surrounding mountains. But a year with a high number of wildfires is usually followed by a year or two with fewer incidents. For example: there were 6,537 fires in 2021 but the following year the number was down to 1,528. There were 5,216 fires last year, this year the number has already reached 1,800, and the trend is likely to be broken. Heavy rains forecast for the coming days are expected to douse some of the fires and clean up the air. But the damage has been done: Kathmandu residents of all age groups this week crowded clinics and hospitals with burning eyes, itchy throats, difficulty breathing, headaches, and dizziness. But in the longer term, soot particles that are tiny enough to jump the blood-air divide in lung capillaries do not just cause Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), asthma, but also cancers, heart attacks, strokes, birth defects and other chronic diseases. The latest Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) report by the University of Chicago shows that the annual concentration of PM2.5 in Kathmandu’s air rose from 17.87µg/m3 in 1998 to 31.33µg/m3 in 2022. Air pollution has got worse by 75% in Kathmandu in 25 years. During this time, air pollution has reduced the average life expectancy of Kathmandu’s residents by 3.5 years. According to the Health Effects Institute in Boston, dirty air is among the biggest public health concerns in Nepal killing over 42,100 a year. The adverse impact of high levels of air pollution is not limited to public health, it is seriously affecting tourism. Operators in Pokhara this week said that there were many negative online posts by visitors unable to see the famous panorama of Machapuchre and the Annapurnas even from Sarangkot. Aviation is also affected, as planes have to circle sometimes for hours burning a lot of fuel because of runway visibility being below minima at Kathmandu airport. The higher fuel cost is just passed down to customers, making air tickets in and out of Kathmandu some of the highest in the world. Kathmandu, with a population of four million, has not implemented a concrete policy to curb toxic air despite having formulated various action plans and repeated commitments by the government to protect the environment and control air pollution. The Department of Environment’s 2017 Air Quality Management Action Plan for Kathmandu put forward a policy to reduce air pollution caused by vehicles which was approved by the Cabinet, but has yet to be put to practice. The action included the immediate implementation of the Euro 5 emission standard to reduce pollution emitted by vehicles. However, Nepal has not even been able to implement Euro 4 standards so far. India, meanwhile, has already moved forward with the implementation of the Euro 6 standards. Says Ravi Sahu: “Air pollution in Nepal is not just about air pollution, it has ties to tourism, aviation, the economy so we must be prepared for annual conditions like forest fires, and this requires urgent interdisciplinary collaboration.” &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250411050452_821d09e283d8a590f1369bfb71b9b7fc6d950726e0651ea86c6488d04deb1742.jpg" data-media-id="editor_15" data-image-id="20250411050452_821d09e283d8a590f1369bfb71b9b7fc6d950726e0651ea86c6488d04deb1742" data-rendition-name="original" width="839" height="784" loading="lazy" alt="Silent Killers"> </figure>  &nbsp;

What is invisible is more dangerous

On Tuesday, leader of the monarchist RPP once again gathered on Kathmandu’s streets to deliver fiery speeches, but this time there was no arson and looting and no need for riot police to fire live rounds or tear gas.
RPP leaders demanded the release of their members including vice-president Rabindra Mishra and MP Dhawal Shamsher Rana were arrested during the violent <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/republicans-and-royalists-on-nepal-s-streets">28 March protests at Tinkune </a>which left two dead. 
They denounced the current leadership of the main parties, demanding the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/nepal-party-reincarnating-hindu-monarchy">restitution of Nepal as a Hindu kingdom</a>. They also said the government was responsible for the fatalities on 28 March because it provoked its rally with a tear gas attack even before it started.
It has now been revealed that the police fired at least 100 live rounds from high powered assault rifles at the crowd. Twenty-one of the 120 injured received bullet wounds, and most of them were bystanders and people trying to reach home. 
Tuesday protest on the Ring Road in Balkhu was much more subdued, and comparatively fewer RPP supporters showed up. The arson and vandalism in the previous protest appears to have cost some support for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-ghost-of-monarchy-returns-to-haunt-nepal">former king Gyanendra </a>especially for the anointment of medical tycoon and bank defaulter <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/street-politics">Durga Prasai </a>as ‘commander’ of the Tinkune rally.
Some monarchists acknowledge Gyanendra’s mistakes when was king 2001-2008, but say he has had a lot of time to reflect on his shortcomings and seems more disciplined and committed. His supporters have tried to build on nostalgia among some Nepalis for<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/why-invest-in-nepal"> domestic stability </a>and international respect that <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/if-birendra-was-alive-nepal-could-still-be-a-monarchy">the monarchy</a> commanded. 
“Nepalis were promised better service delivery, opportunities for the underserved, as well as better, more honest use of state resources, but the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=16992">people in leadership </a>have not been able to deliver on their commitments,” says RPP leader Prakash Chandra Lohani. “The gap between their rhetoric and reality has widened, the people feel betrayed, and the respect Nepali people had previously had for them has changed to revulsion.” 
Indeed, many commentators have warned the three main parties and their <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/politics-as-usual">serial prime ministers</a> who have ruled Nepal for much of the past 30 years should address rising public anger with them, and see the writing on the wall.
‘<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-government-changes-again">The UML, NC and Maoists</a> must introspect about their conduct,” warns Gunaraj Luitel, editor of Nagarik, in an op-ed this week. ‘These leaders for life may save themselves from simmering public anger, but they will not be able to save the system. The monarchist wave can only be dispelled when citizens are assured of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-local-election-gives-power-back-to-people">better governance</a> through <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/latest/real-world-training-for-youth-leaders">younger leaders</a>, and reforms.’ 
Rifts between radical royals who are gunning for a return to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/mob-movement-and-mayhem">Panchayat-style absolutism </a>and moderate monarchists who favour a constitutional king have also weakened the movement somewhat. The split between the RPP and RPP-Nepal cost the royalists numbers in Parliament in 2022, and both parties denounced the violence last month, albeit shifting the blame on the government.
The irony is that the same royalists who want to scrap the republican Constitution had formed electoral alliances with the UML during the 2022 elections. RPP-Nepal chair Kamal Thapa contested the 2022 election with the UML. Thapa has not taken part in the last two rallies, saying he will only be a part of a movement under a national flag, and not a RPP party banner.
For his part, the RPP’s Rajendra Lingden is said to be hesitant to censure some of his party’s more radical royalists for fear of fissure within his ranks, despite his aversion to Durga Prasai’s role. 
Analysts have questioned why <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/old-is-still-gold-in-nepali-politics">supporters of the monarchy </a>have decided to reestablish an institution that would not ultimately have executive decision-making power. There are doubts about whether authoritarian-minded Gyanendra will be satisfied being a <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=13957">ceremonial king</a>. 
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-s-deja-vu-on-black-friday">Nepal’s déjà vu on Black Friday</a>, Sonia Awale
"The Nepali people will not accept <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/forgotten-woman-who-sheltered-communist-activists">an absolute monarchy </a>at this point of time, and both the public as well as <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=8371">king Gyanendra</a> are fully aware that there is no other possibility beyond a constitutional monarchy," asserts the RPP’s Lohani. “The traditional monarchy’s institutional capacity might have been enough to meet the needs of feudal Nepal, but an absolute monarchy is impossible both in concept and practice in the context of <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/Economic-Class/waiting-for-an-industrial-revolution,784">modern day Nepal</a>.”

New year revolutions

<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/trump-shock-wave-hits-nepal">US President Donald Trump</a>’s announcement of hefty trade tariffs last week has reverberated worldwide, causing turmoil in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/ce3qnyr7y94t">international trade and stock markets</a>.
The Trump administration announced a baseline 10% tariff on all goods from every country entering the US market, including products from Nepal. But other countries got <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/03/trumps-tariffs-the-full-list">slapped with even higher tariffs</a>: 20% for goods from the European Union, 26% on Indian exports to the US, and a massive 54% on China.&nbsp;
Many countries have imposed additional reciprocal tariffs on US goods, and there are fears of a global recession. It has been compared to dropping a nuclear bomb on the global trading system.
The tariffs will increase customs duty on foreign goods entering the US, ultimately increasing their prices for end consumers. This may reduce the competitiveness of imports, as a result of which there could be a decline in exports from China, Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and other countries that export manufactured goods to the US.
The US is Nepal's second-largest export market, with goods worth Rs17.31 billion exported during the last fiscal year. These include <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/Churpi-gaining-popularity-outside-Nepal,1048">chhurpi dog chew</a>, woolen carpets, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/passionate-about-pashmina">pashmina</a>, ready-made garments, and handicrafts.&nbsp;
Dog chews and woolen carpets account for more than half of Nepal's total exports to the US. Nepal exported nearly 1,000 tonnes of dog chews to the United States.&nbsp;
<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/11-56-25-april-2015-wkc9q2an">Following the 2015 earthquake</a>, the US granted Nepal duty-free treatment for 77 items under its <a href="https://np.usembassy.gov/nepal-trade-preference-program/">Nepal Trade Preference Program</a> (NTPP). The period for these non-reciprocal preferential trade benefits will end on 31 December 2025.
It is not clear if the 10% tariff will apply to those items during the course of this year, and the ultimate fate of the NTPP.&nbsp;
“The NTTP was passed as law by the US Congress a decade ago, so we can assume that the current administration will not revoke it through an executive order,” says Ravi Shankar Sainju, also the former joint secretary of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies.
But he adds that the US is unlikely to extend the trade benefit to Nepal after December, as the Nepal government has not taken the necessary steps to renegotiate the NTTP.&nbsp;
Kiran Saakha, president of the Nepal-USA Chamber of Commerce and Industry, also doubts that the NTTP will end immediately, adding: “The US Embassy was unable to provide us with a clear answer when we asked about the program. But as far as we understand, the benefits Nepal has received under the NTPP remain in place for now.”
Nepal has not been able to increase exports of the 77 specified products and reap full benefits of the zero tax facility. However, even with recent developments, economists say that a 10% duty on Nepali exports will not affect Nepal much and may even benefit the country,
<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/products-made-in-nepal,3345">Exports from Nepal </a>would still be cheaper in the US market than goods from countries in the region which have had much higher tariffs placed on them, like India (26%), Pakistan (29%) Bangladesh (37%), and Sri Lanka (44%).
“The countries in the region export goods to the US that Nepal can produce,” says economist Poshraj Pandey. “With the US having imposed a relatively lower tariff on Nepal, there is a potential to actually increase exports to the American market.”
Saakha of the Nepal-USA Chamber of Commerce and Industry, agrees that the demand for Nepali goods could increase, but adds that the country must be more competitive.
Nepal had a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/a-post-mortem-of-nepal-s-garment-boom">booming ready-made garment industry</a> leading up to the early 2000s with 500 industries employing 85,000 workers, and accounted for a quarter of the country’s total exports. But the termination of the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) in December 2004 ended quotas that countries like Nepal had benefitted from. Currently, cotton and polyester garments from Nepal are subject to 18% and 20% customs duty respectively in the US market.&nbsp;
“Nepal has the opportunity to increase the export of ready-made garments once again,” says Bhim Kumar Giri of the Garment Association Nepal (GAN). “It is time to dust off our old machines and bring them back into production. Since garment exporting countries like India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam have been slapped with high tariffs, Nepal’s products will become competitive once again.”
But to take advantage of the tariff differential, Nepal has to be much more investment-friendly and transparent than it is now. While analysts discuss hypotheticals, there are doubts as to the US government’s commitment to its new tariff announcement.&nbsp;
“We cannot be certain about Trump’s trade policies, he may reverse it just as suddenly,” says economist Pandey.
“There is cautious optimism about Nepal being less affected by Trump’s tariffs, but Nepal should not count its chicken before they hatch,” says trade expert Ravi Shankar Sainju. “Because daily expenses for the average American have risen, there may be less demand for Nepal’s exports.” &nbsp;
In the past, high production and transportation costs and low productivity have hurt the competitiveness of Nepal’s products in the international market. Raw materials required to produce goods in Nepal have to be imported, and the country’s landlocked location increases cost of production.
Former GAN president Chandi Prasad Aryal says the fact that Nepali exports have lower tax rates will be meaningless unless the Nepal government removes existing hurdles to production and export, ensures domestic production of raw materials, and promotes productivity.&nbsp;
“These new trade dynamics will be a wasted opportunity unless we can facilitate competitive production within Nepal,” he adds.
Nepal can benefit from the new US trade policy, but experts warn that Nepal must not misuse it. With high customs imposed on goods from neighbouring nations, there is a risk of those goods entering Nepal markets to be re-exported as <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/from-heads-to-toes">Made in Nepal products</a>. &nbsp;
Says Kiran Saakha: “Government and entrepreneurs must be vigilant in preventing crimes that could lead to Nepal losing its credibility in the international market. Otherwise, the US might just as easily take away the small concessions it has currently granted to us.”

Trump tariff to benefit Nepal

Journalist, environmental activist and pioneer of Nepal’s community radio movement, Bhairab Risal has died at age 97 at a hospital in Kathmandu.
Risal’s journalism career took him from being chief reporter at the national news agency RSS to hosting a regular studio talk on Radio Sagarmatha, Nepal’s first community radio station. He spoke extempore from the studio about everything from plastic pollution to the need to address the concerns of senior citizens.
When not in a newsroom or radio studio, he would be roaming to the remotest parts of the country promoting initiatives to fund schooling for underserved children in Dolakha, or paying for farming families in Humla to install solar lights. He was perhaps the only Nepali journalist who had been to all of Nepal’s 77 districts.
Risal was born in 1927 in the Tikathali village of Bhaktapur, where he lived all his life. While working for the official news agency, he was jailed for criticising the Panchayat system, and kept a diary while in detention which he later published as साधुलाई सुली (Skewered Saint).
Once released from jail, he joined Bhaktapur’s Nepal Workers’ Peasants’ Party in the 1991 parliamentary elections, but lost by only 1,300 votes. It is intriguing to speculate what would have happened to Bhaktapur and Nepal today had he won that election.&nbsp;
He then turned into an environmental activist and was one of the leading figures in the Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists (NEFEJ). A guru to many of us younger journalists, Bhairab Dai (as he was fondly known) demanded the same professional high standards and integrity from us that he practiced himself.
Once in 1967, Risal was sent to cover a press conference by visiting UN Secretary General U Thant. This was before recording devices, and not knowing a word of English, Risal transcribed what U Thant said in English into his notebook in phonetic Devnagari and got someone back in the newsroom to translate it into Nepali. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=11605" target="_blank">He told this newspaper in 2000</a> on his 75th birthday: “I think it is the company of enthusiastic young journalists that re-energises me all the time. I feel younger every day.” Indeed, Risal was actively lecturing and writing well into his 90s, until his physical health started declining in the past two years. His Radio Sagarmatha interviews with seniors has been published as <a href="https://thuprai.com/author/bhairav-risal/?srsltid=AfmBOoo106kEP21yLaip836nEZBqeZDX_nAt1vVj5GoJBRPOHYReRhbP" target="_blank">उहिले बाजेको पालामा</a> (In the Time of our Grandfathers).&nbsp;
After hearing that Nepal’s medical colleges imported corpses from India, Risal and his wife Sushila willed that their bodies be donated to medical science at Patan Hospital. Although always hard up, Risal would mobilise funds for initiatives like a trust fund for married women students, raising money or for lighting up homes in remote parts of Nepal with solar-powered batteries.
Rsial was deputed to far-western Nepal as an enumerator for the 1961 national census, and wrote about his experience for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/remembering-the-1961-census" target="_blank">Nepali Times in 2021</a>. He collected household data in the villages of Gunji, Nabi and Kuti in the disputed Limpiyadhura region on the Indian border that was historically a part of Nepal.
‘The fact that the government of Nepal had actually conducted a census there in 1961 has been cited as irrefutable proof that the territory east of the main channel of the Kali River has always been a part of Nepal,’ Risal wrote.
He launched the Light Up Humla campaign while the Maoist conflict was raging, and when the roadless district in Nepal’s northwestern tip still did not have electricity. The initiative provided solar-powered lights for 7,000 households in a district where people used sooty pine resin lamps for indoor lighting. This caused respiratory infections, and was a major cause of death of babies and children in a district with the highest infant mortality rate in Nepal.&nbsp;
Risal’s plan was to raise money from 7,000 donors in Nepal and abroad, as he <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=188" target="_blank">explained to this newspaper</a>: ‘We will ask one Nepali who enjoys the benefits of modern electricity to support another who is living in darkness.’ The plan worked.
I visited Humla with Bhairab Dai in 2006 to report on his solar light campaign. The conflict had just ended, and it was clear that the war had pushed the region’s development behind. An under construction hydropower plant on a tributary of the Karnali was abandoned because of the violence and the district was in darkness.&nbsp;
In the village of Langduk, a day’s walk from Simkot, Gore Sunwar was emotional to finally meet the man who had brought a lamp to light the darkness of households in his Dalit neighbourhood.&nbsp;
I remember him holding Bhairab Dai’s hands, and saying: “You are the only one who thought of us poor people, no one else did. My children are in school, they can finish their homework at night and they are not coughing anymore.”&nbsp;
Later, on the trail back to Simikot, Bhairab Dai told me that raising money was the easy part. The hard part was to make it sustainable with training and backup support. &nbsp;
Bhairab Risal was a recipient of many awards, including the Jagadamba Shree lifetime achievement prize in service of the Nepali language.&nbsp;
Read Nepali Times # 299 from 26 May 2006 in PDF <a href="https://d1i1jdw69xsqx0.cloudfront.net/digitalhimalaya/collections/journals/nepalitimes/pdf/Nepali_Times_299.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.

Bhairab Dai’s shining light

This is the 62nd episode of Diaspora Diaries, a Nepali Times series in collaboration with Migration Lab providing a platform to share experiences of living, working, and studying abroad. On 25 April 2015, I was on a video call with my friend in Nepal from the UAE when she suddenly panicked. Her house had started shaking. My instinct told me it was an <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/deadly-earthquake-hits-w-nepal">earthquake</a> so I told her to get out of the house as soon as possible.&nbsp; As she ran outside, the line got disconnected. It was my turn to panic. A few moments later, she called again to tell me she was safe, but got disconnected again. Since then, I have not heard from her and all my efforts to reach her have been in vain.&nbsp; Even after a decade, I do not even know if she is alive. After her call, I was worried about my family as news of the mega earthquake had already started spreading. I could not get in touch with my father in Rasuwa, but was relieved to know my brother and other family members were okay and camping outdoors. &nbsp; My father, who had gone to the market, was missing and I was worried. My brother finally called to say he was all right. I was somewhat relieved that my family back home had survived the earthquake, unlike thousands of others. That our house was destroyed mattered less, but I was concerned about the frequent <a href="about:blank">aftershocks</a>.&nbsp; Being away at such a time is difficult. I am sure most <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/50-diaspora-diaries-in-nepali-times">Nepalis in the diaspora</a> were in a similar situation: restless, sleepless and desperate to be back home as we refreshed our phones for updates or tried to call relatives. Some replied, others did not. My heart was in a constant state of worry: about my family, my village and my country.&nbsp; I was desperate to come home. My family was safe and alive, but maybe I could at least save one person from under the rubble if I went back to Nepal. But I was in the middle of my employment contract in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/uae-warning-to-send-back-workers-including-nepalis">the UAE </a>and could not just leave. After around two weeks, the desperate urge to return started subsiding and I became more practical. If I returned to Nepal, I would once again be unemployed and hard up. My family was living in a temporary shelter, and the best thing I could do was to earn as much as possible so we could <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/quake-survivors-migrate-for-work">rebuild our house</a>.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250405080412_80b55004bc3a3fd19b9c95339a24f5f22d2a74b4fc61ba07deb46955d1df2674.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20250405080412_80b55004bc3a3fd19b9c95339a24f5f22d2a74b4fc61ba07deb46955d1df2674" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1333" loading="lazy" alt="DD 62"> <figcaption>Aman Eakal back in Kathmandu, showing a photo of his home destoryed in the earthquake, and trying to build a singing career. </figcaption> </figure>  My heart was aching not just for my family but also for my country. I transferred my first month’s salary of Rs80,000 to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund. As my family was safe, I thought it was more important to contribute to the nation.&nbsp; I had served seven years in the Armed Police Force (APF), and perhaps that is why I felt a sense of responsibility. I also started remitting as much as I could to my family. Even before the earthquake, I was most careful about my spending habits, some might even consider me a कन्जुस miser.&nbsp; We value every paisa because we are aware of the pain of our families <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/bringing-korea-s-prosperity-to-nepal">back home</a>, and our own sacrifices: eating the previous day’s rice with cold veggies or dal in a plastic bag on the roadside during lunch breaks.&nbsp; The earthquake made me even more cautious. I wanted to send home every extra Dirham I could. I took on more overtime hours and even stopped spending on fruit and meat in the market on my days off.&nbsp; I was in the APF’s communication department, so I knew people in the Nepal government and I stayed in touch with them for earthquake updates. Nepalis in Dubai also asked me about the latest from home.&nbsp; Even today, when I think of that time during the earthquake, my heart feels heavy. It was poverty that kept me far from my family and country. I had migrated to work so I could invest my savings in my younger brother and children.&nbsp; My childhood memories are of scarcity and challenges. I did not even know what it meant to eat खाजा snacks in school. Till Grade 5, all I had was a pair of shorts, we could not even afford trousers. My family could buy me a school uniform only after Grade 7, and I wore it right through my school life. It was only after my father went to work in Kathmandu that we stopped worrying about eating two meals a day. But poverty is relative. There were fellow students who got to eat lunch in school and focus on homework, whereas I had to finish household chores that left no time for assignments. &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250405080412_21b47d56f3941ca53b9faa933de900b8eb0c7564f687d0f18d16a800bc58522b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_7" data-image-id="20250405080412_21b47d56f3941ca53b9faa933de900b8eb0c7564f687d0f18d16a800bc58522b" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1287" loading="lazy" alt="DD 62"> <figcaption>A page of lyrics Aman Eakal wrote during the earthquake that evokaes longing for the motherland, worry about home and family, and a commitment to rebuild the country.</figcaption> </figure>  And there were those who were even worse off, and did not go to school at all, or dropped out. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/latest/14-years-after-conflict-no-closure-in-nepal">The Maoist conflict</a> made it impossible for me to stay in the village because the guerrillas tried to force me to join their militia.&nbsp; My older brother was in the Army and refused. To avoid them, I even used to ask my mother to lock my room from the outside. But one day, they dragged me out and warned that my brother or I had to join the Maoists within one month. They even fired shots to scare me. My brother was posted in Itahari and told me to run away to Kathmandu. I quit my studies and joined the APF but the salary was low and my mentor from the force, a deputy inspector who treated me like a son, died in an accident.&nbsp; I lost interest and decided to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/making-overseas-migration-better">migrate overseas</a>. My APF salary was Rs10,200 a month at the time, and in the UAE I would earn over Rs72,000. I had loans of over Rs850,000 mainly because of my mother’s health expenses. With my Nepal salary, it would take me a lifetime to pay off these loans so I had to migrate.&nbsp; I worked as a security guard and later refilled cash in ATM machines in the UAE, and it was all to support my family. I focused a lot on my younger brother and parents as I was unmarried for the first few years. My own studies had been affected by poverty, but I could not let my brother face the same fate.&nbsp; I enrolled him in a private school and asked him to focus on his studies. I would fulfil all my personal dreams through him. He is now doing a PhD in China and this could not make me prouder. I think it is my life’s biggest achievement. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/quake-survivors-migrate-for-work">Quake survivors migrate for work</a> My father sacrificed his life for us. I was told that he used to bleed from his mouth from overwork as he crushed stones or cut wood. I wanted to make sure my parents would not have to worry about work or money anymore.&nbsp; I gave up all my dreams and passions in life except one — a deep desire to one day record my own songs. After returning to Nepal, I recorded three songs, including one that I had written some 20 years ago.&nbsp; I do not know what the future holds. I do not have the money to start my own business in Nepal, although it is constantly on my mind. I am a new father and my responsibilities are growing. If I am unable to start a business soon, I may very well have to migrate again to the UAE or to Europe. &nbsp;&nbsp;  <figure> <video controls src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250405080416_306fcaa9702389af66c5c9476c6cffb792ebcc298a544e5c080e3e220faed8ec.mp4" alt="" width="100%" height="100%"></video> <figcaption>Away from home when Nepal shook | Aman Ekal (Diaspora Diaries 62)</figcaption> </figure>

Away from home when Nepal shook

Top news

As we mark Nepali New Year 2082 next week, take a look back at our editorial 20 years ago this week where we said that we need both peace and democracy to move ahead, amidst the Maoist war and political instability. Perhaps Nepalis need to be reminded once again that there is no real peace or stability without democracy. Excerpt of the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=84">editorial</a> from <a href="https://d1i1jdw69xsqx0.cloudfront.net/digitalhimalaya/collections/journals/nepalitimes/pdf/Nepali_Times_242.pdf">issue #242 8-14 April 2005</a>:
King Gyanendra, addressing the Royal Nepali Army's cadet graduation ceremony at Kharipati on Monday, said: "The alternative to democracy is democracy, not terrorism."
There will be very few people in Nepal who will disagree with that: not even the political party leadership which excels in seeing a dark cloud behind every silver lining. For some Kathmandu-based diplomats, who were present at the king's address, it was exactly what they wanted to hear. And most Nepali people would whole-heartedly endorse their monarch's sentiment. So where is the problem?
In fact, we seem agreed on just about everything about the future course this country should take. We all know (or should admit we know deep down) there is no military solution to the insurgency. Even some in the Maoist leadership have admitted this publicly. In reality, all that the revolution has achieved in the past decade is to bring ruin and misery to Nepal and Nepalis, postpone reforms, demolish democracy, dismantle hard-earned freedoms, encourage rightwing adventurism and push us to militaristic tendencies…
…Why not agree to a roundtable conference to discuss constitutional reforms—there isn't a constitution in the world that can't be improved. Delaying a resolution by engaging in deadlocked debate about which comes first, peace or democracy, doesn't get us anywhere. We need both, together. That should be our new year resolution for 2062.
For archived material of Nepali Times of the past 20 years, site search: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/">nepalitimes.com</a>

New Year 2062

Ever since leaving his home village in Syangja, Purna Gurung has been crossing bridges when he comes to them. And here he is at age 55, supervising the pile-driving for a new bridge in Tasmania, 10,000km away from home. Gurung has built <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/how-safe-are-nepals-suspension-bridges">bridges</a> in Africa, worked on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-first-and-forgotten-tunnel">tunnels</a> in Hong Kong, and moved up the ranks in teams building complex infrastructure projects <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/flying-home-in-a-pandemic">across the world</a>. All that experience is standing him in good stead in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/australian-galley-returns-stolen-strut-to-nepal">Australia</a>, where he came 15 years ago. Purna Gurung has brought other Nepali engineers to join him in the bridge project here. He got his former co-worker Mansuba Gurung to come from New Zealand, and other Nepali engineers from the Australian mainland.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250403140440_4437eca5b584ca91ac43516c3961760fdc1b956d6dcb13da3b7a6fe4c20a9d4a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250403140440_4437eca5b584ca91ac43516c3961760fdc1b956d6dcb13da3b7a6fe4c20a9d4a" data-rendition-name="original" width="1285" height="723" loading="lazy" alt="Tasmania"> <figcaption>Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania with Mount Wellington in background.</figcaption> </figure>  “We are a professional and energetic team, born in the high <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-mountains-are-melting">mountains of Nepal </a>and now working on this historic bridge in Tasmania,” says Gurung, as he drives a recent visitor to the construction site, and points out the piers and girders from the window. “My role is to maintain professional integrity and motivate my team, especially the Nepalis here.” The feeling appears to be mutual. Gurung is regarded as a sort of guru by the other Nepalis at the site, and he is respected for his expertise in <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/This/building-bridges-in-nepal-to-combat-poverty,308">bridge-building</a>, his capacity for taking on difficult tasks and teamwork.&nbsp; At the site itself, one could easily imagine oneself on a construction site in Nepal: workers in hard hats are shouting instructions to each other in Nepali. Indeed, Nepali is said to be the most spoken language in Tasmania after English, and there are at least five Nepali restaurants in Hobart alone.&nbsp; Despite its bucolic setting with neat, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/nepal-can-lead-in-zero-carbon">clean and green environment</a>, many Tasmanians migrate to the mainland or abroad to seek new opportunities. Which is why the Australian government provides higher wages and encourages immigrants from Nepal and elsewhere a fast-track to permanent residence if they move to the island. Nearly half of Tasmania is protected <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/the-wellbeing-of-the-wilderness">wilderness</a> which has many species found nowhere else in the world. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-other-attraction-the-night-sky">Nature-based tourism</a> is becoming the mainstay of Tasmania’s economy, Australia’s smallest state. There is also a new infrastructure drive, and this includes the Tasmania’s longest bridge over the River Derwentin which Purna Gurung and his team are working on. The Derwent flows down from Lake St Clair in Tasmania's Central Plateau and 182km later discharges into Storm Bay.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250403140440_b69911289a50c7d4d6dcd77d9884cbe97946afd553ae5da194c68735478e51c6.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="20250403140440_b69911289a50c7d4d6dcd77d9884cbe97946afd553ae5da194c68735478e51c6" data-rendition-name="original" width="1391" height="783" loading="lazy" alt="Tasmania"> <figcaption>Low Bridgewater Bridge will be demolished after completion of the new project.</figcaption> </figure>  Compared to delayed bridge-building which is the norm in Nepal, construction here is progressing on schedule, and was preceded by an environmental assessment and measures to ensure that aboriginal and cultural sensitivities were addressed.&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/10-000-bridges">10,000 bridges</a> Despite criticism about high cost of the $786 million Bridgewater Bridge, it appears to be worth it because cyclists and pedestrians have been given high priority with a safe three-metre-wide shared path on the upstream side of the bridge. A temporary bridge has also been built to streamline work, and will be dismantled later. Purna Gurung is popular with his team members, especially his colleagues from Nepal. After completion of the Tasmania bridge later this year, he has already got a commitment to work on a tunnel project in Adelaide. He has not thought about retirement, and tells us: “I have spent over three decades of my life building bridges and tunnels, and all that experience is very useful as I take on more challenging work.”

Nepali building bridges in Tasmania

Usually in winter, air quality in Kathmandu is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. But <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/wildfire-season-starts-early-in-nepal">wildfires raging</a> across central Nepal for the past weeks may have increased that to four packs a day. <a href="https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:24hrs;@86.3,28.9,7.0z" target="_blank">NASA’s Fire Information and Resource Management System (FIRMS)</a> uses infrared heat detecting satellites to map the world for fires. While central India and Burma are the worst affected, forests along the central Tarai and the mountains south of Kathmandu have hundreds of red dots — each representing a forest fire. Kathmandu Valley had the worst air quality of any city in the world on Monday afternoon, according to <a href="https://www.iqair.com/world-air-quality">Swiss-based air quality tracker IQ Air</a>. Air Quality Index (AQI) which measures the concentration of tiny suspended particles in the air smaller than 2.5 microns hit 250 because of soot particles from smoke combined with pre-existing pollution from vehicular and industrial emissions.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250331110320_6ea6ed9ab5fceefd0b46e5ba59222eefe6f838b475a75a5ec2c12598ffccb6eb.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250331110320_6ea6ed9ab5fceefd0b46e5ba59222eefe6f838b475a75a5ec2c12598ffccb6eb" data-rendition-name="original" width="1896" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="NASA FIRMS 29 March"> <figcaption>More than 200 forest fires are burning in central Nepal with prevailing winds blowing it up the valleys to Pokhara and Kathmandu, worsening air quality. This NASA FIRMS satellite image was taken on Sunday afternoon.</figcaption> </figure>  This was ten times higher than what the World Health Organization (WHO) has set as the threshold for healthy air. The microscopic particles cannot be seen by the naked eye and can jump the blood-air divide in capillaries in the lungs causing not just lung infections but also heart disease and cancer.&nbsp; The immediate effects of air pollution are felt in dry and burning eyes, itchy throats, difficulty breathing, headaches, and dizziness. In the longer term, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a major cause of death in Nepal, with the average life expectancy of Kathmandu’s residents has been reduced by 3.5 years.&nbsp; Despite studies, Nepal’s leaders are preoccupied with coalition politics, and little action has been taken to control vehicular emissions with green stickers, curb open garbage burning and industrial pollution. Studies have shown that in winter 60% of the air pollution over Kathmandu is transboundary from the south, and in November it is compounded by crop residue burning by farmers in India and Pakistan which prevailing winds blow up the Himalayan mountains.&nbsp; Forest fires are common in Nepal in the pre-monsoon months as farmers and herders set fire to slopes hoping for green shoots when the rains arrive for their livestock. But successive years of winter drought have meant that the wildfires have been starting earlier, and they spread fast because of high afternoon winds this time of year.&nbsp; On 29 March, there were at least 200 fires burning across central Nepal. The FIRMS satellite image also shows thick blue smoke blanketing the river valleys, reducing visibility and affecting flights. On Monday morning three flights attempting to land at Kathmandu airport had to divert due to runway visibility being below minimum.&nbsp; This level of pollution is classified as ‘extremely unhealthy, and &nbsp;has serious health impact not only on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/poisoning-children-at-school">vulnerable groups</a> like children, the elderly, and those who live with health conditions, but across Kathmandu’s population.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250331110324_b0f149ef5fc3f2657e883c311520b87d45e9636a7464ab418c691dd2bb6f6c7a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20250331110324_b0f149ef5fc3f2657e883c311520b87d45e9636a7464ab418c691dd2bb6f6c7a" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1778" loading="lazy" alt="Pokhara Wildfire NT"> <figcaption>A fiery sunset over Phewa Lake in Pokhara on Sunday afternoon was caused by thick smoke from forest fires. Photo: KUNDA DIXIT</figcaption> </figure>  After the<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-revenge-of-the-rivers"> devastating September floods last year,</a> Kathmandu Valley and much of the country experienced a prolonged drought with little to no winter rain. Such prolonged dry spells raises fire risk, and with Kathmandu’s bowl-shaped topography concentrates pollutants. There are indications that high pollution levels do not just harm human health, but are also beginning to affect tourism. Operators in Pokhara said that there were many negative online posts by visitors unable to see the famous panorama of Machapuchre and the Annapurnas even from Sarangkot. Aviation is also affected, as planes have to circle sometimes for hours burning fuel for visibility to get better at Kathmandu airport. The higher fuel cost is just passed down to customers, making air tickets in and out of Kathmandu some of the highest in the world.&nbsp; Kathmandu’s toxic air quality is not a temporary phenomenon, it has consistently gotten worse. IQ Air places Kathmandu eighth out of 121 capital cities with the worst air quality in 2024, and Nepal is seventh among countries with the highest air pollution. The State of Global Air (SOGA) Report published last June <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/bad-air-and-polluted-politics">revealed </a>more than 50,000 Nepalis died from air pollution in 2021, accounting for 19% of all mortality, just behind high blood pressure. Kathmandu, with a population of four million, has not implemented a concrete policy to curb toxic air despite having formulated various action plans and repeated commitments by the government to protect the environment and control air pollution. The Department of Environment’s &nbsp;2017 Air Quality Management Action Plan for Kathmandu put forward a policy to reduce air pollution caused by vehicles which was approved by the Cabinet, but has yet to be put to practice. The action included the immediate implementation of the Euro 5 emission standard to reduce pollution emitted by vehicles. But Nepal has not even been able to implement Euro 4 standards so far. India, meanwhile, has already moved forward with the implementation of the Euro 6 standards.&nbsp;

No smoke without fire

Kathmandu ground to a halt on Friday as pro- and anti-monarchy protests rocked separate parts of the capital. While the Socialist Front led by the Maoist Centre Party held a large rally in the centre of the city, a group agitating to reinstate Nepal as a Hindu kingdom gathered on the outskirts.&nbsp; The two rallies were kept apart, but pro-monarchy protesters resorted to arson and looting, setting fire to buildings in the Tinkune neighbourhood and attacking newspaper offices, party buildings and ransacking a branch of the Bhatbhateni department store. Police fired tear gas and live rounds after stone pelting protesters tried to prevent fire trucks from trying to put out blazes. One protester and a reporter died and 22 people, including several riot policemen, were injured.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_10a340ec54625655b84320e9708349f32ae410ebd66dc2e9006d74c26e24e723.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20250328130336_10a340ec54625655b84320e9708349f32ae410ebd66dc2e9006d74c26e24e723" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1333" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_4095596005d5c744222ed813ef2621c887fec3f3d8cb99b0580f9f4e241bdd55.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20250328130336_4095596005d5c744222ed813ef2621c887fec3f3d8cb99b0580f9f4e241bdd55" data-rendition-name="original" width="1810" height="1207" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_b64ae8a70d36a7a2bbc4d9f4f51344a92531a735f653dd25f97700e170b7f12c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20250328130336_b64ae8a70d36a7a2bbc4d9f4f51344a92531a735f653dd25f97700e170b7f12c" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1333" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>  The pro-monarchy rally was organised by the United People’s Movement Committee for the Restoration of the Monarchy, which had the support of the royalist RPP party and was led by business tycoon Durga Prasai and the 86-year-old former Panchayat politician Nawaraj Subedi.&nbsp; The government had assigned both the protesting groups separate parts of the city so as to minimise chances of confrontation. The pro-monarchy rally turned violent after Prasai broke through police cordons with his vehicle, with supporters following. Across town, a much larger flag-waving crowd marched through the streets and gathered to listen to speeches by leaders of the Socialist Front made up of Maoist Centre, the CPN- Unified Socialists, the Nepal Samajwadi Party and the Communist Party of Nepal led by a breakaway Maoist faction of Netra Bikram Chand.&nbsp; The Socialist Front is in the opposition and has blamed the rise of royalists to the non-performance of Prime Minister K P Oli’s governing coalition. The Maoists were till last year in their own coalition with the Nepali Congress, until it joined up with Oli’s UML.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_36c4b5cd97720a86d4cc65d680211644bbdd23ba9d872ca33ecde56cf7a83bd8.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250328130336_36c4b5cd97720a86d4cc65d680211644bbdd23ba9d872ca33ecde56cf7a83bd8" data-rendition-name="original" width="1772" height="1181" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_6598409e322e0680bb01e00306842343642ee662a6f95e0d097478c0517879c3.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250328130336_6598409e322e0680bb01e00306842343642ee662a6f95e0d097478c0517879c3" data-rendition-name="original" width="1933" height="1288" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>  &nbsp;“This country cannot return to autocratic, dynastic rule that destroyed our nation,” said former prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal of the UML-US. “The Nepali people have no interest in being servants to anybody.” Speakers accused the monarchists of getting support from elements of the Hindu-right in India. Former king Gyanendra had met Uttar Pradesh’s cleric Chief Minister Yogi Adiyanath several times in the past year, and posters with the Yogi have been seen at previous royalist rallies. Chronic corruption, impunity, poor service delivery and lack of jobs has fed public anger at the three established parties that have taken turns to rule Nepal for the past 20 years or more.&nbsp; Adding fuel to the fire was the sacking this week of the popular head of the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) Kulman Ghising, and his replacement by the prime minister’s brother-in-law, Hitendra Dev Shakya. &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_340647eb1ac3e611a7fe9ea5cabe6bc280ec02fd9162e1fdce81a3c7101b6072.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20250328130336_340647eb1ac3e611a7fe9ea5cabe6bc280ec02fd9162e1fdce81a3c7101b6072" data-rendition-name="original" width="1872" height="1179" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_b0e1012e17637ceebf2611db796ae745d274636583974f7595b4ab79670b5c37.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20250328130336_b0e1012e17637ceebf2611db796ae745d274636583974f7595b4ab79670b5c37" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1333" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>  In his speech Maoist chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal seemed more introspective and moderated his criticism of the current government.&nbsp; “Perhaps it is because we republicans were unable to live up to the expectations of the people that the forces that were buried in the rubble of history have dared raise their heads once again today,” Dahal told the crowd.&nbsp; While these speeches were going on, tension was escalating in Tinkune as pro-monarchists trashed and set fire to an office block, the office of the CPN-Unified Socialists, vandalised the Annapurna Media building, and attempted to break into the offices of the Maoist Centre. &nbsp;&nbsp; A curfew was imposed in Tinkune and surrounding areas, affecting travellers entering and leaving Kathmandu. Nearby Kathmandu airport was closed for two hours.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_b9d567d96a519dfdf7627ca9bf372a441b47a5f7dc709df94e2042274da1fe23.jpg" data-media-id="editor_7" data-image-id="20250328130336_b9d567d96a519dfdf7627ca9bf372a441b47a5f7dc709df94e2042274da1fe23" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1365" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_277512a9bff76fd425e964f41854f7abd835ce3f38b68e95ec8a4cdd3d4e10c5.jpg" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="20250328130336_277512a9bff76fd425e964f41854f7abd835ce3f38b68e95ec8a4cdd3d4e10c5" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1333" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_aa52420cd50c238a9cbd7d49855fbd45586098a92dba14f1b5ef3dfad43293b0.jpg" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="20250328130336_aa52420cd50c238a9cbd7d49855fbd45586098a92dba14f1b5ef3dfad43293b0" data-rendition-name="original" width="1722" height="1144" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>  Royalist morale was boosted earlier this month to welcome former king Gyanendra to Kathmandu from a trip to western Nepal. Gyanendra has been king twice, and was ousted when an elected Constituent Assembly voted to abolish the monarchy in 2008. In 2015 Nepal’s new Constitution officially declared the country a secular federal republic. Royalists like former BBC journalist Rabindra Mishra have been exhorting the Nepal Army and Police to join the protests to reinstate the king, which many have described as provocative and dangerous rhetoric. Earlier this month Mishra told an Indian tv channel that New Delhi should support the reinstatement of a Hindu monarchy in Nepal.&nbsp; Indian leaders including External Affairs Ministry S Jaishankar have reportedly told Nepal’s leaders that they do not want to interfere in the country’s internal affairs. As tensions escalated on Friday, Mishra absolved himself and the pro-monarchy protesters of responsibility for the casualties and property damage.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_fef2e6aee4a59e2fbec96bba5814af5c18a9390b532fd6cb8d7cb62e86441cdf.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="20250328130336_fef2e6aee4a59e2fbec96bba5814af5c18a9390b532fd6cb8d7cb62e86441cdf" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1365" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_a70af2ece39b52108f32560e0a4c06a1ed7cd95e6f0c1c23121e8951b5525cdc.jpg" data-media-id="editor_11" data-image-id="20250328130336_a70af2ece39b52108f32560e0a4c06a1ed7cd95e6f0c1c23121e8951b5525cdc" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1333" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250328130336_8d5ab4cbabb4d1ab9bc2fa94711168ea1dc854297b5a427a2030536bc87db75c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="20250328130336_8d5ab4cbabb4d1ab9bc2fa94711168ea1dc854297b5a427a2030536bc87db75c" data-rendition-name="original" width="2000" height="1333" loading="lazy" alt="Pro-monarchy protests 28 March NT"> </figure>  “No mass movements are under the control of its leaders,” said Mishra. “The government must take responsibility for the loss of life and property incurred today.” Despite the tough words, Nepal’s royalist bloc seems to lack a unified front. The RPP’s Rajendra Lingden and RPP-Nepal’s Kamal Thapa have distanced themselves from Prasai.&nbsp; Gyanendra himself appears to be content to ride what he thinks is a wave of public support, and leave the organising to his supporters. He has so far not spoken in public except occasional video appearances. One thing the pro-monarchy protests have done is restore a semblance of unity among the fractious three main parties. Top leaders of the NC, UML and Maoists met earlier this week to chart a response to the royalists, indicating that they are aware of the public mood and are rattled by the scale of support for the former king. Friday’s protests should serve as a stark reminder to Nepal’s serial prime ministers and their parties that if they do not step up and do their job, street protests could escalate.

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