The third Himal Media Mela 2024 continued on Friday following the keynote speech from Mohamed Nasheed, climate activist, writer/journalist, and former president of the Maldives.&nbsp;
The day-long symposium included four workshops and two panel discussions ranging from possibilities of AI usage in newsrooms to threats faced by investigative journalists in environmental reporting, to climate finance.&nbsp;
In the first session of the day, Naresh Newar gave a workshop on AI in the Newsroom with a presentation about how media practitioners can responsibly use Large Language Models (LLM) and Generative AI to ease their workload.&nbsp;
“One main way AI can lighten the burden of journalists is by using it on small repetitive tasks that could lead to burnout,” said Newar, adding that newsrooms can use AI in such tasks as proofreading, transcription, review, and research.&nbsp;
“However, one must not claim AI-generated content as their own,” cautioned Newar. &nbsp;
The workshop also delved into the rapid advancement of AI technology, as well as its limitations. There was also discussion surrounding the ethics of AI use, and the need for newsrooms to be careful in identifying AI-generated content that might be posed as human-generated media.&nbsp;
Meanwhile, during the workshop on Data Mining to Tell Compelling Stories, data journalists Mohan Mainali and Arun Karki shed light on formulating stories from available data sources, and the importance of interactive data in storytelling.
“A single set of data can generate multiple stories and analyses,” said Arun Karki. “The key is to know how and where to look.”
Sharing his experiences while reporting for a three-part series published in Nepali Times analysing meteorological, hydrological and demographic data from eastern Nepal, Mohan Mainali emphasised on the importance of data visualisation.
“Like the expression, ‘show, don’t tell’ goes—it is the journalist’s responsibility to visualise and present data in the most easily apprehensible way for audiences,” said Mainali. “And although numbers by themselves do not have much to say, visualising those numbers reveals trends.”
The speakers also encouraged journalists to make the most out of open-source and freely available data while reporting on environmental issues, adding that climate-related data are more accessible than most. &nbsp;
“When media is under a financial crisis, data journalism lets journalists form a story without actually having to go to the field,” added Mainali.
Later in the day, water expert Ajaya Dixit during the workshop Media for Early Warning of Disasters discussed how Nepal can move to a disaster-resilient future. He highlighted that Nepal’s policies recognise that it is prone to multi-hazards, and must be prepared for them.
“The media must proactively communicate relevant messages before, during and after disasters, but attributing all environmental issues to climate change is not enough,” he said.
“Furthermore, no disaster is natural,” added Dixit, giving an example of how poorly built houses kill people, not earthquakes themselves. “Media coverage must stop referring to disasters as natural.
“We need to recognise the events within our borders—such as the soot from wildfires that are expediting the melting of the mountains— that contribute to the climate crisis,” remarked Rama Parajuli of the BBC.
Dixit also pointed to the need for collaboration between media practitioners, researchers, and development partners, and that knowledge and information need to be cross-validated.”
“Disaster, hazard, vulnerability, and risk are used interchangeably in Nepal. These terms need to be contextualised, disaggregated, and used appropriately,” he further added. “Reporting has to be based in science.”
The workshop Investigating Climate Finance led by economist Rashtraraj Bhandari of the Asian Development Bank was a crash course into climate finance, as well as jargon journalists must understand while reporting on climate finance.
The economist during his presentation emphasised the need for nations to generate their climate funds.&nbsp;
“Foreign grants and funding are never going to be enough to combat climate crises, and expecting external funding for them is more costly in the long-term— both economically and &nbsp;socially,” said Bhandari, “We as a country must identify what ‘green’ means for us, not what is dictated by grant-giving countries or projects.”
Bhandari also urged the journalists that storytelling should look beyond numbers. “Real stories are the ones that visualise the impact of crises,” he added.
The Media Mela continued into the second half of the day with two panel discussions.&nbsp;
In the session Threats against Environmental Journalists, &nbsp;moderator Bidhya Rai, as well as panellists Ramesh Bhushal and Ramu Sapkota narrated personal experiences in the field while discussing the dangers that Nepali reporters who investigate environmental exploitation and crimes face.&nbsp;
“Our rich natural resources are being exploited by those in power, and is part of our economic activity,” noted moderator Bidhya Rai said during the session’s introductory remarks.&nbsp;
Ramesh Bhushal, Nepal editor of The Third Pole, remarked that environmental journalism had long been attributed to travel and luxury, and simply writing about nature.
“Environmental reporting is political reporting—it involves reporting on corruption, and those exploiting resources for their self-interest,” said &nbsp;“It is thus people-based reporting,” added Bhushal.
Bhushal added that environmental journalists have been under threat from the moment that environmental reporting began in the 70s, soon after the exploitation of natural resources became part of the mainstream discourse globally.
There are not just threats to journalists’ physical safety. The increasing fragility of the environment also means that reporters face the risk of experiencing disasters like landslides and floods while in the field.&nbsp;
“While there is information that can be accessed remotely, one cannot report about the environment entirely from the desk, it has to be done from the field,” said independent journalist Ramu Sapkota.
Journalists also face possibilities of legal repercussions, from local-level leaders to powerful political cronies. And it is not just journalists who risk their safety. The panellists also spoke about how sources become hesitant to communicate with reporters when their lives and safety are threatened.&nbsp;
“The climate of fear in the community is increasing,” said Bhushan.
“Independent journalists and local reporters are under more risk than reporters who have support from and are in communication with their newsrooms,” added Sapkota. &nbsp;
The panellists further discussed how maintaining constant communication with newsrooms, as well as friends, and family can mitigate risks to media practitioners who investigate environmental exploitation.
Also present in the session were Laxmi and Sangam Mahato, the sisters of Dilip Mahato, an activist who was murdered by contractors extracting sand from the Aurahi River in Dhanusha. Dilip had been protesting illegal sand mining in the river and organising the local community to conserve the Chure Hills.&nbsp;
His sisters have continued their brother’s fight to save their river and village from illegal sand mining even as they continue to get threatened by their brother’s killers.&nbsp;
The panelists also spoke about what they called a ‘grey area’ between environmental journalism and environmental activism.
“While we should not be engaging in activism, we should provide information that enables activism,” said Bhushal.
Sapkota agreed. “We need to provide space to and encourage those who want to take up activism.”
Meanwhile, public interest litigator Sanjay Adhikari during the panel Economics of Ecology also touched upon the need for environmental activism. “Environmental activism is not a want for us, it’s a need,” said the lawyer.
Adhikari also spoke about what he called “absurdities” in the plans for the Nijgadh airport, including the scale of the trees cut down to make way for the project, and claims that animals would “retreat into the forest from the runways when planes landed.”&nbsp;
Environmentalist Bhushan Tuladhar, who was also part of the panel, also offered critique of Nepal’s environmental policies while championing electric public transport as a public good— reminding the audience that over half of the households, even in the Kathmandu Valley, do not own private vehicles.&nbsp;
Tuladhar also noted how environmental issues disproportionately affect some communities and groups over others. “Indoor pollution is a major part of air pollution in Nepal that directly affects women and children,” he said.
Tuladhar highlighted the economic and health costs of environmental issues such as pollution, reminding that air pollution costs the world 6% of its GDP —$8.1 trillion— every year, on healthcare costs.&nbsp;
Tuladhar asked: “What would we be willing to pay for an extra 1.2 years of life, which would be possible if the air pollution decreased by only 30%?”

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The political economy of environment

Namaste, journalists, climate experts and friends of the planet! The third edition of the Himal Media Mela is going to be held on 3rd May 2024, Friday, at Yala Maya Kendra, Patan Dhoka, Lalitpur. This year, the theme is 'Journalism for the Planet', in keeping with UNESCO's theme for World Press Freedom Day 2024 - 'A press for the planet: journalism in the face of the environmental crisis'.&nbsp; We are excited to announce that we are offering workshops and knowledge sharing sessions that are interactive and for smaller groups this time. Sub-events will be held two at a time so please carefully comb through <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeveKsuPezOER4EK1Zz8mOjHyoRD1ACpFsThtksUz4b1WB2YQ/viewform?pli=1">this form</a> and let us know which ones you will be attending, so that we can save you a seat. Do have a look at the sessions and select your preferences here: <a href="https://t.co/xI5VbMAP3n" target="_blank">https://shorturl.at/pS239</a> This one-day conference will packed with events from 9AM until 6PM, with lunch provided and breaks in between. But do stay on for the closing reception (drinks, snacks and networking) after 6 PM. Seats are limited, so we will take your filling this form as your confirmation, along with your payment (see details below): Entry Ticket: Rs. 500 Payment to be made in advance via eSewa to: Samrat Tamrakar 9841359603 Thank you for your interest and participation! Looking forward to seeing you for another successful Media Mela where we share valuable insights with each other and grow together. Best, Team Himalmedia  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20240429100448_2250035690fc50a6d31f29de73759209122976dc2bd82fc63ad88a3e68be5b1e.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20240429100448_2250035690fc50a6d31f29de73759209122976dc2bd82fc63ad88a3e68be5b1e" data-rendition-name="original" width="680" height="680" loading="lazy" alt="Himal Media Mela 2024 registration"> </figure>

Himal Media Mela 2024 registration

Sha Bahadur Gurung was 30 years old when he was arrested for participating in a peaceful protest. He died aged 65 last week in Bhutan’s Chamgang Central Prison. He was among 31 prisoners of conscience in Bhutan, many of whom are serving long sentences for opposing the regime’s forcible expulsion of 100,000 of its Lhotsampa people in the early 1990s. ‘Mr Gurung died on 15 December in his prison cell under circumstances that raise serious concerns about custodial negligence and long-term abuse,” said a statement by the Global Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners in Bhutan (GCRPPB) based in The Hague which demanded an external probe, justice and release of remaining political prisoners. Gurung was from Chirang and was arrested in 1990 while serving in the Royal Bhutan Army, and accused of having sympathies for the Lhotsampa people. He was mostly held at the notorious Rabuna Prison in Wangdi Phodrang District.&nbsp; Gurung’s relatives in the United States said he had endured prolonged physical and psychological abuse during his imprisonment, and repeatedly subjected to torture and inhumane treatment. They believe the decades of ill-treatment had damaged his health, ultimately leading to his death. Earlier this month, Gurung was transferred from Rabuna to Chamgang Central Prison. On 14 December. He had gone to bed after dinner without any visible sign of distress. He was found unconscious in his cell the next morning.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251224151248_5fc8305ecd320d89b9e343c04a1a897dc1353353da55b6d277f5398034b265ea.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20251224151248_5fc8305ecd320d89b9e343c04a1a897dc1353353da55b6d277f5398034b265ea" data-rendition-name="original" width="902" height="1103" loading="lazy" alt="Sha Bahadur Gurung NT"> <figcaption>Sha Bahadur Gurung, who died at age 65 in prison in Bhutan after serving 30 years for expressing political opinion.</figcaption> </figure>  He was referred to a hospital in Thimphu, suggesting that he was still alive during transfer to a local health post. But it appears that he had already died before being taken from prison. Gurung’s death occurred two days before Bhutan’s National Day on 17 December, when families, supporters, and human rights advocates worldwide had hoped for the release of political prisoners through a royal amnesty. Instead, the death of one of the longest-serving political prisoners has caused grief and anger in the Bhutanese diaspora.&nbsp; “We strongly condemn the treatment and death of Gurung, a peaceful and justice-loving Bhutanese citizen,” the V statement said. ‘This tragedy raises serious questions about the treatment of political prisoners in Bhutan and stands in stark contrast to the country’s international image under the principles of Gross National Happiness, compassion, and mindfulness.’ Earlier this year, The <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/wg-arbitrary-detention/opinions-adopted-working-group-arbitrary-detention/opinions-adopted-working-group-arbitrary-detention-its-101st-session" target="_blank">United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention</a> said the Bhutan government was detaining citizens without parole for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/detainees-in-dire-straits-in-bhutan-s-prisons" target="_blank">expressing political opinion</a>. The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in 2023 that there were least 37 <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/13/bhutan-free-long-term-political-prisoners" target="_blank">political prisoners</a> in Bhutan’s jails. Of them, 32 belong to the Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa community, which has faced <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2003/06/18/nepal-bhutanese-refugees-rendered-stateless" target="_blank">decades of discrimination and abuse</a> and eviction. Most of them were convicted because of prohibited political activity between 1990 and 2008. One political prisoner, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/no-country-for-dissent?fbclid=IwAR07lpitMBWAYSkny_3d_smQBlmoxAOQm1OxdNtl-27h8mV0RNO9IxVY2qs" target="_blank">Madhukar Monger</a>, who was released in 2023 after serving 29 years described brutal conditions in <a href="https://www.hrw.org/asia/bhutan" target="_blank">Bhutan</a>'s jails. Political prisoners were not given enough food, and medical care, he said, urging the internaitoonal community to press for the release of prisoners of conscience.&nbsp; In March, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/about/people/meenakshi-ganguly" target="_blank">Meenakshi Ganguly</a>, Deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, urged Bhutan’s international partners to call on the Bhutan government to release all remaining political prisoners immediately.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251224161216_9d11a78ed5490091c595341900e4c26f5c0dd0328718f6930ef19c1e9b7f95a6.jpg" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="20251224161216_9d11a78ed5490091c595341900e4c26f5c0dd0328718f6930ef19c1e9b7f95a6" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1422" loading="lazy" alt="Bhutan political prisoners NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251224161216_176855f3d3df42d24ac7e77372bbf49115695b732a6c094a66267e969111dfca.jpg" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="20251224161216_176855f3d3df42d24ac7e77372bbf49115695b732a6c094a66267e969111dfca" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1420" loading="lazy" alt="Bhutan political prisoners NT"> </figure>  &nbsp;

Bhutan political prisoner dies in detention

‘Get out of my house.’ ‘All my sickness is because of you.’ ‘You’re a millstone around my neck.’ Arundhati Roy heard these admonitions from her mother over and over throughout her life.&nbsp; This must be a singular, yet universal experience. There must be very few daughters who make it through life unscathed by their mothers. And vice-versa.&nbsp; How many of our mothers look at us and see in us the potential of all of the lives they could have lived? How many resent us for it, or want us to live those lives in their stead? And how many of us look back at our mothers and imagine what they would have achieved had they not been expected and assigned to play the role of wife, daughter-in-law, mother — had we never existed in their lives? How many mothers project their experiences onto their own daughters and continue the cycle? No daughter seems to escape it — no matter how well-behaved, docile, unruly, or rebellious. Certainly not the child who would go on to become a Booker prize-winning author. Arundhati Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me chronicles her complex relationship with her mother Mary, or Mrs Roy, as her educator mother had her two children refer to her. In December, Arundhati Roy was in Kathmandu to sign books and briefly interact with readers at two bookshops in the city. She describes a childhood overshadowed by her mother’s volatility towards her and her brother. Mary herself was raised by an abusive father to escape whom she married the first man who proposed — Arundhati’s father who in her mother’s words turned out to be an alcoholic ‘Nothing Man’.&nbsp; Mary left her husband in Assam and eventually wound up with her two children in her town of Aymanam in Kerala, encountering other family members along the way who did not treat her, or her children with respect. The trauma and cruelty her mother endured could not be contained in her body, and spilled out onto her two children, towards whom she was physically, verbally, and emotionally abusive.&nbsp; While she treated her children with disregard, she would build a school in the nearby town of Kottayam from the ground up, educate thousands of children, take up a legal fight that led to the Supreme Court granting Syrian Christian women in India equal inheritance rights, and uplift many orphaned children and women in Kerala.&nbsp; Arundhati lived with both her mother’s brutality and brilliance. And like her daughter, readers must reconcile the indefensible parts of Mary Roy’s personality — the cruelty of calling her nine-year-old daughter a bitch, or shooting the family dog that mated with a stray — with her unyielding drive to educate thousands, fight for equal rights, and challenge the way her world viewed women.&nbsp; Mrs Roy had little kindness for her own children, but plenty for the students, children, and women whose lives she shaped, and made better. And her kindness was not rooted in empathy, but in anger at the hand she had been dealt in life. Eventually, Arundhati decided to temporarily cut all contact with Mrs Roy — not because she did not love her, she writes, but so that she could continue to love her. Her desire to get away from her abusive mother, and her fascination with the ideas inspired by the architect who built her mother’s school, would lead her to the Delhi School of Architecture at age 16. In Delhi, Arundhati became roommates with Hisila Yami before she and her Maoist ideologue husband Baburam Bhattarai went underground to lead Nepal’s decade-long armed struggle. &nbsp; But architecture was not her calling. In Delhi, the heart of India’s statecraft, Arundhati came into young adulthood against a backdrop of the country’s changing socio-politics, which began to take a turn for the hyper-nationalist, Hindu supremacist community that it has now largely become. The winds of those changes have now blown into Nepal. In the city, far from her mother, Arundhati met the man who would become her partner of many years, collaborating with him on several films and screenplays before finding the language (‘I needed to hunt [language] down like prey,’ she writes) she needed to become the writer she is now.&nbsp; She went on to write her Booker prize-winning novel The God of Small Things, but the wealth and status the book brought her did not sit comfortably. So she smashed her newly-built gilded cage, as she describes it, and became more political. Contrary to norm, she published several works of non-fiction, and would only publish her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, in 2017, 20 years after The God of Small Things. &nbsp;&nbsp; Her fierce opposition to India’s nuclear policies, to a dam that would displace millions of indigenous people and ecologically damage the Narmada Valley, her championing of Kashmiri self-determination, and her time spent with Maoist rebels in the forests of Chhattisgarh as they took up arms to defend their land and resources against corporate interests made her an enemy of the state.&nbsp; Meanwhile, being raised by a single mother had never sat well within her Syrian Christian community. ‘I wasn't Christian enough. I wasn't Hindu enough. I wasn't communist enough. I wasn't enough,’ Roy writes in her memoir. For all her love for India, the nation did not seem to reciprocate. The circumstances might be different, but it might strike a chord with readers in Nepal, many of whom marched on the streets in September hoping for a better tomorrow, but were gunned down by the very institutions meant to protect them. It might resonate with those who are not seen as citizens of this nation simply because they might not fit into an imagined idea of Nepali nationhood.&nbsp; Arundhati’s relationship with her mother, who was simultaneously proud and disdainful of her daughter’s accomplishments, continued to be tumultuous until the end of Mary Roy’s life.&nbsp; One of Mrs Roy’s last messages to her daughter before she passed was: ‘There is no one in the world whom I have loved more than you.’ Arundhati muses that her lifelong refusal to stop loving her mother must have finally breached her barriers. One wonders if that final declaration of love was solace enough, apology enough, for all the pain caused.&nbsp; But for Arundhati Roy, her love for her mother and her motherland outweighs the cruelty both have shown her. This, too, must be a singular, yet universal experience.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025122208128_32b171acb09df2184495367b74efd91fe2896b0f5ba75b276e1533276268761c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2025122208128_32b171acb09df2184495367b74efd91fe2896b0f5ba75b276e1533276268761c" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Mother Mary Comes to Me review"> </figure>

The sins of our mothers

Nepal’s Gurkha soldiers have a well-deserved reputation worldwide for uncommon valour and loyalty. However, what happened in Hawaii in 1986 and the long struggle for fair pay and pension shows that the formidable fighters from Nepal also do not tolerate injustice. The Hong Kong-based 1st Battalion of the 7th Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Rifles was in Hawaii for jungle warfare training exercises at the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center when they beat up their commanding officer, Major Corin Pearce. &nbsp;&nbsp; The Gurkhas said Pearce had insulted them, and 111 soldiers were dismissed. Pearce suffered broken ribs and a head injury, and was himself also discharged. The incident got worldwide publicity and enforced the belief that the Nepalis were not treated fairly in the British Army. It also led some retired soldiers to begin a decades-long struggle for compensation at par with their British peers.&nbsp; Retired British Gurkha soldier Shankar Rai in his book Triumph and Tears revisits the Hawaii incident which he witnessed, and also his experience in the Falkland Islands/Malvinas war in 1982.&nbsp; He has lots of grievances: unequal treatment and injustice from the British Army towards himself and his comrades. This is an indignant and disillusioned account of the good, the bad and the ugly of being a British Gurkha, which he says let him down despite his service and belief in it.&nbsp; The book could also be a cautionary tale of how one person on a power-trip can tarnish two centuries of the shared history of Nepal and the UK, as well as ruin the lives of those involved. It also is proof that loyalty should never be taken for granted. Four years after defeating the Argentinians in the Falklands, several companies and platoons of Gurkha rifles were stationed in Hawaii in 1986 for joint US-UK ‘Exercise Union Pacific’ military exercises. The goal was to ‘perfect the art of marine warfare in collaboration with the US Marine Force’. The rules were that a British Gurkha company commander needed to have the rank of major and pass a Nepali language test. Captain Pearce was the son-in-law of a British Brigadier on extra-regiment employment, and this rule was waived. He was appointed Acting Major. Pearce didn’t bother to learn Nepali language or culture, and from Rai’s account took every chance to belittle and embarrass the Gurkhas as poor, stupid, rude, backward, and lucky to be there. He writes: ‘After Captain Pearce reached Hawaii, he began to project himself as a master and the Gurkhas as servants, to show off to the Americans.’ The author also recounts other slights, such as only receiving a fourth of the rations they were due during hard training, being forced to train even when some of the soldiers had high fever, and claims to have ‘civilised’ the Nepalis.&nbsp; Pearce had been to eastern Nepal before the training and seen the grinding poverty. He kept telling the Gurkhas how lucky they were to be in the job, and that they were making ‘more money than Nepal’s prime minister’. During the final farewell party in Hawaii, Pearce set up tables to form a saluting platform, and asked the Gurkha pipe and drum band to march around him while playing. The enraged soldiers could not take it anymore, and after the party an inebriated group ran Captains Pearce and Chandra Kumar Pradhan out of their tents and beat them up. Both officers broke ribs, and the major needed 15 stitches on his head. ‘This sorry and unseemly episode is considered to have been entirely at odds with the Brigade of Gurkhas’ tradition of loyalty and gallant service in the British Army. It is regarded as an isolated and untypical event, which will not be permitted to detract from the high esteem in which the Brigade is held,’ reads the report of an investigation. Most of the 1/7 company soldiers were dismissed whether they had been involved in the assault or not. The author describes the shame that followed, with dismissed soldiers returning to Nepal with lost face.&nbsp; ‘I burned with humiliation, and life scared me,’ writes the author, whose father told him that he was ashamed to call him his son. ‘Many of my friends’ girlfriends left them and married other people. Rifleman Khem Gurung (21162015) of Itahari committed suicide,’ writes Rai, adding that those dismissed were blacklisted, and could not get other jobs.&nbsp; They tried to pursue legal action against the British Government, but backed down when they could not afford expensive hotshot lawyers, and would not have the money to cover the British government’s legal fees in the likely case of a loss in court. Gurkhas who had served for four years in the UK were allowed to move there, an option that many of those dismissed in the Hawaii incident took, including the author, who now lives in Oxford. Rai pours out his hurt and emotion in the book. Towards the end, he writes: ‘I depend on small jobs for livelihood. In the remaining time, I actively raise the issue of the victims of the Hawaii incident. We are burdened with insults, hatred, and contempt for a lifetime. It was harsher than a court martial, too heavy to bear.’ The is a slim book, and is a quick, engaging read of an incident 30 years ago, and Rai writes with a soldier’s precision. Even though the anger shows even after all these years, there is no over-dramatisation in the narrative.&nbsp; The first part of the book is about sailing across the South Atlantic in the QEII, which had been converted into a troop ship to take the Gurkhas to war. The soldiers from landlocked Nepal were mostly sea-sick, but were happy to get two cans of beer a day. Barclays Bank even had a branch on board. Rai’s descriptions of the friendships he developed in the Company and on the battlefield are poignant. They braved Argentinian bombs, dug trenches and fought through the rain in the Southern Hemisphere winter. There are vignettes of sharing tea with fellow Nepalis, seeing comrades fall, and finding pictures of wives and children in the pockets of dead young Argentine soldiers. Behind the prestige, honour and myths of being a Gurkha soldier, it seems this is just another job with nepotism, horrible bosses and bad pay. But such is the desperation that up to 20,000 young Nepalis still apply for 300 openings in the British Army every year. &nbsp;&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251227041256_694a253e782c83b0bf89fc1b9840b0ade3f7beca2d0b01dbc4fcd3e63c207f50.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20251227041256_694a253e782c83b0bf89fc1b9840b0ade3f7beca2d0b01dbc4fcd3e63c207f50" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Triumph and tears book details NT"> </figure>

Not taking loyalty for granted

After a week of to-and-fro that culminated in all-night bargaining, two populist young figures in Nepali politics agreed at 4AM on Sunday to join forces ahead of elections in March. Rabi Lamichhane of the RSP, who came out of jail a week ago, has forged an alliance with Kathmandu mayor Balen Shah. Both are keen to ride on the GenZ wave that radically changed the direction of Nepal’s politics that has been dominated by three mainstream parties for the past three decades. Under the 7-point deal, Lamichhane will still head the RSP, while Shah has been promised prime ministership if the party wins a majority in the federal elections. Shah will also be the parliamentary party leader. The RSP will keep its name and election symbol. “Agreements must be made not on the basis of what leaders want, but on what the country needs,” Lamichhane wrote on social media announcing the alliance. The RSP chair is said to have put his own prime ministerial aspirations on hold to ensure the Kathmandu Mayor's support for the March polls. This is an alliance of convenience. Lamichhane requires the backing from Shah’s youth voters to face the legacy parties, while the mayor needs a political platform. Ultimately the prospect of leading not just Kathmandu but Nepal itself appears to have been the deciding factor for Balen Shah. The Kathmandu mayor is reportedly keen to contest the election from Jhapa against former prime minister K P Oli in his constituency.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251228041212_1b26fd7f14e418a9bdb827a7b733914c08183c36b4a93694fc1aefda9f45d85a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20251228041212_1b26fd7f14e418a9bdb827a7b733914c08183c36b4a93694fc1aefda9f45d85a" data-rendition-name="original" width="900" height="900" loading="lazy" alt="Balen-Rabi alliance"> <figcaption>Photo: BALEN SHAH, RABI LAMICHHANE / FACEBOOK</figcaption> </figure>  The two have much in common. Lamichhane, a former tv anchor, returned from the United States and launched the RSP as an alternative party four months before elections in 2022. He served as Home Minister twice in Pushpa Kamal Dahal's coalition government before being jailed for defrauding cooperatives depositers. He made a jail break during the September protests, returned to prison voluntarily, and was released on bail last week. Balen Shah stood as an independent candidate for mayor of Kathmandu in local elections in 2022, and was catapulted to victory because of anti-incumbent protest votes among urban youth.&nbsp; Both campaigned on social media, pushing a populist anti-corruption agenda and against the governance failure of the three establishment parties — the same logic that drove the GenZ protests in September that escalated into violence and brought down the UML-NC coalition. Even as government buildings smouldered on 10 September, GenZ members were strongly urging Balen Shah to be the interim prime minister, but when he declined they voted on Discord for former chief justice Sushila Karki.&nbsp; With just over two months to go for elections on 5 March, Prime Minister Karki has been trying desperately to get the mainstream parties on board. She has met twice with the top leaders of the UML, NC and the NCP. All three parties have been dealing with internal power struggles, and the UML appears to be the most reluctant to face elections.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251228051212_d42944e014b278d6864270b74f924ac842d6f7a68d5bd6817148d120522ba60b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20251228051212_d42944e014b278d6864270b74f924ac842d6f7a68d5bd6817148d120522ba60b" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1365" loading="lazy" alt="Sushila Karki with political leaders"> <figcaption>Prime Minister Sushila Karki has been meeting with leaders of the mainstream parties to get them on board for the election. Photo: PMO</figcaption> </figure>  The UML’s former prime minister K P Oli has refused summons by the Judicial Inquiry Commission charged with investigating the massacre of protesters on 8 September and the arson and vandalism the next day. Then home minister Ramesh Lekhak is scheduled to give his deposition to the Commission this week. The legacy parties appear to be taking the threat from the Rabi-Balen partnership strongly, and have been trying to forge an electoral alliance so they do not compete against each other.&nbsp; They are relying on traditional vote banks among the rural electorate, and calculate that alternative forces will cancel themselves out. They could also be hoping that Balen Shah’s erratic behaviour and Rabi Lamichhane’s prison conviction will put voters off. A total of 837,094 first-time voters have been registered in Nepal ahead of the elections.&nbsp; The Kathmandu mayor is an engineer and rap artist, and had till now been reclusive, preferring to post on social media rather than face the press. His late-night online posts have been impulsive: like the one urging that Singha Darbar be burnt down, or another one recently in which he used the f-word against the US, China, India and the mainstream parties. He later deleted both posts.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251228041212_a2f87881e36fb40b82bf77e1b07003aaf36b91e2a9eb5da096f1e562654c31e3.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20251228041212_a2f87881e36fb40b82bf77e1b07003aaf36b91e2a9eb5da096f1e562654c31e3" data-rendition-name="original" width="1112" height="1440" loading="lazy" alt="Balen Rabi agreement NT"> <figcaption>The seven-point agreement between Shah and Lamichhane. </figcaption> </figure>  Lamichane and Shah had also been negotiating with Energy Minister Kulman Ghising’s newly-forced Ujyalo Nepal Party, but the bargaining did not go well because Ghising refused to fight elections under the RSP banner. If the three had been successful in coming together, it would have been a formidable alliance. There are misgivings about the RSP-Balen Shah deal, even among some GenZ who see the two prominent men dividing up the power structure as just the kind of political culture they wanted to reform. Many are already predicting exactly the kind of clash of egos between the two alpha males that characterised Nepali politics since the restoration of democracy in 1990. In the coming days, as with most political change in Nepal, there will be much speculation about the geopolitics behind the Rabi-Balen deal. Balen Shah’s angry post against India-US-China as well as his past nationalistic pronouncements on Nepal’s territorial dispute with India over Kalapani will be recalled, while Beijing has misgivings about the antecedents of some GenZ figures. Dharan-mayor Harka Sampang, who has also formed his own political party, has already pronounced the Rabi-Balen deal as being “foreign backed”.

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