October is buckwheat harvest time in the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/dazzling-dolpo/">distant highlands of Dolpo</a>. In the village of Tso, Namdak Sangmo watches other women from her village fling their sickles, stoop over to sling the sheaves on their shoulders, and bring the crop in. Sangmo, 68, does not have her own crop to harvest because she does not have any land anymore. Her riverside terraces were washed away by a flash flood in 2012, and another one in 2019 destroyed what was left, leaving a barren boulder-strewn slope. “It was a raging torrent, and it came down suddenly and swept everything in its path, I do not have any land left to farm,” says Sangmo. She is not the only one, almost half the villagers in Tso lost their standing crop and fields when a wall of mud and boulders raced down from the slopes of the 6,883m high Mt Kanjiroba that towers over the district. Scientists have not drawn a direct correlation between the climate crisis and extreme weather events like this, but they say there is evidence that droughts, record downpours, and erratic monsoons in the Himalaya are a result of a hotter atmosphere. This year’s monsoon has seen freak downpours and unprecedented rainfall in the trans-Himalayan regions of Nepal. Unseasonal rains this week unleashed deadly floods and landslides, especially in western Nepal. The Himalayan mountains are warming between 0.3-0.7°C faster than the global average, causing glaciers to shrink, snowlines to recede, and increasing the danger of floods when expanding glacial lakes burst. <div class="embed-block"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161128/636d18e39c7e80680e0ac7edjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000"></div> Sangmo remembers well that September day two years ago. “It had rained non-stop for two days, and suddenly we heard a big roar from up the mountain, my brother-in-law told us to run,” she recalls. There was unusually heavy rain where snow used to fall, and the fragile moraine ridges below Kanjiroba just dissolved, sending the debris flow racing down to the village below. A similar flood in June on the Melamchi River damaged Kathmandu’s water-supply project, Nepal’s most expensive infrastructure scheme. In Manang, a trans-Himalayan valley north of the Annapurnas, there was record-breaking rainfall that unleashed deadly floods. “There is more and more evidence that extreme rainfall events are caused by climate change, and these trigger sudden floods that destroy farms and settlements downstream,” says Arun Shrestha, a climate specialist with the River Basins and Cryosphere division at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). There has not been enough study to determine if the Dolpo flood was <a href="https://www.dhm.gov.np/uploads/climatic/467608975Observed%20Climate%20Trend%20Analysis%20Report_2017_Final.pdf">caused by a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF)</a>, or just extra-heavy rainfall on sediment deposits in high mountain valleys, but the result was just as devastating. <div class="embed-block"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161128/636d18da9c7e80680e0ac7eajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">The tongue of the glacier below Kanjiroba from which the floods came down.</div> A recent Himalayan <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepals-glacial-lakes-in-danger-of-bursting/">Glacial Lake Inventory</a> by <a href="https://www.icimod.org/event/glacial-lake-inventory-launch/">ICIMOD </a>and UNDP mapped 3,624 new glacial lakes on Nepal’s main river basins and found that 47 of them could <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/more-himalayan-tsunamis/">burst at any time</a>, with the risk of catastrophic flooding down valley. Of these, <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepals-glacial-lakes-in-danger-of-bursting/">25 lakes are in Tibet,</a> but flow into tributaries of Nepal’s main rivers. While communities in Nepal have historically learnt to reduce risk from these floods by not settling along riverbanks, new poorly-designed roads, settlements and infrastructure are vulnerable to these climate induced disasters. While GLOFs can happen at some point in the future, weather extremes caused by the climate crisis have already unleashed a creeping disaster in Himalayan villages like Tso. This year, a 7-month <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/no-smoke-without-fire-2/">winter drought led to wildfires</a> and floods in Dolpo, displacing farmers, and forcing them to migrate. As <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Shey-Phoksundo-may-soon-become-a-bus-park,3975">Dolpo is connected by road</a>, most men have left rural areas for work in the cities or abroad to supplement their income, and it is the women who stay behind who bear the brunt of the impact of climate change -- the drudgery of having to walk farther for water, or suffer from failed harvests. <div class="embed-block"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161128/636d18dd9c7e80680e0ac7ebjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">Massive flashfloods in 2012 and 2019 that came down from Mt Kanjiroba washed away fields and homes in Tso village.</div> “Climate change adds to the extra load of women in rural areas because of unpredictable rain, floods droughts and springs going dry,” says <a href=".%20https:/www.icimod.org/team/abid-hussain/">Abid Hussain</a>, of the Mountain Agriculture and Livelihood division of ICIMOD. Most of Nepal’s subsistence farmers are dependent on rain-fed agriculture, and <a href="https://www.thestatesman.com/world/women-participation-in-agriculture-is-highest-in-nepal-1502659946.html">83% of the country's women are fulltime farmers</a>. Namdak Sasngmo’s husband died 15 years ago, and her children are married. Without her fields, she finds it difficult to take care of her family. Nepal’s central or local governments should be helping her, but there has been no compensation for the loss and damage. Without her fields, with <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/trekking-to-save-nepals-snow-leopards/">no income from trekking tourism</a> due to the pandemic, and a decline in the yarsagumba crop, Sangmo is worried. Left to fend for themselves, she has fallen back on her faith in the Tibetan animist belief system that has deep reverence for the mountains as divine creations that have their serene and destructive sides that need to be appeased through prayer and good deeds. “We may have angered the gods of Kanjiroba with our deeds,” says Sangmo.“We made the river impure and many outsiders came and polluted the lake.” <div class="embed-block"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161128/636d18e09c7e80680e0ac7ecjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">Namdak Sangmo, 50, harvests buckwheat in a neighbour’s field because her farm was washed away by the flood.</div> To prevent future calamities, the monk at the local monastery, Khenpo Lama, performed a ritual to appeal to Mt Kanjiroba with a shebchu at a small stupa with offerings of buckwheat and barley. Sangmo believes it worked, because “everything has been quiet on the mountain after that”. From his monastery, Khenpo Nyima himself has noticed the change in weather, and the snow retreating higher and higher up Kanjiroba. Although he does not connect this to the global climate crisis, he is convinced outsiders are to blame. “We have seen the mountains changing, and that is because there are more and more outsiders coming here and they are desecrating nature,” he says, looking up at the icy tongue of a glacier below Kanjiroba, the top of which is veiled in monsoon clouds. He says the modern world has also changed the traditional ways in Dolpo. Local people no longer rely on dorima that determines the schedule for planting, harvesting, and the timings for taking yaks and goats up to high pasture. “They also do not put up prayer flags in the yulsa every year, and this has displeased the gods,” Khenpo Nyima adds. <div class="embed-block"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161128/636d18e39c7e80680e0ac7edjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000"></div> However, the local government and the <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/saving-shey-phoksundo-in-nepal,3596">Shey Phoksundo National Park</a> are not relying on prayers to protect citizens here. They built an embankment along the river after the 2012 flood to shield Tso’s village and farms, but it was washed away in the second flood in 2019. “We may need a bigger budget to build a proper wall that will save the village the next time there is a big flood, I am trying to convince the municipality authorities, but we need more help,” says Nima Lama, the ward chair. However, studies have shown that people in mountain regions across the world have been adapting to the changing climate without knowing why it is changing, and using local belief systems and traditions to do so. <a href="https://phys.org/news/2019-06-mountain-dwellers-glaciers-climate.html">Anthropologist Ben Orlove of Columbia University’s Earth Institute</a> interviewed people in locales including the Peruvian Andes, and found that while villagers were aware of the changes, they were adapting to them without necessarily linking it to climate change. Orlove proposes framing the ‘climate change’ narrative as a need for ‘community change’ so the focus is on how villagers can benefit from the measures they take to adapt to lack of rain, water shortages, or flood-prevention embankments. That appears to be already happening here in Dolpo, an arid trans-Himalayan region of Nepal where people are falling back on a sense of community and traditional belief systems to cope with the impacts of the climate crisis. <div class="embed-block"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161128/636d18e69c7e80680e0ac7eejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">Yarsagumba is a fungus that grows on a caterpillar, and is harvested in spring in the Himalaya. It is in high demand across the border in China.</div> The climate and ‘Himalayan viagra’ As the climate crisis impacts on the pastoral lifestyle of the people of Dolpo, the women who remain in the remote villages have started relying more and more on <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/its-yarsa-picking-time/">yarsagumba, the caterpillar fungus</a> that is prized in Chinese medicine for its supposed aphrodisiac properties. These days, it is mainly women who climb up to the high slopes where the fungus pokes out of the ground after snow melts in spring. They harvest the yarsagumba and sell it to middlemen who in turn sell it to wholesalers at the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/new-high-way-to-dolpo/">Chinese border, 4 days walk to the north.</a> However, a combination of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/heavy-snowfall-over-nepal-himalaya/">unseasonal snowfall</a>, long periods of drought and warmer weather is affecting the yarsagumba, too. Schools in Dolpo close at yarsa harvest time so students can accompany parents to the pick the fungus, but this year they have returned empty-handed. “We went up in April, but the yarsa was not fully mature and it was soggy, there was nothing to pick,” says one student, Sangmo Lama. <div class="embed-block"><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161128/636d18e99c7e80680e0ac7efjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000">With her trekking income gone, and farm washed away by floods, Namdak Sangmo used to depend on yarsagumba picking. But even the growth of the fungus has been affected by weather extremes caused by climate change.</div> While over-harvesting in the past has been one of the reasons for the decline in the yarsa crop, it should have revived in the past two years when the pandemic reduced the numbers of pickers. That lends support to the theory that a warmer Himalaya is also affecting growth of the valuable fungus and contributes to the end of the yarsa <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/yarsagumba-dispute-dolpa,1424">gold rush</a>. Local people who relied on tourism and livestock for income had <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=18321#.XnOPvS2B3-Y">earnings from the fungus</a> as a fall back. Now, that option is also gone. Yarsa made up more than half of the annual income of an average Dolpo household. While the fungus is sold for only Rs5,000 per kg to the Chinese traders at the border, it can fetch as much as $75,000 per kg in Shanghai. After she lost her fields to the glacial floods, Namdak Sangmo of Tso village used to rely solely on yarsa income. She used to collect at least 100 pieces of fungus in the past, two years ago she found only six pieces, and this spring none at all. “Without yarsa what do we eat? How do we survive? The mountain was angry and took away my fields, there is nothing to do but pray,” says Sangmo, as she sharpens her sickle to help the other women in their buckwheat fields. This report was supported by the Road to COP26 campaign implemented by the British Council and funded by UKAID.

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Climate change is a disaster in the Nepal Himalaya

‘One early morning, we heard the ambassador’s wife cry out, “Ram, Ram, Ram!” A disaster has befallen Nepal!” She had heard on the radio that a fire had consumed Singha Durbar." This is not about the arson attack on 9 September 2025, but the one on 8 July, 1973. It started in the South Wing of the then single-largest building in all of Nepal. It took two days to bring the blaze under control, requiring the use of explosives to demolish one wing to protect the imposing western facade. As Bhekh Bahadur Thapa recalls in the English translation of his memoir A Life in Public Service: Nepal from Autocracy to Democracy, he was then on leave from the Nepal government serving with the IDRC in Ottawa.&nbsp; He had already served as Nepal’s Finance Secretary at age 25, went on to be Finance Minister and Governor of Nepal Rastra Bank. He was already younger than some of the GenZ ministers in Nepal’s present RSP government. Thapa, now 89, was at the launch of the book in February which was attended by former diplomats and bureaucrats. After speeches by panelists, there was a question from the audience about how Thapa had managed to be the diplomat he was, managing Nepal’s international relations on the world stage.&nbsp; Writer and journalist Akhilesh Upadhyay, who was moderating the panel, responded by going into the section of the book where we see Thapa as an ambassador to the US, playing tennis with White House officials, cultivating a network of contacts to project the identity and welfare of Nepal, and making it possible for a state visit by King Birendra to Ronald Reagan’s America. The book is full of anecdotes that suggest Thapa was a clever and strategic diplomat, always calm and unruffled, easily making friends in high places with his maturity and engaging sense of humour. Thapa’s memoir is heavy on details about Nepal’s administrative history during the years he was active in public service, serving as minister and ambassador under three kings: Mahendra, Birendra and Gyanendra, and alongside five prime ministers.&nbsp; Aside from an insider look on how certain treaties, development deals and research projects in Nepal came into fruition, Thapa goes into great detail about his personal and professional relationships with the kings, ministers, ambassadors, foreign leaders and politicians.&nbsp; As a reader, one is struck by the level of detail around the events that unfolded in Nepal over the years during Thapa’s tenure. Was Thapa recording a journal over the years of the events and the conversations that transpired, or were they committed to his phenomenal memory? Either way, the reader gets a glimpse of Nepal’s recent history from the early days of the Panchayat, through the People’s Movement and the democracy period, the Maoist insurgency, Royal Palace massacre of 2001, and Gyanendra’s coup of 2005.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026041204048_125dc8ae300a1e33124f394abe724d42727f83e067b0201d2008b58d60c459a4.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2026041204048_125dc8ae300a1e33124f394abe724d42727f83e067b0201d2008b58d60c459a4" data-rendition-name="original" width="1584" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="How to win friends and influence nations NT"> </figure>  Not enough is said about the political parties of the time whose presence led to the way Nepal’s multiparty democracy came to be shaped. The book keeps its focus on the administration and the key figures around it, mostly those in the Panchayat era. Towards the second half of the book, we do start to hear about political parties, but not in great depth. Another figure whose presence in the book is conspicuously less prominent is that of his wife, Rita Thapa — the person who seems to have rescued him every time financial quandary or family care became a challenge. Yet, we do not see her as a full person. Perhaps because of the personal tragedies in his life, the children are also barely mentioned.&nbsp; The book is therefore less personal and more technical. Throughout, we learn about Thapa’s thinking as he navigated the world of diplomacy to win him the trust of those who mattered. There are tips here for a new generation of Nepali officials and diplomats about how much commitment and focus is needed to be good at one’s job and serve the national interest. This book adds to tomes that have been written on Nepal’s fragile relationship with India. ‘India has always wished for Nepal to remain dependent on it,’ writes Thapa, who served as Nepal’s ambassador to India and later in the Eminent Persons Group &nbsp;on Indo-Nepal relations that has been allowed to languish. The book has several insights into the Indo-Nepal trysts with diplomacy and agency.&nbsp; China’s role is also recorded, viewed through conversations during a visit to Beijing, but all that was before Nepal’s neighbour to the north emerged as a world economic and military power. The book also has such sudden instances of quirkiness and humour. For instance, we see a young Thapa in America explaining to a government official why he would like to return to Nepal instead of settling down in the US. “Because, Nepal is beautiful,” he said. The text is immaculate and does not read much like a translation, credit for which clearly goes to the team that put the edition together: translator Prawin Adhikari, &nbsp;Anagha Neelakanthan and Bhekh Thapa’s daughter, Manjushree. As Nepal enters a new era of governance and diplomacy, A Life in Public Service: Nepal from Autocracy to Democracy should be essential reading for students of political science, economics and foreign affairs who can gain a fresh perspective on the country’s trajectory.&nbsp; There are dozens of forgotten state secrets recorded in the book, but the reader must also remember this is a story told from one person’s perspective and there may be others.&nbsp; So, what really made Thapa the diplomat he was? I met him in 2004 at the Kantipur TV studio when he was serving as king Gyanendra’s foreign minister. He was there for a studio interview, and I was just done with my English newscast.&nbsp; He surprised me at the door: “Pratibha! I’ve been reading your articles in The Kathmandu Post. You must keep writing.” I thanked him, glad to have been noticed for my work by a stranger. That was perhaps one of the things that set Thapa apart — he excelled at staying close to those in power, while also noticing those who were not.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260412040412_213e706136a038ec9f5e2b8c6d7f7c1e9ceed9479e22fe2884872ad7bd20955f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20260412040412_213e706136a038ec9f5e2b8c6d7f7c1e9ceed9479e22fe2884872ad7bd20955f" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Book details"> </figure>

How to win friends and influence nations

This is the 91st 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. I have still not come to terms with the reality that my daughter Ruby Thakur is now the Deputy Speaker of Nepal’s Parliament. Sometimes, when I am walking, the thought hits me, and I cannot believe it.&nbsp; Things changed for my daughter in a very short time. I had dreamt that the best my daughter could achieve was a good engineering job. Fate had bigger plans for her. She is no longer just my daughter, she is the nation’s daughter. Nepal’s daughter.&nbsp; My children’s education was always my foremost priority. That is the main reason I went overseas for employment. I realised the value of education while working in Saudi Arabia. In my office, colleagues with good education earn $8,000 per month working on computers. Those with low education toil outdoors in the heat for much lower wages. A good education or skills can change everything. I am in Nepal on vacation and will soon return to my job. Ruby is all set now. But I still have to take care of my other children's education. As the eldest son, I myself never got a chance to prioritise my own education. I dropped out in Grade 7 because I had to take care of my ageing parents and younger siblings. I have done all kinds of jobs. I worked in a landlord’s field for a share of the harvest. Even now my wife and I farm for the land owner and have to give away half of what we grow.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260413120444_051b61e01a5189af538aa1e011acd3e2b38d5f42825116b2afd325d93d0c519b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20260413120444_051b61e01a5189af538aa1e011acd3e2b38d5f42825116b2afd325d93d0c519b" data-rendition-name="original" width="4032" height="2268" loading="lazy" alt="DD"> <figcaption>Sogarath Thakur during a break in Nepal with wife tending to his farm.</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260413120448_8a1c3ac3fd559026bc6f981cc8dc82cb8ad09a3a4f55fb9f6f7fd5f49c3d5571.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20260413120448_8a1c3ac3fd559026bc6f981cc8dc82cb8ad09a3a4f55fb9f6f7fd5f49c3d5571" data-rendition-name="original" width="4032" height="2268" loading="lazy" alt="DD"> </figure>  Then I worked as a barber, my family’s line of occupation. I went door to door cutting people’s hair and later worked in a relative’s saloon. Hairstyles were simple back then, and I got to keep half the fee. I also worked in a brick factory where I was paid weekly. &nbsp; I married when I was 16, and my wife was a year younger. As my family and responsibilities grew, I had to migrate leaving behind my three children including Ruby who was just three months old.&nbsp; I went to Qatar where I continued working as a barber. It was a large saloon and the standards for cleanliness and professionalism were higher. I had to hand over 70% of my daily earnings to the employer. I had to rely on my colleague to translate what the customer wanted. But I slowly became fluent in Arabic. I used to jot down words in Nepali and Arabic and memorise them. In Qatar, customers even came at night for haircuts, and people stayed up late. I would work till 3AM.&nbsp; Communicating with my family was one-way. I would go to Bismillah and ask someone to type out questions to my family about their whereabouts, how the harvest was that season. I would offer very little information about my life in Qatar because it was not easy. What was the point of getting them all worried? What could they do? I never received a letter in return, so throughout my time in Qatar, I never knew how my family was faring. When I appeared in the village after five years without any advance notice, it was a bittersweet reunion, and I had no gifts. I still remember how unfamiliar my village felt when I came home after so many years. I had to ask for directions. When I came home, Ruby was already in school. I had left her in my wife’s arms five years prior. I missed her growing up, and did not even see her pictures. My wife had to introduce her to me as her father. But it took just 15 minutes for her to warm up to me.&nbsp; The Arabic skills I had picked up in Qatar came in handy when I remigrated two years later to Saudi Arabia. I worked as a labourer in the desert heat, but once my company found out I spoke Arabic, I was hired for an indoor job as an office boy. The struggle in Qatar had paid off. I worked in an air conditioned office serving tea or coffee, doing bank runs or getting documents signed and photocopied. I have worked in the same company for the past 20 years, sending money home.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260413120448_f083fa873a6d77b19c8b0bdde623415c643a151fb550c57ff4e52b3c2431355f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20260413120448_f083fa873a6d77b19c8b0bdde623415c643a151fb550c57ff4e52b3c2431355f" data-rendition-name="original" width="5712" height="3213" loading="lazy" alt="DD"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260413120452_5ccd9a01ee05ce26b71381725108215d0f0d3806508b0cb482aabcfea09bbaef.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20260413120452_5ccd9a01ee05ce26b71381725108215d0f0d3806508b0cb482aabcfea09bbaef" data-rendition-name="original" width="4032" height="3024" loading="lazy" alt="DD"> </figure>  My wife is not just my children’s guardian, but also mine throughout the two decades I was away. I trust her with all my earnings, and she manages our household finances well. She makes sure that the children’s school fees and other expenses are paid on time. These days, with video calls, things have become much easier for me to stay in touch with home.&nbsp; When Ruby told me she wanted to do an engineering diploma, I was happy. Later, her friends inspired her to join politics so she started getting involved with Shram Sanskriti Party. I first found out she got the proportional representation nomination through social media while on my work duty in Saudi Arabia. I was so excited, but even more so when she was elected Deputy Speaker. I was back home in Dhanusha on my vacation at the time.&nbsp; We are overjoyed and waiting for her to come back to the village for a visit when she gets a chance so we can celebrate properly with everyone. I plan to go back to Saudi Arabia as originally planned, I have a good job and will work for maybe five more years. Ruby has taken 75% of the load off my back. She can help take care of her siblings.&nbsp; I sleep at 8PM every day and wake up at 5AM to exercise before my day in Saudi Arabia begins – I have stuck to the same routine for the last two decades and it has worked well for me and my health. I have a good rapport with my boss who is an Egyptian. My requests to resign have often been met with counter-offers to stay on. My honesty and hard work have won me the company's trust. I will go back and resume working as I have, despite my daughter’s huge achievements. I am still a farmer’s son, a simple man who has to fulfil his family responsibilities. My colleagues in Saudi Arabia are aware that Ruby is Deputy Speaker in Nepal’s Parliament, they are all happy for me and have congratulated me. This time, when I go back, I have promised them that I will throw a bakhri party to celebrate my daughter’s achievement.

The nation’s daughter

Nepalis are insured but not covered

This week, discourse in Nepal’s public sphere has been dominated by numbers and net worth of ministers in the new government following their asset-disclosures.
The inventories revealed the considerable wealth of a majority of the new ministers. This unleashed a deluge of comments and opinion — mostly on social media.
Many considered that Nepal just replaced the old rich with a new rich and that nothing has changed.&nbsp;
Others see it as anti-RSP hysteria. Wealth accumulated when the leaders were private citizens should not be the business of the public, that their financial security will make them less inclined to corruption.
The argument is: plutocrats are less likely to be kleptocrats.
For most Nepalis who voted for the RSP, this has been a new reality check. Most had taken to the streets in September in large part due to outrage over the wealth gap between ordinary Nepalis and those who benefitted from and flaunted wealth and privilege gained through corruption, nepotism, and political connections.&nbsp;
Nepalis saw the nation’s new elected officials as a reflection of themselves — identifying with their youth, their social and professional backgrounds, their disillusionment with the entrenched power structure, their shared struggle. Nepal’s leaders finally seemed approachable and accessible.&nbsp;
The fact that most Cabinet members are well-off, in particular the fact that many of them have generational wealth— even though it might be honestly earned— has made them significantly less relatable to most Nepalis now.
This has also served as another reminder that the political hierarchy is still largely dominated by the privileged class.
Home Minister Sudan Gurung's defensive statement on social media which read, in part, ‘It is not your fault if you are born poor, but it is your fault if you die poor’ (a quote by Bill Gates) did not help.&nbsp;
Gurung later deleted this statement. It drew criticism because it framed poverty as a lack of initiative. This was reductive and unfair to the millions of Nepalis who work their entire lives, often venturing far from home in search for better opportunities. Many faced with unemployment and lack of capital, savings do not have the cushion of inherited wealth to fall back on.&nbsp;
This also serves is a reminder that Nepal does not just need competent leadership, it also needs empathetic leaders.
In any case, perhaps, the depth of scrutiny into how the ministers earned their wealth outside of politics might be unwarranted at this early point in many of their careers.&nbsp;
But on the issue of politico-administrative patronage, cronyism, and nepotism on which the RSP built its institutional and electoral platform, the leadership must be answerable to the public.&nbsp;
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Last week, Prime Minister Balendra Shah relieved Labour Minister Dipak Sah of his portfolio after the RSP found him to have misused his position to ensure his wife’s appointment to the Health Insurance Board, an action for which Health Minister Nisha Mehta was also given an official warning.&nbsp;
But do the same rules apply to other leaders? The newly-appointed Attorney General Narayan Kandel was previously legal counsel to Rabi Lamichhane, and will now have to prosecute Laichhane’s pending cases, representing a clear conflict of interest.&nbsp;
Lamichhane himself has become a member of the State Affairs and Good Governance Committee, which oversees the very law enforcement agencies that are tasked with looking into his cases.&nbsp;
An analysis on Ukaalo this week also exposed how newly-elected RSP lawmakers, many of them influential business owners with direct stakes in the business, finance, tourism, and infrastructure sectors— now sit in Parliamentary Committees that would directly benefit their interests.&nbsp;
Meanwhile, after criticism of its directive that official notices be published or broadcast only on state-run media— police this week arrested a content creator for posting a derogatory video of political leaders including the Prime Minister. &nbsp;
This is the same rule-by-fear tactic thin-skinned leaders of the past have employed to restrict freedom of expression. A Prime Minister who previously publicly criticised the arrest of another rapper over his lyrics as ‘the police having nothing better to do’, who in his own music did not mince his words or shy away from epithets, and who was generous with expletives to lambast legacy parties and neighbouring nations on social media, cannot now countenance similar rhetoric by ordinary citizens.&nbsp;
The Prime Minister is yet to address Parliament let alone the nation. His reputation as a doer-not-a-talker, leader of mystery will only pacify the public for so long.&nbsp;
All this to prove that digital platforms are double-edged swords: the same network that propelled some to power also has the power to speak truth to it.&nbsp;

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