<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109121148/636b94279c7e80680e06f1e3jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2540" height="1426"/><figcaption>Richshaw operator Kancha Lama hardly gets one ride a day. He mostly depends on people distributing free food during the lockdown.</figcaption></figure>After two months in which there were new records of cases and fatalities every day, the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/kathmandu-covid-19-lockdown-relaxed/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">appears to be cresting in Nepal</a>, but it has left the economy in ruins with a crisis-ridden government offering no hope to citizens.<a style="font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/we-knew-the-tsunami-was-approaching/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">At its peak in mid-May</a>, there were more than 9,000 new infections and up to 250 deaths daily. And that was just the official count, models put the figures at least three times higher. However, the real impact of the pandemic is in the country’s economic meltdown, with more than half the employed losing their jobs.The Covid-induced lockdowns have pushed millions of  Nepalis back below the poverty line, which means they are now <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepals-epidemic-of-hunger/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">unable to access food and water</a>, basic health care and education. This has completely reversed Nepal’s gains in poverty reduction in the past ten years.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109121148/636b942a9c7e80680e06f1e4jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="225">Back in March, at the tail end of the first wave, <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/covids-collateral-damage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Himalmedia’s tv magazine Saglo Samaj interviewed</a> farmers, tourist guides, hotel operators and taxi drivers most affected by the lockdowns.This week, the team revisited each of the same people to find out what had become of them. Their stories are a microcosm of a society ravaged by the pandemic, where the poor have got poorer.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yni_6WWbmAo&amp;feature=youtu.beNepalis suffered altogether <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/economic-cost-of-5-months-of-nepal-lockdown/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">five months of lockdown in 2020</a>, and another nearly two months this year. The restrictions were eased this week, even though the daily number of fatalities and active cases are higher than when the lockdown was imposed on 29 April.The pandemic and the lockdowns have disabled every sector. Some 1.1 million people in the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/nepal-tourism-may-take-5-years-to-recover/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">hospitality industry</a> have been directly impacted by the pandemic and more than half of Nepalis lost their jobs in the past month alone.Yet, the government has no clear plans to provide alternative employment opportunities for those who lost their jobs. In fact, it has been too <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/court-debates-nepal-pm-olis-future/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">preoccupied with a political power struggle for most </a>of the pandemic to plan a real exit strategy. Every response to the crisis has been too little, too late.On Tuesday, even though other districts prepared to relax their lockdown just as Kathmandu did, Nepal saw 4,522 new cases and 41 fatalities. There are a total of 52,648 active infections, 762 of them in ICU and 218 in ventilator support in hospitals across the country.Public health experts are already warning of a possible third wave and urging the government to make preparations for <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/nepal-covid-19-impact-worse-than-official-figures/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">increased contact tracing</a> and hospital treatment to avoid much devastation.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109121148/636b942b9c7e80680e06f1e5jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2552" height="1428"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>MILKED DRYBuffalo milk is the only source of income for farmers in Kamdi village of Banke district in the western Tarai. But many of the dairy farmers were unable to sell their milk during the lockdowns in 2020. Later, they didn’t get a fair price and the Dairy Development Corporation was slow to pay even what they were owed.“The market is closed, there is barely any feed for the cattle. We are working day and night, but for nothing,” says Malati Prasad Yadav, who has 150 buffalos, but little income since the pandemic.The farmers took loans to buy feed and take care of the buffalos, but the second wave has quashed the little hope they had. They were hoping the government would announce a relief package in this year’s budget. But their hopes were dashed.“We are having to pour the milk into the drains, there are no consumers for ghee or cheese. We are running at a loss and there is no telling how long it will last,” says Saroj Pandey of the SJ Dairy in Nepalganj. “The government should boost the morale of farmers and local businesses, subsidise their electricity or promote Nepali goods by stopping import from the third country.”<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109121148/636b942e9c7e80680e06f1e6jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="844"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>TOURISM AND REALISMOne of the hardest-hit sectors is tourism. And while professionals of most fields have had to cope with the challenges brought on by the pandemic, <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/where-have-all-the-guides-gone/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">tourist guides have been unemployed</a> for more than a year now.Four months ago, tourist guide Shankar Bhattarai had taken up teaching to make a living but was spending all his free time reading up about Nepal’s history and culture to better prepare himself for when the tourists would come back post lockdown. But the second wave killed what was left of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/survive-revive-thrive/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nepal’s tourism</a>.He has since given up any hope of normalcy and is constantly worried about debt collectors. Hoping for an alternative for tourists guides like himself, he was further depressed with this year’s budget.“There were provisions only for the big hotels and travel agents, we didn’t find ordinary tour guides like us anywhere in the relief packages,” says Bhattarai, who had been a tourist guide since 2011. “I’ve tried my best to promote Nepal through my work but at our time of need, we have no government support. I now question myself about staying back in Nepal.”<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109121148/636b94309c7e80680e06f1e7jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2537" height="1425"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>UNSERVICEABLEBig businesses have their own woes. The three-star Airport Hotel in Kathmandu has seen only a handful of guests in more than a year. The hotel’s original staff of 100 is down to 10, and only 10 of its 62 rooms are kept serviceable.“We are doing much worse than last year, we did survive 15 months somehow, there were some domestic tourists, but then the second wave happened and it destroyed what little we had,” says owner Binayak Shah, adding that he has not been able to pay the monthly instalments on its loan for 17 months.He adds: “I have no income, so how can I pay them? This means sooner or later, the bank is going to blacklist me, and put this hotel up for auction.”<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109121148/636b94339c7e80680e06f1e8jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2544" height="1420"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>DOWN AND OUTWhile some worry about paying millions in bank loans, daily wage labourers worry about the next meal. Kancha Lama has been operating a rickshaw in Kathmandu for 38 years, but his <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/pandemic-puts-brake-on-kathmandus-rickshaws/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">business is down and out</a>. He hardly gets one ride a day, and mostly depends on people distributing free food.“It’s easy for the government to tell us to stay home and eat healthy, where is the money? It doesn’t even allow me to beg on the streets. At least they should distribute rations for people like us,” says Lama. “If I get Covid, at least I will be out of this misery.”Bir Bahadur Lama is in Asan every day, and if it is his lucky day he will get a client or two to carry loads for them. Otherwise, he sits on the temple steps passing the day with other jobless porters. Before the pandemic, they used to carry loads for Asan’s many shops. Sometimes, good samaritans offer them food, but that is rare.“I just wish I did not have to sleep hungry and lockdown would end soon, that is all I wish for,” he says.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109121148/636b94379c7e80680e06f1e9jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2539" height="1430"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>TAKEN FOR A RIDEDuring the lockdown last year, a bank took possession of Ganesh Tamang’s taxi which he had bought with Rs500,000 out of savings from years of toil in the Gulf.With no other source of income, he is now back to his village and raises livestock. “I often feel like I was born in a wrong country, to a wrong family, and at the wrong time, it wouldn’t have come to this anywhere else,” he says.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109121148/636b943a9c7e80680e06f1eajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="844"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Sagar Bohora has a sickly mother at home, and a family of young children dependent on him. But his taxi has broken down because it has not run much for the past year-and-a-half. He needs at least Rs30,000 for repairs, but he has barely enough after paying off the auto loan.“I only ask banks and financial institutions that they give us a few months until after the lockdown so that we can pay our dues, by then we will be able to get up, with or without government help,” says Bohora.<h2>Pandemic makes the poor poorer</h2><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109121148/636b943c9c7e80680e06f1ebjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="2538" height="1424"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>There is empirical evidence that the second pandemic wave has <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/nepal-prepares-for-economic-fallout-of-pandemic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">further impoverished Nepal’s poor</a>. Even by modest estimates, some 9 million Nepalis have been pushed back below the poverty line due to Covid-19 induced lockdowns. In this week’s Saglo Samaj tv magazine, Shankar Sharma, former ambassador to the US and vice-chairperson of the National Planning Commission spoke to Kanak Mani Dixit. Excerpts:Kanak Mani Dixit: We went back to people we had interviewed four months ago, and found that their situation had further declined. Do they represent the current Nepali society?Shankar Sharma: They are an accurate representation. There are three categories that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic: the first are <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/pandemic-offers-chance-to-revive-farming/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">subsistence farmers</a> below the poverty line, this also includes disadvantaged groups. The next are people in the informal sector whose livelihood has been endangered with the extended closure of the market. Then there is the hospitality industry and unlike others, they haven’t been able to pick up after the first wave because the impact of the lockdown on the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/tourism-that-treads-lightly-on-the-land/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">travel industry</a> is long-term. These businesses had loans and now their debt has accumulated.These impacts are directly reflected in our macroeconomic numbers. Economic growth rate last year was 2% and this year it won’t be more than 1%. Similarly, the World Bank estimates following the pandemic there are now a total 9 million people in Nepal below the poverty line.Would you say that because it is not monetised rural subsistence living is faring better?Back during the Maoist insurgency, some development partners had conducted a study about people who had migrated to the cities due to the violence. They asked people if they would go back to the village once the peace accord was signed, 93% of the respondents said no.One of the main reasons behind this was <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/back-to-the-future-of-farming/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nepal’s agriculture</a> couldn’t compete with Indian and Chinese produce. This also led to more people migrating abroad. Experts have suggested the concept of contract farming, which is also included in this year’s budget and will do well for the country.But one of our biggest problems is our <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepals-fake-poor/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">inability to identify the poor</a>. The government has developed ID cards for their identification, but 23% of the poor are not on the list but 25% are those who have listed themselves in hopes of getting some relief. As a result, the real poor have been deprived even of their social security fund.What should we do to boost their morale and of the country?The affected people are those in rural Nepal but they also have an advantage of three levels of government. But it is still the responsibility of the central government to provide relief worth at least two months at $1 per day for its people. Unfortunately, there is no mention of this in the budget this year.The Nepal government has also allocated a total of Rs50 billion for training in the last two budgets but hasn’t been able to spend that money. This fund should be used in skill development for Nepalis post lockdown, effective spending of the budget is a must. Similarly, the government should support cottage and small industries so that they don’t close down. If we lack funding, we could use loans and grants we have received from international development partners.Despite the pandemic, there is still talk about Nepal graduating from Least Developed Country (LDC) status to a middle-income country. What will happen now?Following the pandemic, the United Nations has set a new deadline for the LDCs to graduate to lower-middle-income and middle-income countries. The good news is that we have made some progress in our per capita income, and the fact that our economy is now dependent on multiple factors is a positive sign. But what is worrying is that our economic growth is still lower than the average growth of underdeveloped countries. This means we will have to work more on increasing our living standard.It is said that Nepal is not a poor country, but the government just cannot seem to spend its development budget. If they were held more to account by civil society and media during this pandemic that might help? I think that is an appropriate conclusion to make. The government will always play the lead role, but it is important to highlight the importance of civil society and journalists in creating awareness about various programs at the local level such as the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/missing-the-plot-in-nepals-job-scheme/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Prime Minister’s Employment Scheme</a>, which goes a long way in rejuvenating elected representatives in villages and towns.

original

674x448

610x380

500x500

400x266

400x240

400x203

301x200

1250x600

1084x550

The real cost of Nepal’s second wave

With Saturday's deadline on Malaysia’s announcement of new criteria for selecting private recruiting agencies for migrant workers having lapsed, Nepal and Bangladesh have rejected the conditions.
The Malaysian move three weeks ago came in the aftermath of deadly GenZ riots in September, when Nepal’s interim government does not have designated heads in the Foreign Ministry and the Labour Ministry.
Interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki instructed the Labour Ministry to examine the implications of the standards and recommend appropriate steps to address them, but it has said it cannot send Nepali workers to Malaysia based on those criteria.
“In line with Nepal’s foreign employment policy and regulations, we are currently unable to accept or implement the proposed criteria,” says Pitambar Ghimire, spokesperson at the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security in Kathmandu.
In response to the government’s request for their opinion on the Malaysian stipulation, the Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA) has also flatly rejected the criteria, saying it could create a harmful syndicate and restrict fair competition, violate Nepal’s Constitution and laws, and increase recruitment fees that workers must pay.
On 25 October, the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent letters to the governments of Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma, Pakistan and India with 10 criteria meant to ‘rationalise the number of licensed private recruitment agencies permitted to facilitate recruitment and placement of workers to Malaysia’.
The proposed criteria include: at least five years of operating experience, deployment of 3,000 workers in the past three years of operation, experience sending workers to at least three countries, valid licenses and good conduct certificates, five employer testimonials, operating their own training and accommodation centres, and even a requirement for the staffing agency to have a 10,000 sq m office maintained for three years.
“We have communicated our views to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and have proposed discussing various labour related matters with our Malaysian counterparts diplomatically through bilateral dialogue and negotiations including renewal of the Nepal-Malaysia labour agreement,” Pitamber Ghimire said.
NAFEA has urged the government to prevent this measure from moving forward using diplomatic channels, and has held &nbsp;several gatherings and press conferences opposing the proposal since the Malaysian letter was received three weeks ago.
“We have taken commitment letters from members that they will not be engaged in activities related to the syndicate,” said Sujit Shrestha of NAFEA. “And if they break the commitment, they will face consequences including the revocation of their NAFEA membership. These letters also send a strong message to the government that this is irrevocably and collectively rejected by the industry.”
Bangladesh has also not accepted the proposal despite the 15 November deadline to send a list of recruiters that meet the criteria. That in itself would have been an impossible task to complete to begin with even if the government had accepted the proposal.&nbsp;
According to media reports, Bangladesh has sent a letter to the Malaysian government requesting that three of the proposed criteria be relaxed. This includes flexibility regarding the requirements for a 10,000 sq ft office, a dedicated training center, and the condition of having deployed 3,000 workers in the last five years. Despite the official request to Malaysian authorities, the Bangladeshi Government has also been collecting applications from recruiters who meet Malaysia’s proposed criteria, raising confusions about the contradictory stance.&nbsp;
Just like NAFEA, the recruitment association in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) has also outright rejected the proposal including in a letter to the Bangladeshi government, calling the criteria ‘unprecedented and exclusionary, unreasonable, discriminatory and syndicate-driven &nbsp;that would effectively disqualify 99% of legitimate agencies from participation’.&nbsp;
Now that the ball is back in Malaysia’s court and the proposal has not gained much support from two of the major origin countries, it will be interesting to see how they respond.

Nepal, Bangladesh reject Malaysian conditions

The very first frame in The Lama’s Son starts with a vision of Shangrila and the quest of a mythical utopia in the Himalaya when the rest of the world is crumbling away. It is also the personal search of filmmaker Kesang Tseten, but what he finds there are adherents of the Bon Po faith clinging to the last remnants of a culture as it erodes away like the sandstone cliffs of Mustang. “It was while editing the documentary that the story became distilled: how does what we see in the high Himalaya relate to the notion of the Shangrila idyll that especially the West ascribed to them,” asked Tseten during a recent trip to Kathmandu from Berne where he now lives. He continued: “Often and perhaps rightly criticised as an orientalist construct, I wondered if there was any basis at all to the Shangrila notion, and I hung the film on that idea.”&nbsp; Tseten takes us to the vast vistas of Mustang and Dolpo, a landscape of his Tibetan ancestors. This is as much an intimate documentation of families on Nepal’s Himalayan rimland torn between remoteness and globalness as it is about Tseten’s own quest for rootedness.&nbsp; We start from Lubra, a 3,000m village in Mustang the 15 households of which follow the Bon faith. Lama Tsultrim is from a 900-year-old lineage of the animist faith and an exponent of the tradition that is slowly being subsumed first by Buddhism and now modernism. For Tseten, the material is familiar, and not at all exotic as it is for non-Nepalis and indeed for many urban Nepalis. Bon, founded in Tibet, predates Buddhism, but over time, the two religions have come to resemble each other.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251113111156_ecf8148fbaa17b93c81ddfa3ed244bed266e3ef6af0cd5e6ca7b64c181b97d45.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20251113111156_ecf8148fbaa17b93c81ddfa3ed244bed266e3ef6af0cd5e6ca7b64c181b97d45" data-rendition-name="original" width="1920" height="1080" loading="lazy" alt="The periphery cannot hold NT"> </figure>  ‘Both believe in karma, rebirth, and that humans can become enlightened. Nature and spirits are predominant in Bon, and rituals are what keep them benign and alight,’ says Tseten, who rarely narrates in his documentaries. “This is not really a personal film as such, but it has a point of view,” Tseten said. “I decided to have a voice-over on this one and cast my presence in the film.”&nbsp; Lubra's Lama Tsultrim is called upon to perform rituals from Kagbeni and other villages, but there is no one to continue the tradition after him, which is passed from father to son. Lama Tsultrim’s son (hence the title of the film) is a sushi chef in New York and has been gone for 20 years. “The Lama is like a setting sun, his son should come back and take over his father’s responsibilities,” says a local youngster chatting with friends. “If he dies tomorrow, where do we go? We can’t just light butter lamps ourselves to the gods.” It is not only the Lama’s son who has left. The village is nearly empty, and more are planning to leave. One of them is Chimi, a teacher who will be joining her fiancé who is an Uber driver in New York. Her brother is already in Hong Kong. In Lo Manthang a local is back home for a three-month vacation after being in New York for 12 years. A shopkeeper was in Japan for several years, and has returned. “Everything has changed, our language, our tsampa, our religion. We used to work and live together, now the children live separately,” says a middle-aged woman. “There are roads now, and vehicles stop right outside our house, but what’s the point? No one stays home.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251113111156_47b4c4984fa33e42791b16dba1f078aaa7f9d8bd51ca3bfd5415b436c3a0bf2c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20251113111156_47b4c4984fa33e42791b16dba1f078aaa7f9d8bd51ca3bfd5415b436c3a0bf2c" data-rendition-name="original" width="1920" height="1080" loading="lazy" alt="The periphery cannot hold NT"> </figure>  Like most of Tseten’s films, The Lama’s Son is an honest documentation of a place and people whose lifestyle, culture and heritage cling precariously to the past. In Dri village we come across local women filling their buckets with water. Tseten asks them why the village is so empty: “Where is everyone?” The women reply that they are “here, there and everywhere”. Then it is their turn to ask Tseten about where he lives and what he is doing in their village. Migration is a recurring theme in Tseten’s documentaries from We Corner People, In Search of the Riyal, or Saving Dolma. His previous film Diversity Plaza documented the lives of Nepali and Tibetan emigrants in Jackson Heights in the borough of Queens in New York.&nbsp; Diversity Plaza was shown at DOC NYC in 2023, and The Lama’s Son will be one of only two Asian films shown next week at one of the biggest documentary film festivals in the world.&nbsp; “The Lama’s Son is not loud, not attention grabbing but intimate, so I was surprised they chose a quiet film for a big, flashy event,” Tseten told us. In Lama’s Son, we also see how climate breakdown is impacting Nepal’s trans-Himalayan regions. Lama Tsultrim shows us the aftermath of a recent glacial flood that swept away houses and fields. The debris-covered farms are as hard as cement.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251113111156_c82126a3c2dc4577b99beb9bef20aafa16f532a3f41e59caea17c93914c59fff.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20251113111156_c82126a3c2dc4577b99beb9bef20aafa16f532a3f41e59caea17c93914c59fff" data-rendition-name="original" width="1920" height="1080" loading="lazy" alt="The periphery cannot hold NT"> </figure>  The nearby village of Dhey at 3,900m is a high and dry cold desert. Farmers get one crop in a year, but the springs have gone dry and there is no snow in winter. So they are relocating to New Dhey, closer to the road. We follow Kesang Tseten to Samling in Dolpo, which at 4,200m is another Bon village. Locals are preparing for the Walchu festival in which Lama Sherrab carries out elaborate rituals to appease spirits that can turn malevolent. But unlike Lama Tsultrim in Lubra, Lama Sherrab has a community of lamas to help him, including two sons, one of whom will eventually take on his role. We move on to the adjacent village of Bicher and listen in as locals talk about how despite being dirt poor, they thrive in scarcity and are resilient. “We wear sheepskin, eat stew and yak meat, and drink wine. But we are very poor, we have nothing. Look at how dirty our clothes are. We may be dirty, but we have few illnesses,” says one. But even here in Upper Dolpo, a week’s walk from the nearest road, things are changing. There are mobile phones, readymade clothes and instant noodles.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251113111156_d1472165cfa9ffa6edbf72de59167e8cbddcc2bf4a7928f7830e099966259a78.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20251113111156_d1472165cfa9ffa6edbf72de59167e8cbddcc2bf4a7928f7830e099966259a78" data-rendition-name="original" width="1920" height="1080" loading="lazy" alt="The periphery cannot hold NT"> </figure>  At the Walchu ritual, Tseten watches men and women with hand-woven blankets and down jackets sing and dance after the main ceremony. He narrates: “Bon is sustained by a way of life that fosters a fine but fragile balance between nature and people, where humans come before gods. This is what lies at the heart of Shangrila if there is such a thing.” The film then takes us half-way around the world to a Bon centre in New York, but (spoiler alert) the eponymous Lama’s son never appears. He did not want to be filmed, but it makes for a more powerful portrayal of the life of emigrants forever trapped between two worlds. “Bon villages may be in danger, but the Bon has spread widely across the world,” narrates Tseten, a director who likes to call his storytelling ethnographic, and avoids coming to an apt conclusion. Lama Sherrab’s words after the Walchu ritual is a perfect segue:&nbsp; “Whether you say om mani padme hum (in Buddhism) or matri mi yu (in Bon) they are the same. When you go up, it’s the same heavenly realm. If you go down, it’s still the lord of death who awaits. There isn’t a separate heaven and hell for Buddhists and Bon, it has to be the same for both.” &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025111312110_82817ef48840bb6baa1732d5b0b90c90ead2f9bd9eb0c289940fa61d8058de8d.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="2025111312110_82817ef48840bb6baa1732d5b0b90c90ead2f9bd9eb0c289940fa61d8058de8d" data-rendition-name="original" width="7087" height="10004" loading="lazy" alt="The Lama's Son NT"> </figure>  The Lama’s Son by Kesang Tseten, 2025 Shunyata Films To be screened at DOC NYC 16 November at 2:05PM local time, Online: 17-30 November Details <a href="https://www.docnyc.net/film/the-lamas-son/">here</a>.

The periphery cannot hold

Nepal’s September protests and regime change created two major unexpected costs that Prime Minister Sushila Karki’s interim government is scrambling to deal with: reconstruction of destroyed government buildings, and holding elections on 5 March.
The buck stops at the desk of economist and former bureaucrat Minister of Finance Rameshore Khanal about where and how to spend limited resources.
“Rameshore-ji is a fresh face and the right person for the role. He is capable and interested, and he knows the system,” says Kalpana Khanal of the Policy Research Institute (PRI).
But Minister Khanal has to grapple not just with the immediate budgeting needs for elections and reconstruction, but also initiate longer term measures to restore investor confidence badly dented by arson and vandalism of 9 September, and mend the economy.
Immediately after taking office, he had set up a three-member task force to cut programs and free up budget to meet immediate expenses.
“We have to hold elections and we have to reconstruct. Both need money, and they are equal priorities for us,” said Ministry of Finance spokesperson Tanka Prasad Pandey. “It is important to find these funds internally, and not look to aid from abroad.”
But Minister Khanal flew into heavy flak last week for his decision to restore investor confidence by giving a strategic capital gains tax break to Nepal’s only foreign private equity fund.
The Mauritius-based Dolma Impact Fund has invested venture capital into Nepal’s hydropower, construction and biotech sectors as well as solar farms and hospitals. It said in a statement that its capital gains are only taxable in Mauritius as per its double-taxation avoidance agreement with Nepal, which predates and overrides the Income Tax Act of 2002 subsequent to the Treaty Act 1990.
“When you have investors from all over the world, you have to choose a domicile and Mauritius is probably the most popular for development finance institutions due to strong governance, AML, and treaties with developing countries like Nepal,” Tim Dolma Investment told Nepali Times on the phone from London.
He added: “Last June we applied for the government to uphold its treaty with Mauritius which under all country laws including Nepal treaty act supersedes any disagreement with domestic laws. But there were delays. It was when the new government decided to uphold the treaty that the whole hoo-hah started.”
Leaks to the media possibly by bureaucrats fearful of being hauled over the coals by the CIAA has set financial circles abuzz for the past week. The Internal Revenue Office refused to grant the exemption, citing the 2002 Act.
Prime Minister Sushila Karki asked Chief Secretary Eaknarayan Aryal for clarification, and learnt that the Cabinet’s decision was not official since it was not recorded in the minutes.
“We were raising a fund that could have brought $1 billion in for energy and we had to stop it due to the reputational damage to Nepal by not upholding an international treaty,” said Gocher.
Gocher added: “Under Nepal’s Treaty Act, if there is ever disagreement between an international treaty and domestic law, then international treaty takes precedence so it is crystal clear and the way international treaties are dealt with all over the world.”
Some experts worry that gifting the fund such perks can set a dangerous precedent and a loss in tax revenue. Professor and economist Pushkar Bajracharya says: “The most important thing is to have a consistent policy about tax cuts and not do it piece-by-piece. Besides, the evidence just isn’t strong that tax cuts lead to higher investment, or more jobs.”
Others hark back to the capital gains dispute of the sale of Ncell ownership, which went to the Supreme Court and all the way to the international tribunal in The Hague.
Khanal has said privately that he is responding to the damage to Nepal’s investment climate from the dramatic visuals beamed worldwide of an international hotel chain and government buildings set ablaze in September. Western embassies are also said to be lobbying to allow Dolma tax exemption and smooth profit repatriation.
There are tradeoffs. Private equity funds like Dolma could funnel foreign funds more efficiently towards successful Nepali companies than the government, which is slowed down by many layers of bureaucracy. The downstream multiplier effect of such investments would outweigh taxes to the government since much of it is misused and wasted.
For example, the government is not taxing income in FY 25/26 generated by the US-funded $697 million Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) projects to build transmission lines and upgrade highways.
Strategic tax exemptions do provide incentives to investors, to make sure these projects are carried out effectively, which in turn helps Nepal’s development which has been affected by corruption and mismanagement.
The main demand of the GenZ protests that led to the downfall of the government coalition two months ago was to control corruption and make government more efficient so there is investment and job creation. The interim government seems to be responding to that sentiment.
The Dolma issue has distracted from the larger and longer-term need to reform the country’s financial systems and streamline public expenditure. How to reduce corruption and spur development is going to be the main agenda for elections, and the criteria by which voters will select candidates and parties.
TASKED FORCE
Shortly after Rameshore Khanal was appointed he set up a three member task force made up of the heads of Budget and Program, Foreign Aid, and Revenue Management Divisions. The team sent through the budget culling items DOGE-style — projects deemed ‘inadequately prepared,’ ‘fragmented,’ or ‘included through political pressure.’
Khanal hoped to save up to Rs100 billion by cutting all projects less than Rs30 million. However, such a slash and burn method would hurt rural and remote area projects for health and education more, and much bigger corruption-ridden infrastructure projects would be unscathed.&nbsp;
Says Bajracharya, “There are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of low-return programs in the budget that are there because of political or personal influence. But the criteria for cutting them needs to be properly defined. Doing it arbitrarily is unacceptable.”&nbsp;
Kalpana Khanal of the Policy Research Institute was involved in the taskforce, and explains: “The decision to mobilise internal funds is a pragmatic move to fund elections and reconstruction.”
However, she also singles out the massively-funded Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport as being particularly problematic: “Time and cost overruns are historically the norm, and many are ‘vote bank’ projects that are politically motivated rather than done for return on investment.”
For example, politicians use their influence to build roads to their home districts to secure popularity even if the funds would have been better spent elsewhere.
“Another problem is the amount of funds that are transferred randomly for things that outside the budget,” continues Khanal.
Bajracharya adds, “While reconstruction and elections are big financial commitments, Nepal could easily find the funds. Cancelling low impact programs is a good move by the ministry of finance, and another option could have been to raise customs or taxes by a few percent. The main problem is that a huge amount of funds are lost to corruption.”
Kalpana Khanal and Dilli Raj Khanal co-authored a technical report last year titled Improving Public Expenditure System in Nepal: Critical Areas of Reform which did a forensic examination of such wasteful projects.
The conclusion: recommendation to have stricter accountability measures in place to check the actual use of funds and merit-based appointments in the National Planning Commission, Ministry of Finance, and the CIAA.
The technocrats in Prime Minister Karki’s cabinet resonate with the latter point. Nepal is so entrenched in the ‘afno manche’ culture of nepotism and connections that it has become the norm.
The report also refers to the well-known off-budget ‘re-allocations’ of big outlays during the seventh and first months of the fiscal year that undermine in-built check and balance. Almost a quarter of the budget is spent in the last month, which results in low quality and low impact work.
The authors call for reward and punishment systems to prevent these practices. The CIAA could also be supercharged to build transparency into the digital Line Ministry Budget Information System, instead of being an agency for political vendetta.

Nepal needs to use its money better

At the opening plenary of COP30, which stands for the convolutedly named 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in Belém on Tuesday, Nepal brought up the threats to the Himalayan watershed. Nepal’s delegate Rajendra Prasad Mishra, Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also spoke on behalf of Bhutan and Bangladesh after the three countries formally called for tripling grant-based adaptation financing from 2015 levels to at least $120 billion per year by 2030, and to ensure a more simplified, scaled-up access to finance their National Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts. “Bhutan has already graduated from Least Developed Country (LDC) status, while Bangladesh and Nepal are in the process of graduation,” said Mishra. “Graduation reflects development progress, but does not reduce our climate vulnerability nor the scale of support required to safeguard development gains.” The Loss &amp; Damage Fund is also finally coming into effect, so countries can now apply for $5-20 million to make up for damage from climate impact. But claiming damage and linking disasters to climate breakdown has not been an easy process. “When a 200MW hydropower plant is destroyed by a glacial flood, it is a big loss for Nepal’s GDP. Every megawatt costs us $20 million to build,” says energy entrepreneur Kushal Gurung. “Our lobbying should be top-notch, and hydropower can make a good case for us.” Belém marks the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement that brought the world together to pledge to keep global average temperature to ‘well below’ 2°C above pre-industrial levels and limit it to 1.5°C.&nbsp; COP has also returned to Brazil after 30 years of the Rio Conference in 1995. Since then there have been numerous summits, which have been criticised for being just hot air and being hosted by fossil-fuel exporting countries like UAE and Uzbekistan. Belém was selected because it is a gateway to the Amazon, but Brazil has now also become a major oil producer after new offshore finds. A recent report shows that compared to 2019, the world is set to reduce its emissions by 12% in 2035 if countries are to implement their Nationally Determined Contributions even though the figure needs to go up to 40% to meet temperature targets. There has been progress. Before the Paris Agreement the world was on a path for 4°C increase during this century, and this has now come down to 2.5°C because of the clean energy transition. But a lot more needs to be done to meet the Paris 1.5°C target. “This progress is proof that multilateralism is working, it is delivering,” Manjeet Dhakal of the Climate Analytics South Asia told us from Belém. “Having said that, it is simply not enough. Emissions need to go down much further, and a lot of it is tied to developed countries providing climate finance to do so.” Many developing countries have adopted ‘conditional NDCs’ which means their emission reduction targets cannot be met without international climate finance. In its third NDC, Nepal set a target of a 17.1% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions and 26.8% by 2035. But achieving that has a price tag of &nbsp;$73.74 billion, with much of it from international climate finance. UNDERFINANCED However, the climate for climate finance is getting worse. The United States has exited from the Paris Agreement for the second time under President Trump, and there are cutbacks in foreign aid by European funders. Even so, the EU has committed to reducing its emissions by 90% in the next 15 years, 85% of which will be domestic emission cuts. The silver lining in all this is that the leadership in climate action is increasingly being taken by Nepal’s neighbours China and India with both investing heavily in renewable energy. China is the world leader in solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles, and Nepal has already taken strategic advantage of this.&nbsp; With expensive hydropower plants increasingly at risk from glacial lake outburst floods, experts say Nepal must diversify its energy mix and invest in solar power which has 10 times more potential than hydropower at 432 gigawatts with over 300 days of sunshine a year. Solar farms can also power pump storage, which are cheaper and quicker to build.&nbsp; China has drastically reduced the cost of photovoltaic cells, making such schemes more feasible. Nepal just needs to ease up its restrictive domestic energy policies, boost investment and resist geopolitical pressure on electricity generation. “First, we need to increase the cap on solar energy from 10% to 30%, and next, the bidding process should be made easier, or just have the first past the post system like that for hydropower,” says Kushal Gurung. The disadvantage of solar power is that it generates only daytime energy, but this can be solved with grid-scale battery storage or pump storage. But first, the government needs to fix the rate for solar purchase so that entrepreneurs are incentivised. “This is not happening because our government officials and engineers are comfortable dealing with hydropower, and are not just updated about the latest advances,” says Gurung. “As a result, we have no clear policies when it comes to solar.” Hydropower has become one of the biggest industries in Nepal with an installed capacity of over 3,400MW and the government’s target is to produce 28,500MW in the next ten years. But the recent climate disasters have made it clear that relying only on hydropower alone is too risky. The Nepal-Tibet glacial flood in July destroyed and damaged four hydropower plants and substations along the Bhote Kosi, and last September’s floods slashed the country’s total generation by half. Nepal now needs to build on the widespread adoption of battery-powered vehicles by extending it to electric public transport and for household appliances like stoves, rice cookers and refrigerators. Not only would this reduce Nepal’s per capita carbon footprint, but it would also reduce the country’s annual Rs300 billion petroleum import bill. At global platforms like UNFCCC, it is easy even for individual developed countries to get lost without an alliance. Now that Nepal is graduating from LDC status, it needs to have strong partners with a common goal to move forward in international negotiations. Says Kushal Gurung: “We won’t have privilege that came with LDC status anymore, which means climate finance will be even more limited. But there are a few things we can urgently do on our own like regulating the carbon credit market.”&nbsp; 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/20251118101116_30c3782f9c09219bf1c249b51483a3cfb7a53a06d117d2aebd23ca7080d12758.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20251118101116_30c3782f9c09219bf1c249b51483a3cfb7a53a06d117d2aebd23ca7080d12758" data-rendition-name="original" width="680" height="103" loading="lazy" alt="Nepali Times SDG"> </figure>

milk-production

The real cost of Nepal’s second wave

Nepal, Bangladesh reject Malaysian conditions

The periphery cannot hold

Nepal needs to use its money better

Global warning bell in Belém