Nearly 24,000 people died on Nepal’s roads in the last 10 years. In comparison, 17,000 people were killed in the 10 years of the Maoist armed conflict. Covid killed about 12,000 Nepalis.
Nepal’s highways are deadlier than war or pestilence.&nbsp;
Numbers are numbing. But although this epidemic of fatalities is now one of the biggest causes of death nationwide, it gets scant attention from governments, the public and media.
Nepalis have come to accept death on roads as a part of life. All three levels of government shirk from responsibility, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/highway-accidents-are-no-accident-in-nepal">calling them ‘accidents’</a>. And road mortality has become so commonplace that the mainstream press buries the news.The relentless slaughter on our roads is the result of political disinterest, governance malfunction, and public apathy. Nepalis are not dying on roads, they are being killed.
“Road traffic accidents are getting more frequent and there is a direct correlation with the failure of national governance,” says transport expert Chandra B Shrestha. “Local and provincial governments have neither the capacity, nor clarity of their roles. Budgets are poured into building substandard roads.”
Shrestha analysed the tragedy this month on the Chandragiri road that killed a doctor, his parents and two children. Only his wife, a physician, survived because she got out of the car to put a rock behind the wheel of their hatchback that stalled on a steep section.
He says the incline was too steep, the rough surface did not allow it to gather enough speed for the gradient, and the thick dust did not provide adequate traction for the tyres.
Most of the euphemistically called ‘roads’ in Nepal are similar <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/dying-to-travel">death traps</a>. They are not wide enough, do not have the required radius on excessively steep curves, no attention is paid to drainage, and houses are allowed to be built without the required set-back.
“There is no design or planning to begin with, there is a total absence of any engineering,” says Shrestha. “This should be criminal. These are not accidents, but almost deliberate deaths.”&nbsp;
And like all crimes, the perpetrators can be tracked by following the money. Inevitably, it leads to corruption linked to infrastructure budgets to build roads regardless of priority or quality for kickbacks or votes. And when a bus falls off a road, there is <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/traffic-accidents-continue-to-increase-worryingly-in-Nepal,2799">no political will </a>to investigate the root cause in the political economy and lack of accountability.&nbsp;
Apart from faulty highway engineering and absence of safety features, the other factors in <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/Nation-road-kill,621">road fatalities</a> include driver negligence, carelessness, over-speeding, overloading, and lack of maintenance of vehicles.&nbsp;
Two-wheelers, which used to be confined to cities, have now added a new challenge to highway safety. Motorcycles are involved in 68% of road traffic accidents in Nepal.
“Young people over-speeding in their heavy 600cc bikes are a danger to themselves and others. Moreover, we have found a notable increase in youths driving under substance abuse,” says DIG of Police Bhim Prasad Dhakal, explaining that strict monitoring of drinking and driving has led to an increase in drug use.
Highway deaths make news, but injuries are a major cause of physical disability in Nepal. The numbers are shocking: just last year more than 30,000 people were injured in road crashes. Nearly 6,000 of them had severe spinal or brain trauma needing complicated surgery, rehabilitation and lifelong care.
As Nepal’s road network expands, and with inadequate attention to highway safety as well as lack of timely treatment of trauma victims and rehabilitation, it will be the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/editorial/cartel-carnage-highway,3233">poorest Nepalis who will pay the price</a>. And they are the section of society already marginalised and excluded by governments, the public and the media.
“Road crashes perpetuate the vicious cycle of poverty,” says Raju Dhakal of the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre in Sanga. “From expensive medical bills to rehabilitation to lost years of productivity, it represents a huge loss for the nation. Our health system needs to be revamped, and investment is needed for preventive, curative, palliative and rehabilitative care.”
<h2>The main cause of highway deaths: corruption</h2>
The epidemic of fatalities and injuries on Nepal’s highways are no accident, they are a criminal offence
<div class="embed-block"><iframe title="Road fatalities and injuries between July 2018-July 2023" aria-label="Map" id="datawrapper-chart-S3f2N" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/S3f2N/1/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border: none;" width="600" height="433" data-external="1"></iframe></div>
It is ironic that for something that is considered a vote bank, there is no accountability when it comes to the maintenance of roads to ensure their safety. All 77 districts in Nepal are now connected to the road network but bad roads are a given in this country.&nbsp;
Under federalism, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/federal-express">true devolution of power is yet to be exercised</a> but heavy earth-movers are clawing through the mountains in a misguided notion of ‘development’. A fatalistic society accepts road ‘accidents’ as a price to be paid.&nbsp;
This is one case where corruption kills, yet rarely is power held to account, or wrongdoing punished.&nbsp;
“Road maintenance is not sexy or attractive enough, there is no political or monetary incentive, and there is no budget allocated either for road maintenance,” says transport expert Chandra B Shrestha.
Shrestha was a district transport planning adviser in the 1990s, and says Nepal expanded its road network but left sustainability out of the equation. “Asset maintenance is not even an afterthought,” he says. “What this means is that our roads are non-functional and not cost-effective, among other things.”
Every 14 deaths per 100,000 are caused by road fatalities, which is now the <a href="https://www.nepjol.info/index.php/HPROSPECT/article/view/5666/4664">third biggest cause of death in the 15-29 age group</a>. Three times more men die on the roads than women.
Last year alone, there were nearly 2,500 fatalities on the country’s highways and streets. Yet, the 79 who died in two tragic aviation mishaps in 2023 got vastly more attention in the public sphere.&nbsp;
Every year in Nepal, highways take more lives than floods, landslides, lightning strikes and other disasters put together. An average of 7 people die every day on the roads, and 19 were killed in three separate bus and car crashes in a 24-hour period last week.
As per the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, Nepal was committed to halving road traffic deaths and injuries by 2020 and providing safe, affordable, accessible, and sustainable transport systems by 2030. We missed the first target. The second is not likely to be met.
Twelve people lost their lives when an over-speeding bus plunged into the Rapti River in Dang in the evening of 12 January. The very next day, a jeep travelling to Dhorpatan in Baglung overturned and killed two. This was followed by the private car that fell 500m from the road on Chandragiri, killing five passengers including two children.&nbsp;
And this is not even the peak season for highway fatalities, which <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/deadly-dasain-on-nepal-s-highways">sees a spike during the Dasain-Tihar festival </a>or during the monsoon. In the last 10 years, there have been a total of 137,395 highway and road crashes in Nepal. A majority of these took place in Kathmandu, and in the Tarai where straighter stretches of road tend to lead to overspeeding. Gandaki and Kosi Provinces are next because of their wider network of mountain roads. &nbsp;
Nepal’s topography and weather are contributory factors, making roads difficult to build and maintain. In addition to being substandard, switchbacks wrap around mountain or roads that follow narrow gorges, traverse treacherous cliffs. During the monsoon, entire sections of arterial highways such as Mugling-Narayanghat are in a permanent state of disrepair.
<div class="embed-block"><div><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 400px; position: relative;"><iframe src="//cdn.iframe.ly/api/iframe?app=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.datawrapper.de%2F_%2FJ8GCJ%2F&key=87ca3314a9fa775b5c3a7726100694b0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen></iframe></div></div></div>
The fact that vehicles are regularly falling down mountains on the same section of highways over and over means <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-other-global-pandemic-road-fatalities">lessons are never learnt</a>, no one is accountable. We do not take corrective actions when there are cost-effective solutions readily available.
“Driver carelessness on poorly built and maintained roads is the biggest cause of accidents. So our licensing system must be improved to allow only the qualified people to drive, even then we have to differentiate between heavy and light vehicle licensing,” says DIG Bhim Prasad Dhakal.
He adds: “Equally important are regular tests of public vehicles, better signage, as well as monitoring and patrolling where even the traffic police have areas to improve on.”&nbsp;
Traffic police has introduced time card for long-distance drivers and vehicle owners need to employ two drivers on such routes. New roads like the Midhill Highway are better engineered, have improved signage and guardrails.
Still, because roads with poor safety features are being built all over Nepal, the country needs trauma centres along every stretch of highway and ambulances with emergency equipment pre-positioned at health posts. The government has mandated one trauma centre in each province, and even though more are required even that target has not been met.
“Management of crash sites is of utmost importance, but first responders are often untrained locals who add to the severity of the injuries or even cause the wounded to die during rescue due to mishandling,” says Raju Dhakal of the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre (SIRC) in Sanga.&nbsp;
Trained trauma teams are often too late to arrive, and most victims and their families cannot afford long-term rehabilitation.
A four-month pregnant 20-year-old woman sustained brain injury after a motorbike hit her on the Sindhuli Highway last year. She lost her baby, and her husband had to quit his job to look after her 24/7 after being trained at the Sanga centre.
Many patients that receive rehabilitation therapy at SIRC after highway mishaps are paralysed and require a caretaker round-the-clock. If the person is the sole support, their families become destitute as well. Many children drop out of school, and end up in the streets.&nbsp;
The public must refuse to accept Nepal’s <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/maps-showing-increase-in-road-accident-fatality-rates#google_vignette">poor road safety record</a>. There should be rallies and sit-in’s outside government offices just like there are for other crimes to push the government to take this life-or-death issue more seriously.&nbsp;
Given that road accidents are the biggest killers of children in the 9-15 age group, traffic rules and discipline should be taught in school. Pillion riders should refuse to get on two-wheelers if there is no helmet available for them, cars and bikes should be restricted on pedestrian streets.
Some surveys have also found that using local vehicles reduces accidents. But more often than not, the older less conditioned buses and jeeps operate on rural roads.
The use of CCTVs on highways and major junctions as well as dashcams on public vehicles can help in post-accident investigation and deter reckless driving in the very first place.
“Most of all, it is the government that has the biggest responsibility here,” says Raju Dhakal of the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre in Sanga. “It must seriously revamp everything from licensing, making vehicle tests mandatory, stricter traffic patrolling and actually holding culprits accountable.”
He adds: “The fact that most of the cost for treatment and rehabilitation of road traffic accidents is borne out of pocket by patients’ families has left the government off the hook. The public should refuse to accept this anymore.” &nbsp;

Sonia Awale

original

674x448

610x380

500x500

400x266

400x240

400x203

301x200

1250x600

1084x550

ROADKILL

Samsung Nepal has opened pre-orders for the Galaxy A57 5G and A37 5G. Both phones run Samsung’s One UI 8.5, featuring AI capabilities like voice transcription, Circle to Search, and photo editing. They feature a 50MP triple-camera system, a Super AMOLED display, and six years of OS and security updates.

Galaxy A series

The war in West Asia has exposed the fragility of the economic architecture Nepal has built on over two generations. If the conflict continues, growth across developing Asia will slow and prices will rise. For Nepal, this will be felt through higher living costs, weaker economic activity, and growing uncertainty for the millions of families who depend on remittances.&nbsp; Nepal now needs to structurally transform from exporting labour to investing in domestic job creation. &nbsp; The country's current path toward a knowledge economy has a blind spot. A <a href="https://iids.org.np/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/unleashing.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> by the Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS) in Kathmandu shows that IT export companies alone generated 7,228 jobs and income for 66,509 freelancers.&nbsp; We are building digital labour export, not an economy that accumulates institutional knowledge. The Nepali Upwork developer and a migrant construction worker in the Gulf are engaged in the same economic activity, but with different tools. Nepal’s reliance on a <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS?locations=NP" target="_blank">remittance-driven economy,</a> means the country has failed to create enough <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/nepal/publication/unlocking-nepal-s-growth-potential" target="_blank">quality jobs</a> at home. For millions of young people, leaving the country is not a choice but a necessity to survive and support families back home. <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/nepal/publication/unlocking-nepal-s-growth-potential" target="_blank">Remittances</a> have no doubt helped reduce poverty. Thirty years ago, 55% of Nepal’s population lived on less than $2.15 a day, now it is 20% after the absolute poverty line was revised upwards. This progress has come at a cost — &nbsp;an economy that depends more on exporting workers than creating opportunities at home. This development reflects a deeper political failure to create meaningful jobs within the country. Since the democratic transition in 1991, Nepal’s leadership has largely recycled the same faces, with limited progress on job creation or industrial growth.&nbsp; Nepal cannot build a <a href="https://nipore.org/accelerating-nepals-startups/" target="_blank">knowledge economy</a> while its most ambitious people are outbound to Doha and Tokyo. We are also not just losing ‘labour’. We are losing the entrepreneurial risk tolerance of our youth.&nbsp; If the most ambitious 25-year-olds are abroad, who is left to support innovation and entrepreneurship? The same people who are working tirelessly abroad, are our biggest asset for development. Their work ethic and the know-how inurban renewal could well fit into the new RSP government’s mandate of 7% annual growth.&nbsp; The <a href="https://english.biznessnews.com/posts/-nepal%E2%80%99s-it-exports-cross-1-billion-" target="_blank">$1B milestone</a> of IT exports is a celebratory moment for Nepal. However, that cannot lead to a pathway to a $100 billion economy without innovation ecosystems that go beyond individual labour export. Companies like SecurityPal and industry associations such as NASIT have made significant efforts in building such an environment, recently championed by private sector leaders as a &nbsp;<a href="https://www.securitypalhq.com/blog/silicon-peaks" target="_blank">Silicon Peaks</a> model that emphasises a home growth tech cluster. The need to accelerate this transition is even more urgent with the escalating conflict in West Asia. &nbsp;The recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) <a href="https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/Nepal%20LDC%20Graduation%20Employment%20Impacts%20Report.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> shows that LDC graduation is expected to adversely impact manufacturing with losses of $1 billion by 2030.&nbsp; If manufacturing takes such a large hit from losing trade preferences, then Nepal’s services and IT sectors need to structurally transform and shift from exporting individual talent to building firms. &nbsp; A generation’s frustration has finally forced a shift in Nepal’s political structure, handing the new government a clear mandate to fix failures. But the question still persists: what prevents Nepal from achieving sustained, productivity-driven growth? &nbsp;&nbsp; RSP is in the right place at the right time to put Nepal's economy on a firm footing. At the heart of Nepal’s economic underperformance lies a major development binding constraint: low returns to investment on projects.&nbsp; The government invests like a high-growth economy, with gross capital formation at around <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.GDI.FTOT.ZS?locations=NP" target="_blank">25–30 percent of GDP</a>. Yet economic growth remains modest. The problem is not how much the country invests, but how little it gets in return. One way to see this is by looking at how much investment is required to generate growth.&nbsp; Nepal needs large amounts of capital to produce relatively small gains in output (graph, below). For instance, in 2024, the ICOR was 8.29, this suggests that Nepal had to invest more than 8 units of capital to produce a one unit of additional economic output.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260406040412_605dc527641d2ff2dc5723ed8bbec946898331d5538a55b9941e32a0725bf811.jpg" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="20260406040412_605dc527641d2ff2dc5723ed8bbec946898331d5538a55b9941e32a0725bf811" data-rendition-name="original" width="1827" height="925" loading="lazy" alt="Economy graph"> <figcaption>Source: Author's calculation based on a Growth Diagnostic simulation</figcaption> </figure>  This reflects a deeper issue in how investment is allocated and executed. Capital is often locked in low-productivity sectors or diluted by delays, inefficiencies, and policy uncertainty.&nbsp; As a result, even high levels of investment fail to translate into sustained growth. Until investment shifts toward productive, firm-building activities, higher spending alone will not deliver results. &nbsp; To reverse this, the government must focus on raising the returns to investment by enabling firms to grow and compete. This requires a shift from managing scarcity to creating an environment where capital can generate consistent and predictable returns. A central priority should be given to attracting and retaining both domestic and foreign private investment. Investors do not just respond to direct incentives, but also to policy stability in the country. Nepal’s economy cannot sustain high growth if its human capital continues to leave the country.&nbsp; The goal should not simply be to create jobs, but to build companies that scale, innovate, and compete beyond Nepal. This requires supporting sectors with strong productivity potential and ensuring that firms can expand without being constrained by infrastructure gaps or regulatory friction. Finally, the state must improve the quality of its own investment. Public spending should focus on lowering the cost of doing business through reliable electricity, efficient logistics, and digital infrastructure.&nbsp; The GenZ movement took two days to bring change. The economic transformation of Nepal might take a generation. The RSP can accelerate this transition, but only if it focuses on building a better investment climate for business and not just feeding the global labour pool. Kailash Raj Pandey is an MPA/ID and MBA candidate at Harvard Kennedy School and MIT Sloan School of Management and a fellow at MIT Kuo Sharper Center for Innovation and Prosperity.&nbsp; Siddhartha Raymajhí is a policy researcher based in Kathmandu.

Creating a firm future for Nepal

Know your Ministers

Prime Minister Balendra Shah on Wednesday broke tradition and met with 17 foreign envoys collectively, a move that was a notable departure from how his predecessors operated.&nbsp;
Shah had already set himself apart by talking less, listening more, and delegating to trusted friends. But by meeting all ambassadors at one go in the presence of the Foreign Ministry, he signalled a paradigm shift in how he wants Nepal to be seen: no longer just balancing India and China, but as a country confident about its <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/guest-editorial/tripolar-contestation-over-nepal">strategic importance and place in the world</a>.
In just two weeks, the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/rsp-dos-and-don-ts">RSP has sprung into action </a>on multiple fronts to implement its ambitious 100-point, 100-days action plan. It has taken short-term measures to mitigate the impact of the Gulf war, as well as medium- and long- term measures to streamline the bureaucracy. A few high-profile figures have been made examples of to drive the message home.
Earlier this week, the government recalled six politically appointed ambassadors, the most notable being long-serving Shankar Sharma from New Delhi. The Kathmandu District Court issued arrest warrants against former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his former foreign minister wife Arzu Rana on charges of money laundering and corruption.
Each ministry has been trying to clean up the accumulated rot from the past three decades: regulatory overhaul of microfinance, education, health and service delivery.&nbsp;
These actions widely disseminated campaign-style on YouTube and TikTok have made most Nepalis hopeful that the party they installed in power means business.
<div class="embed-block"><iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=314&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Freel%2F1279862820757799%2F&show_text=false&width=560&t=0" width="560" height="314" style="border:none;overflow:hidden" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowFullScreen="true"></iframe></div>
BACKLASH
But such attempts to overhaul a long-entrenched political culture were bound to face backlash. In their impatience and enthusiasm to get things done, some of Prime Minister Shah’s ministers have over-reached.
It was common knowledge that government-paid advertising in the mainstream press was kickback-driven, but the PMO’s directive that official notices be published or broadcast only on state-run media has been denounced — especially as the media industry struggles to stay afloat.
More serious are some recent appointments by ministers of relatives and figures closely associated with the RSP to key positions. This has rankled because this party built its political plank on ending nepotism and graft.&nbsp;
News that Home Minister Sudan Gurung allegedly had not paid rent on leased land, which illegally encroached on the lake in Pokhara did not help. &nbsp;
Prime Minister Shah himself has come under scrutiny for appointing a kitchen cabinet full of male buddies from his time as Kathmandu mayor. To douse criticism he brought in as adviser investigative journalist Deepa Dahal, who has exposed corruption in high places of the previous coalitions.&nbsp;
Shah’s appointment of another political adviser Asim Shah to the head Constitution Amendment Task Force, is also seen as problematic. He is a filmmaker and former lawmaker, but does not have a background in constitutional law.&nbsp;
Even more controversial is the Cabinet’s decision to appoint RSP Chair Rabi Lamichhane’s legal counsel, Narayan Kandel, as Attorney General. Kandel used to be a UK permanent resident, and does not have as much experience practicing law in Nepal.&nbsp;
Kandel’s appointment drew flak and raised eyebrows, and with the pending legal cases against Lamichhane this appointment represents a flagrant conflict of interest.
Health Minister Nisha Mehta was also accused of favouritism after reappointing Junu Shrestha, wife of Labour Minister Dipak Kumar Shah, as member of the Health Insurance Board which had earlier suspended her. The Labour Minister’s rambling rant at the Board’s meeting on Tuesday has not helped the RSP’s image.&nbsp;
(UPDATE: On Thursday, Prime Minister Shah sacked the Labour Minister after the RSP found him in breach of the party's code of conduct and discipline. He served 14 days in the Cabinet, one of the shortest tenures for a minister in Nepal )
It is hard to know what <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/ball-in-balen-s-court">Balendra Shah is thinking</a>, and how Rabi Lamichhane is going to justify some of these moves. After all, making politics, governance, and bureaucracy a meritocracy has been the core tenet of the RSP, and it risks alienating its mainly youth base if these missteps persist.
But at least for now, most RSP supporters seem to be giving the party the benefit of doubt.

nepals-highways

ROADKILL

Galaxy A series

Creating a firm future for Nepal

Know your Ministers

Nepal’s new government springs into action