<img width="640" height="269" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110121152/636ce60d9c7e80680e096746jpeg.jpg" alt=""/>The Supreme Court on Tuesday declared the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority's  (CIAA) use of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/labour-recruiter-netted-in-sting-raid/">sting operations</a> unconstitutional, putting an end to two decades of scare-mongering fueled by personal agenda and impunity.Acting on a petition filed by Advocate Bishnu Prasad Ghimire, the Constitutional Bench of the SC led by Chief Justice Cholendra Shamsher Rana declared the provision for sting operations set out by CIAA Rule 30 (2002) as contrary to the spirit and essence of the Constitution. “The nature of the stipulated provision is found to be encouraging the investigating officer to act in an arbitrary way”, the brief judgment issued today stated. Decried by critics as a tool to further personal interests, Rule 30 gave CIAA operatives the power to procure and set up bribes for stings and exempted them from constitutional law which criminalises the giving of kickbacks.Opportunists then exploited this loophole, conspiring with operatives to set up bribes and implicate low-level employees they had disagreements with.Enforcement of Rule 30 was noticeably higher, and random, over the last few years. Of 206 cases of graft registered in the Special Court by the CIAA last fiscal year, 181 had sting operations, from which 99 involved kickbacks less than Rs 25,000.There were 277 arrests, among whom 69 ranked as non-gazetted officers or lower and 16 were office peons. It is clear that the CIAA is focused merely on the ‘easy work’ of luring low-ranked officers and making arbitrary arrests in an extralegal manner. As the CIAA goes around chasing after small-time offenders and innocents, corruption in the larger scale flourishes. Over the last three years, only four percent of cases registered by the CIAA concerned serious offences, including revenue embezzlement and illegal acquisition of property. “Despite the instructions of the parliamentary committee and the emergence of huge scandals such as Ncell and Wide Body, the CIAA has failed to conduct any meaningful investigation.” says former Chairman of the Special Court Gauri Bahadur Karki. “Sting operations are their way of fudging case numbers to inflate performance.”     <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/ciaa-traps-small-fish-lets-big-ones-go/">A Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) report</a> in July last year detailed instances where sting operations had led to arrests of low-level employees.For example, contractor Sujan Poudel filed a complaint at the CIAA against police deputy superintendent Shyam Kumar Rai, accusing him of soliciting a bribe. The CIAA decided to catch Rai red-handed in a sting operation. Poudel went to Rai’s office and surreptitiously planted Rs140,000 in cash in the police officer’s drawer. Immediately after, officials from the CIAA who were hiding outside barged into the office and arrested Rai.The media ran the news: ‘DSP Rai arrested with Rs140,000 bribe money’. The CIAA took Rai under custody and filed a corruption case at the Special Court. Rai later accused Poudel of framing him because he had taken action against the contractor for illegal sand mining and quarrying. “CIAA can file corruption case if someone is caught taking a bribe,” said constitutional expert Bhimarjun Acharya told CIJ then, “but a constitutionally empowered body’s involvement in using cash to trap someone is not really acceptable matter in any civilised society, and it goes against the rule of law.”Former police chief Hemanta Malla who has worked at the CIAA says the agency’s use of stings goes against the basic principle of ‘secret action’. He admits that sting operations can be used to expose serious crimes like match fixing, human trafficking and drug trafficking, but says the use of sting operations against petty crime is ‘overkill’.“The target of secret action should be to break organised crime networks, but the CIAA’s operation seems just focused on arresting junior-ranking officials. This should be stopped because the sting tool can be misused,” Malla added.

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Sting operation ruled illegal

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110121148/636ce5af9c7e80680e096724jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="448"/><figcaption>DoFE sting team after a successful raid in Dhumbarahi. December 22, 2020.</figcaption></figure>The Nepal government transfers civil servants regularly, sometimes as routine rotation, but also because of unmet vested interests. The heads of the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE),  which is the regulatory arm of the Labor Ministry, have recently seen short tenures. With its inter-governmental aspect, and the interests of migrant workers and private sector, overseas labour demands a steep learning curve. But once heads of the DoFe get a grasp of the issues they are transferred. Momentum is lost. Priorities change. Unfinished businesses remain unfinished. Relationships and trust need to be re-established. Progress is delayed. The Director General (DG) of DoFE, Kumar Dahal (pictured below) was recently transferred and spoke to Upasana Khadka at Nepali Times about his 14-month tenure, the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/labour-recruiter-netted-in-sting-raid/">sting operations</a> of ‘manpower’ agencies last year that he helped organise which led to the suspension of the licenses of four recruiters found illegally interviewing and charging workers exorbitant fees for jobs in the Qatar Police. This suspension was quickly revoked by Labour Minister Gauri Shankar Chaudhary. Excerpts of interview:Nepali Times: Your transfer was a bit abrupt? Kumar Dahal: Look, rotation are part of the bureaucratic process, especially at the senior level. My 14-month tenure is actually considered quite long. The foreign employment sector has many stakeholders with varied interests, which don’t always align. Unwillingness to engage or cooperate in certain activities can make rotations more likely.Having said that, it would be better if people doing good work are allowed to continue for at least two years to achieve tangible results. Change is not easy in a sector where malpractice like overcharging workers or buying visas are entrenched.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110121148/636ce5b39c7e80680e096725jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="639">Earlier they were isolated events, but soon they became habit and now, they have become a<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/why-has-zero-cost-migration-not-happened/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> part of the culture</a>. Our regulatory oversight has been insufficient and the situation has deteriorated over the decades. Even migrants are convinced that paying hefty fees and high interest rates are part of the recruitment culture and they comply, often questioning it only when it is too late. The players are able to make easy money without much effort, time or investment, exploiting the desperation of our youth. Changing this will take time. It depends on bold, visionary leadership, which is lacking.As a regulatory agency DoFe has to adopt restrictive policies, but you don’t want to deprive migrants of lucrative overseas opportunities. How do you balance the two?The category of migrants we are dealing with need help navigating the system. They are vulnerable to cheating, so regulations are needed. We first need to accept that most <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/kleptocrats-of-kathmandu-and-kualalampur/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">problems faced by migrants begin in Nepal</a> and sometimes, even problems abroad are byproducts of activities here. Every time we received a tip-off from migrants regarding possible malpractice, there has always been something illegal going on which made our sting operations successful. Recruiters have to abide by business ethics, but they often don’t, which makes regulation necessary. Ideally, they should be responsible for workers they send abroad, but that often does not happen.The private sector is driving this industry, and our role as regulators would be hands-off and minimal if their work was transparent. But it isn’t. Just a few days ago, our inspection of 45 pre-departure orientation training providers showed that 30 were giving out certificates without training. Then there are other types of problematic migration: via individuals, education consultancies or traffickers, or on wrong visas, such as visit visas.We in government also need to be responsible, which isn’t the case always, either. The question for both the government and the recruiters should be whether the migrant worker is satisfied with the services and protection being afforded. Currently, I am afraid they are not.We can do better with facilitation support. For starters, we can simplify the approval process of job demands in destination countries and explore opportunities in markets like Europe where there is a potential demand for Nepalis. A foreign employment business fund has been set up for welfare tasks, funded by interest from the Rs20 million escrow deposit of each manpower company parked at commercial banks. A guideline is being drawn up jointly by recruiters and the government.What are some of the lessons from the pandemic?First, we need to be more proactive in our decision-making. Even in instances when the governments or employers offered to send migrants desperate to get home at their own expense last year, we did not allow it due to blanket rules about flights.Second, our embassies need to be strengthened significantly to handle grievances better. The staff size at embassies is not proportionate to the numbers of Nepali workers there.Third, our governance system isn’t prepared to handle undocumented workers. The documentation status of migrants does not determine incoming remittances, so we should support all stranded migrants during a crisis.Fourth, recruiters should have been involved more during repatriation.On the bright side, the pandemic forced us to expedite technology adoption. Migrants can now renew labour approvals from anywhere in the world, and we have also started recording data on returnees.Read Also<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepali-workers-overseas-toil-through-the-pandemic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nepali workers overseas toil through the pandemic</a>, Upasana Khadka<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepali-workers-overseas-toil-through-the-pandemic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Crossborder virus and Nepali migrant workers</a>, Upasana KhadkaWhat was your experience at DoFE with the free-visa-free-ticket policy?<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/zero-sum-game-in-zero-cost-migration/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Free-visa-free-ticket</a> is a populist policy implemented without considering the migration ecosystem. It isn’t being implemented and we don’t have the capacity to do so in today’s context. This has also larger implications like the government losing a high amount of tax revenue and workers not having the receipt of actual payment made.Revising the cap on services from Rs 10,000 to first month’s salary as demanded by recruiters is reasonable in cases where employers are not providing service fees--provided the penalty for overcharging workers is increased. This reform will also be meaningless if diplomatic efforts are not ramped up to get governments of destination countries and employers on board. I have heard anecdotes of Nepali recruiters paying Rs250,000 to bag jobs that pay only Rs50,000. Our recruiters do not have direct access to employers but operate through agents abroad. Most employers or foreign agents are also not ethical, so the costs trickle down to workers.We have not been able to get into the crux of the issue and some policies are merely populist. Sting operations are insufficient. The number of recruiting agencies in Nepal at 853 is too high. Incentives to facilitate mergers or regulations to drive out the bad apples are needed so that monitoring is easier. For that we need a strong governance system and bold leadership free of manipulation, political interference and corruption.And the ban on overseas household workers?The domestic work sector is problematic, especially in West Asia. Those in Japan, Cyprus and Turkey are not facing such systemic problems. It is not just Nepal that implements the ban which signals that there are problems in this sector. I get desperate calls from domestic workers in transit in Sri Lanka, Oman, Jordan and Saudi Arabia pleading for rescue support. I am not in favor of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/lift-the-ban-on-female-domestic-workers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">lifting the ban</a> completely but to have approaches specific for each country, especially domestic worker-specific bilateral labour agreements with countries that also have in place strong domestic worker specific regulations. A key criteria is that embassies and families should be able to reach domestic workers when necessary.What are three of your priorities that you hope your successor will continue?The way to minimise corruption is via faceless service so recruiters and bureaucrats do not have to meet in person. We are almost there with the current online system. The remaining kinks need to be immediately ironed out so everything can be done digitally. Eventually, we also need to go to a one-door system, so migrants don’t have to go to different offices for migration-related services.There is a high demand for workers in Europe but we don’t have active diplomatic presence in many European countries and demand attestation, market exploration, worker protection etc become a problem. Otherwise we either lose opportunities, or migrants take circuitous routes with high recruitment costs.Finally, we lack understanding on the skills profile of our youth or a systematic way to monitor labour opportunities abroad. What skills or training do they have, what is needed abroad?Overall, we have a robust foreign employment management architecture with <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/a-few-good-agents/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">dedicated agencies</a> and <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/nepal-plans-to-reintegrate-returning-workers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">policies</a> which is something to be optimistic about. Our singular focus should be on its implementation.Read Also:<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/commercially-important-people/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Commercially important people</a>, Editorial

Upasana Khadka

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Why are labour officials transferred frequently?

<figure><img width="1116" height="656" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110912118/636b8ada9c7e80680e06b265jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Businessman Sulav Agarwal and the diplomatic car he used to make delivery of black market infra-red thermometers.</figcaption></figure>The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has withdrawn certain facilities granted to honorary consuls of countries without embassies in Nepal after one of them was caught in a police sting operation on Tuesday trying to sell infra-red thermometers in the black market.The decision was taken by a meeting headed by Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali in Kathmandu. There are honorary consuls from over 45 countries in Kathmandu at present, and many of them are Nepali nationals.‘The privilege of using blue plate and the flag in official vehicle of the Honorary Consuls has been suspended with immediate effect until further notice,’ a statement from the Ministry said.The honorary consul of Kyrgyzstan Sulav Agarwal was caught as he was making personal delivery of 67 thermal gun infra-red thermometers to police posing as buyers. In phone negotiations, Agarwal had agreed to sell the devices used to measure body temperature for coronavirus for Rs 15,000 – three times more than the retail price.Agarwal is owner of the Shanker Group that has interests in cement, construction and textiles. He had ordered 20,000 thermal guns from China after the COVID-19 pandemic, and had brought some of them to Kathmandu last week on a special Nepal Airlines flight from Guangzhou. <figure><img width="640" height="864" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110912118/636b8adc9c7e80680e06b266jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption>One of the 67 thermal guns confiscated from Agarwal.</figcaption></figure>Agarwal has been remanded in custody for a week at the Police Station in Darbar Marg pending investigation, and will face up to five years in jail if found guilty. Agarwal has repeatedly told the police he bought the devices in the local market. <figure><img width="1102" height="712" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022110912118/636b8ade9c7e80680e06b267jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption>Sulav Agarwal’s honorary consul ID card.</figcaption></figure>Police was acting on a tip-off and called Agarwal on his phone posing as buyers. Agarwal arrived in Naxal to make delivery of the 67 devices driving his Mitsubishi SUV with blue Kyrgyz diplomatic plates.

Not so honorary consul

The daily 10-hour curfew at Tribhuvan International Airport from 8 November that will last five months has affected tourism during Nepal’s peak season, with some hotels and trekking agencies here reporting cancellations into spring next year. The reduced hours at Nepal’s main aviation gateway till 31 March means that a third of all flights have been cut. This has also caused ticket prices to surge by up to eight times of normal fares. For example a Kathmandu-Delhi ticket that used to cost Rs12,000 is now listed at Rs50,000, and even then seats are not available.&nbsp; “Especially if they are here to trek, change in flight dates can cause tourists to miss their connections,” says Jagan Timilsina, who runs a trail running and outdoor education business. &nbsp; Pokhara is feeling the brunt as hotels report last-minute cancellations for November because of flight disorders. Some hoteliers also say although there have been some cancelled trips, most itineraries have been rescheduled.&nbsp; Hari Prasad Sharma Gaire of the local chapter of the Hotel Association of Nepal says the Kathmandu airport closure should have been timed for the off-season. He told us: “Starting construction during the peak tourist season was a mistake and will cause the tourism industry to lose a lot of business. The upgrade could have been spread out over a longer time but closed for fewer hours at night so that disruption was minimal.”&nbsp; Nearly a third of the 1.2 million tourists who visit Nepal annually come to Pokhara, which is also the gateway to Mustang, the Annapurna treks and pilgrimage tourism to Muktinath. Located by scenic lakes with a range of adventure sports like hot air ballooning, paragliding, canyoning, bungee and ziplines, Pokhara is also popular among diaspora Nepalis. “Besides its own attractions, Pokhara is really the hub for central Nepal, and we have been trying to get visitors to extend their stay here,” says Timilsina, who started out as a trekking porter and rose up the ranks to be an expedition guide and entrepreneur. &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024111603114_0e071ce63ea9b0a9a7ee76f8c3cea0ff08c6767c41dd09f6bc4413d2db067a60.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2024111603114_0e071ce63ea9b0a9a7ee76f8c3cea0ff08c6767c41dd09f6bc4413d2db067a60" data-rendition-name="original" width="3500" height="2333" loading="lazy" alt="Pokhara's tourism woes NT"> <figcaption>Tourist arrivals in Pokhara have slumped since the disruptions at Kathmandu airport due to upgrading work. Photo: KRISHNA MANI BARAL/NEPALI TIMES ARCHIVE</figcaption> </figure>  Even without the Kathmandu airport closure affecting tourist arrivals, Pokhara was already suffering from a decline due to many factors like the poor state of the Prithvi Highway, the shortage of luxury accommodation for high-end tourists, and the reluctance of international airlines to start direct flights to Pokhara despite an expensive new airport that was inaugurated two years ago.&nbsp; “There was a lot of initial excitement on the construction of the international airport,” says Timilsina, “but it hasn’t delivered as expected due to politics. People have invested in nearby businesses, and have faced losses.” India has blocked direct flights from its cities to Pokhara because the facility was built by a Chinese company. Although tourists and pilgrims from India hit record levels this year, the poor state of the highways and the Indian bus accident on the highway to Kathmandu in July that killed 27 pilgrims from Maharashtra state dampened arrival figures. Gaire says, “While tourist arrivals to Pokhara are now approaching pre-Covid levels, we haven’t seen the improvement we were expecting. We need a better marketing strategy. What are our embassies abroad doing?”&nbsp; Indeed, Pokhara used to be a favourite destination for Chinese tourists. There was a boom in arrivals from China before Covid, especially after a popular Chinese tv serial was shot on location here. But arrivals from China have not really recovered since the pandemic because of the economic slowdown there. Promoting Pokhara airport to handle direct flights from Chengdu or Kunming could revive Chinese arrivals.&nbsp; Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAAN) has used the Kathmandu airport closure as an excuse to arm-twist international airlines to start flying to Bhairawa, which has barely been in operation for two years since it was inaugurated. So far, Fly Dubai, Thai AirAsia, Jazeera and Qatar are flying to Bhairawa, but most use it as a hop before flying on to Kathmandu, which does not reduce congestion at Kathmandu.&nbsp; An ideal situation could have been to get Pokhara to run to full capacity while Kathmandu is partially out of action. Pokhara entrepreneurs are puzzled why the CAAN and the national government have not taken more interest in promoting Pokhara as an alternative to reduce the congestion in Kathmandu. Nepal’s football team that was flying to Dushanbe this week couldn’t get tickets via Delhi, and took a domestic flight to Bhadrapur, crossed over to Bagdogra and flew on to Delhi to catch their flight to Tajikistan.

Pokhara’s tourism woes

An excerpt of a conversation between an anthropologist and linguist Mark Turin, PhD and Lava Deo Awasthi, PhD, the first Chairperson of the Language Commission of Nepal. Nepali Times: What is the role of Nepal’s Language Commission and when was it formed? Lava Deo Awasthi: The Constitution of Nepal (2015) created a Language Commission (LC) with the following four core mandates: (a) to develop eligibility criteria for gaining status as an official language and offer recommendations to the Government of Nepal about the official language(s) in each province; (b) to offer recommendations to the Government about measures to be taken for the conservation, promotion, and development of languages; (c) to suggest possible ways of using mother tongues in education by assessing their stage of development; and, (d) to conduct studies, carry out research and perform monitoring functions about the response to the constitutional provisions for the federalisation of languages in Nepal. The Commission was founded in 2016 and I was appointed as the Chairperson of the Commission in September of the same year by the Cabinet of Ministers. What in your own professional and educational background helped to prepare you for the role? I have worked with the Government of Nepal for about 30 years, alongside holding teaching appointments at universities in Nepal. Prior to assuming the role of the Chairperson of the Commission, I served as permanent Secretary to the Government of Nepal and worked as the Chief Administrator of the Central Development Region. I was appointed as Director General of the Department of Education and completed my assignments as Joint Secretary at the Planning, Monitoring and Educational Administration Divisions of the Ministry of Education.&nbsp; In addition, I have taught courses as a visiting professor at Tribhuvan University and Kathmandu University for more than three decades. Later, I also started supervising MPhil and PhD students at the Far Western University in Mahendranagar, Kanchanpur. My PhD project from the Danish University of Education was dedicated to making sense of Nepal’s social construct and commitment to multilingualism, exploring the persistence of monolingual school practices in the face of constitutional promises and state commitments to multilingualism. I conducted a survey of Nepal’s languages and carried out a qualitative study of the Tharu language in the district of Bardia. I analysed language policy statements and explored classroom pedagogies in schools. I documented how teachers showed a tendency to resist change and maintain the status quo because they were not consulted when new educational language policies were introduced. Teachers also exhibited a deeply-held adherence to the Gurukul education system which appears to have been harnessed as a way to resist newer pedagogical ideologies imported from the West. Recognising how engrained these rich traditions of knowledge transmission are, I wanted to know how students’ engagement in the learning process appeared to have dwindled, creating a gap between children’s home languages and the language(s) of the school. Whilst statutory provisions for education in the mother tongue were oriented towards promotion, classroom pedagogies remained resolutely monolingual and exclusionary. The result was that multilingual education policies that had been introduced in Nepal did not result in meaningful changes in classroom practices. My research was also a reflection of childhood traumas I had experienced at the earliest stage of formal education. My home language, Baitadeli, has a strong oral tradition and no written literature. English is my fifth language in terms of exposure and competence, and my home district of Baitadi is well-known for its loyalty to the local language. I had to drop out of school after completing my sixth grade. Staying at home, I received much attention from my family and had much greater exposure to my native language, culture and environment. My overall impression is that dropping out of school had a surprisingly positive impact on my life. The opportunity offered a surprising dividend for me as I gained mastery in my mother tongue and received extensive exposure to folk literature and Indigenous knowledge and survival skills, cultivating my interest in language, culture, literature and local cosmologies.&nbsp; Now that I reflect on it, I appreciate how language has always played a key role in my life. I grew up in a multilingual environment: brought up with Baitadeli, Hindi, Sanskrit, Nepali and English. Language played a major part in my decision to leave school and my later success is closely linked to my competence in several languages. It was rewarding to be at home with my family as I deepened my understanding of native language and culture, which in turn helped me to harness and refine my art of living. Languages matter so much to me because they are both software and hardware. Later, when I was in secondary school, I realised that my command of my home language contributed significantly to enhancing my Nepali and English. I used my mother tongue as a form of linguistic capital to strengthen my competence in both English and Nepali.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024111811110_5400ba54792bf9e4854e1c1effde8bf09804e99647f23513700b450cc49adc4a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2024111811110_5400ba54792bf9e4854e1c1effde8bf09804e99647f23513700b450cc49adc4a" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1500" loading="lazy" alt="Dr Lava Deo Awasthi"> </figure>  In your term as the Commission’s first Chairperson, what were your strategic goals and objectives? My first strategic goal was to create an environment conducive to implementing the provisions of the Constitution of Nepal in relation to language. My priority was to prepare a detailed action plan for my six-year tenure in consultation with language stakeholders, including language experts, professionals, activists, Indigenous community members and representatives of relevant national and local-level institutions. The Commission formed a body of high-level advisors to ensure that the Chairperson’s work was well-informed and credible. The advisors to the committee had highly visible professional and social reputations in Nepal and had much experience in the field of language conservation, promotion, research and development. Another strategy we adopted was to establish close institutional linkages with federal, provincial, and local level governments for collecting opinions and disseminating information widely.&nbsp; What critical issues did you have to consider while discharging your duty? When Nepal’s new Constitution was drafted, a number of concerns could not be adequately addressed. These related to the conservation of languages, the recognition of official languages at the provincial level, and the use of mother tongues at federal, provincial, and local levels. These unresolved issues and matters pertaining to the federalizsation of Nepal’s languages were passed on to the Language Commission to address and resolve.&nbsp; Regarding the recommendations for official languages, a five-year timeline had been set by the Constitution. With great effort, we succeeded in having all provinces agree to recognise their official languages as per the recommendations of the Commission.&nbsp; What were your greatest achievements during your term? One of the greatest achievements was that we succeeded in setting a language agenda at all levels. Nepal’s language communities and other stakeholders expressed the view that this was the first time their languages were recognised and their voices heard by the state. People participated in debates and discussed issues relating to language that in all likelihood had never before happened in their lifetimes, at least not in ways that were supported by the state. We encouraged people to speak in their own language(s) and provided translators during plenary sessions and group discussions. Another major achievement was developing criteria for the status planning of languages at federal, provincial, and local levels, and to recommend 11 province-level official languages, in addition to the Nepali language. Similarly, a notable achievement was recognising Indigenous languages spoken by smaller communities, all of whom faced ongoing marginalisation and high levels of endangerment. The Commission identified 9 new languages that had not been reported in the 2011 census, and provided a framework for recognising official languages within a municipality. The commission emphasised the need for documentation and digitisation of languages for developing corpora and archives at national and sub-national levels.&nbsp; Languages of historical importance as well as classical languages were given recognition for their protection, growth, and development. Recommendations were made for the conservation, promotion and development of Nepal’s marginalised languages that are threatened by majority languages and for those languages that hold particular power at local and global levels. Recommendations were also made for how best to safeguard Nepal’s languages from the ever-growing spread of English and other powerful, globalising languages.&nbsp; A further important aspect of the Commission’s work was to emphasise mother tongue medium instruction in schools across the nation. Recognising the role of language in children’s cognitive, socio-emotional and academic development, the Commission suggested strategies for linking schools with ward-level language clusters for use in the classroom. The importance of nurturing and respecting a child’s first language was reiterated in the Commission’s recommendations for children’s learning and all-round development. By the end of my term, a remarkable change could be observed in terms of building trust within and across Nepal’s diverse language communities. A network of language groups and stakeholders across the country proved to be a powerful way of bringing all language communities under one roof for a collective review of and response to the process of federalising language policy. The many language stakeholders across Nepal appreciated the opportunity to work within a coordinated framework, and—feeling empowered by this—seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the initiatives taken by the Commission.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024111811114_b45297fdd2fedf17bdb6313e495a1062c0d87f1a19fa5349f871f220b75f93ab.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2024111811114_b45297fdd2fedf17bdb6313e495a1062c0d87f1a19fa5349f871f220b75f93ab" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Dr Lava Deo Awasthi NT"> </figure>  What were the most significant challenges for you as Chairperson? One of the major challenges was winning people’s trust in advocating for the mission of the Language Commission. I faced considerable resistance as I sought to emphasise the use of native languages in families and communities. While the Commission advocated for multilingualism and promoted linguistic diversity, the prevailing policy circles and central level institutions had been deeply influenced by a one-language discourse and ideology of Nepali only. The spread of English also poses a huge threat to Nepal’s languages. However, people in power do not seem to see this as a problem. They tend to abandon their own languages in preference for English. The way that Nepal’s municipalities are increasingly introducing English as a medium of instruction at the earliest stage of a child’s school-based education has proven to be detrimental to their cognitive development, socio-emotional wellbeing and academic success. Most of Nepal’s elites have been heavily influenced by the spread of English and remain unaware about its impact on their home languages as well as on the inter-generational transmission of Indigenous languages in the country. I wish that we could have produced more compelling evidence to show the consequences of making poor policy choices for our children’s education. Demystification calls for a collective response. To make change happen across this entire, complex and federalising country was daunting work and left like a race against time. I feel that I could have done more to offer concrete examples in favour of using the mother tongue as a medium of children’s education at the earliest stages of a child’s education. What do you see the Language Commission achieving in the next 5-10 years? The Language Commission will have to ensure that all of its key recommendations are implemented at all levels of government. In 10 years’ time, all seven of Nepal’s provinces will have their official languages in place. These languages will also be recognised as languages of federal business, alongside Nepali. I anticipate that all official languages in the federal and provincial systems will have a national portal for inter-language corpora using machine translation to fulfil their federal, provincial and local level language functions, and that all languages spoken in Nepal will be represented through a digital database in the national archive. The Office of Statistics will monitor the status of Nepal’s languages over time. By the end of the next decade, each municipality in the country will have recognised one or two official languages at the local level, based on speech populations. Other local languages will have received community-level legal recognition and official status to fulfil their functional roles. Languages that are highly endangered or at risk will be entitled to receive state grants for enhancing local level capabilities to encourage families and young learners to speak the language. Incentive schemes will be introduced in municipalities that promote language within the family and at home. Inter-generational transmission of languages will have received welcome and timely attention across Nepal. It is my hope that all schools—public and private—will have introduced mother tongue medium instruction at the earliest stage of school education, at least up to class five. Nepali, English and other national as well as classical and foreign languages will be taught as subjects. The existing policy of English medium education at the early stage of education will be abolished. The Government of Nepal will be held accountable if the number of speakers of any language decreases or if local communities face language loss and greater endangerment. Under the aegis of the Language Commission, a Centre for Language Research and Innovation will be created with world-class facilities for language documentation and archiving in collaboration with Tribhuvan University’s Central Department of Linguistics and other relevant institutions. Harnessing the vastness of Nepal’s linguistic diversity, the Language Commission will morph into a centre of excellence for national and international communities to engage in collaborative language research, to share experiences and document best practices at in service of global linguistic diversity and Nepal’s many Indigenous languages.

Languages are both software and hardware

Turkish Airlines has introduced a new amenity kit collection designed in collaboration with French fashion house Lanvin for international business class passengers on flights more than five hours. It consists of five pieces designed for sustainability and elegance. Bags are reusable and will consist of Lanvin cosmetic products like hand and body lotions and lip balm. Eye masks and socks are made from recycled materials, earplugs are packaged in paper and the toothbrush is bamboo.

Turkish amenity kit

Earlier this month, Nepal received Rs1.6 billion from the World Bank as part of its <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/will-nepal-ever-be-paid-for-saving-trees">Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF)</a>, rewarding the country for increasing its carbon sink capacity. Nepal is the first in South Asia to benefit from this facility, and it is specifically to recompense the country for increasing forest cover in 13 Tarai districts between 2018-2024. “We are also trying to get another Rs13 billion from the facility while also preparing for free market-based carbon trading in the international market,” says Nabaraj Pudasaini of the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) Implementation Centre. Big emitters of greenhouse gases are under pressure to reduce their carbon emissions, and many have signed agreements to do so by investing in decarbonisation projects in developing countries. Countries that emit more than a specified amount of carbon would be able to buy emission rights from countries that emit less. Nepal is internationally known for its community forestry program which has been largely credited for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/tree-mendous">increasing tree cover to over 45%</a> in less than three decades. But this achievement had not been adequately recognised or rewarded internationally before. Forests, especially in the tropics, absorb and store large amounts of carbon while releasing oxygen in a process known as photosynthesis. <a href="https://www.fao.org/forest-resources-assessment/en/">Preventing deforestation</a> and increasing canopy cover is considered a much more achievable goal than reducing emission in the scale necessary to limit global average temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. COP11 in Montreal in 2005 first proposed reducing carbon emissions by improving forest quality by halting degradation. By 2015, a new mechanism of financial assistance was created to help less developed countries with sustainable management of forests <a href="https://www.un-redd.org/">(called REDD+)</a>. Under this new mechanism, countries receive aid based on their efforts to prevent forest degradation and increase carbon sink, and in 2021 the World Bank was entrusted with implementing it. Nepal’s FCPF receipt this month was calculated on the basis of 2.4 million tons of carbon stored at a rate of $5 per ton. In the second phase, Nepal will receive more than Rs4 billion within the next year for storing an additional 7 million tons of carbon. Eighty per cent of this amount obtained from carbon trading needs to be spent on local beneficiaries and indigenous communities.&nbsp; But carbon trading is not easy, Nepal needs to prove that protected forests will not be destroyed in future.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241121091132_c8a381c9a95aa86fec558951650d97bb87914741f01766982ba2b086af001f16.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20241121091132_c8a381c9a95aa86fec558951650d97bb87914741f01766982ba2b086af001f16" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="999" loading="lazy" alt="Greenbacks for greenery NT "> <figcaption>Photo: KUNDA DIXIT</figcaption> </figure>  Explains carbon trading expert Yugan Manandhar. “Forests should be handed over to the community and shown that they are managed sustainably. Proving this will be particularly challenging; forest encroachment and degradation is rife in the Tarai.” <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/nepal-is-going-up-in-smoke">Deliberate forest fires</a> have also added to the challenge because they increase carbon emissions and reduce the sink capacity of forests. The basis for the amount that Nepal received was set five years ago by calculating the carbon reserves of forests in the 13 Tarai districts. In the meantime, sustainable forest management, tree plantation, forest destruction and erosion control were prioritised to increase carbon reserves in those forests. Nepal is signing another carbon trading agreement during the ongoing Baku climate conference. The <a href="https://www.leafcoalition.org/">Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance (LEAF Coalition) </a>proposes to sell the carbon stored in the forests of Bagmati, Gandaki and Lumbini provinces. For this, Nepal signed the letter of intent three years ago at COP26 in Glasgow. The target is to store 70 million tons of carbon in 32 million hectares of forest in the three provinces per which Nepal will receive Rs13 billion in four years at $10 per ton with provisions to increase the rate if various conditions are met. However, the agreement in itself doesn’t guarantee the amount. According to the targets set by Nepal, forest degradation should be stopped and carbon reserves increased by protecting tree cover. Preparations are also underway for clean air carbon trade because it has offset fossil fuel use by introducing 30,000 electric vehicles. Nepal has been selected for the first round to receive $40 million within one and a half years through the Clean Air System of the World Bank. Given that most of Nepal’s energy mix is from biomass, replacing them with electric stoves can significantly improve health by reducing indoor pollution as well as strengthen the country’s capacity for carbon trade. “Nepal's goal now is to sell carbon in the free market where carbon credits are bought and sold based on supply and demand in an open and transparent manner,” adds Pudasaini of the REDD Implementation Centre. “Nepal can now set its own price and bargain with interested buyer countries and organisations.” Lately, India has been discussing setting up a carbon market. Nepal has exported Rs12.72 billion worth of electricity to India so far this fiscal year, which can be traded under Nepal’s carbon market. “Carbon trading can create significant economic benefits for Nepal, which will help reinvest in development and environmental protection projects,” says Manandhar. “But we must prioritise sustainable management of forests, cutting older trees and allowing regrowth as well as promoting electric stoves and electric vehicles.”