HELLO NEPAL

The Himalayan Times 24 October 2019 Medical education It was and is not uncommon to see the private medical colleges, which are run by group of people having one way or the other political affiliation, charging exorbitant fees from the inspiring students, who wanted to pursue their medical education in the country, rather than going abroad for the same. The past governments for many years and this government had never bothered to seriously look into such malpractices until Dr. Govind KC, an anti-corruption crusader, staged several fast-onto-death protests against these wrongdoings. Not all the agreements which were signed with him were properly implemented.  A few months ago, the government constituted the Medical Education Commission (MEC) as demanded by Dr. KC, which has been entrusted with the authority to deal with the medical education system. Recently, the MEC had decided to revise the fee structure of MBBS from NRs. 3.85 million to NRs. 4.02 million in...

The Himalayan Times 17 October 2019 Sluggish mechanism Nepal has seen governments of almost all the major political parties in the three decades of its political history of multiparty democracy. All of them followed the same procedure of presenting the next year’s annual budget towards the end of the fiscal year and having it passed through the Parliament after hasty deliberation. However, the new constitution has made it mandatory to table the annual plan and budget in the Parliament on May 28 every year. But the government has not been able to fully and appropriately spend the allocated development budget “Dismal spending” (THT, October 16, Page 6).   Haphazard spending of such development budget towards the end of each fiscal year is still in practice, promoting gross misuse of such budgets. Not all past and this government seem serious in controlling such practice, which has left many development projects incomplete for several consecutive years. In fact...

The Himalayan Times 3 October 2019 Sexual harassment Nepal has experienced many political ups and downs in its political history. During these times, it did not see any statesman who could drive the nation towards prosperity. Whoever got the opportunity to lead the nation could not distance him or herself from corruption. Likewise, other political leaders, with the exception of a few, have not been able to maintain a good image among the people. They are seen as people who are doing politics for their own sake.   In the recent days, the ruling party seems to be embroiled in hindering the democratic process and undermining the constitutional rights of the people, such as freedom of speech, free education and basic health services, the right to move around and anywhere in the country, restriction on peaceful demonstrations and so on. For these obvious reasons, the NCP government has become unpopular, when it should have fully utilized its two-thirds majori...

The Himalayan Times 26 September 2019 Politics for development The number of political parties that mushroomed during the transitional phase got completely downsized following the three tiers of general elections held in accordance with the new constitution. The then UML and the NCP-Maoist fought the elections under an alliance and won almost two-thirds majority seats, pushing the Nepali Congress to the opposition bench. Other political parties also suffered heavily. However, some of them survived, securing lesser seats than they had gained during the CA elections.    But to the common people, it does not make difference which political party reaches the political helm, provided that they democratically run the nation, give good governance, abide by the constitution, respect human rights, punish the corrupt, maintain social and cultural age-old harmony, provide equal equity of the fruit of development, maintain proper law and order, generate job opportu...

Enjoying a short term consultant job with a research project initiated in Nepal by the Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention (CPSP) formed under the auspices of the University of Edinburgh. Its aim is to identify the highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) currently responsible for the majority of pesticide suicides in selected sites in Nepal. Had a wonderful opportunity to interact with a number of pesticide vendors in Banke, Chitwan, Kavre and Kathmandu and to know about the pros and cons of pesticides. Nepal government has banned until now 21 HHPs which were very harmful to human health. There are still two more toxic pesticides, namely: Zinc Phosphide and Aluminium Phosphide, which are easily accessible and available in the pesticide shops and are being used for committing suicide. Hope the government will ban these two toxic pesticides in near future which will definitely help to reduce the number of pesticide suicide.

The Himalayan Times 19 September 2019 Improve performance Nepal should have been at this time politically strong, considering the presence of a two-thirds majority government in place in its almost seven-decade-long political history. None of the past governments had such a powerful mandate. This government has completed almost fifteen months with not much to show the people as critics are frequently putting forward their opinions. What is preventing this strong government in running the country with good governance? Why has this government been widely criticized? Why has this powerful government not been able to deliver even the minimum level of services to meet the people’s expectation? It is natural for the people to have high expectation from the government of the Nepal Communist Party (NCP), which was able to garner almost two-thirds of the votes in the last general election. However, it is losing its credibility day-by-day for its poor performance in ...