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Mahesh Bikram Shah is a Nepali writer and a retired policeman who has authored several short story collections. Some of his notable works are ‘Sataha’, ‘Kathmandu ma Camrade’, ‘African Amigo’, ‘Bhuinkhat’ and ‘Sipahiki Swasni’. Among them, his short stories collection called ‘Chhapamar ko Chhoro’ was awarded the ‘Madan Puraskar’ in 2007. Anushka Nepal from ApEx talked to Shah about his dedication to continuing writing despite having a full-time job. From being a police officer to an award-winning author, what was the journey like? I worked as a police officer for 30 years and I carried my career in writing. I have been interested in literature since I was a child, and have previously published a few of my works in Nepali newspapers too. I stopped writing while I was in high school since studying science didn’t give me a lot of time to focus on it. But deep down I knew I would definitely become a writer someday. I think it’s that dream that made me get back to writing again. I loved writing so much that I didn’t mind doing two things at the same time. My attachment to writing and literature never waned. How did you manage to juggle writing with a full-time job? I was lucky enough to get posted at Bharatpur Police Training Center in Chitwan where I was surrounded by an academic environment. And the job wasn’t as hectic as it would be if I were posted somewhere else, like in a department where I would have to be on site a lot. That gave me some leisure time to start writing again. I wrote stories and poems that reflected on the lives of the people from Tikapur, Kailali, my hometown in the western part of Nepal. That’s how it started. And I never discontinued writing after that. How did you feel when your writing first got published?  It was a poem I wrote that got published in one of the newspapers. I was quite young at that time. The amount of joy I had cannot be described in words. I was proud of myself and every time I saw my name in print, I would have a smile on my face. When I published my first book, I realized that I had finally achieved the dream of becoming a published author. Not just that, I knew I could do so much more and write many other books with the recognition I had received. It was a surreal experience. What’s the inspiration behind the books you write? It’s the things I have seen, experienced, read, and heard about that inspire me to continue my work. I also like to listen to other’s experiences and understand their pain, and suffering, as well as their happiness, which can be incorporated into my writings. So, in short, it’s the small things that happen in our society that inspire me. I’m someone who can never come up with a storyline if I sit down and start thinking. It’s the things that I see, hear, or experience that gives me the idea of what I can write about next. How do you come up with the plots and characters? Whenever I get an idea for a story, I already have an outline in my head of how I can start and conclude my story. I’m also aware of the behavior and personality traits I would like my characters to have. So basically, I just write down whatever I have on my mind. Yes, there will be some changes in between and I might come up with some new ideas. But the framework remains the same. I think the most important thing about planning your story is to know exactly what the moral of your writing is going to be. A writer must be clear on what he wants to say through his stories. Only then can you frame it well. Any authors/books that have inspired you? I grew up reading the works of BP Koirala, Parijat, Govinda Bahadur Malla, Ramesh Bikal, Laxmi Prasad Devkota, Rabindranath Tagore. and Premchand. So I would have to say these are the writers who have inspired me to become a writer myself, especially when it comes to writing stories and poems. Shah’s picks Madhabi by Madan Mani Dixit ‘Madhabi’ by Madan Mani Dixit is a Nepali mythological novel published in 1983 by Sajha Prakashan. The book won the Madan Puraskar in the same year. Sumnima by BP Koirala ‘Sumnima’ is a novel written by BP Koirala. The book was published in 1969 by Sajha Prakashan and it tells the story of a Kirat woman and a Brahmin boy. Koirala wrote the book in eight days during his imprisonment at the Sundarijal jail. Shakuntala by Laxmi Prasad Devkota This is one of the greatest works of Laxmi Prasad Devkota, published in 1945.

The Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE) gained 56.94 points to close at 2,186.36 points on Tuesday. Similarly, the sensitive index surged by 13.40 points to close at 412. 51 points. A total of 13,107,080-unit shares of 275 companies were traded for Rs 5. 47 billion. Meanwhile, Nirdhan Utthan Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha Limited, Deprosc Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha Limited, Himalayan Life Insurance Limited, Nerude Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha Limited and Grameen Bikas Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha Ltd were the top gainers today, with its price surging by 10. 00 percent. Similarly, Sikles Hydropower Limited was the top loser as its price fell by 3.88 percent. At the end of the day, total market capitalization stood at Rs 3. 20 trillion.

Seven persons including Bhatbhateni Supermarket Chairman Min Bahadur Gurung have been arrested in the Lalita Niwas land grab case. A team of Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police nabbed Sudhar Kumar Sah, Dharma Prasad Gautam, Kaladhar Deuja, Gopal Karki, Surendra Kapali and Bhupendra Man Shrestha from various places today. Sah is also a former election commissioner. Nepal Police spokesperson Kuber Kathayat informed that they were arrested in connection with the Lalita Niwas land grab case. It has been learnt that they will be presented before the government attorney office today itself to extend the remand. Spokesperson Kathayat said that the necessary investigation will be started after the extension of the remand. Bhatbhateni Supermarket Chairman Gurung was released after posting a bail of Rs 20 million set by the Special Court on February 3, 2021. Earlier on January 6, the CIB had submitted a report of investigation to the government attorney office making 300 people defendants in the Lalita Niwas case.    

The acute shortage of liquidity, rising interest rates, and the slowdown in demand have hit the industries in Koshi Province badly in the first half of the current fiscal year. As industries grapple with multiple issues, their capacity utilization dropped by 8.3 percentage points in the first half of the fiscal year (FY) 2022/23. The average capacity utilization of industries in Koshi Province stood at 40.6 percent in the first half of FY 2022/23 compared to 48.9 percent during the same period of the last fiscal, states a new report of Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB). The decline in the capacity utilization of bricks, vegetable ghee, animal feed, cement, raw leather, synthetic fabrics, plastics goods, and iron rod production industries led to a decline in the average capacity utilization of the industries in Koshi Province. According to the NRB report titled “Provincial Economic Activities Report-Koshi Province,” industries producing bricks, vegetable ghee, soybean oil, and raw leather have experienced a decline in their capacity utilization in this fiscal. The NRB report says capacity utilization of the processed tea industry was highest at 85.4 percent while that of the bricks and vegetable ghee industries was the lowest at zero percent and 5.1 percent respectively. The capacity utilization of noodles increased by 80.7 percent, mustard oil by 79.9 percent, jute products by 74.5 percent, yarns by 65.7 percent, biscuits by 58.9 percent, and synthetic fibers by 58.1 percent. The central bank report shows the production of the sugar industry in Koshi Province surged by a whopping 190.7 percent and the rice industry by 68.4 percent. The production of the paper industry grew by 64.4 percent, the readymade garment industry by 26.5 percent, the GI wire industry by 20.2 percent, and the yarn industry by 11.6 percent. However, the production of the brick industry and soybean oil industry plunged by 100 percent and 89 percent respectively during the first half of FY 2022/23. Similarly, the animal feed industry and cement industry saw their production going down by 43.7  percent and 36.7 percent respectively. “The production of bricks has decreased mainly due to a delay in the supply of coal and a slowdown in market demand,” says the report. On the other hand, soybean industries’ capacity utilization suffered this year as soybean export to India slumped massively. With industries operating below capacity, the bank and financial institutions’ (BFIs) loan disbursement to them grew marginally in the first half of FY 2022/23. The BFIs’ loan disbursement to industries surged by 5.5 percent to Rs 127bn. The BFIs’ loan to the industrial sector had stood at Rs 121bn during the first half of FY 2021/22. The BFIs’ loans to the electricity and gas sector surged by 226.6 percent, the metal sector by 7.2 percent, and the agriculture sector by five percent. Of the total loans disbursed by the BFIs in Koshi Province, the share of the non-food-producing sector is the highest. The BFIs disbursed Rs 63.36bn (49.6 percent of total industrial loans) to the non-food-producing sector. The agriculture sector was the second highest recipient of industrial loans with the BFIs disbursing Rs 39.87bn in loans.

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma arrived in Kathmandu on Tuesday. The Chinese business magnate came to Kathmandu on a chartered plane from Bangladesh. It has not been revealed who Jack, also the founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, will meet in Nepal. Apart from Alibaba, he has also been operating the Jack Ma Foundation. He has been highlighting the problems of the rural areas through this foundation.    

The government has said construction of the Budhigandaki Hydropower Project will start within this fiscal year. Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Monday said that preparations are being made to lay the foundation stone of the Budhigandaki Hydropower Project within Ashad (mid-June to mid-July). Inaugurating the new building of Adarsh Multiple Campus in Gajuri, Dhading, Prime Minister Dahal said the establishment of the project office and the foundation laying will be done within this month. “I have already instructed the Nepal Electricity Authority to make arrangements for establishing a project office and laying the foundation stone of the project within a week,” he said. Budhi Gandaki is a ready-to-go project as its detailed project report (DPR) has already been prepared. Compensation distribution to the residents of the project-affected areas for the acquired land has also reached close to completion, according to the officials of the company. The mega project which envisages ensuring energy security for Nepal for the next decades has been in limbo due to uncertainty over the modality of its development. The project will be Nepal’s largest reservoir-type hydropower project and its development has been estimated at $2.6bn. The project area is situated at the boundary between the districts of Gorkha and Dhading. For the government, generating resources and closing the project's budget gap will be a difficult undertaking. Of late, the government has been mulling to hand over the development of the Budhigandaki Hydropower Project to the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA). In April this year, a task force was formed to finalize the share structure of Budhi Gandaki Jalbidhyut Public Limited. The task force led by NEA Deputy Executive Director Pradeep Kumar Thike was assigned to revise the share structure of Budhi Gandaki Jalbidhyut Public Limited to give a majority stake in the company to the government-owned power utility. Later in May, the NEA board decided to give the responsibility of the CEO of Budhi Gandaki Jalbidhyut Public Limited to Thike. The government in the last fiscal year decided to build the reservoir-type project on its own and established Budhi Gandaki Jalbidhyut Public Limited for the development of the 12,00MW project. As of now, the authorized capital of Budhi Gandaki company is Rs 20bn. The Energy Ministry has a 50 percent stake in the company while the Finance Ministry and NEA have 30 percent and 20 percent stakes, respectively. According to NEA, it has the technical expertise on developing big projects but it wants a majority stake in the newly established company. As developing storage-type projects is quite expensive compared to the run of the river-type projects, a viability gap funding is likely to be required from the government to develop this project, according to NEA. The project which has been touted as important to ensuring Nepal's energy security as it is expected to help the country to be self-reliant even during the dry season has been in limbo for a long time due to uncertainty over the modality of its development. Earlier, Budhigandaki fell victim to policy inconsistency despite facing hardly any problem in land acquisition and completion of DPR. In 2017, the then government, also led by Dahal, awarded a contract to build the project without competitive bidding to China Gezhouba Group Corporation under the engineering, procurement, construction, and financing (EPCF) modality. The Sher Bahadur Deuba-led administration in November 2017 overturned the earlier government’s decision. A high-level team led by Swarnim Wagle, former vice-chair of the National Planning Commission, was then established. The committee suggested that the project could also be developed using domestic resources. Again, in September 2018, the government led by KP Sharma Oli decided in favor of the Chinese company, reversing the decision of the Deuba-led government. In April of last year, the Deuba-led government once more decided to terminate the license granted to the Chinese company since it was not making any progress on the project. The report prepared by the committee headed by Wagle in 2017 suggested that the government should develop the project on its own by providing viability gap funding, covering around one-third of the project development cost. As per its report, the government could cover the cost of land acquisition and resettlement of displaced families which could total as high as Rs 94bn. A significant chunk of resources can be generated from government institutions. An infrastructure tax being imposed on imported fuel could be an important source of revenue that can be used to develop the project. According to the Wagle report, public enterprises such as Nepal Electricity Authority, Employees Provident Fund, Nepal Telecom, Rastriya Beema Sansthan, Hydroelectric Investment and Development Company, Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Company, Chilime Hydropower Company, along with Nepal Army, Nepal Police, and the general public could be tapped for the project.

The government has backtracked from its decision to scrap district election offices. The government backed out after the CPN-UML and the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) lawmakers obstructed the Parliament meeting on Tuesday demanding that the decision to scrap the district election offices be rolled back. In the meeting, Finance Minister Prakash Saran Mahat expressed his commitment not to confine the district elections offices within the district administration office. “We had not said that the offices will be scrapped in the context of commission. Election offices will remain as they are,” he said. Minister Mahat said that the government will not deviate from the belief that ordinary citizens can freely participate in the elections in a fair and fearless environment. “We will guarantee the independence of the Election Commission. Initiatives will be taken to make the district election offices more independent and effective,” he said. Saying that they stand in favor of the independent existence of the Election Commission, he expressed his commitment that the government will do its best not to create doubt on the same, Minister Mahat said. Earlier, in the Parliament meeting today, the CPN-UML and the Rastriya Swatantra Party lawmakers staged a protest against the proposal to bring the district election offices under the CDO office.

Chairman and Managing Director of Bhatbhateni Supermarket Min Bahadur Gurung has been arrested on Tuesday. A team of Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) nabbed Gurung from Kathmandu this morning. Nepal Police spokesperson Kuber Kathayat said that he was detained in connection with the Lalita Niwas land grab case. The Special Court on February 3, 2021 had issued an order saying that Gurung be released on a bail of Rs 20 million. The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority on February 5, 2020, had filed corruption cases against 175 individuals at the Special Court in connection with Lalita Niwas land scam.