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Chef’s Special:

- Spaghetti Carbonara

- Ricotta Pizza

- Fish N Chips

Location: New Road

Cards: Accepted

Meal for 2: Rs 1500

Reservation: 014243333

New Road—the old shopping haven of Kath­mandu and the cultural center of this ancient city—is also the home of street foods, lightning fast and cheap. Almost every other door opens to a place where one can get a quick bite. But what if one wants to spend some time relishing the meal in a nice environment, and also escape the heat of the commercial zone? The newly opened New Road-branch of the Black Water Restro and Bar is such a place where you can relax with your food, and at affordable prices too. The New Road branch of Black Water, located in the New Road Complex, has become popular for its beautiful ambiance and affordable menu. Sandwiches, burgers, noodles, pasta, friend chicken are some popular orders that Black Water receives along with its various offerings of pizza, which it claims to be “probably the best pizza in town.”

The government is making the operation of ships its primary agenda at the fourth Bengal Ini­tiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMS­TEC) summit, which is taking place in Kathmandu in August. Prime Min­ister KP Sharma Oli will represent Nepal at the summit. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is making prepa­rations in line with the government’s plan to promote international trade and investment. The ministry has informed that it is working to attract BIMSTEC member states’ attention to the prospect of operating ships. Nepal is also going to lobby for agreements on energy, technology, customs and transport. It is formu­lating short-, medium- and long-term plans to work with member states. PM Oli, in his meeting with BIMS­TEC’s Secretary General Shahidul Islam last month, had also raised the topic of ships. Oli is reported to have said in the meeting that ships would help countries around the Bay of Bengal better connect with each other.

Nepal has already prepared a draft agreement to establish BIMSTEC Grid Interconnection. According to the agreement, a coordination com­mittee would be formed, which in turn would formulate a master plan, opening up doors for energy trading among the BIMSTEC member states.

Krishna Prasad Dhakal, a Joint Secretary at the MoFA, said that the summit will be a success only if all member states are fully on board. He added that Nepal, for its part, is fully prepared. Dhakal also said that various issues between Nepal and its close neighbors (India, Bangladesh and Bhu­tan) are also high up on the summit’s agenda.

That the regional grouping’s summit is talking place after 14 years is unusual. Even so, the exact dates have not been finalized. “The delay in finalizing the date is due to the failure to hold a Secretary-level BIMSTEC Working Group meeting with Bangladesh,” said Rabi Shankar Sainju, spokesperson at the Min­istry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies. “The meeting is slated to take place in Bhutan in July. It will discuss the progress made in line with the previous summit’s commit­ments. But we are yet to receive an invitation,” said Sainju.

“They haven’t expressed much interest in the meeting partly because it does not zero in on eco­nomic activities. Important eco­nomic topics haven’t been a top priority ever since political, cultural and other issues were also included on BIMSTEC’s agenda in 2004,” said Sainju. “BIMSTEC’s significance will go up once there is considerable economic activity among member states.”

The summit is considered import­ant for formulating high-level poli­cies. However, only three summits—in 2004, 2008 and 2014—have been held so far. A BRICS-BIMS­TEC Outreach Summit had been held in Goa in 2016 at the spe­cial initiative of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

BIMSTEC was formed in Bangkok on June 6, 1997; Nepal became a full member in 2004. Currently, BIMSTEC member states include Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myan­mar, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Member states are collabo­rating on 14 main issues, among them trade and investment, technology, energy, transport and telecommunications, tour­ism, fishery, agriculture, cultural cooperation, and poverty allevia­tion. Nepal is the lead country on poverty-alleviation.

The ruling Communist Party of Nepal has repeatedly expressed its commitment to battling car­tels and syndicates in every sector. It has done a few things too. The registration of various transport cartels has been cancelled. The syn­dicate involved in exploiting Malay­sia-bound Nepali laborers has been busted. The government also seems to be getting tough on the syndicates on daily edibles. And yet most peo­ple seem unsatisfied, or unsure of the government intent. “The government is advertising that the syndicates in different sectors have been broken. But the reality is that most consumers are yet to see any tangible change in their daily lives,” says Jyoti Baniya, a senior advocate and President of the Forum for Protection of Consumer Rights Nepal.

The battle against the syndi­cates began in April 2018 with the issuance of the Transport Manage­ment Directive that threatened to break transport monopolies. The government decision was met with massive protests of transport entrepreneurs amassed under the umbrella organization of the Federa­tion of Nepalese National Transport Entrepreneurs Association.

Unlike what happened in former times, the government of the day did not budge to this pressure tactic. After making various arrests and cancelling the route permits of the protesting companies, the trans­port federation backed off and new bus companies were added on the Araniko Highway, which had been at the heart of the power struggle between the government and the transport syndicates.

Subsequently, Mayur Yatyat, Sajha Yatayat, City Metro, Mahanagar Yatayat, Shiva Darshan, Madhya Upatyaka and Annapurna received ‘direct permits’ from the govern­ment and have since started their services. “But these buses are not enough to meet the high demand,” says Baniya. The consumer rights activist believes that many more transport companies need to be introduced to completely do away with the syndicates in the sector.

Moreover, the government intent to take on transport syndicates has been a suspect following some questionable transfers of the bureaucrats involved in recent syn­dicate-busting activities.

Manpower mess

The government recently can­celled the registration of a few com­panies that had created a syndicate for Malaysia-bound workers.

Since 2013, four different compa­nies—the One Stop Solution (OSC), the Malaysia VLN Nepal Pvt. Ltd, the GSG Services Nepal, and MiGram—had formed a syndicate that together earned Rs 4.6 billion on the pretext of providing medical checkups, visa stamping, security clearance, pass­port collection and online registra­tion services to the Malaysia-bound laborers. On assuming office, the Minister of Labor, Employment and Social Security Gokarna Bista swiftly revoked their license and had those who had restricted free competition for bio-metric health checkups of migrant workers arrested.

Manpower company operators, however, believe the government acted in haste. “The companies involved were established in coor­dination with the Malaysian govern­ment. Shutting them down without proper homework could affect thou­sands of Nepali workers set to leave for Malaysia,” says one such opera­tor on the condition of anonymity.

“The government always attacks us without justification. We are a remittance-based economy and without recruitment agencies like us handling the demand and supply of workers, how does the government expect to increase remittance?” he asks. This manpower operator says he alone spent over two months and around Rs 5 million to create demands for Nepali workers in Malaysian compa­nies, to no avail.

Having set a strong precedent in the case of Malaysia, Nepal could be forced to get tough on labor export to other Gulf countries as well. Emulating Malaysia, Qatar, another big destination for Nepali migrant workers, is preparing to install a ‘one-door mechanism’ of its own to hire workers from Nepal and seven other countries. Qatar plans to open a private recruitment company that will take care of all migrant labor-related issues, from recruitment to departure. The extra costs will undoubtedly be passed on to the laborers applying to go to Qatar. Government officials declined to comment when APEX wanted to know if the government would also look to get tough on the prospective suppliers of manpower to Qatar.

Fruits of labor

Cartels are also responsible for artificially inflating the prices of daily commodities. Take the case of fruits and vegetables. The two main wholesale fruits and vegeta­bles markets in Kathmandu—Kali­mati and Balaju—have drawn the government’s attention following complains of irregular and unscien­tific pricing there.

Minister for Agriculture Chakra Pani Khanal made a surprise inspec­tion of the Kalimati market this week and identified various cartels. “We have shortlisted 434 businessmen who are involved in creating a syn­dicate in the vegetable market,” says Bomlal Giri, media coordinator for minister Khanal. “We have issued them stern warnings and have asked them to furnish clarifications.”

One example of the syndicates operating in Kalimati wholesale market is the one related to rent of the stalls there. The ministry found that a few businessmen have been occupying the same stalls for over 15 years. These businessmen pay around Rs 8,000-10,000 in rent to the market operator while they sublet the same space for up to Rs 200,000. This naturally translates into inflated end prices for the final consumers, much to their chagrin.

“I have been in the business of selling vegetables for a year now but I still have not been able to find the logic behind the pricing,” says Avilash Pantha, a shopkeeper who runs a vegetable store in Ranibari, Kathmandu. “The prices are raised in the wholesale markets but it is us, retail shopkeepers, who have to face the wrath of the customers.”

Minister Khanal’s visit to the Kali­mati market was followed by pro­tests by local businessmen, along with threats of imminent strikes. “But the ministry is ready to take them all on,” said a source at the agriculture ministry. In fact, with the help of the home ministry, the ministry of agriculture is planning to remove middlemen in vegetable markets across the country.

All in all, the all-powerful left gov­ernment has made some right nois­es and taken some bold decisions. But again, unless these cartel- and syndicate-busting measures trans­late into lower costs and ease of access for end consumers, they will be meaningless. That, in the end, will be the real test of the popularity of Oli government.

Fiction

THE VEGETARIAN

Han Kang

Publisher: Portobello Books

Published: 2015

Translated into English from Korean by Deborah Smith

Pages: 183, paperback

In the opening sentence of Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian’, Yeo­ng-hye is described as someone who is “completely unremarkable in every way”. And it is this ordi­nary woman who, one day, throws away all the meat from the freezer because she has had a ‘dream’ and announces that she is going to become a vegetarian. Things quickly spiral out of con­trol from there on as her husband, unable to understand her choices, drags in her whole family to try and ‘solve’ the ‘problem’. Yeong-hye’s father even tries to force a piece of pork into her mouth and she stabs herself in retaliation. But despite all the chaos that ensues, Yeong-hye’s decision remains rock solid.

The story is structured in three acts. The first part is about Yeo­ng-hye’s decision and her family’s reaction to it, the second mainly revolves around her artist brother-in-law who becomes increasingly obsessed with her body, and the final one is about Yeong-hye’s sister, In-hye, who tries to help Yeong-hye even as her own family is falling apart in the process.

‘The Vegetarian’ is disturbing. It’s a little gory too. While reading it, sometimes you will squirm, ill at ease in your own body. But it’s easily one of the best books you will ever come across. The story, with all its wild concepts and ideas, has a cer­tain appeal that makes it seem more like a work of abstract art rather than a neatly crafted fiction.

Thus it manages to stay in your mind long after, making you rethink and question everything you believed to be true, challenging con­formism and making you wonder why the society puts such strict code of conduct on sex when it is the very basis of evolution.

But think and ponder all you want, you will, at the end of the book, still struggle to make sense of it in its entirety or you will take away multiple (often contradictory) mes­sages. And it’s perhaps this churning of the story in your mind that makes this little novella so special, willing you to return to it in anticipation of a different take on it altogether this time around.

Over the past 16 years, each one of the mountain expeditions in Nepal has suc­cessfully reclaimed the $4000 (in the case of Everest, and $3,000 in the case of other mountains over 8,000m) deposited with the Department of Tourism. This means our mountains are spotlessly clean, as a mountain expedition forfeits the deposit if it is found to have littered a mountain. But as there is little monitoring of the activ­ities of mountain expeditions, this legal pro­vision of monetary fines has failed to deter mountaineers from polluting the mountains they are climbing.

As a result, the piles of garbage on Nepali mountains have been mounting, even though there is no hard data on how much garbage is actually out there. “But there surely is a lot of it,” says Nga Tenji Sherpa, a regular mountain climber.

There is a provision whereby every climber has to bring back eight kilograms of garbage to the base camp. A government liaison officer sta­tioned at the base camp is supposed to ensure that the mountaineers are doing so. But most of the times these officers are not even present at the base camps.

“There is now no alternative to banning expe­ditions on polluted mountains like Everest and Manaslu for, say, five years and start cleaning them up,” says Maya Sherpa, the president of Everest Summiteers Association. “Otherwise the government could lose all the revenues it currently earns from mountaineering.”

This year, a lot of garbage has been depos­ited above Everest base camp 2, says Nga Tenji Sherpa. “When I was returning after cresting Everest earlier this month, I found tent clothes, used utensils, gas cylinders, and other plastic and rubber items left behind at various camps.”

There is still a tradition of expeditions bury­ing their wastes under the snow; and the wastes show up as soon as the snow starts melting. “The climbers are supposed to bring back eight kilo waste but it appears that they are doing the opposite: leaving behind eight kilo. No one is monitoring them. In this state, how can our mountains be clean?” he asks.

The Department of Tourism has been return­ing anti-dumping deposits on the basis of rec­ommendations of bodies like the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (in Khumbu) and the Annapurna Conservation Area Project (in Manalsu region). “But these organizations have zero knowledge about whether a partic­ular expedition has adhered to government’s anti-dumping rules,” says Santa Bir Lama, the president of Nepal Mountaineering Association. “Unless these organizations and the offending liaison officers are punished, there is no possi­bility of cleaning up our mountains.”

This climbing season alone, the government generated Rs 380 million in revenues from Everest. Likewise, it earned over Rs 450 million from other mountains. But little of this money is being spent in cleaning up the mountains.

Lack of awareness about the damages caused by the left-behind garbage among mountain­eers and government workers, unaccountable trekking agencies, and poor oversight are responsible for the garbage problem, according to Ram Prasad Sapkota, an information officer at the Department of Tourism.

Besides Everest and Manaslu, the other mountains with documented accu­mulation of garbage are Nangpai, Mustang, Dhaulagiri, Sarewung, Arniko Peak, Makalu, Lhotse and Nuptse.

By CHHETU SHERPA | KATHMANDU

The first football World Cup to be televised live in Nepal was 1982 Spain. Back then, there were no Nepali broadcasters, nor was there satellite TV. What little Nepalis got to witness, in uneven sound and pixilated pictures, came via the antenna on their rooftops. Even this shoddy broadcast was only available to the well-to-do as most Nepalis at the time could not afford television sets. Things would dramatically change with the establish­ment of Nepal Television in 1983 and particularly when the national broadcaster gained the rights to show the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

By 1986, a few more Nepalis in urban areas could buy black-and-white TVs. Not only were there more TV sets on which to watch matches live. As the local NTV would be carrying pictures from Mexico the broadcast would also be much clearer. Thousands upon thou­sands of people huddled around the few television sets in their neighborhoods to watch the greatest sporting spectacle on the planet. What they saw mesmerized them, making them lifelong football fans.

Or make that Argentina fans. Nepalis just could not get enough of the diminutive ‘God’ who would easily out-dribble and out-run all his competitors on the field of play. Not just that. Unlike other mor­tals, he could score a legitimate goal even with his hands. Diego Maradona is perhaps the single biggest reason, along with his more contemporary protégé in Lionel Messi, why Argentina to this day has arguably the biggest fan following in Nepal among all major World Cup contenders. Just like you are more likely to vote for a political party your parents voted for, the children of the 1986 generation of Argentine fans find it hard to switch.

That said, this is no 1986. These days, football fans can watch their favorite sport being beamed live from all parts of the globe. The number of Nepalis who follow particular football clubs—English, Spanish, Germans—has also rocketed. With international trav­el getting cheaper, many can also afford to see the World Cup in person. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Nepalis, will be in Russia to savor live action this June and July. Football thus continues to be wildly pop­ular despite the national men football team’s lowly 161 rank, and the near-impossibility its qualification for the World Cup any time soon. We may be divided by our pick of teams but we are all united by our common love for this beautiful game.

The government has asked for the closure of the Kath­mandu office of the United Nations Department of Political Affairs (DPA) as the office was deemed to have completed its mission. The DPA was established in 2011 after the wind-up of the UNMIN, the UN body responsible for supervising the demobilization and disarmament of the then Maoist combatants. With the UNMIN gone, a mediatory body like the DPA, it was felt, was needed in order to oversee the completion of the ‘peace and constitution’ process that had started with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agree­ment (CPA) in 2006. The new federal government thinks that the peace and constitution process has been completed with the holding of all three constitutionally-mandated elections and subsequent formation of three tiers of government. In other words, now that most of the outstanding political issues have been settled and the new constitution has become fully functional, there is no need for an outside observer like the DPA whose chief mandate is to help ‘resolve conflict’.

One could argue that the peace and constitution process will not be completed so long as the two transitional justice bodies—related to truth and reconciliation, and enforced disappearances, respectively—don’t satisfactorily complete their work. If the conflict victims feel they have been denied justice, there will always be a possibility of the country’s relapse into conflict, and hence the continued need for something like the DPA.

But it was also hard to see the DPA play any meaningful role in transitional justice after the formation of the strong left government intent on stamping its authority. Prime Minister KP Oli seems to believe Nepalis are now mature enough to deal with their own issues. He also reckons that he has the mandate to regulate the functioning of foreign NGOs and agencies in line with national interest.

The government asking the DPA to wind down, however, is not tantamount to saying that Nepal is now self-sufficient and needs no outside help whatsoever. Or it should not be. Such an approach would be suicidal in this increasingly interconnected world. But it is also well within this govern­ment’s powers to ensure that international organizations working here follow due process at all times. And if certain organizations like the DPA and the Indian Embassy’s field office in Biratnagar have outlived their utility, or if they have somehow breached their code of conduct, it is only right that they be closed down.