Submit your Article

Weekly Editorial Cartoon

Kathmandu: India, for the first time, is said to be pos­itive about allowing trucks with Nepali number plates to carry cooking gas into Nepal. The Indian side reportedly showed this readiness during the Nepal-India Intergovern­mental Committee (IGC) meet­ing in Kathmandu this week.

The Indian side has accepted that it may not be possible for Nepali trucks to meet its rigorous anti-explosion test requirements. Nepal Oil Corporation had last year given permission to 775 such trucks to import fuel from India. But since none of them could get India’s anti-explosion certificates, they have been unable to operate. APEX BUREAU  

A village at a distance of 14 km from the headquarters of Baglung, a district in the western hills, has been practicing an extreme form of exclusion where dalits and non-dalits do not attend each other’s social functions, including weddings and funerals. Dhamja of Kathekhola-3 rural municipality, a community long reputed for its religious diver­sity, is now completely divided. Local resident Bhabilal BK says that in the past two months, the dalits and non-dalits of the village of Asauje have even stopped talking to each other. The locals trace the origin of the problem to a wedding ceremony of a non-dalit family. Some members of this family apparently objected to the presence of an inter-caste couple in the ceremony, following which all attending dalit members boycotted the event.

Before that villagers used to attend wedding ceremonies and funerals together. But they have stopped inviting each other now. And even if they receive an invitation from another community, they don’t accept it.

“My daughter got married last week. I’d invited the whole village, but no one from the so-called upper caste Bistas attended the wed­ding,” says BK. “In fact they made a collective decision not to accept a dalit’s invitation. I had made a special request to the elders of that community and had told them that I would make a separate dining arrangement for the non-dalit community. Still no one came,” rued BK. Despite claims that caste-based discrim­ination here is on the wane, separate dining arrangements for dalits and non-dalits at feasts and festivals are now common.

Not only during celebrations, but the two communities have begun shunning each other even on sensitive occasions like funerals. When the wife of Rana Bahadur BK passed away, no one from the non-dalit community attended the funeral. Another local Amar Bahadur Sri­sha says that caste-based discrimination has wrecked social harmony and unity in the vil­lage. “Our ancestors lived amicably with each other, but now there has been a decisive rift in social harmony,” argues Srisha.

Buddhi Bahadur BK, another local resident, asks heatedly who’s going to speak up against such injustice. “The dalit community has been oppressed for years. We won’t stay silent any­more,” says a visibly angry BK.

“At a time when there is widespread talk of the decline in caste-based discrimination, such cases shock us,” says ward chairman Yam Bahadur Srisha. “Discrimination is firmly entrenched, and taking on a more insidious form,” says Srisha. “Discrimination won’t be stamped out by laws only. A change in attitude is necessary.”  

There aren’t many places that offer a good view of the sunrise. But there also are a few sites from where it looks as if the sun is rising not from the distant horizon but right in front of one’s eyes. Sandakpur, which lies at the border point between Nepal’s far-eastern districts of Ilam and Panchthar, and the Indian state of West Bengal, and which is situated at an altitude of 3,636m, is one such location from where the glowing sun appears to rise right in front of the observer. Between October and April, huge numbers of tourists flock to Sandakpur. They need to use Nepal’s territory to get a good sunrise view. There is a hilltop on the Nepali side that offers spectacular views of the sunrise and the sunset. But the Nepali territory doesn’t have adequate infrastructure and hotels to accommodate the legions of tourists in Sanda­kpur. As a result, it’s the Indian side, which has many more hotels than the Nepali side, that makes most of the money from the region’s tourism.

Whereas the Nepali side has just two hotels, the Indian side has 14—three privately run and 11 operated under the West Bengal state gov­ernment. Both hotels on the Nepali side—Sherpa Shaile and Sunrise—are private. Pema Dandu Sherpa, manager of Sherpa Shaile, says Nepal has failed to tap the tourism potential of Sandakpur.

“Tourists view the sunrise from the Nepali side. But because we don’t have enough hotels, most of them have no choice but to stay in the hotels on the other side. Nepal government hasn’t shown interest and taken the initiative to develop adequate tourism infrastructure,” says Sherpa. Other Nepalis in the region also say that India has earned billions by milking Nepali territory.

Domestic tourist Tyson Kerung said he felt bad at the current state of affairs. “It’s sad that we cannot feel the pres­ence of the Nepali state in such a profitable area that attracts hordes of tourists,” says Kerung.

Pasang Dawa, a hotel entrepreneur, informed that tourists wanting to stay in Sandakpur pay anywhere in the range of 500 to 3,500 Indian rupees per night.

BY BHIM KUMAR BASKOTA | SANDAKPUR, ILAM

Time supposedly flies, at least for those whose life is easier than that of 57-year-old Bikaman Thami of Barhabise, Sindhupalchowk. On the third anniversary of the Gorkha earthquake, Thami and his family of 10 continue to live in a ram­shackle tent. The first installment of Rs 50,000 in post-quake rebuilding aid for the construction of his new home was spent on basic necessities of his large family. Broke, Thami is now worried that government officials will ask him to return the money that was meant for laying the foundation of his new home.

Nepal’s reconstruction efforts are in some ways Thami’s plight writ large. The government did not have the resources to rebuild over 767,000 partially or completely destroyed homes, so it decided to give the quake-affected people money to do it themselves. But identifying the right quake victims and taking the mon­ey to them via the right banking channels proved to be hard. When some people did finally get some money, it was a case of too little too late.

Reconstruction of other vital infrastructures has been as slow. Of the over 7,500 schools that were destroyed across 14 most-affected districts, just over 3,100 have been rebuilt satisfactorily. Likewise, less than half of the 1,200 health centers destroyed are up and running again. When it comes to rebuilding the private homes of those who lost it all like Thami, just one-seventh of the target has been met.

With an unclear mandate and constant political med­dling, the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) set up in 2015 to expedite the process was hobbled from the start. Then, reconstruction was virtually put on hold as the country’s attention shifted to the three tiers of elections. Also, for various reasons, the donors who made tall promises during the international donor conference held in June 2015 failed to follow through. As the public memory of the horrors of 2015 faded, it seems, so did the compassion for the quake victims.

PM Oli said all the right things on the third anniversa­ry of the quake on April 25, even pledging to personally contribute labor for rebuilding. He need not do that. What he needs to do is provide strong leadership. He will have done plenty if he can ensure that the NRA is given enough autonomy and resources. Another big achievement would be convincing the donors to hon­or their pledges. But Oli should hurry. At stake are the lives of hundreds of thousands of people like Thami who are bracing for yet another nasty monsoon.

Yubaraj Khatiwada is the right man to lead the Ministry of Finance. Not just because he has a Phd in monetary economics from the pres­tigious Delhi School of Economics—although that is no small consideration in a country where this vital portfolio has time and again gone to those with limited economic nous. The new finance minister has a record of helping steady the economy through diffi­cult times, particularly during his previous stint as the central bank governor.

Khatiwada takes over as finance minister when the economy is again hitting turbulence. Over the past one decade, the country’s trade deficit has declined by a yearly average of 21.9 percent. It has notched up over Rs 90 billion of deficit in the first five months of the current fiscal alone.

Foreign remittance, Nepal’s one sure source of steady income, is drying up. In the five months of the current fiscal, remittance is down 0.8 percent compared to the same period last year—the first negative remittance growth rate in over a decade. Recurrent expenditures are shooting up, productive spending is stagnant, and another real estate bubble is building. Even someone with Khatiwada’s stellar credentials could struggle to bring the twisted economy in shape.

But Khatiwada seems to be in a mood to make a good fist of it. In his first declaration as finance minister, he vowed to bring all government transactions online from the upcoming Nepali New Year. This, if can be done, could make a significant dent on bureaucratic corruption and reduce money-laundering, a growing problem. As a representative of the unified left gov­ernment, Khatiwada added, he is as committed to the left alliance’s electoral commitment of common pros­perity. Moreover, he said he was determined to bring Nepal’s economy back on track. But therein also lies the problem.

CPN-UML, the senior partner in the recent merger with CPN (Maoist Center), has long been seen as a par­ty that protects cartels and syndicates. It also has a vast patronage network to look after. This raises a legitimate fear: Will the new finance minister be allowed to work freely? Or will he be used primarily as a smokescreen behind which the various vested interests of the new communist juggernaut can hide?

Having shown the courage to sideline his cronies who were all angling for the finance ministry, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli would do well to give his cho­sen one enough room to work in the country’s interest.

NON-FICTION
The Girl Who
Escaped Isis
Farida Khalaf with
Andrea C. Hoffman
Translated by Jamie Bulloch
Published: 2017
Publisher: Vintage
Page: 206, paperback

In August 2014, Isis fighters gave the Yazidi inhabitants of Kocho village in the mountains of Iraq three days to convert to Islam or ‘suffer the fate of infidels’. They erroneously viewed the Yazidi religion as a form of devil worship. Farida Khalaf, a young Yazidi woman who was then 18, belonged to one of the many families in Kocho who thought converting to another religion was tantamount to dying.

The result: The Isis stormed into their village, and the jihadists murdered all the boys and men including Farida’s father and elder brother. The girls—around 80 of them—including Farida, were forced into a bus, at gunpoint, and sold into slavery at Raqqa, a city in Syria. The women—including Farida’s mother—were taken elsewhere.

What’s worse, for the Isis fight­ers, misogyny is part of their reli­gion. And that made it possible for men to reject the idea of gender equality and enjoy a sense of power over ‘their’ women. They reveled in violent sexual acts that often left women bruised and bleeding. That’s what happened to Farida too. She was repeatedly sold into sexual slav­ery, raped, and beaten senseless when she tried to resist.

But the good news is that The Girl Who Escaped Isis isn’t just a harrowing tale of all that happened to Farida during the time she was held captive. Yes, she talks about the beatings (she lost sight in one eye, and there was a time when she could not walk for two months), and all the sexual torture that she had to go through.

She even narrates the attempted suicide episodes—from cutting her wrist with glass shards to trying to stick her finger into a light-bulb socket—carried out just to put an end to all the rape.

But the book is ultimately the story of a girl who survived the horrors of Isis against all odds. Farida currently lives in Germany and has been reunited with her mother and younger brothers, who were also taken from their village and held captive for months. However, escaping the clutches of Isis wasn’t the end of the fight for Farida.

Even when she was reunited with her surviving family members, the extended community looked down upon her as someone who had brought dishonor to her family by being raped. Even the name Farida Khalaf is a pseudonym, adopted to protect herself and her family from further shame.

What makes you unable to put the book down though is the way human spirit shines through the ordeals. Farida defies her captors from the get-go and she fights them every chance she gets and with every ounce of strength she has. Maybe Farida’s father, who was a soldier on border duty between northern Iraq and Syria, and who taught her how to shoot a Kalashnikov when she was just 15, had fired up her ‘fight’ rather than ‘flight mode.

This early life lesson was perhaps why she was able to bear the torture without letting it defeat her, even when things seemed far beyond her control. Farida worms her way into your heart with her fighting, screaming, kicking ways. You realize that in a similar situation you would have long given up and that makes you cheer for her unwavering spirit even more.

During the felicitation program hosted by Monika Petra Scheiblauer, the gen­eral manager of Hotel Yak & Yeti, the climbers shared their extraordinary experiences and expressed their heartfelt connection to Nepal.

“It has been 40 years but the experience is still fresh,” Reinhold Messner, a member of the expedition, told APEX. “I wish to be back 20 years later and spend my last few years here. It is always won­derful to be here in Nepal.”

The other mountaineers of the 1978 expedition attend­ing the event were Wolfgang Nairz, Prof Dr Oswald Olz, Prof Peter Habeler, Prof Dr Raimund Magreiter, Robert Schauer, Hanns Schell and Helmuth Hagner. Nepal Mountaineering Association President Santa Bir Lama and the representative of Nepal Tourism Board Sudhan Subedi were also in attendance.