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Quick facts

Born on 1973 in Gorkha

Went to Manakamana Higher Secondary School, Gorkha 

Graduated from Pine Manor College, US; and post-grad from Clark University, US

Wife of Pradeep Thapa Pariyar 

About her

Pradeep Thapa Pariyar (Husband)

Kishor Panthi (Colleague)

Sandy Hecker (Friend)

The Election Commission (EC) is preparing to hold elections to the federal parliament and seven provincial assemblies on Nov 20—in a single phase. It’s a herculean task in terms of security, human resources, and logistics.  But despite the challenges, the commission is capable of conducting the polls on the same day and in a free and fair manner, says Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya.   The first challenge that the poll-governing body as well as the Home Ministry currently face is management of human resources, mainly security personnel.   The Nepal Police is the primary security provider for elections while the Nepal Army (NA) and the Armed Police Force (APF) serve as back-up forces.  As the current police strength is inadequate to oversee election security, it plans to hire 120,000 temporary police to secure around 11,000 polling sites and 22,000 booths across the country.  Deploying enough security personnel during elections is hard, says Hemanta Malla, a former deputy inspector general of police. “Nepal Police must carry out its daily policing work as well as secure the poll centers.” When the elections to the local bodies were staged earlier in May this year, 62,000 police and around 100,000 temporary police were deployed. For additional security, 32,000 APF and 71,000 army personnel were also on the ground, with their own sets of security plans and mandates.    Tek Prasad Rai, spokesperson for Nepal Police, says the major constraint for election-related security is lack of weapons, vehicles, and communication equipment.  “We have 2,660 police units across the country but only 1,717 four-wheel vehicles,” says Rai. “We also lack communication equipment and weapons.” Chances of police getting additional communication equipment and weapons before the November polls are slim. In the run-up to the May local elections, Nepal Police had submitted a proposal to the Home Ministry for purchasing weapons. But the ministry initially snubbed it, citing fund-crunch. When the ministry did accept the proposal, it was forced to roll back its decision following a public criticism that the government was planning to buy weapons when the country’s economy is in a terrible shape.   During the local elections, the Nepal Police had to borrow weapons from the army. It is likely to do the same for the November elections as well.  “Without sufficient weapons and resources, police cannot keep a close eye on every election-related security detail,” says Malla. “In that case, incidents like booth-capturing and vote-rigging cannot be effectively prevented. Management of non-security staff at election centers is another challenge. According to the commission, it needs approximately 260,000 staff—40 percent more than in the May elections—to conduct federal and provincial elections. As the number of government staff is insufficient, the EC will have to hire temporary election officers. The election governing body is also logistically constrained to hold elections in a single phase without any hiccups.  Thapaliya, the chief election commissioner, says his office will import only those electoral equipment that are unavailable in the country.  The EC also expects logistical support from India and China. It has already communicated with India and China through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, requesting vehicles, ballot boxes and other equipment. With limited logistics and resources, it is hard to be assured that the elections will be smooth. It would have been far easier for the EC to hold the polls to the federal parliament and provincial assemblies in multiple phases.  But both the EC and the political parties are in favor of a single-phase election.  Malla, the former inspector general of police, says there was no need to hold elections to all seven provincial assemblies on the same day.  “Considering the issue of logistics, India holds its state assembly elections on different dates,” he says. “We could follow a similar model here.” The multiple-phase elections are also cost-effective, as some logistics and resources can be reused.  But Thapaliya does not agree. He says the EC is capable of holding elections in a single-phase. “Unlike India, we don’t have a large population and as such we do not need to hold provincial assembly elections on different dates,” he says. 

There’s no denying that work-life is hard. Having to deal with so many people with varying emotions, interests, and expectations can get tiring. But that’s why emotional intelligence is so important. The ability to manage oneself in the midst of frustrations when dealing with variables outside of one’s control is at the core of what it means to be emotionally intelligent. Take two people, for instance. One is cool, calm, and collected during confrontations at work. She understands that all her co-workers have their own pressures and that they are all trying their best. She is empathetic but not a doormat. She can be assertive when needed, but generally radiates positive vibes that make working with her pleasurable. On the other hand, there’s a person who takes everything personally, gossips all the time and doesn’t think twice before sharing what he really feels. He excuses it as ‘being himself’, not realizing that what seems like authenticity to him is making life hard for his colleagues. What happens when these two individuals feel angry at work? The emotionally intelligent person is likely to notice feelings of anger arising within her. She realizes that anger is an emotion that is just communicating to her that there is an obstacle in the way of getting something she cares about. She uses anger to understand herself and redirect her actions towards her goal rather than reacting angrily. On the other hand, the person lacking emotional intelligence reacts with anger without realizing that the emotion has gotten the better of him. Instead of seeing anger as a signal, he justifies his unhelpful comments and reactions. We all have thoughts, emotions, and stories inside our heads. If we act on them without consideration, we might end up resentful of both others and ourselves. But instead, what if we learnt to see emotions as data and not directives? When we are governed by our emotions, we become emotionally rigid. We are hooked into our mental chatter and fail to see the bigger picture. The opposite of this inability is the ability to create space between stimulus and response. Instead of reacting right away, we can pause and choose an appropriate response. This fundamental skill is called emotional agility. When we are emotionally agile, we learn to align our actions with our values, intentions, and the kind of person we wish to become. What others do and say is out of our control. But how we think and act are well within our reasoning: are we getting closer to the kind of person we aspire to be or veering away from it? Our emotional intelligence is highly malleable. But we must first be honest with ourselves: what are we like during trying times? What are our aspirations: what kind of person do we really wish to become? Once we find answers to these deep but important questions, we can see what is making us emotionally rigid. Stretching the space between stimuli and our responses requires us to practice taking small pauses. A helpful way to take a pause is to ask ourselves three important questions: First, how am I feeling? Second, what are my options? And finally, what do I truly want? If we practice asking these questions to ourselves regularly, we will quickly realize that the choices available to us are shaped by the way we feel at any moment. Let’s say someone gives us feedback we don’t like. The first step is to recognize feelings of frustration in us. Now what choices do we have? Shouting back? Shutting down and becoming passive aggressive? Or is it to acknowledge frustration in us and to communicate in a way where we try to understand another person’s reasons for the feedback but also share why we would have liked the feedback delivered differently? If we are emotionally agile, we understand the value of our frustration in telling us what’s important to us. But if we aren’t skillful, we might act frustrated rather than using our frustration constructively. Becoming aware of our emotions, intentional with our choices and purposeful with our actions takes practice. You can practice each moment, starting right now. How are you feeling? What are your options? What do you truly want? The author is co-founder of My Emotions Matter, an education initiative that helps individuals and teams learn the mindset and skills of Emotional Intelligence. Learn more at myemotionsmatter.com

A library equipped with ICT facilities. A yoga center. A rainwater harvesting system equipped with a large storage facility. Wider roads, bigger boulevards, a well-functioning mass transit system that serves this end of the valley. A relatively fail-proof local street lighting system. A CCTV-based community safety and security system. These and many other problems surfaced, once again, at a town-hall meeting one recent Saturday morning. The meeting of minds, lack-of-minds, halfwits and many others on the margins of these broad categories was quite intense and interesting, pointing at a vibrant democracy that we have at the grassroots around here. For one thing, the meeting again showed how vibrant and diverse our small community is. It revealed that it is full of experts of different kinds, giving individual and collective confidence a big boost. For those outsiders looking for news in every event, a major news was this: Our own mini-polis abutting the hip and happening metropolis of Kathmandu did not have a town hall of her own! This lack of infrastructure was a real smack in the face of the old guard that had gotten the popular mandate to run the municipality once again. But then such things happen in our polity every now and then, making our governance system a unique one and giving our state a unique identity. All those seeking a bright future in this country must get used to this, for the sake of their mental, physical and spiritual health. The absence of a town hall and the unavailability of other appropriate venues meant the organizers had to make adjustments, which they did. They held the meeting at a private house. The tea served at the meet tasted great and so did the cookies. The venue was spacious enough for about 100 people. For 50-odd, it provided quite a lot of breathing space. The owner of the property moderated the session all too well. Between the cup and the lips, another news came to the fore. A meeting of the coterie that mattered revealed that an inter-ward coordination committee meant to act as a bridge between local communities and the municipal office had already taken shape the other day. Who all were in this committee? The moderator cum house-owner, of course. His neighbors. And his neighbors’ neighbors. And what was this committee meant to do? A kind of policy adviser, it was to report problems facing the communities to respective ward offices and work out solutions. That day’s meeting in which yours truly was taking part was meant to inform the communities that one such committee consisting of birds of a feather had just come into existence. Well and good. After all, that’s how ‘democracy’ has been working in this part of the world for decades, despite waves of political change. Let’s shed a bit more light on this. After the ‘political transformations’ of the 1990s and the mid-2000s, an informal system has been ruling this country, dashing popular aspirations for peace, progress and prosperity. In common parlance, it is called ‘setting’. What is it? It’s all about filling the organs of the state with people that are loyal to the rulers. They don’t need to be exceptionally bright or qualified. Not possible? Then how about putting the right people in the right place, albeit differently? How about putting people, whose morals are questionable and loyalties up for sale, in positions of power? Still not possible? Then smash the organs that do not do your bidding, for even without these organs, a state can run as per the whims and fancies of despots donning the garbs of democrats. In recent days, the judiciary has come under repeated attacks from the all-powerful executive, much to the former’s detriment. The legislature has become a tool that does the bidding of the executive. Crack a whip and all the lawmakers fall in line to do their masters’ bidding. The country is in crisis, but these people have been partying. That’s why it’s hard to find lawmakers even during discussions on issues of utmost importance like citizenship laws. That’s why the government does not land in soup even after a massive scandal involving preparation of fiscal budget. The years after the political change of the mid-2000s have seen this system of settings ruin the country further and further. Like the fish, our political system has been rotting from the head and the stink is getting unbearable. Was the town-hall meeting yet another indication of a polity stewing in its own juice? Was it a serious indication of polity metastasis spreading? Most probably. I would be all too happy if this analysis of the town-hall and other goings-on in this country proved far-fetched. But I doubt it.