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The trouble with ethics is no one knows you have them until you come into conflict with people around you.

Earlier this year I was offered a job which breaches my, and the current trend of, ethics. It is not illegal and the person was truly astounded when I said what he was suggesting is now seen, around the world, as unethical. He stated that a niche market had opened up, which he thought he could fill, because of the very fact other countries and orga­nizations have stopped this practice due to ethics.

My friend has worked for decades to improve the lives of thousands of people in Nepal, and to a lesser extent, overseas. This of course takes an inordinate amount of fund­raising. He thought that by entering this niche market he could make enough money to help fund his humanitarian projects.

Double jeopardy. Do we do some­thing parts of the world now con­siders unethical, but as I said, not illegal, to the benefit of the under­privileged? In my opinion this could backfire on him, making his current donors and supporters doubt his ethics across the board. Or am I just being too sensitive to something that perhaps his supporters are totally unaware of?

I am sure this question is sim­ilar to those faced by non-profit and for-profit organizations every day. Perhaps for the organizations that exist to make a profit for their shareholders, the line is not so blurred. After all making money is their bottom line. As long as it is not illegal, who cares if it is ethical or not? Most larger organizations these days have a social conscience—some contributing out of real desire to help (the environment, the unem­ployed, the poor, etc) and others out of an obligation and perhaps for a tax rebate.

Non-profits face a bigger dilemma, as their very existence is often brought about in reply to unethi­cal behavior (armed conflict, gen­der bias, etc) by governments and groups in various countries around the world. One organization I respect for its ethics is UNICEF. They do not use pictures of suffering chil­dren in their fund-raising campaigns or literature. To them it is unethical to use the suffering of children to raise money. Yet many organizations do use pictures of the suffering to help raise awareness and funds. We can ask, is this ethical? Does the end justify the means?

We can also say ethics is a luxury many people cannot afford. But by saying this, I think we do the majority of the population a disser­vice. We all have our own level of understanding of ethics, depending on our background, upbringing and environment. Sometimes we are required to do things in our work or family which we do not particularly want to but by not doing them the result may be us being out of a job or coming into conflict with colleagues, friends or relatives.

It can be extremely hard to stand up and say ‘no’ when those around us are compliant. But every day people take the decision to do just that. Often those people are not widely noticed, but most likely are the people who do not get ahead in their career or are called ‘foolish’ for not breaking their own set of values for personal gain. There are a few brave souls (like a friend’s mother) who stand up for their beliefs by chaining themselves to trees or machinery scheduled to cut those trees or mine the land. Or who stand up against the social norms in their society (like Malala Yousafzai) because nowhere under God’s law does it say girl children should be denied education, or that certain people are less than human and should be exterminated. And some­times we do notice these people and applaud their ethics o

The West Seti Hydropower Project is again in the news for wrong reasons. Twen­ty-one years after first license was issued for its development and seven years after it was handed over to the Chinese side, perhaps not unexpectedly it is on the verge of being cancelled again.Separate the fluff and the financial viability of West Seti was always a suspect. As a stor­age-type, it makes sense for Nepal to develop it for energy securi­ty. But it’s relative remoteness from urban centers in Nepal and the fact that it needs a very long transmission line for power evac­uation, if it is not exported to India, didn’t seem to make much economic sense. It was originally conceived as an export-type proj­ect for obvious reasons.

But with India’s new regula­tions on cross-border power import that proscribes import­ing power from Beijing-invest­ed projects in Nepal, the door for exporting it to the southern neighbor remains shut. While there may be talk about consum­ing the generated power in the far-west and developing a local economy, that is unlikely before the transfer within the Build Own Operate and Transfer (BOOT) period is over.

The China Three Gorges Corpo­ration was worried about the prof­itability of the project and return on investment. Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) was expected to make a 25 percent investment in this $1.6 billion project—arranged through concessional loans from China EXIM bank. (Now there is talk of the project being built with the help of Nepali investors.) Even NEA management would much rather invest the borrowed amount in other projects, if it were not for political pressure.

When the government of Nepal cancelled the license given to Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation (SMEC) in 2011, it had become clear that the SMEC would not be able to arrange financing for the project. By then ADB and China National Machin­ery and Equipment Import and Export Corporation (CMEC) had decided not to offer financing as well. But curiously enough the project was handed over to anoth­er Chinese state-owned firm in August 2011.

The story of repeated fail­ure of the West Seti hydropow­er project is emblematic of our lack of pragmatism. This is also a strong indictment of our devel­opment model that perpetu­ates a slack and nonchalant attitude in everything we do. A degree of discipline is required in any undertaking, more so in huge national infrastructural development. Our inclination to take at face value commitments made by our neighbors is also a problem. We tend to assume that China will fund anything and everything, if we only ask. Reality is much different. Chinese polit­ical leaders may give assurances to fund our request, but they are only being polite.

More important, the failure of West Seti is symptomatic of our unrealistic expectations from Bei­jing; our inability to see through cultural differences during nego­tiations continues to create a bub­ble of unrealistic expectations.

As Nepal begins a phase of negotiations with China on a raft of projects both in and out­side the ambit of Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI), the failure of West Seti offers a stark remind­er of what could happen to oth­er much-hyped undertakings, including the railways, if we do not do due diligence.

 There was a time when I’d wake up with Radio Nepal's signature tune at 6 am. These days, an alarm on my phone tries to rouse me, which I ‘snooze’ or ‘dismiss’. Before getting up, there are people like me who go to their social media accounts to see what happened in the world while they slept. And there are those who go to bathrooms carrying their cell phones and spend a little extra time while they do their chores. We show off what we ate on a Friday night, what lipstick or watch we wore, how much we ran, what gave us chills, where we went on vacations, the expen­sive gifts we gave or received. We tirelessly comment about politi­cians. We have a desire to become the extraordinary. If we support a person whose house has been swept away by floods, we pose with them handing a blanket and looking like the most generous and sensitive person on earth. But we also constantly fear being judged. If everyone is posting a picture of celebrating Teej and we don’t, ‘maybe we're not cultural enough.’ If we don't post on our wedding anniversary, people might think we have ‘troubled relation.’ Our thought process has been deeply affected by the world that we see through a small handheld screen.

There are around 80 million users (including myself ) of Face­book in Nepal who spend most of their times either chatting, brows­ing, liking, or commenting. Take a look at your family—do they spend more of their home-time or fam­ily-time using the little machines than on the little ones who are probably learning new words, or old ones with sickness who yearn for care, or the spouse seeking bonding time? If they do, your relationships have become less important than the online world!

But no, I don't mean that there are only addicted people. There are in fact conscious people who make an effort to stay away from social media, who prefer to make their minds agile by thinking, con­templating, and analyzing—without using the phone. But the popula­tion of the opposite is higher, who when they need to think, prefer assisted thinking, using Google’s Help for questions like ‘am I rude?' or ‘why men/women behave like that?’ I had a habit of maintaining a diary/journal. I wrote on and off for more than 10 years but ever since the mobile phones entered my life, my frequency went down and now, it’s a thing of the past.

Technological advancement is no doubt beneficial. News trav­eling across the globe in a fraction of second or getting close to your loved ones through free video calls are everyday highlights. But there are relationships that have died because of social media. We have been enslaved by these devices to the extent that we forget that there is a real world where people need to talk, feel, understand, and respond in person. And the more we are hooked consciously, the more dangerous it is.

 We have to give a big thank to Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli for bringing the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooper­ation (BIMSTEC) to national atten­tion. Had PM Oli not taken the ini­tiative to host the fourth summit, this regional organization would probably have gone unnoticed in Nepal for years to come. All said and done, this was one of the biggest international events Nepal has ever hosted, costing the state Rs 2 billion (nearly $17.6 million). The chaos in Kathmandu during the meeting forced Kathmanduties to get to ‘know’ BIMSTEC, whether they wanted to or not. There is no doubt the memory of this meeting will last long in the minds of the millions who saw the way the meet­ing was organized. Now the meeting is over and resources have been spent, I do not want to dwell on whether it was necessary. But the meeting got me to thinking—and reading—on how/if Nepal can benefit from BIMSTEC.

Many opinion makers in Kath­mandu had no idea what BIMS­TEC was—a 20- year-old regional organization. That was because till date no one knows of a single ben­efit Nepal has derived from being its member. However, having spent so much to convene the meeting last week, Nepal now seems heavily invested in it. In other words, every one of us now knows what BIMSTEC is and that it costs us quite a lot to keep the membership.

PM Oli has claimed the BIMSTEC meeting was a huge success. He touted the agreement on energy as its biggest achievement. He further said Nepal has expedited talks with India and Bangladesh to facilitate power trade. Now, the question is, and excuse me if it is layman, but, why does Nepal need BIMSTEC to discuss such issues with Bangladesh and India? They are our immedi­ate neighbors as well as founding members of SAARC, the oldest regional organization. And if PM Oli thinks this meeting helped boost his image internationally, and has benefitted us all, that too would be naïve considering BIMSETIC is a questionable endeavor even on the international front.

Factoring in how much criticism SAARC gets for being ‘redundant,’ going by the fact that the BIMSETC Secretariat didn’t even bother to tweet or update social media on the summit in Kathmandu, it is clear that BIMSTEC, too, is no hub of learning, exchange and diplomacy. Let’s face it: the productive function­ing of the initiative is questionable at best. But again Nepal has already invested Rs 2 billion on this unpro­ductive exercise.

Five out of the seven BIMSTEC members are SAARC countries. It should thus be no secret that the purpose of BIMSETC is to under­mine and keep SAARC divided. BIM­STEC is actually aggressively push­ing the agenda of the Brother India Managed Small Territorial Economic Countries (or BIMSTEC, if you will). And that is not an agenda Nepal should support.

For as long as our resources are spent on a parallel regional ini­tiative, SAARC will continue to be undermined, in tune with the for­eign policy strategies of our south­ern neighbor. It is no secret that SAARC has been made redundant by the political tussles between India and Pakistan, and that BIMSTEC, as such, has no future so long as those tussles are not resolved, for it will not be able to move beyond being an exercise in Indian foreign policy and its hegemonic intent. If the political tussles between India and Pakistan were to subside, BIMSTEC will cease to be relevant, even from the foreign policy perspective. So the question is why the government is wasting resources on our southern neigh­bor’s foreign policy issues.

There were some positive ini­tiatives that we saw in this latest BIMSETC meeting, like the agree­ment to underscore Buddhism as a transnational connectivity indi­cator. However, our incapacity to turn agreements into action, com­pounded by the already-question­able intent of BIMSTEC, renders such agreements moot.

Right now the government looks like a fool for having spent valuable resources —which it could have oth­erwise used to boost its image and credibility—to instead wreak havoc on Kathmandu streets in the name of regional cooperation, and God knows what else!