No space to breathe
The danger of lack of public spaces was painfully brought home to the residents of Kathmandu valley during the 2015 earthquakes. People rushed out of their homes in panic only to find there was no safe place nearby. But this is not the only danger. Lack of public parks dissuades people from physical activity, contributing to an ever-expanding number of people with non-communicable diseases. Some can afford expensive exercise gear, not so everyone. If there was a green park nearby, they could all have gotten some exercise without paying anything.
Kathmandu valley is a badly planned area. Houses continue to go up haphazardly in every little open space. Community parks, a salient feature of the Indian capital New Delhi for instance, are non-existent in Kathmandu. Nor is there the equivalent of the Central Park in New York, around which a whole city has sprung up. Government authorities say they are now working on establishing satellite cities around Kathmandu so that some folks can be relocated from core and congested areas. Other ideas include relocating Tri-Chandra Campus and the Chhauni barracks of Nepal Army and building massive green parks in their place.
They won’t do it too soon. Kathmandu is already among the cities with worst air pollution in the world. The incidents of diabetes and heart disease have rocketed. Seismologists fear another big earthquake. The national capital is a botch-job in urban planning. Yet some corrective measures can still be taken.
(See full article here)
Two Silver, zero gold
Finally, the long wait is over. Team Nepal on August 29 secured silver medal in men’s paragliding team event at the 18th Asian Games being held in Indonesia, breaking a 20-year silver drought at Asia’s premier sporting event.
The last time Nepal had won a silver, its only silver in the Asian Games, was in Bangkok 1998, when Sabita Rajbhandari came second in taekwondo. Unfortunately, after the paragliding glory, Nepal may have to wait for a while to earn another Asian-level medal as worthy.
Even in the case of the 2018 Asiad, Nepal failed to qualify for the event in over a dozen sports. This isn’t surprising. Besides the wildly popular football and cricket, the country has always had great promise, in martial arts for instance.
Yet Nepal has been unable to realize its potential due to pathetic state of sporting infrastructure and pervasive corruption in sports bodies. They say numbers don’t lie.
There are currently 207 sports associations registered with the National Sports Council, Nepal’s sports governing body.
The sport of karate alone has 45 associations. There are associations for curling and Iranian wresting, even though there are no players for these sports. Each of these associations has the backing of this or that political party.
Whenever Nepal is invited to take part in a sporting event abroad, the prime concern is not to prepare the athletes but how to use the opportunity to arrange for all-expenses-paid foreign trips for association officials and their families. With such perverted incentives at work no wonder Nepal has punched far below its weight at international sporting meets.
Full story on here
A swirl of questions around BIMSTEC
What is the rationale behind the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC)? Far from the Bay of Bengal, why is Nepal even a part of it? Is meaningful regional cooperation possible by undermining SAARC? If not, why is Nepal promoting it? As Kathmandu prepares to host the BIMSTEC Summit, the fourth in the 20-year history of the organization, many-many questions are being asked about BIMSTEC. There seems to be few answers. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs says climate change and poverty alleviation will be the twin focus of the Kathmandu jamboree. But then the Nepali parliament has just ratified a regional anti-terrorism bill that entails greater security cooperation with India. There are thus more than a few observers in Nepal who think BIMSTEC is an Indian ploy to isolate Pakistan (See Editorial).
“India has always had this paranoia about other SAARC countries ganging up against it, particularly Pakistan,” says Keshav Prasad Bhattarai of Nepal Institute for Strategic Studies. “It is using the BIMSTEC platform to undercut SAARC”.
Bhattarai says the idea of linking South Asia with Southeast Asia, as BIMSTEC aims to do, is alluring. But is it feasible? “For instance is India willing to allow our cargo trucks unhindered land access to Bangladesh and Myanmar? If not, it is futile to talk of BIMSTEC.”
Constantino Xavier of Brookings India, who recently authored a seminal paper on BIMSTEC, disagrees (Interview will be available online Sunday). He says the idea of linking South Asia and Southeast Asia is not new; the age-old trade links between them were severed only when the British colonized the Indian subcontinent. Also, compared to SAARC, says Xavier, “BIMSTEC is not hostage to cyclical India-Pakistan tensions.” But what is in it for Nepal? The BIMSTEC Summit, he says, is a chance for Nepal to “assume greater global visibility”.
The problem right now is that Nepal is unclear about what it wants from the forum, and hence the perception that it is happy to follow India’s lead. Perhaps the ‘BIMSTEC charter’ that will be drafted by this summit will offer some clues.
Full coverage on Sunday
Growing tax burden
The communist government seems keen on taxing Nepalis more to fund its model of welfare state. This fiscal’s budget had already increased taxes on luxury items, including alcohol and tobacco. Later internet and phone calls were also made dearer. In fact, increase in taxes on select goods and services has translated into higher market prices across the board. Nepalis are feeling the pinch.
It does not help that as the federal setup becomes operational the provincial and local level governments have started levying their own taxes. The federal government says many of these taxes are unconstitutional. Yet the provinces listen only selectively. All this has added to the perception that the federal system is costly for common folks.
Small businesses have to register under VAT and its higher tax slabs. Big companies and industries, most of which have been in a state of funk for most of the past three decades, are chaffing under ‘double taxation’.
But instead of increasing, tax collections have dropped, as people find all kinds of ways to evade taxes. They will continue to do so if they are not convinced that higher taxes also means better public services. They can see no functioning welfare state right now.
Fulll story on HERE...
