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KATHMANDU: The second edition of the joint military exercises between Nepal Army and China’s PLA, named ‘Sagarmatha Friendship’, is to be held in the city of Chengdu in Sichuan province of China between Sept 17 and 28. A 16-man team of Nepal Army is going to China under the leadership of a Lieutenant Colonel. The two countries had agreed to resume the exercises, first held in 2017, during PM KP Oli’s recent China visit.

The second edition of Sagarmatha Friend­ship will focus on ‘anti-terrorism wargames’ and ‘disaster management’. Nepal Army has been conducting similar exercises with the armies of India and the US as a part of its defense diplomacy. SHAMBHU KATTEL

Blood is dripping from their pierced nose through which ropes have been inserted and tied. Their tears are mixed with blood; and their tails are firmly tied to the truck. Even their mouths are tied so that they cannot scream through the pain. This is how 35-40 buffa­los a truck are transported to Kathmandu every day.Several animal rights activ­ists were present when Sneha Shrestha, founder of Sneha’s Care that works for animal rights, talked about the brutal treatment of these animals at a public event in Lalitpur. Many got emotional when they saw a video on it.

Shrestha informed that the animal welfare guidelines were first drafted in 1999 and later amended in 2007. “But why are they not being imple­mented?” she asked.

She painted a picture of the buffalos transported via trucks to Kathmandu. There are many obstacles to trans­porting buffalos from the Indian border. A truck driver spends Rs 28,000 when transporting a truckload of these animals from Sarlahi district to Kathmandu in var­ious legal and illegal levies. Likewise, according to truck drivers, they have to pay Rs 100,000 to Rs 150,000 for a truck of goats. There is thus great incentive to cut costs.

The guidelines state that the animals should be fed properly, given enough space to move and physically unharmed while they are transported; they should have a comfort­able journey. However, “every day, 500-600 buffalos enter Kathmandu and each of them has the same horrific ride,” Shrestha added.

The Director General of the Department of Livestock Services Bimal Kumar Nir­mal said that despite efforts to bring a law on animal welfare, they had been unable to do so. Nonetheless, he com­mitted to tirelessly working to end cruelty against animals. “We had a provision in the proposed law that outlawed such,” he said.

“If a goat is found dead while it is being transported, we can charge no more than Rs 5,000 in fines,” said Modnath Gau­tam of Central Animal Quaran­tine department. Because of such paltry fines people who transport animals are careless. In Gautam’s opinion, the laws should be stricter.

The police do not bat an eye when they see the bru­tal way in which the animals are transported. “There are also cases where drivers have presented signed papers from quarantine officers even though the mentioned officers were absent from their posts,” Shrestha revealed.

The registrar of the Nepal Veterinary Council Narayan Prasad Ghimire said that state and local governments are better placed to deal with these problems. The local governments have the powers to punish the rule-breakers, he said, “and even to send them to jail.”

By Nitu Ghale | Lalitpur

With the coming to power of the left government that now enjoys a two-thirds majority in the federal parliament, as well as effective control over all seven provinces, people were hope­ful that the ruling parties would honor their twin electoral promises of stability and prosperity. But while the government certainly appears stable, its record on prosperity has been repeatedly questioned over the past five months. The central government seems to believe that the remedy to the country’s economic woes is higher taxes, which is why the new budget increased taxes across the board. Everything from cars to liquor to daily edibles are now dearer, the rise in their prices directly or indi­rectly attributable to tax increases stipulated in the budget. The sev­en provincial governments, on the other hand, believe the center has shortchanged them in revenues and are devising their own formulas to collect more taxes. There is thus a lot of duplication in tax collection, which in turn is making the lives of Nepalis difficult.

The federal government for instance recently imposed a 13 percent Telecom Service Charge (TSC) on telecommunications and Internet Service Providers, add­ing to the cost of voice calls, text messages, data packages and internet services. This made tele­com and internet services in Nepal one of the most expensive in Asia, even though the left coalition’s elec­tion manifesto had clearly stated that free and widespread availability of internet would be one of its cen­tral goals. This year’s budget also broadened the scope of the Value Added Tax (VAT), much to the cha­grin of small businesses.

Why pay?

“We had people from the tax office coming to tell us that we needed to register with VAT soon,” says a beauty salon owner in New Road who didn’t want to be identi­fied as she feared being accused of cheating on taxes. “We are regis­tered under PAN and pay our taxes regularly. I don’t understand why a small business like ours needs to register with VAT too.” (The new budget had listed beauty salons, among other small businesses, to be registered under VAT.)

“There is no point in paying extra taxes when we’re not getting any­thing in return,” she says. “Look at the pathetic state of New Road. Basantapur is still under con­struction, we get waterlogged when it rains and we have run out of parking spaces. So what do we pay the taxes for?”

Likewise, an IT firm owner in Kathmandu, who also declined to be named, believes the current gov­ernment is not friendly towards entrepreneurs. “The government seems to have no idea how much income IT companies generate for Nepal from abroad,” he says. “IT professionals can work in any part of the world yet we’re still trying to work in our own country and create new jobs here. But the government keeps discouraging us.” H clarified that his laments were based on the recent increases in internet charges, the imposition of VAT on IT compa­nies and the ban on cryptocurrency.

As the taxes are now levied under three levels—federal, provincial and local—common folks feel the tax bur­den on them has greatly increased. Provinces, metropolitans and rural municipalities have started their own taxes and are increasing local service charges. For instance, having a birth certificate made will now set you back by up to Rs 1,000 when earlier it used to cost next to nothing.

Storm brewing

At present, all provinc­es except Province 4, the Gandaki province, are in conflict with the central government over taxes. Province 1 has intro­duced taxes on exports of 207 different mate­rials to other provinc­es. Provinces 2, 3 and 6 have introduced 0.5 per­cent “Natural Resourc­es Tax” on the export of stones, crushed stones, sand, slate, grav­el and also cement and clinkers produced under its jurisdiction.

Province 5 has passed a man­date to impose a tax of between Rs 160 to Rs 320 on Indian vehicles plying within its jurisdiction. At the same time, province 7 has introduced extra taxes for regis­tration and renewal of business firms under the “Province Develop­ment Tax.” Industries and business­es are feeling the pinch, and again their added costs are being passed on to the final consumers of their goods and services.

The federal government claims that the provinces cannot arbitrarily charge ‘unconstitutional’ taxes, and any such taxes would be summarily scrapped.

“We are aware of the various taxes provincial governments are levying and we have already taken mea­sures to control them,” says Shishir Dhungana, revenue secretary at the Ministry of Finance. “The pro­vincial governments have the right to manage their own finances but they must follow certain rules and guidelines. They cannot go against the constitution.”

Making them pay

Such conflicts of interest between different tiers of government are increasingly coming to the surface. When provinces 1, 3 and 4 intro­duced ‘District Export Tax’ on for­est, agriculture and mine products, the central government had to write to them, informing that such taxes violated the constitution. But in most cases the provincial govern­ments have refused to withdraw their taxes.

“The constitution gives the provin­cial and local governments the right to levy taxes as per their needs. But some local and provincial govern­ments have introduced extra taxes on their own,” says former finance secretary Shanta Raj Subedi. “It is the central government’s duty to make sure that the taxes don’t over­lap. Moreover, the mechanism of levying and collecting taxes should be scientific, practical and coordi­nated.” Only then, says Subedi, will people have faith in their tax system and will actually be inclined to pay timely taxes.

The mighty federal government of KP Sharma Oli has over the five months of its tenure been repeatedly accused of authoritarian tendencies. In the eyes of many observ­ers, this was evident in the way the prime minister tried to consolidate all powers in the PMO, the manner in which the government strove to ram through a watered down medical education bill in parliament, in its ban on popular protest sites and in arbitrary detention and harassment of prominent public figures. Yet the past one week has also shown why it is not easy to impose an authoritarian rule in Nepal these days. After resolutely standing its ground against Dr Govinda KC for over three weeks, the government was forced to come back to the negotiating table after widespread criticism of its handling of Dr KC’s fast-unto-death. Likewise, the Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs Sher Bahadur Tamang was compelled to resign after an uproar following his misogynistic comments against Nepali women studying medicine in Bangladesh. The gov­ernment is also increasingly under pressure to come clean on its prolonged inaction on vital issues.

These are signs that when civil society leaders and mainstream media support a popular cause the government is forced to take heed. In fact, following the 2006 change, there has been a steady growth in the role of indepen­dent civil society and free press. They are able to shape public opinion as never before, and the government ignores their advice at its peril. Interestingly, the role of the main opposition, Nepali Congress, has been as meaningful in recent developments.

Even though Congress is now an enfeebled opposition numerically (with just 63 seats as opposed to the ruling communist party’s 174 seats in the federal parliament), it was nonetheless able to bring the federal legislature to a standstill to forestall the government from watering down the afore­mentioned medical education bill. The main opposition, with the help of its many sister organizations, was also able to build pressure from the street.

Prime Minister Oli and his entourage are finding out that however powerful the executive in Nepal there are now potent checks against its tendency to abuse power. On another day, such checks may lead to political gridlock and government inaction. But right now they are playing a vital role: reminding the executive organ of the limits of its power.