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Millions have been squandered from the Prime Minister Employment Program due to poor planning and improper implementation. Many local units of Province 5 have spent an inordinate amount of money in just clearing weeds. About Rs 500 million has been spent on various programs that have no clear long-term impact. Program officials blame hasty planning.

Rs 7 million has been spent just in weeding gardens and cleaning roads in Tilottama municipality in the district of Rupandehi. Earlier too, a cleaning program with a budget of Rs 5 million was organized in the
municipality. “Even after the program was completed, we had to employ people for cleaning and clearing weeds in order to spend the allocated budget,” says Devendra Gyawali, a municipal officer. The majority of the 236 people employed in Tilottama municipality were women, who cleared weeds in Butwal’s
Belhiya road.

The PM employment program has a provision that allows the hiring of laborers in various municipal programs. However, Tilottama municipality has wasted a lot of money in seemingly pointless work. According to Madhav Giri, the coordinator of the employment program in the municipality, Rs 4.4 million has been spent on wages alone. Rs 5.5 million was spent by the municipality on cleaning the city, planting trees and clearing up a field. Laying drains, maintaining health posts and constructing hospital roads are the only tasks the municipality has invested in that have meaningful long-term impact.

Gaumukhi rural municipality in the district of Pyuthan has also spent Rs 3.6 million on gratuitous activities. As many as 600 people were employed and Rs 3.6 million spent by this rural municipality in just nine days to exhaust the allocated budget. In nine local units in Pyuthan, more than 2,500 people—of whom 70 percent are women—have been employed.

Meanwhile, some municipalities in Rupandehi have still not shown an interest in implementing the PM employment program. Chief administrative officer Khyam Bahadur Thapa of Siddharthanagar municipality says, “Most of the municipality’s structures are concrete. Here the only work that needs to be focused on are cleaning and afforestation. Clearing weeds, just for the purpose of employing people and spending the budget, cannot be justified,” he says.

Many have criticized the PM employment program, arguing that billions of rupees are being spent for cheap popularity. Central member of the Nepal Bar Association Shiv Raj Pandit says that the criteria for selecting an unemployed person for a job is flawed. “There isn’t much difference between giving away money to someone and employing them for clearing weeds,” he says. He adds that the lives of the unemployed won’t improve unless the PM employment program is linked to productive activities. “The program is good, but because the implementation was not effective, it has been unable to bring about positive changes. We need to do better in the upcoming fiscal,” he says.

“Hokum!” George Orwell would scoff at the idea of sports as a tool of diplomacy. “At the international level sport frankly mimic warfare,” he wrote in his celebrated 1945 essay ‘The sporting spirit’. At the international level, “even a leisurely game like cricket, demanding grace rather than strength, can cause much ill-will.” He was at the time referring to the infamous 1932-33 Bodyline series between England and Australia, when the English team tried to bounce out Don Bradman and company by bowling into their bodies, delivery after short-pitched delivery. But Orwell could as well have been speaking about modern-day India-Pakistan cricket rivalry.

Traditionally, Indian and Pakistani teams have been at loggerheads, each trying to demolish the other in every match they occasionally play against each other. Who can forget the Aamir Sohail-Venkatesh Prasad run-in at the 1996 World Cup? Or the simmering atmosphere of the first post-Kargil India-Pak match in Manchester in 1999? Or Sachin Tendulkar cutting Shoaib Akhtar for a six at the 2003 World Cup? Yet the most recent World Cup clash between the two was a bit of an exception.

Even as Indo-Pak ties remain strained, the two teams were rather civil to each other when they met in the round-robin stage of the 2019 World Cup. The ever-irascible Indian captain Virat Kohli seemed determined to control his emotions. On the tournament’s eve, Babar Azam, the best Pakistani batsman, had expressed his desire to emulate the international success of Kohli, his cricketing idol. In the match itself, when Kohli thought he had nicked a ball (he hadn’t), he walked off, a rarity in modern-day cricket. It was far from a ‘war’ that the Twitterati were expecting.

The US and China famously began their rapprochement in 1971 by playing Ping-Pong. The two Koreas march together in the Olympics as a mark of amity. In cricket, India hosts all of Afghanistan’s home games, which has done more to buttress India-Afghan ties than decades of the more traditional diplomacy. Likewise, when Sandeep Lamichhane appears in the IPL, our knee-jerk anti-Indianism takes a backseat, as we cannot help but ponder the many similarities between Nepalis and Indians.

The ace leg-spinner has done a lot to break the stereotype of Nepalis as ‘chowkidars’ in India. There could as such be few better goodwill ambassadors of Nepal to India. It’s easy to latch onto prejudices from afar. Friendship requires more interactions to flourish. Anecdotally, one of the first American sportspersons to visit China in 1971 was shocked at how much the Chinese resembled the Americans: “The people are just like us. They are real, they’re genuine, they got feeling!”

Of course, sports can both unite and divide. Some sports fans are so rabidly xenophobic that they have to demean players from other cultures. African footballers playing in the Nepali football league are subjected to awful racial chants. The treatment of any Indian football or cricket team visiting Nepal is no different. Yet when we see a Nepali player like Lamichhane easily mingle and bond with Indian players, our perception of the Indians changes, and vice-versa. As in cricket, so in life.

The Home Ministry has stopped the celebrations of the Dalai Lama’s 84th birthday that falls on July 6, Saturday. The celebrations were to be held at the Mustang Samaj Monastery in Swayambhu, Kathmandu.

The District Administration Office Kathmandu rejected the request of the Tibetan Refugee Welfare Office at Lazimpath that it be allowed to hold the annual celebrations. The office says no anti-China activity will be allowed on Nepali soil.

“The Tibetan community had asked for our permission for the celebrations. We did not give the permit,” said Ram Prasad Acharya, Kathmandu’s Chief District Administrative Officer.

A representative of the Tibetan spiritual leader and the coordinator of the Tibetan refugee camps in Nepal Tsultrim Gyatso said: “We did not organize the program with a political motive. It is objectionable to stop a program that was being held on the basis of our religious beliefs.”

The Tibetan Refugee Welfare Office had invited the ambassadors of the US, the UK, Japan and other European countries to the program.

A committee comprising families of martyrs, and disappeared and injured people has warned Province 2 government of protests if the government does not ditch its ‘discriminatory’ attitude.

The committee in the south-eastern district of Saptari organized a press conference on June 29 in the district headquarters Rajbiraj to voice its opinion and issue a formal warning of protests in all eight districts of the province if its demands are not met. The following day, the committee submitted a memorandum to the chief minister as well as to the prime minister.

A press release issued by the committee states that martyrs sacrificed their lives for the country and its people, not for any political party, so the government’s discriminatory behavior is an insult to
the martyrs.

Committee chairperson Rita Chaudhary accused the provincial government of providing services and facilities only to the victims of the Madhes movements while neglecting families of the martyrs from the decade-long insurgency (1996-2006) and the 2006 people’s movement. She accused the provincial ministry of land management, agriculture and cooperatives of showing discriminatory behavior by providing cows and buffaloes only to the victims of the Madhes movements.

Provincial Minister for Agriculture and Land Management Shailendra Prasad Sah had launched the program last month by handing over a buffalo to Nirmala Raut, the wife of Rajeev Raut who was martyred in the 2015 Madhes movement. The ministry has also started giving each family a one-time sum of Rs 30,000 for the care of the cattle and the maintenance of their sheds.

Kulananda Bishwakarma, a member of a martyr family from Shambhunath municipality, demanded that the government correct its biased behavior and treat the families of all the martyrs and the injured respectfully and impartially.

He claimed that Province 2 government has called for applications only from the families of the martyrs of the Madhes movements for receiving these services, thereby depriving families of other martyrs of the same services.

As many as 20 buffalos were distributed in Maleth on June 30, and 14 buffalos were distributed in Bhardah the following day. Minister Sah informed that in the upcoming fiscal, the provincial government is planning to distribute buffalos to the families of martyrs from the Madhes movements in the districts of Saptari, Siraha, Sarlahi, Mahottari, Dhanusa, Rautahat, Bara and Parsa. Under the program, families that receive buffaloes are not allowed to sell them or give them as gifts for three years.

Minister Sah also informed that as per a decision of the provincial council of ministers, one member each of the families of the martyrs from the Madhes movements would get jobs and that appointment letters have already been handed over to them. The provincial government has also introduced a special scholarship program for the children of the martyrs, he added. Moreover, the provincial government has been providing financial assistance to the families whose members were injured during the
Madhes movements.