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Shortly before the start of the 2023 A Division League, a Nepali club secured what it thought were two major signings, national team regulars Dinesh Rajbanshi and Santosh Tamang, both formerly of Manang Marsyangdi Club, on salaries exceeding Rs 100,000. However, before any public announcement, both players flew to Australia. The same day, defender Gautam Shrestha left, and within a week, midfielder Nitin Thapa and striker Ranjan Bista followed, despite Thapa having signed with Sankata Club and Bista renewing with New Road Team. To call this a pattern of broken contracts would be accurate and irrelevant. These players were not leaving bad deals but a system where even good ones guaranteed nothing.

The standard explanation for this kind of migration is wages. Nepal’s domestic football economy is thin: most players at the national level earn between Rs 30,000 and Rs 100,000 a month when a league is active, many lack personal sponsors, and the gap between what a Nepali footballer earns and what a footballer in a functioning professional league elsewhere earns is wide enough to look self-explanatory. But the wage-gap argument only holds if you assume the choice is between playing football at home for a low salary and playing football abroad for a higher one. That is not what is happening.

The Nepali footballers going to Australia are not signing professional contracts. They are taking jobs in kitchens, construction sites, and warehouses, and playing football on Sundays in community tournaments organized by the diaspora. The sport, for most of them, becomes a leisure activity rather than a livelihood. This unsettles the usual narrative. If the migration were purely about football income, Australia would be a strange destination. What Australia offers is not a better football wage. It is a stable working life, a functional visa pathway, and a community large enough to absorb new arrivals. Players are not trading bad salaries for better ones, but professional identity for a more predictable future. The real question is not why this is attractive, but what system makes it rational.

Nepal’s top-tier domestic club competition, the Martyr’s Memorial A Division League, went more than a thousand days without being organized. A thousand days is not a delay. It is a structural absence. The B and C Division leagues were irregular through the same period, meaning the entire domestic pyramid essentially stopped functioning as a competitive system. Players in their mid-twenties, approaching the peak physical years of a footballer's career, had no competitive platform. They were contracted to clubs that could not offer them matches and professionals without a profession.

ANFA cites financial and infrastructure constraints for delays. While partly true, such issues are often symptoms of deeper governance failures. Its management has been marked by internal conflicts, inconsistent leadership, and weak long-term planning across administrations. A past match-fixing scandal eroded public trust that has yet to be restored. By contrast, the Cricket Association of Nepal has set a stronger benchmark for sports governance in the country, making football’s failures evident.

In March 2025, the Nepal Football Players Association padlocked ANFA’s Satdobato complex, demanding a confirmed A Division schedule, transparency on the Players’ Perpetual Fund including Rs 6.5m from a four-nation tournament, and payment of pending prize money. It was not the first protest. Months earlier, players hung their medals on the same gate, asking for a basic platform to compete. These are not underpaid players, but structurally abandoned ones.

Player departures reinforce the failing system. In 2023, around 35 left, several just after signing contracts; by late 2025, over a dozen left in two months. Each exit weakens league quality, revenue, and payment reliability, fueling more departures. Migration is both a result and driver of institutional collapse.

Migration economics has a vocabulary for this. The dominant push-pull framework in labor migration theory, associated most directly with Everett Lee’s elaboration of push-pull factors, treats wage differentials as the primary driver of population movement, and it is not entirely irrelevant here. But it does not account for migration that occurs when the destination offers no higher professional wage, because the migrating workers are leaving a profession rather than seeking a better version of it.

A more precise frame is institutional precarity as a push factor. Migration is driven not by low earnings but by the lack of conditions that make income reliable. Contract instability, no legal recourse, irregular calendars, and weak infrastructure create more than underpayment. A player earning Rs 80,000 during a league but nothing for eighteen months faces a planning problem, not a wage one. Human capital theory sharpens this further: footballers have a narrow professional window, with physical peak years falling roughly between 24 and 29, losing even a few years to chaos that erodes their most valuable earning window. Exit, therefore, reflects rational decision-making under declining asset value.

The reforms needed are not complicated to describe. ANFA needs a legally binding league calendar whose dates carry actual contractual obligations. Minimum player contracts require an enforcement mechanism with real dispute resolution, so players have recourse other than leaving. And AFC licensing compliance must be treated as a condition of institutional standing, not a bureaucratic aspiration, because external accountability is likely the only pressure that can force internal reform at the pace the current generation of players still needs.

The Australian Nepalese Football Association in New South Wales has around 2,500 registered Nepali players, with weekly games and cash prizes. Across Australia, around seventy Nepali community clubs exist. None are professional, but the games run on schedule. For players shaped by failure at home, that reliability is the entire point.

Sabitra Bhandari’s signing with Wellington Phoenix in the A-League Women made headlines because it’s rare. Nepal lacks the infrastructure to make such pathways routine. For every player who reaches that level through uncommon individual talent, dozens more go to Sydney, Melbourne, or elsewhere not to play professionally but simply to survive.

Migrating is not disloyalty to Nepali football but a rational response to a system that fails to provide basic professional conditions. Leagues must run on schedule, contracts must be enforceable, and prize money must be paid. Until that floor exists, the Sunday pitches of Shepparton and Western Sydney remain the most reliable places for many of Nepal’s best players.

For many music fans, the music of Hiranya Bhojpure is instantly recognizable, even before his name is. A former band member of the nationally acclaimed ‘Lekali Band’, his creativity extends beyond music. He is known for using his platform to voice the problems of people whose basic rights have been violated. He has also published over a dozen books of poetry, short stories, essays, and children's literature. 

‘Aang Sherpa & The Ocean of Heights’ is his latest release. Set in the Himalayan base camp and Everest, the story is inspired by real events and real figures.

There are two ways to approach a book inspired by real incidents. You can dive into the story without prior research, or you can enrich your experience by familiarizing yourself with the events that fueled Bhojpure’s imagination. 

The first is the 1996 Sagarmatha disaster. Some sherpas believed that the 1996 climbing season was fated for doom after two climbers had sex in a tent, an act they believed had angered the goddess Chomolunga, revered in Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Drawing from this, the main protagonist, Aang Sherpa, is portrayed as someone who indulged in sexual activity at the highest altitude as part of a project by Director Moor—a member of the Australian Climbing Society. This act makes him a celebrated figure in the society, while simultaneously drawing fierce backlash from Nepali communities who view his behavior as a desecration of the sacred mountain. This leaves Aang with two choices: settle into a comfortable life in Australia or return to Nepal and face the consequences.  

Though the choice is predictable, it still feels meaningful in how it reflects his values and identity.

Not being able to live without climbing again, he returns to Nepal, knowing he will face a lot of challenges. From giving up his prize money to foregoing a secured future, he accepts everything for the chance of climbing again. Moments like these deepen our understanding the characters, and the tension between cultural values and ambition elevates the storytelling. 

One of the novel’s strengths is its information in regards to culture and traditions like the ‘Rakshi Dalle Laddu’. The novel succeeds in showing the hardships that sherpas face during treacherous climbs. Bhojpure’s background as a singer and a poet lends a lyrical rhythm to his prose. The imagery of the mountains and the scenery are vivid throughout.

As this book is Bhojpure’s first attempt at long-form fiction, there are a few problems. The non-linear narrative structure of the novel makes the opening and some middle sections difficult to follow. Outside of Aang Sherpa himself, most characters receive little development, making it hard to feel invested in their choices or the emotional weight of outcomes that involve them. 

The book’s ending, too, feels somewhat forced and unnatural. Despite its flaws, the story manages to create a moment of tension during Aang’s return to Nepal. It is also worth noting that since this is Bhuwan Thapaliya’s first attempt at translation, some of the issues with the novel may be associated with translation itself.

Altogether, this book has its own charm and disadvantages. Certain passages of this book are lyrical and beautiful, while others leave the reader confused and disoriented. The plot is creative and entertaining, but the execution feels lacking. 

The government has formed a four-member commission to investigate the property of political and high level government officials in the period of the last 20 years- since 2062/63BS to 2082/83BS.

The Cabinet meeting held on Wednesday decided to form the commission under the coordination of former Supreme Court judge Rajendra Kumar Bhandari. 

The commission would collect details on the property of those public officials- politicos and bureaucrats- and launch investigations accordingly.  

Members of the commission are former judges Chandiraj Dhakal and Purushottam Parajuli, former Deputy Inspector General of Nepal Police, Ganesh KC, and a chartered accountant Prakash Lamsal.

Earlier, on March 27, the government formed under Balendra Shah's premiership had decided to form the probe commission within two weeks. Even number 43 of the 100-point governance reform plan had included this matter. 

The point had mentioned that a high-powered panel would be formed under the Office of Prime Minister and Council of Ministers in a bid to end impunity and corruption by launching a probe on propriety of the high level public officials.

The investigation would be conducted based on legal criteria and evidence. 

Recommendations of the investigation would be forwarded to the concerned bodies for its enforcement.

Newly appointed ministers of Gandaki Province have taken oath of office and secrecy today.

Gandaki Province Chief Dilli Raj Bhatta administered oath to the newly appointed ministers at a program organized at the Office of the Province Chief.

Chief Minister of Gandaki Province Surendra Raj Pandey appointed new ministers from the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML. 

The newly appointed ministers from the Nepali Congress are Jit Sherchan as Finance Minister, Nanda Prasad Neupane as Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Water Supply, Namdu Gurung as Minister for Social Development, Youth and Sports and Rekha Gurung as Minister for Forest and Environment.

Similarly, UML's Govinda Bahadur Nepali has been appointed as Minister for Physical Infrastructure Development and Transport Management, Yashoda Rimal as Minister for Industry and Tourism, Laxman Pandey as Minister for Agriculture, Land Management and Cooperative and Bhim Karki as Minister for Health.