Nepali Economics

Prajwal Shrestha

Along with the dawn of the multiparty democracy followed by the present loktantra, corruption has become a synonym for democracy. 

Noted singer Ramesh, who sang revolutionary songs dedicated to an overhaul of the nation through a communist regime, has remarked that King Mahendra was the true communist. Those communist leaders in Nepal are not true communists, Ramesh has lambasted his leaders presently in power. 

“Those, who are suffering from hunger, eat much and they have no limit of eating. Those communist leaders who were deprived of poverty, are collecting property as much as possible,” he has remarked about his own leaders’ present-day hubby in an interview aired recently. 

As the political system is dominated by the "Gang of Five", they wanted to develop a political mechanism favourable to them. They collect money for their personal prosperity. While developing such a mechanism, they deploy their own men in constitutional bodies. In other countries, such constitutional organizations are being operated through an autonomous mechanism, therefore, the anti-corruption bodies are powerful and such bodies are able to curb corruption practices. In Nepal, such bodies are unable to catch ‘big fishes” as they are under the control of the supreme leaders of the selected political parties. 

The political cycle in Nepal is that those leaders earn money through corruption and spend a certain percent of the money earned through corruption in elections and will be elected again and again in every election. As the political leaders are always running behind corruption, they have given special priority to the businessmen’s brokers. Those brokers settle the deal with the business community. Therefore, in today’s Nepal, brokers have become very powerful as they have permission to enter the bedroom of influential political leaders.   

Honest leaders cannot get space in the present political mechanism. The irony is that we need a dictator to clean the political garbage, otherwise, the situation has already gone beyond the control of the Nepali people. 

Without curbing corruption, we cannot make the nation prosperous but curbing corruption has become a Herculean task as the present system is based on corruption. 

Of course, the donor countries and international institutions, if wished, can put pressure on the political leaders in curbing corruption, however, they too have seen reluctance. The entire government seems practising corruption by developing corruption friendly mechanisms. Senior leaders who have drafted laws related to corruption control have kept holes for practising corruption. For example, the CIAA cannot look after the files on the deals made through the cabinet decision. Therefore, to escape corruption charges, the government is practising endorsement of the lucrative projects through cabinet decisions.

MPs raise their voices against corruption, in practice, they are demanding their share in the corruption projects. Just recently, the finance minister wrote a letter to release suspicious 400 million rupees sent from the USA to different Nepali companies owned by a suspicious Nepali. The American agency monitoring the money laundering case has instructed the Nepal government for sending back the suspicious amount to the USA. Similarly, a case is under consideration by the Supreme Court. By undermining all these developments, how the finance minister dared to write a letter to the Nepal Rastra Bank and when the NRB governor denied releasing the cash, he was suspended. The minister is not concerned about Nepal being blacklisted but concerned about the release of the fund. This is a serious issue related to money laundering.