By Narayan Prasad Mishra
Most people consider the United States of America the most developed country and the land of economic opportunity among all countries in the world. Even now, people are attracted to this country and aspire to go and work there. My late, beloved wife, Shanti Mishra, and I had the opportunity to go to that country for higher education a long, long time ago, in the 1960s and 1970s, when not many Nepalese were seen in that country and when Nepal was not well known to the American people. We were proud that we used our education for our country’s development, returning to our nation and not being attracted to the luxury of a highly developed country.
The situation is different now. People aspire to work and settle in foreign countries for many reasons. It should be well studied, and we should create an atmosphere to attract our people to return to our own country and invest the knowledge and labor for its development.
When I returned from the United States to Nepal on November 8, 2022, I was astounded to see an incredible number of Nepalese citizens on the plane, including many older men and women; there were approximately 60% Nepalese citizens from New York to Doha and nearly 85% from Doha to Kathmandu. Some seemed to be illiterate and uneducated, naive villagers who were visiting their families who had settled in the USA. Wheelchairs carried them from the landing place to the departure gate. Still, the identity card-like leaflets were hung on their necks, requesting help in case they needed it, like we sometimes see on the necks of pet dogs for identification. They were so simple. I had long conversations with them while waiting 6 hours at New York’s airport and 5 hours at Doha’s airport. I helped them when needed. They enjoyed my company. I was glad to learn from their experiences and thoughts on different topics, although some were not pleasing.
In this context, I had a long chat with two men in their 70s, one from Lumjung and another from Manthali, about the elderly allowance arranged by our government in our country. No doubt they were happy to have it, poor or rich. But the saddest and most disturbing story they both told was how the responsible political leaders and their followers in their villages made their followers of around 50 entitled to get the elderly allowance by recording the wrong date of birth and age, making them older than 68 years. They also said that sometimes genuine senior citizens had difficulty getting the required paperwork for the allowance. They themselves faced that challenge and got the paper only after two years. Their talk showed that corrupt practices were openly carried throughout the country to favor the people, making the vote bank strong. What an immoral and corrupt practice it is. Everywhere corruption. In this context, I sadly remembered the corrupt practices used by government employees to get a residential plot at Kuleshwor Abas Chhetra (Kulishwor Residential Area) many decades ago. The plots were for the people who had no land or house in the Kathmandu Valley, but even the valley land and house owners possessed the plot, hiding their ancestral property and being landless.
In the same way, I know some people living at the Bagamati riverside, occupying Bamati land while being landless (Sukumbasi), who have land and house property outside of Kathmandu Valley. They hope to legally get the Kathmandu Valley’s land, submitting the false statement of being landless. They will certainly reclaim their claim if the government includes a clause before granting them the land that all land, including the land of the villages they formerly owned, will be confiscated if the government discovers any of their false statements submitted with the intent of cheating and if the government investigates with full judgment and without any corrupt practices in order not to save the wrongdoers and cheaters. The artificial landless (Sukumbasi) may also abandon their claim to the land as being landless if the rule is made to give the landless only the land of the same district where they were born, not of the place where they lived.
We cannot expect everyone to be honest in every country and society. Some may be dishonest and corrupt. Some may be cheaters and liars. Without a doubt, we can have good governance if the government works honestly based on rules and regulations and is an excellent guardian of the people. There is no hope of reform if the government itself is corrupt. We can say that irregularities, mismanagement, and corruption are the products of bad governance.
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