Unplanned development of the Kathmandu Valley
By Golu Thapa Magar
There is no doubt that the country is going through a myriad problems right now. An ambitious budget has been announced but it is unclear how such a callous amount will be raised by the government.
It is virtually sure that the general people will have to pay more taxes and also suffer from the inflation in the market.
This author had already written many times that corruption was the root cause for everything that was bad was happening in Nepal. This has been proved true on many occasions especially after multiparty democracy was established and greedy politicians sought to on the big money in a short time. They didn’t care about the nation. They only wanted to make themselves very rich and also helped their family members and other close ones to earn money just like them.
In fact before the present political change, corruption and nepotism had reached its peak that was one of the biggest reasons why the people rose against the older establishment.
No one is missing these old leaders who are virtually in hiding these days. So it is a good decision of the present government to seek the source of income of all those individuals including high level civil servants, police and army officials and others attached to government organizations.
We understand why former prime minister KP Oli and former home minister Ramesh Lekhak were arrested for a short while and they are still held accountable for the death of more than seventy people and the destruction of sacred places like Singha Durbar, the Supreme Court, the Parliament House and also the Prime Minister’s residence. It is quite tangible to ask why not other culprits mainly Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Baburam Bhattarai should not also be held accountable for the mass destruction and also the deaths of thousands of people during the so called Maoist Uprising the whole country had to witness.
While the Kings always tried to keep at the minimum Nepalese fighting against other Nepalese but people like Dahal and Bhattarai encouraged Nepalese people to fight against each other. Now some people outside of Nepal and some of their workers in Nepal itself are instigating caste based confrontation.
The other problem is there is no doubt that corruption has hugely damaged not only the economy but the country itself. It is for nothing that we are seeing thousands of Nepalese people opting to go abroad mostly to work even in difficult conditions and some even to settle down forgetting the country.
This is not because of the difficulty even in making enough to make enough to have two meals a day, forget other things like social security, education, health services and other such important needs with every citizen should have access to.
Why is this happening when many individuals walked into Kathmandu with just one pair of dress and virtually bare feet are now multi-millionaires while the majority of people are getting poorer and poorer?
One can just look at the environment of Kathmandu which was covered by lush green fields and the people could easily buy grains and vegetables here.
Now we see only crowded houses not only in Kathmandu but also in the outskirts of the valley. The lush green fields are no more around. This is totally due to the greed of politicians, civil servants and other government officials who all own a plot of land and a house in Kathmandu.
Of course every Nepalese has a right to own a house in Kathmandu and all other places of Nepal but such development must be done in a planned manner. Even in Kathmandu, there are so many areas where even firefighters cannot reach if there is a disaster. Even constructing roads, whether in Kathmandu or remote places of the country cannot be taken as development.
It is destruction.
We can say this by the many accidents that take place in the highways and in that sort of unplanned roads and also the floods and landslides that take place in an alarming manner every year. The government has not been able to do anything for even these events which are surely to take place in a predictable manner.
But to come back to where we started, it is said that the government has been too ambitious in what they can achieve in the coming fiscal year. This is a time when even much better off countries is cutting off their expenditure. So it is perplexing how the government will raise the huge amount it has set aside for different causes. Most are apprehensive that the people may have to pay more taxes and also see a sharp growth in the markets.
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