HLPC sets date with Regmi to settle poll law issues

VOLATILE FORTUNES 

THE monsoon plays a major role in 

determining the performance of the 

country's economy, and forecasts for 

the coming months are positive 

Kathmandu, Saturday, June 8, 2013 (25/02/2070) Nepal Sambat 1133 

THE JATRA 

ENDS 

JITENDRA KHADKA 

RAJBIRAJ, JUNE 7 

INVESTIGATIONS into the murder 

of former lawmaker Sadrul Miya 

Haque has taken an unexpected 

turn with the police arresting 

Haque’s wife and daughter as the 

main suspects. Police have also 

arrested a third suspect in connection 

with the incident. 

Eighteen days after Haque was 

murdered in Kalyanpur VDC, police 

called a press conference at the 

Sagarmatha Zonal Police Office here 

on Friday and said Haque’s wife 

Noor Jahan Khatun and their 19year-old 

daughter Rubeda Khatun 

had plotted the former lawmaker’s 

murder. The plan was carried out by 

Rubeda’s husband Mohammad 

Jamirool Sheikh and two others, 

Abdul Rauf and Anul Sheikh. 

Noor Jahan, Rubeda and Abdul 

are in police custody and were pre- 

CAPITAL EDITION PRINTED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN KATHMANDU, BIRATNAGAR, BHARATPUR AND NEPALGUNJ STAND PRICE RS 5.00 

POWER IN 

PREPAREDNESS 

THE newly-introduced Monsoon Forum 

represents a positive step towards the 

mitigation of risks in various climate- 

sensitive sectors 

6&7 6&7 

A Guthi Sansthan official displays the Bhoto (vest) decorated with jewels to thousands of 

spectators during Bhoto Jatra at Jawalakhel in Lalitpur on Friday. (Report on Pg 3) 

POST PHOTO: NARENDRA SHRESTHA 

Govt, Kamlaris ink 

deal; protests end 

WEENA PUN 

KATHMANDU, JUNE 7 

AGITATING former Kamlaris 

(indentured girl child labourers) 

have called off their 10-daylong 

protests and the indefinite 

Tarai banda 

after the govern- 

ment agreed to 

meet their 

demands. 

The two 

sides signed a 

10-point agreement 

on Friday, 

where the government 

agreed 

to provide compensation 

to the 

family of Srijana 

Chaudhary, a 

12-year-old 

domestic whose death sparked 

the protest. 

“We have signed a 10-point 

agreement,” said Phakala 

Tharu, programme manager at 

the United Committee for the 

Elimination of Kamlari 

Practice, the body formed to 

lead the movement. 

As per the agreement, the 

government will provide Rs 

500,000 to Chaudhary’s family. 

She was found burned to death 

at her employer’s house in 

Lalitpur in late March. 

The government also 

agreed to provide an additional 

Govt agrees to 

compensate dead 

Kamlari girl’s 

family, declare 

abolition of 

Kamlari practice 

within a month 

Rs 500,000 if the governmentformed 

investigation team 

finds the employer, Yubraj 

Poudel, and his brother-in-law, 

Shankar Adhikary, guilty of 

murder. 

“The government also 

agreed to bear 

the cost of treat- 

ment for former 

K a m l a r i s 

injured in clashes 

with the 

police in 

Kathmandu and 

in other places 

in western 

Tarai,” Shanta 

Chaudhary, former 

Kamlari 

and Constituent 

Assembly member, 

said. 

Other agreements include 

announcing the abolition of the 

Kamlari practice within a 

month and providing rehabilitation 

packages, freeing the rest 

of the Kamlaris, providing 

Kamlari ID cards and scholarship 

to former Kamlaris and 

punishing those who buy girlchildren 

as Kamlaris. 

Meanwhile, the indefinite 

banda enforced by the former 

Kamlaris continued for the 

fourth consecutive day in 

some districts in the Tarai 

region on Friday, our district 

correspondents reported. 

Wife, daughter main suspects 

HAQUE MURDER 

Noor Jahan 

Rubeda 

sented before the media at the press 

meet, while Mohammad and Anul 

are at large. 

Investigations have revealed that 

Haque was murdered as he was 

against the relationship of his second 

daughter, Rubeda, with Mohammad. 

Investigators have also found out 

that the two had secretly exchanged 

wedding vows in Rautahat last year 

with Noor Jahan’s consent. 

NEPAL’S LARGEST SELLING ENGLISH DAILY 

US, UK are 

‘committed’ to 

helping polls 

POST REPORT 


IN the wake of former PM Baburam 

Bhattarai’s statement that some 

‘West-funded INGOs, NGOs and persons 

are trying to disturb’ the election 

process, the US ambassador held 

talks with UCPN (Maoist) Chairman 

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, while the 

British envoy held talks with Vicechairman 

Bhattarai on Friday. 

Although both the missions have 

not officially spoken about the meetings, 

Maoist sources said the envoys 

conveyed to the two leaders that both 

the countries are committed to 

extending support to the poll 

process. In talks with British 

Ambassador Andrew James Sparkes, 

Bhattarai reiterated his statement 

and asked Sparkes to remain cautious 

of the activities of such INGOs, 

NGOs and persons, a statement 

issued by Bhattarai’s personal secretary, 

Bishow Deep Pandey, said. 

“I had a very productive first 

meeting with Mr Bhattarai. I asked 

him about the media reports in question 

and Mr Bhattarai replied to me 

in the terms set out by his assistant in 

his statement,” Sparkes said. In public 

functions recently and in an interview 

with Kantipur daily, Bhattarai 

had said “some western-funded 

INGOs, NGOs and persons have been 

trying to derail the poll process, but 

at the same time India and China are 

very much supportive of the polls.” 

POLLS CONTD ON PG 4 

An investigation report states 

that Noor Jahan had given Rs 80,000 

to Mohammad, who used the money 

to hire Abdul and Anul to murder 

Haque. 

A joint team from the Central 

Bureau of Investigation in 

Kathmandu, the Eastern Regional 

Police Headquarters in Biratnagar 

and the District Police Office in 

Saptari was involved in the investigations. 

The team apprehended 

Rubeda and Abdul on Thursday. 

Based on their statement, Noor 

Jahan was arrested on 

Friday morning. 

Noor Jahan has denied involvement 

and accused her husband’s two 

brothers and their maternal uncle 

instead. She said they told her not to 

speak about the incident to anyone, 

or else they would kill her son. 

Superintendent of Police Sanjay 

Singh Basnet said they will soon 

arrest Mohammad and Anul. 

POST REPORT 


THE STRAINS OF 

THE SEASON 

AS the deadline set by 

Chairman of the Interim 

Election Government Khil Raj 

Regmi for major parties to 

hammer out a deal on disputed issues 

of an electoral law ended on Friday, the 

parties in the High-level Political 

Committee (HLPC) have decided to 

meet Regmi on Saturday. 

A meeting of the HLPC on Friday 

ended inconclusively as the parties 

failed to have agreement on two provisions 

in the electoral law—one percent 

threshold for seats under the 

proportional representation system 

and barring convicts from contesting 

the elections. 

In Friday’s meeting, the Nepali 

Congress (NC) and the CPN-UML floated 

two alternatives to the threshold 

provision before the UCPN (Maoist) 

and the Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi 

Morcha (SLMM). 

According to a leader, the first alternative 

is to reduce the threshold to 0.9 

percent, while secondly, the two parties 

DESPITE assurances from the government that 

preparations are in place to deal with epidemics 

this monsoon, how effective these will actually 

THE RIGHT WAY TO 

DO THE STEP 

INSTALLING a permanent ladder to 

surmount the Hillary Step would be 

like slapping a Band-Aid on 

prove to be is questionable a hemorrhaging artery 

6&7 9 

proposed providing seats under the 

proportional electoral system to any 

party that secures one seat under the 

First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) system and 

0.7 percent of the total votes. 

The Maoist party and the SLMM 

want the threshold removed altogether, 

while the NC and the UML are for keeping 

it. “Chiefs of the four major parties 

will sit with Chairman Regmi on 

Saturday to seek a solution to problems 

in promulgating the election ordinance,” 

NC General Secretary Krishna 

Prasad Sitaula said. 

The ordinance to amend the 

Vol XXI No 111 | 12+4 Pages | www.ekantipur.com 

HLPC sets date with Regmi 

to settle poll law issues 

In Friday’s HLPC 

meeting, the Nepali 

Congress and the UML 

floated two alternatives 

to the one percent 

threshold provision 

Constituent Assembly Member Act- 

2008 states that the parties failing to 

secure one percent of the total votes 

under the FPTP system will be ineligible 

to secure seats under the proportional 

representation system. The ordinance, 

which was forwarded to the government 

by the Election Commission 

some three months ago, is still under 

consideration at the Cabinet due to the 

dispute among the major parties. 

Sitaula said the parties may mandate 

the government to promulgate the 

ordinance on its own if no agreement is 

reached. “Elections should not be hampered 

just because of the ordinance,” 

said Sitaula. 

While the Maoist and SLMM members 

in the HLPC on Friday pressed for 

authorising the government to do the 

needful, NC and UML members were 

reluctant. NC President Sushil Koirala 

remained adamant on retaining the 

threshold. UML Chairman Jhala Nath 

Khanal and senior leader Madhav 

Nepal are also in favour of the provision. 

HLPC CONTD ON PG 4

2 

metro 

ASTRAL 

REFLECTIONS 

ARIES 

TAURUS 

GEMINI 

CANCER 

LEO 

VIRGO 

LIBRA 

SCORPIO 

SAGITTARIUS 

CAPRICORN 

AQUARIUS 

PISCES 

[March 21-April 19] 

With Venus (the planet of love) in your chart’s home life 

zone, this is a great time for romance, so make your move 

now and you won’t regret it. You have a love of home and 

a deep appreciation for security and the private life. For 

once, you value your limits and domestic situation—the 

ties that bind. 

[April 20-May 20] 

Events this week could change your outlook, as your ruler 

Venus moves into your chart’s communications sector, so 

do not try to look too far ahead or make a premature decision. 

What you learn from someone could make you see 

how many options you now have. What they have to say 

could take you by surprise. It could also start you thinking 

in a positive new way about a project that you had lost faith 

in. Listen carefully to advice. 

[May 21-June 20] 

Venus moves into your chart’s wealth zone, filling you with 

the temptation to spend money on treats and objects you 

find beautiful. You’ll have to be careful if you’re supposed 

to be saving money, because whenever you feel down 

you’ll want to splash out on something that makes you feel 

better. Of course it won’t have to cost a fortune, but somehow 

you’ll instinctively be drawn to luxurious items with a 

massive price tag. 

[June 21-July 22] 

Your popularity is on the increase and your social life will 

keep you pretty busy as Venus moves into your own sign 

this week. There could even be occasions when you’ve had 

more than one invitation and are so spoilt for choice. The 

singletons amongst you could find that this is the time 

when your single status changes and you fall in love with 

your very own Prince or Princess Charming. The very 

thought could send you scurrying off to the shops in order 

to look your best. Enjoy the extra attention you’ll receive 

from the opposite sex at the same time as schmoozing and 

using your contacts at work. 

[July 23-August 22] 

Venus, the planet of love, moves into the most romantic 

area of your chart, putting you in a very tender-hearted 

mood. You’ll be feeling seductive and sentimental, which 

won’t go unnoticed by certain people. You could discover 

that you have a secret fan, and you may even find yourself 

playing one admirer off against another. However, this will 

put you in a difficult position and you’ll soon feel guilty that 

you aren’t being fair to everyone concerned. You’re far too 

honest for such games. 

[August 23-September 22] 

Venus is giving you the green light to surround yourself 

with friends as often as possible now, because you’ll revel 

in their company. Should your social circle have shrunk 

recently for some reason, you’re now in the best possible 

position to do something about it. Consider joining a club or 

organisation that caters for some of your interests, so you’ll 

already have something in common with the people you 

meet there. Come on, it’s worth a try! 

[September 23-October 22] 

Venus (your ruler) in your chart’s aspirations sector means 

that romance and business will go together now, perhaps 

when you’re very attracted to someone you work with. 

There could also be a strong rapport between you and 

someone who’s either much older or younger than you, but 

neither of you will notice the generation gap. 

[October 23-November 21] 

Venus moves into the section of your chart devoted to 

adventure and long-distance travel, so it looks as though 

you could be spending money on a holiday before too long. 

You could also be romantically involved with a foreigner, or 

become smitten with a foreign country. Higher education or 

philosophical/religious contacts could have a part in making 

good things happen. 

[November 22-December 21] 

Venus, the planet of love, moving into your chart’s sexual 

affairs zone means that your close relationships will be 

much more harmonious than of late. You’ll also find it easier 

to get on with the people you rely on in life, and it will 

be a particularly favourable time to reach agreements with 

them. Singletons amongst you who are looking for a mate 

could strike it lucky now. 

[December 22-January 19] 

With Venus (the planet of love) in your chart’s relationships 

sector, this is a wonderful time for love. Whether you’re 

going to meet someone new or feel ready to move on to the 

next phase in your relationship, the omens are good for 

sharing and partnership. Even those of you who are single 

will find plenty to rave about. Don’t go it alone now—reach 

out and make connections. This is a time to enjoy and 

appreciate your ties to others, and to seek and promote 

harmony in the interaction between people. 

[January 20-February 18] 

Venus throws a healthy glow over daily routine, health matters 

and your relationships with your colleagues. Should 

you be asked to combine business with pleasure then do 

so, because there’s a touch of luck about this. Whether you 

do so or not is entirely up to you. 

[February 19-March 20] 

Venus moving into your chart’s creative sector means this 

is a good time for casual romance, anything artistic or 

sporty. On a professional level, should your job be the 

slightest bit creative, you’ll be putting out some good work 

and impressing those around you—can’t be bad! 

review 

STRIPS REVIEW 

m MOVIES 

AFTER EARTH 

QFX Kumari: 8:30/6:30/9 PM 

QFX Civil Mall: 8:30/11:00/6:45 PM 

NEPATHYA 

QFX Kumari: 11:15 AM 

YEH JAWAANI HAI DEEWANI 

QFX Jai Nepal: 8:30/12:00/3:30/7 PM 

QFX Kumari: 8:15 / 11:30 / 3:00 / 5:30 / 9:00 PM 

QFX Civil Mall: 8:00/9:30/1:00/2:15/4:30/ 

5:30/8:00/8:45/9:00 PM 

FAST AND FURIOUS 6 

QFX Kumari: 02:30 PM 

QFX Civil Mall: 11:15/ 3:45 PM 

EPIC 3D 

QFX Civil Mall: 1:30 PM 

EVENTOGRAPH 

FOOD AND DRINKS 

Krishnarpan—a specialty Nepali Restaurant at 

Dwarika’s, 6 courses to 22 courses Nepali meal served. 

Opening Time: 6 pm-11 pm. Prior reservations required, 

contact: 4479448 

Taste sandwiches and crepes at The Lounge from 11 am 

to 6 pm everyday. Contact: Hyatt Regency at 4491234. 

The Italian restaurant serves authentic Italian cuisines 

in an elegant ambience for both lunch and dinner. 

Timings: Lunch: 1230-1445 hrs, Dinner: 1900-2245 

hrs, Contact: 427399, at Soaltee Crowne Plaza 

Savor the cardamom and saffron spice, slow-cooked 

kebabs and kormas at Indian restaurant serving 

Awadhi cuisine. Timings: Dinner: 1900-2245 hrs, contact: 

427399, at Soaltee Crowne Plaza 

China Garden offers delectable dishes from across Asia, 

including Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese. 

Timings: Lunch: 1230-1445 hrs, Dinner: 1900-2245 

hrs, contact: 427399 at Soaltee Crowne Plaza 

Garden Terrace offers an authentic world cuisine ie 

Indian, Nepali, Oriental, Italian, Continental etc, with different 

live cooking stations providing diners with the 

unique experience of observing their selected dishes 

being freshly prepared by chefs. Contact: 427399 at 

Soaltee Crowne Plaza 

Kaiser Cafe Restaurant & Bar at The Garden of 

Dreams, opening time: 9 am till 9 pm, offers an international 

cafe menu serving breakfast, lunch, dinner, specialty 

tea’s, coffees and pastries, contact: 4425341 

Tibetan Gyakok for Lunch & Dinner every day at The 

Mandarin, The Everest Hotel ph: 4780100 ext: 7811 

Daily Buffet with a complimentary glass of house wine at 

The Café, The Everest Hotel, Lunch 1200- 1500 hrs and 

Dinner 1830-2230hrs. Ph: 4780100 

Special Saturday Brunch at The Café & Garden, The 

Everest Hotel 1200-1600 hrs; Ph 4780100 

Sandwich and Crepes: Taste the sandwiches and 

crepes at The Lounge from 11:00am to 6:00pm everyday. 

For further details call Hyatt Regency at 4491234. 

Mako’s offers traditional Japanese food served within a 

warm and stylish setting, don’t miss out on Mako’s special 

Tempuras, and also the green tea ice cream, Opening 

Time: 11: 30-14:30 & 19:00-22:00, contact: 4479448 

Manny’s Eatery and bar introduces a special lunch 

package that is affordable, tasty, nutritious and quick 

enough to fit your lunch break, Jawalakhel, Shaligram 

complex, 5536919 

Out-of-Africa Lunch amid rural splendor: Sat & Sun 

from 1130 to 1630 hours at The Watering Hole, 

Indrawati River Valley. For prior reservation contact: 

indrawatiresort@gmail.com 

The Toran, an ideal location for all day lounging and informal 

dining offers continental cuisines. Contact: 

Dwarika’s Hotel, Sales and Marketing—4479488. 

The Dwarika’s Thali brings you the simple yet sublime 

flavours of Nepal’s favourite dish at the Dwarika’s Hotel, 

3 course meal just for Rs1300/- plus 10% service charge 

and 13% vat, per person, contact: 4479488 

Enjoy Biryani with Kebab, Western Grill Items and Pasta 

with baked dishes this weekend at The Café from 12:30 

noon to 4:00 pm, buffet lunch for just Rs 1600. Call: 

Hyatt Regency, at 4491234 

Make your weekend more exciting with family and friends 

with sumptuous Satey, Dimsums, Mangolian Barbecue 

and Pasta at The Cafe from 12:30 noon to 4:00 pm, buffet 

lunch for just Rs 1600 excluding applicable taxes. 

Call: Hyatt Regency, at 4491234 

Smoky Charcoal and Hot Stone BBQ Dinner at Splash 

Bar and Grill, Radisson Hotel Kathmandu from 14th Sept 

onwards every Friday at Rs 1199 from 18:30 hrs to 

22:00 hrs. Contact: 4411818 

Come and experience BBQ BRUNCH BAZAAR every 

Saturday at poolside garden from 12:00-2:30 pm and 

make your gourmet journey memorable: 4451212 

We serve nothing but the finest Arabica coffees at great 

value prices at Barista Lavazza Coffee Restaurant, 

Lazimpat, Uttar Dhoka. Open: 9:00 am to 9:00 pm. 

Contact: 4005123/4005124 

Enjoy every Friday with a special Nepali BBQ at The 

Dwarika’s Hotel with many Live Cooking Stations 

themed on Newari Cuisines, Live music with bonfire & a 

can of Carlsberg beer, or Local Spirit 30 ml, or a soft drink, 

or a bottle of mineral water. Time: 7 pm till 10 pm, 

Contact: 4479488 or sales@dwarikas.com 

Bourbon Room, Lal Durbar Marg is now open for 

lunch every day from 12 noon. Enjoy affordable and 

delicious meals from our lunch menu starting from Rs 99! 

We are currently offering Indian & chinese combos along 

with momos and kathi rolls. Call: 4441703 

Saturday Brunch, 10:30 am till 3:30 pm, at Park Village 

Resort, Budhanilkantha@ special introductory price of Rs 

999/. Lucky draw—one of the main attraction: 4375280 

The most delightfully awesome chicken momos & 

yummy rich chocolate cake on this part of the planet @ 

Just Baked Bakery & Cafe, Battisputali, offering much 

more specialties at affordable price. 

MUSIC 

Enjoy snacks and drinks from 4:00 pm to 11:00 pm 

every day and nightly live music from “The Corner 

Band” except Tuesday and Saturday from 7:00 pm to 

11:00 pm at The Corner Bar, Radisson Hotel. Contact: 

4411818 

Live music at Jazzabell Café every Wednesday and 

Friday with great food, drink and old friends from 6 pm 

every Friday. Jazzabell Cafe, Jhamsikhel, Patan, contact: 

2114075 

Every Friday BBQ from 7:00 pm at Fusion Bar & Pool 

side at Dwarika’s Hotel with live band “Dinesh Rai and 

Sound of Mind”. Price Rs 1600/ includes BBQ dinner and 

a can of beer or a soft drink. Contact: 4479448 

LIVE Gazal with authentic Indian food for dinner at Far 

Pavilion except Tuesday, The Everest Hotel ph: 

4780100 

Live Music 7:00-10: 30 pm by Rapsodi trio band except 

Monday & Happy hour 30 % discount at Bugles & Tigers, 

Gurkha Bar from 5 to 7 pm, The Everest Hotel, 

4780100 

Hotel Narayani Complex, Pulchowk, Lalitpur presents 

Shabnam & Cannabiz Band every Wednesday and 

Rashmi & Kitcha Band every Friday, 7:30 PM onwards @ 

Absolute bar P Ltd; Contact: 5521408, 

abar@wlink.com.np 

Bubbly Brunch—every Saturday from 11 am to 3 pm @ 

Shambala Garden & Club Sundhara where you can 

enjoy Live Shawarma & Pasta only @ Rs 1100 Nett per 

person (Includes a glass of Sparkling Wine). Contact: 

Hotel Shangri~La, Kathmandu at 4412999 

Starry Night BBQ—every Friday Evening from 7:00 pm 

at Shambala Garden Café, Hotel, Shangri~La only @ 

Rs 1299 nett per person and live performance by 

Ciney Gurung. Contact: 4412999 

Oriental Buffet with live Jazz music, every Friday 

evening 7 pm onwards at Earthwatch Restaurant at 

Park Village Resort @ Rs 999/- per person, contact: 

4375280 

A father-son outing 

goes terribly wrong 

MANOHLADARGIS 

AFATHER-SON encounter 

session tricked out with 

science-fiction clichés 

and steeped in motivational 

uplift, After Earth 

opens with a teenager, Kitai Raige 

(Jaden Smith), washing out from a 

ranger academy. It’s a bummer 

because all he 

wants to do is 

please his father 

(Will Smith, 

Jaden’s father), 

the heroic general 

Cypher. Daddy 

Dearest has risen 

having honed 

tremendous selfcontrol 

and a 

useful protective 

technique— 

‘ghosting’— 

which renders 

him invisible to 

the monsters 

plaguing human 

civilisation: the 

Ursa. 

These shrieking creatures are 

introduced in one of those opening 

expositional heaves that filmmakers 

use to sketch in the who, what, 

when, where and why, oh why. In this 

case, the back story goes, after ruining 

Earth, humans relocated to Nova 

Prime, where they wear a lot of white 

and decorate their homes with flowing 

sailcloths. It’s a nautical motif 

that winds though the movie, which 

was directed by M Night Shyamalan, 

who wrote the script with Gary 

Whitta from a story by Smith. There’s 

GETAWAY 

Monsoon Madness, 2 Nights/3 Days Package @ 

Shangri~La Village Resort, Pokhara, only @ Rs.4999 Nett 

per person on twin sharing basis where you get back 

coupons worth Rs. 3000 Nett. Contact: 4410051 

Experience your holiday at Grand Norling Hotel, 

Gokarna. One night and two days at Rs 4500 and two 

nights and three days at Rs 7000, residential package at 

Rs 30000 per month. Contact: 4910193 

Jungle Safari Lodge, Sauraha introduces New Offer of 

2 Nights/ 3 Days Package at Rs 5555 per person, for 

Nepalese Citizen Only. The offer includes elephant safari, 

cultural programme, canoeing, visit to elephant 

breeding centre, 2 breakfasts, 2 Lunches, 2 dinners, 

accomodation in deluxe A/C Room, two way tourist bus 

services. Contact: Suman Ghimire @ 9851116181/ 

4444999 

Fulbari’s Domestic Tourism Promotion Package @ Rs 

6500 nett per person, package includes: 2 night/ 3 days 

deluxe accommodation on bed & breakfast basis, one 

special dinner, welcome drinks, free tennis, swimming 

pool and gym, attractive discount on Spa, Golf & other 

services. Contact 4461918, & email: 

sales@fulbari.com.np 

Experience The Last Resort, the perfect place for family 

fun adventure and relaxation. Special packages for residents. 

Contact: 4700525/ 4701247 or mail us at 

info@thelastresort.com.np 

Asia World Travel Pvt Ltd presents fascinating luxury 

escapades to amazing destinations: Prague, Ladakh, 

Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Mount Kailash and 

Panchpokhari in North East Nepal. Contact: 6222604, 

email: info@asiaworldholidays.com 

Hotel Tibet International, Boudha -Experience Nepalese 

warmth with a touch of Tibetan hospitality in our Reopening 

discount for rooms & restaurant. Savior authentic 

Tibetan cum Chinese cuisine. Call: 4488188 or email 

sales@hoteltibetintl.com.np 

Experience your holiday at Kingfisher Jungle Resort at 

Meghauli, Chitwan. 1 night and 2 days at Rs 3500 and 

2 nights and 3 days at Rs 6000 for Elephant safari, 

Canoeing and Nature walk. Contact: Rudra Raj Dotel- 

9849059295, 4260329 

Nestled in the boarder of Royal Chitwan National 

Park and medieval Tharu Village, Maruni Sanctuary 

Lodge offer special winter package including jungle 

activities 2 nights 3 days @ Rs 9,999 per person 

on twin sharing basis. Contact: Prajina—9841792225, 

4700632 

MIND AND BODY 

Dynamic Health Group: Join free classes every 

Saturday to learn about Reiki, Yoga, Meditation, Quantum 

Science and Healthy Life Styles, Suryabinayak, contact: 

9841393760 

Women Skill Development Resource Centre: Join free 

training for Straw Art, Sewing and Skill Development 

(for 2 hours, 4 hours and 7days), Suryabinayak, contact 

9849426628 

Meditation Session and Satsang: Benefit yourself with 

free meditation session to heal your body and mind, and 

discover the right path towards the fulfillment of life. 

Every Saturday at 8 am, at Mind Body Library, 

Babarmahal. Contact: 4102025 

Introductory 25 % discount on all treatments at 

Himalayan Wellness Centre, the SPA at Park Village 

Resort, Budhanilkantha. Contact: Taruna/Umesh- 

4375280 

SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 2013 

even a nod to Moby-Dick shortly 

before Cypher and Kitai’s spaceship 

crashes to Earth, throwing them 

together for the usual and less-so life 

lessons like: “Root yourself in this 

present moment. Danger is very real. 

But fear is a choice.” 

Kitai would understandably like 

to split—1,000 years after humans 

abandoned Earth, he and Dad have 

landed on a now 

seemingly pristine, 

healed world 

teeming with 

cawing, clawing 

menace and 

some cute baby 

critters. But 

Cypher is made of 

sterner, righter 

stuff. The story 

kicks in slowly, 

predictably, after 

a debris storm 

downs Kitai and 

Cypher’s spaceship 

and they fall 

to Earth. There, 

they trade bitter 

words, clench 

jaws and hold back the tears amid 

long pauses and inert action scenes. 

Shyamalan tends to torpedo his 

movies with overweening self-seriousness. 

But here and there he also 

offers up an image—a close-up of 

Kitai’s face dusted with snowflakes— 

that rises out of the torpor. Those 

images are few and far between in a 

movie that loses its way long before 

Kitai reaches the belching volcano 

that leads to his inevitable destiny. 

—©2013The New York Times 

kantipur 

ONYOUR 

KANTIPUR 

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5:05 Call Kantipur Reloaded 


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9:00 Naya Sambidhan 

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11:30 Countdown Kantipur 

12:00 Call Kantipur (repeated) 

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2:00 Kantipur Samachar (repeat 1) 

2:30 Business Journal 

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3:30 Naya Sambidhan 


00:00 Aaja Dekhi Arko Samma 

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06:30 Kantipur Diary 

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People Play 


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18:00 Maitiko Sandesh (Maiti Nepal) 


18:55 Khoj 

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21:30 Rum Pum Hello Mithila 

23:00 Rock Machine


Delhi may extend 

Prasad’s term if CA 

vote okayed for Nov 

DEVENDRA BHATTARAI 

NEW DELHI, JUNE 7 

THE Ministry 

of External Affairs 

(MEA) of India is 

considering extending the 

tenure of its ambassador to 

Nepal Jayanta Prasad by 

three months, if Nepal 

goes to the Constituent 

Assembly elections by 

mid-November. 

The two-year term of 

Prasad expires in August 

end, prior to his retirement 

from the Indian Foreign 

Service. The Indian government 

has already proposed 

Ranjit Rae, the incumbent 

Indian ambassador to 

Vietnam, as his successor 

and the Nepal government 

has approved his agreemo. 

“If the elections take 

place on November 14 as 

proposed by the Election 

Commission, the proposed 

ambassador will, most 

possibly, not take up his 

assignment immediately 

after Prasad leaves. In 

such a case, Rae’s deputation 

to Kathmandu will be 

deferred by three months,” 

said an External Affairs 

Ministry official. 

In 2008, then Indian 

Ambassador to Kathmandu 

Shiv Shanker Mukherjee got 

an additional stay of six 

months due to the deferral 

of the first Constituent 

Assembly polls. 

“If the parties in Nepal 

agree within a week to a 

POST REPORT 


Prasad’s 

two-year term 

expires in 

August end, 

before his 

retirement 

from Indian 

Foreign 

Service 

mid-November date for the 

elections, Prasad’s term 

extension is possible,” said 

the ministry source. 

Even if the Nepali side 

has agreed to Rae’s proposal, 

the Indian government 

has not announced his 

appointment due to the 

political uncertainty and 

transition going on in 

Nepal. An old Nepal hand in 

New Delhi, Rae, 56, is one 

the architects of the 12point 

agreement signed in 

2005 in New Delhi between 

the then Seven-party 

Alliance and the CPN 

(Maoist). 

Rae was the joint-secretary 

at the MEA who looked 

after the (Nepal/Bhutan) 

North Desk. 

“Discussion is under 

way at the top level of the 

government whether to 

accord a special provision 

for Prasad by giving another 

three months,” said the 

source. “The decision will 

be out within next week.” 

Not only at the bureaucratic 

level, Nepal watchers 

in Delhi are following the 

developments in Nepal 

closely. “For the stability of 

democracy and peace, elections 

are a must for Nepal,” 

said former Ambassador to 

Nepal Mukherjee. 

Meanwhile, to understand 

the situation in Nepal 

better, the South Block is 

busy inviting Nepali leaders 

to New Delhi for consultation 

and dialogue with “as 

much political leaders as 

possible”. On Sunday, former 

Prime Minister and 

Nepali Congress senior 

leader Sher Bahadur Deuba 

is arriving in Delhi. Also 

coming are his spouse 

Arzoo Deuba and party 

leader Bimalendra Nidhi. A 

South Block official said the 

visits are aimed at garnering 

all attention to election and 

imparting the message that 

all the parties in Nepal are 

equal in the eyes of India. 

After unification, RPP hosts tea reception 

THE newly-united Rastriya Prajatantra Party 

(RPP) hosted a tea reception at Bhatbhateni 

on Friday to mark its 24th establishment day. 

Senior government officials and political 

leaders attended the reception. 

Interim Election Government Chairman Khil 

Raj Regmi, Home Minister Madhav Ghimire and 

Chief of Armed Police Force Kosh Raj Onta were 

also present at the programme. 

Similarly, CPN-UML Chairman Jhala Nath 

Khanal, UCPN (Maoist) Vice-chairman 

Narayan Kaji Shrestha, Nepali Congress leader 

Arjun Narsingh KC were among the leaders 

present. Foreign diplomats, civil society leaders, 

journalists, senior government officials and 

artistes were invited too. 

Talking to media persons on the occasion, 

Members of the Joint Women Organisation Struggle Committee submit a memo to the top political party leaders, who were attending a meeting 

of the High-level Political Committee, at New Baneshwor in Kathmandu on Friday. POST PHOTO: KIRAN PANDAY 

Bhoto display wraps up Machhindranath jatra 

POST REPORT 


THE month-long Rato Machhindranath Jatra 

concluded after displaying the jewelled bhoto in 

Jawalakhel, Lalitpur, on Friday afternoon. 

President Ram Baran Yadav, Chairman of 

Interim Election Government Khil Raj Regmi, 

ministers, chiefs of various constitutional bodies, 

bureaucrats and diplomats, among other 

dignitaries and officials, attended the bhoto 

exhibition. As per the tradition, the last day of the 

Jatra is celebrated by displaying the bhoto to 

the people gathered at Jawalakhel. 

Four days after the chariot of 

Machhindranath is brought to Jawalakhel, the 

bhoto is shown to the mass three times. 

According to legends, the vest should be 

displayed on this particular day until its owner 

newly-elected RPP Chairman Surya Bahadur 

Thapa said there is no alternative to the 

Constituent Assembly election. 

Thapa claimed that the CA election would 

be held in November in participation of all 

the political parties. 

“It is our political culture that consensus is 

built at the 11th hour and I am sure all 

the parties will agree to go to the polls in 

November,” Thapa said. 

comes to claim it, with evidences. According to 

myths, Bhoto Jatra is celebrated to look for the 

real owner of the bhoto, which was lost centuries 

Unesco launches journalist safety programme 

POST REPORT 


THE United Nations Education, Scientific 

and Cultural Organization (Unesco) on 

Friday launched a new two-year project 

aimed at increasing the safety of 

journalists and ending impunity in 

the crimes against media and media 

professionals. The programme is 

supported by the United Nations Peace 

Fund for Nepal (UNPFN), which will 

inject US$ 566,500 for executing the 

project, the Unesco Nepal office said in a 

statement. 

The initiative is aimed at improving 

the security situation of media professionals 

by a multi-level approach based 

on the comprehensive framework of the 

“UN Plan of Action on the Safety of 

Journalists and the Issue of Impunity”, 

read the statement. “The project aims to 

contribute to the establishment of sustainable 

peace and the rule of law by helping 

protect the freedom of expression.” 

“Journalists play an essential role in 

the peace process. But they must be safe 

to be able to provide people access to 

non-partisan information,” said Axel 

Plathe, Unesco representative to Nepal 

and the head of Unesco office in 

Kathmandu in the kick-off meeting of the 

project. 

“Continuous aggression against journalists 

and media persons and the 

impunity in many cases of press freedom 

violations and violence against journalists 

continue to threaten the still fragile peace 

process,” Plathe added. 

National Human Rights Commission 

(NHRC) Commissioner Gauri Pradhan 

said that the citizen’s right to freedom of 

expression and the right to information 

are closely related with the safety of jour- 

nalists. “The situation is improving but 

there are still a lot of cases of violence 

against journalists,” added Pradhan. 

NHRC is a partner in the project. 

Yadu Prasad Panthi, under-secretary 

at the Ministry of Information and 

Communications (MoIC), said that government 

of Nepal was committed to 

ensuring the people’s rights and that the 

MoIC and concerned departments had 

carried out various activities to ensure 

journalists’ safety. 

“To ensure the safety of journalists, it 

is necessary to focus on the root causes of 

violence against them,” Panthi said. “The 

government is committed to ensuring the 

rights and safety of the journalists.” 

The safety of journalists has been 

deteriorating in recent years, the 

statement added. Professional journalists’ 

associations have expressed serious 

concerns over the increased number 

(From right to left) Rastriya Prajatantra Party leader Prakash Chandra Lohani, Chairman Surya Bahadur Thapa, Interim Election Government 

Chairman Khil Raj Regmi, RPP leaders Pashupati Shumsher Rana and Lokendra Bahadur Chand, CPN-Maoist spokesperson Pampha Bhusal 

and Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Wu Chuntai during the reception at Bhatbhateni in Kathmandu on Friday. POST PHOTO 

of incidents of violence against media 

professionals. “In this environment, the 

project is both timely and contextual to 

Nepal, which is among the five countries 

identified for the first-phase roll out of the 

UN Plan of Action.” 

Working with professional journalists’ 

associations, international media rights 

organisations, human rights organisations 

and security and judicial bodies, the 

project will establish a nationally owned 

independent mechanism to provide 

appropriate framework to tackle the issue 

of journalists’ safety and impunity, said 

the statement. 

The project is being managed by the 

Unesco Office in Kathmandu in partnership 

with the Ministry of Information and 

Communications and the National 

Human Rights Commission and many 

other organisations working for human 

rights and media development. 

ISTU 

jamboree 

kicks off 

today 

POST REPORT 


THE third general 

convention of the 

Institutional School 

Teachers’ Union 

(ISTU), an umbrella 

body of teachers and 

employees working in 

private and institutional 

schools, is set to 

kick off in the Capital 

on Saturday. 

Over 350 representatives 

from 

schools across the 

country will participate 

in the two-day 

event. The programme 

to be organised 

at the Smriti 

Bhawan on the 

Tribhuvan University 

premises in Kirtipur 

will be inaugurated by 

Education Minister 

Madhav Poudel at 11 

am. The convention 

will conclude on 

Sunday electing the 

new leadership for a 

three-year term. 

The ISTU has 

6,300 members across 

the country and local 

chapters in 42 districts. 

POST PHOTO 

Disaster response: 

Govt says measures 

will be at disposal 

POST REPORT 


IN an effort to minimise the 

potential risks such as flashfloods 

and landslides during 

the upcoming rainy season, 

the government has directed 

the concerned local bodies 

and partners to scale up necessary 

rescue and preparedness 

measures. 

Ministry of Home Affairs, 

the central authority responsible 

for disaster response, 

has directed its line agencies, 

local government bodies and 

concerned partners to be 

ready for necessary rescue 

and relief operations in case 

of a natural disaster happening 

within their purview, said 

Laxmi Dhakal, joint-secretary 

and chief of the Disaster 

Response Division under the 

ministry, on Friday. Ministry 

officials conducted regional 

workshops last month to 

create awareness and to 

empower the concerned 

bodies and local communi- 

3 

ago by a Jyapu (Newar) farmer of Kathmandu. 

The Newar community believes that this 

tradition dates from the Satya Yuga, when 

deities walked on earth. 

According to a legend, the black velvet bhoto 

was given to the Jyapu farmer by Karkotaka Naga 

(serpent) in reward for curing an eye ailment of 

his queen. But soon afterwards he lost the bhoto. 

Later, when the farmer was attending the 

Machhindranath festival at Jawalakhel, he saw 

someone wearing the same vest. A quarrel 

erupted between the duo. Karkotaka Naga was 

also at the festival in human disguise. He 

settled the quarrel by taking the bhoto to 

Machhindranath declaring that whoever comes 

with evidence could take the vest. However, no 

one could present the evidence to claim it. 

Since then, it is being displayed on the last 

day of Machhindranath Jatra every year. 

The road at Gairidhara in Kathmandu on Friday after a 

period of rainfall. POST PHOTO: PRAKASH TIMILSENA 

ties on monsoon-related 

disaster preparedness and 

response. 

“We have been conducting 

regular awareness 

campaigns directed at the 

communities that are 

vulnerable to monsoonrelated 

disasters before the 

rainy season every year,” 

Dhakal said. Meanwhile, the 

Cabinet meeting held a few 

days ago approved the 

National Disaster Response 

Framework, a policy document 

that identifies the 

specific roles of all the 49 

sectors involved in disaster 

preparedness, mitigation, 

rescue and relief activities in 

the country. 

According to the government 

data, at least 420 

people were killed in natural 

disasters in the country in 

the past year. Lightning was 

the top killer, taking 129 lives 

between April 13, 2012 and 

April 5, 2013. The others are 

landslides, floods and other 

geologic processes.

4 

newsdigest 

Nepalis in Scotland set up 

arts and culture centre 

KATHMANDU: Nepalis living in 

Scotland have established the 

Himalayan Centre for Arts and 

Culture in order to promote cultural 

exchange through creative arts 

programme. Mark Watson, a biodiversity 

scientist at the Royal Botanic 

Garden Edinburgh and Kadam KC, a 

Nepalese restaurateur and director 

at the Himalayan Centre Edinburgh, 

contributed to the establishment of 

the Centre, said a statement issued 

by the Office of the Consul General 

of Nepal in Scotland on Friday. 

Meanwhile, the Consul General of 

Nepal in Scotland Sunita Poddar 

donated Dr Bell’s Swimming Pool 

which she had purchased in 2009 to 

the Nepali community. 

DFO clears encrochmemt 

DHANGADI: The District Forest 

Office (DFO) in Kailali, with the help 

of security personnel, evicted families 

occupying the forest land at 

Sadepani VDC on Friday. Bharath 

Shah of the DFO said more than 400 

families living on the encroached 

government property as flood victims 

and landless were asked to 

clear the land. He said huts built by 

the settlers were razed down using 

dozers. Around 25,000 hectares forest 

land in Kailali is occupied by illegal 

settlers, Shah said. 

Boy killed in musket firing 

TEHRATHUM: A 12-year-old boy 

was killed by a musket fired by his 

15-year-old friend in Pauthak VDC 

in the district on Friday. Police said 

Laxmi Limbu died by a musket shot 

fired by his friend Surya Limbu 

while the duo was out for hunting. 

Surya has been taken into custody 

and brought to the district 

headquarters. 

Wai Wai education award 

KATHMANDU: Ajako Awaj Media in 

association with the Chaudhary 

Group (CG) has announced that it 

will award various personalities and 

institutions with outstanding contribution 

to the academic sector in the 

country. The ninth version of Wai 

Wai Education Award will cover 19 

different genres, including best 

school, best higher secondary 

school, best teacher and best education 

journalists. A student scoring 

the highest marks in the SLC examinations 

from the community 

schools will be awarded with Rs 

25,000 by the CG. (PR) 

weather watch 

FORECAST: Generally cloudy in the central,eastern 

and western hilly regions.Possibility of rain or thundershowers 

at many places of the eastern region and 

some places of central and western hilly regions. 

PLACES MAX. MIN. RAINFALL 

TEMP. ( 0 C) TEMP. ( 0 C) (MM.) 

Dadeldhura 27.7 16.0 0.0 

Dipayal NA 25.2 NA 

Dhangadi 34.4 23.4 9.6 

Birendranagar 33.5 21.8 3.3 

Nepalgunj 34.5 22.9 0.1 

Jumla 26.3 11.8 0.0 

Dang 31.0 21.5 0.1 

Pokhara 30.1 21.5 NA 

Bhairahawa 35.0 27.4 0.0 

Simra 31.0 25.0 15.4 

Kathmandu 28.5 20.7 45.9 

Okhaldhunga 22.6 16.4 NA 

Taplejung 23.4 17.0 0.0 

Dhankuta 26.3 20.0 26.8 

Biratnagar 29.7 24.5 29.2 

Source: Meteorological forecasting Division, Department of 

Hydrology and Meteorology, Kathmandu 

Youths from the Kirat Rai community play traditional musical instrument during their Ubhauli sakela dance at 

Manamaiju in Kathmandu on Friday. POST PHOTO: MUNGA DHAN RAI 

Locals demand doctors in hospital 

JANAK NEPAL & 

BHIM BAHADUR SINGH 

NEPALGUNJ / JAJARKOT, JUNE 7 

LOCAL people in Jajarkot have 

padlocked the district hospital 

indefinitely demanding that three 

vacant posts of doctors in the health 

facility be fulfiled immediately. 

The hospital is making do with 

assistant health workers as the doctors’ 

posts are lying vacant for the past one 

year. As a result, patients have been 

forced to visit private hospitals and 

spend a huge amount of money for 

treatment. 

The agitators’ demands include 

proper management of the hospital’s 

operation theater, resumption of 

services such as video x-ray and 

telemedicine. “People are deprived of 

medical services for the past one year 

due to a lack of doctors. The authorities 

concerned, however, are ignorant 

about the situation,” said Paurakh 

Gupta urges 

Goit to join 

peaceful politics 

POST REPORT 

SAPTARI, JUNE 7 

COORDINATOR of the Tarai Madhes 

National Campaign (TMNC) Jaya 

Prakash Gupta has urged Jaya Krishna 

Goit, leader of an underground armed 

outfit operating in the Tarai region, to 

join a peaceful agitation in the Tarai by 

giving up their armed struggle. 

According to sources, during a 

meeting in Bihar, India, last week, 

Gupta asked Goit to abandon of 

armed struggle, give up of the demand 

for nation’s split and join a peaceful 

agitation. Gupta said discussions with 

Goit were a part of his plan to build 

consensus for a peaceful agitation in 

the Tarai region. 

It is learnt that though the leaders 

failed to reach any concrete agreement, 

they agreed to continue their 

talks. According to Gupta, Goit said he 

could give up arms if the government 

showed readiness to hold open discussions 

on issues raised by him. 

Goit’s demands include unconditional 

release of more than 1,000 jailed 

cadres of different armed outfits, 

withdrawal of cases against them. 

Bardiya district hospital resumes services 

BARDIYA: The District Hospital in 

Bardiya resumed its services on 

Thursday after the District 

Administration Office unlocked the 

hospital on Wednesday evening. An 

inter-party women network had 

padlocked the hospital, demanding 

that the vacant posts of three doctors 

be filled immediately. Their 

Malla, a local resident. He said they 

were forced to resort to the move after 

their demands were not addressed. 

Meanwhile, authorities at the hospital 

said their repeated calls to the senior 

officials concerned to fill the vacant 

posts have gone unheard. Regional 

Health Director Dr Sushil Pyakurel said 

his office was being pressed to solve the 

problem. He, however, said that he 

Lack of tube wells 

‘affects’ farmers 

BHARAT JARGHAMAGAR 

SIRAHA, JUNE 7 

FARMERS in Siraha, Saptari 

and Udayapur districts have 

been affected after the 

authorities concerned failed 

to distribute inadequate 

number of shallow and deep 

tube wells for irrigation. 

In Siraha, only 353 of the 

total 4,490 shallow tube 

wells required have been 

installed. In Saptari and 

Udayapur districts too, only 

365 and 102 tube wells were 

installed despite the 

demand for 7,345 and 558 

tube wells, respectively. 

The demand of farmers 

in Saptari and Udayapur for 

37 deep tube wells is yet to 

be addressed. The Lahanbased 

Ground Water 

Development Committee 

(GWDC) is assigned to distribute 

tube wells in the districts. 

According to the District 

Agriculture Development 

other demands include appointment 

of female doctors in the 

Rehabilitation Centre for the 

Victims of Domestic and Sexual 

Violence and upgradation of subhealth 

posts. Chief District Officer 

Man Bahadur BK said a doctor has 

just joined the hospital while another 

one will join within two days. (PR) 

failed to do the needful as the task of 

appointing doctors was beyond his 

office’s jurisdiction. He said his office 

requested the Bheri Zonal Hospital in 

Nepalgunj, the Regional Hospital in 

Surkhet and the Rapti Zonal Hospital in 

Dang to send doctors to Jajarkot. 

Similarly, two posts of doctors, one 

each in two primary health centres in 

the district, are also lying vacant. 

Office (DADO) in Siraha, 

four bighas of farmland can 

be irrigated with a shallow 

tube well while a deep tube 

well can irrigate up to 100 

bighas. 

Shrawan Khanal of the 

GWDC said his office could 

not distribute demanded 

tube wells as the senior 

officials approved only a 

limited number of tube 

wells for distribution. 

He said their compulsion 

to distribute the limited 

number of tube wells in all 

required areas proportionally 

has made the matter 

worse. 

The DADO said a total of 

2,850 hectares of farmland 

has access to deep and shallow 

tube wells in Siraha. The 

figure stands at 2,962 

hectares in Saptari and 755 

hectares in Udayapur. 

Around, 39,341 of the total 

73,913 hectares of arable 

farmland has access to 

irrigation in Siraha. 

POLLS FROM PG 1 

In the meetings with 

the envoys, Bhattarai 

stressed on the need for 

‘positive international 

support’ to the poll 

process. 

In response, the 

British ambassador said, 

“The EU wants to see 

timely elections and is 

ready to extend all kinds 

of support to hold them,” 

Pandey quoted Sparkes as 

saying. American 

Ambassador Peter W 

Bodde also held talks with 

Dahal on Friday and discussed 

poll-related developments 

and possible 

American assistance to 

hold timely elections. 

“Bodde inquired 

about the date of the elections 

and moves being 

made to settle disputes 

among the parties,” an 

ROSHAN SEDHAI 


CONSIDERING the advent 

of monsoon season and 

its impact on the lives of 

agricultural population, the 

CPN-Maoist has planned to halt 

its ongoing protest until the end 

of the season. 

The CPN-Maoist, which has 

been leading an alliance of 33 

fringe parties against the ‘fourparty 

political syndicate’ and 

Khil Raj Regmi-led Interim 

Election Government, said it will 

engage in party’s internal preparations 

and future prospects of 

the protest while a majority of 

the people will be busy farming. 

However, CPN-Maoist leaders 

said nothing will stop them 

from taking to the streets if the 

government tries to impose its 

unilateral decision. 

“Since a majority of people 

in the country will be busy farming, 

our party has decided to put 

the protest on hold throughout 

the rainy season. But the party is 

prepared to take to the streets 

anytime if need be,” said 

CPN-Maoist Spokesperson 

Pampha Bhusal. 

Admitting that a low turnout 

has weakened the overall 

strength of protest, the 

CPN-Maoist has started talks 

with other poll-opposing 

parties, including the Ashok 

Rai-led Federal Socialist 

Party-Nepal (FSPN) and the 

Upendra Yadav-led Federal 

Democratic Front (FDF), to 

intensify their agitation. 

“The differences in our agenda 

and demands had hindered 

the unity so far. During the talks, 

everyone has accepted the need 

to move together putting aside 

differences,” said Bhusal. 


CPN-M to halt 

protest during 

rainy season 

‘EU wants to see 

timely elections’ 

aide to Dahal, Shiva 

Khakurel, said. 

According to him, 

Bodde also talked with 

Dahal the statement 

made by Bhattarai. 

“Expressing concern over 

the statement, the US 

envoy also expressed his 

‘displeasure’ with Dahal 

and explained that the US 

wants to see elections in 

Nepal and that no 

attempts have been made 

by western powers or 

organisations funded by 

them to hamper the poll 

process,” Khakurel said. 

Bodde urged Dahal to 

strike consensus on the 

disputed issues of an 

electoral law as early as 

possible, he said. Asked 

about the meeting, a US 

Embassy spokesperson 

said, “We do not share 

details of the ambasador’s 

private meetings.” 

While the CPN-Maoist firmly 

believes that the incumbent 

government should be replaced 

with a political one, the FSPN 

and the FDF have taken softer 

stance. Yadav only wants Regmi 

to resign from the post of 

chief justice. 

Instead of directly calling on 

the incumbent government to 

quit, the FSPN has demanded 

that the 11-point deal and the 

25-point pact for removing 

constitutional hurdles reached 

among the four parties be 

scrapped. 

Bhusal said her party is 

holding talks both within the 33party 

alliance and beyond it to 

determine a roadmap of a possible 

cooperation and protest. 

Both Rai and Yadav confirmed 

to the Post that they are 

holding discussions with their 

partners to determine the 

possible collaboration for a 

‘decisive struggle’. Rai said his 

party’s meeting on Tuesday had 

decided to hold talks within a 

few days. Yadav has also given a 

seven-day ultimatum to the 

government to address the FDF’s 

demands. 

Unlike the CPN-Maoist, Rai 

and Yadav, who have already 

registered their parties at the 

Election Commission, are 

also holding talks with the 

government and President Ram 

Baran Yadav. 

A day after holding talks with 

the President, Ashok Rai on 

Thursday met Regmi to reach a 

deal. The government had asked 

the disgruntled parties to forge 

an agreement within Friday. 

However, if the parties fail 

to reach a broader agreement, 

the government is likely to 

announce an election date 

on its own. 

Parties’ differences persist 

HLPC FROM PG 1 

The HLPC meeting, 

however, requested the 

government to begin the 

processes required in the 

endorsement of the ordinance 

as per the 25-point 

and 11-point political 

agreements. The 11-point 

deal among the parties 

signed on March 13 does 

not talk about the threshold. 

Despite collective and 

one-on-one meetings 

among the HLPC members 

in New Baneshwor on 

Friday, the differences persisted 

as the parties stuck 

to their stances, according 

to leaders. 

In the deliberations, 

the NC and the UML 

demanded that parties 

who field candidates less 

than 30 percent of the total 

seats in the FPTP system 

will not have to accommo- 

EC Chief Uprety ‘concerned’ 

KATHMANDU: The Election Commission (EC) has 

expressed dissatisfaction over the government’s 

delay in promulgating the CA Membership Act and 

bringing in poll-opposing parties on board the poll 

process. “Those who were for holding the polls in 

June are yet to promulgate the much needed election 

act,” said Chief Election Commissioner Neel 

Kantha Uprety. 

Speaking at a programme to launch three separate 

reports on electoral education and election 

observation and organised by the National Election 

Observation Committee, Uprety said the EC alone 

cannot do anything. “Both the government and the 

EC should work together with strong support from 

parties for holding the polls,” he said. (PR) 

date members of the marginalised 

community 

under the proportional 

representation system. 

Regmi’s Press Advisor 

Bimal Gautam said the 

government will move 

ahead with the election 

law only after holding 

consultations with the 

parties. 

“Nothing can be said 

about the ordinance until 

the government holds 

talks with the parties,” 

he said. 

Two drown, 

three go 

missing 

KATMANDU: Two persons 

drowned and three 

others went missing in 

separate incidents in 

Mahottari and Dhading 

districts on Friday. Two 

women drowned and a 

third one went missing in 

Dhungre river in 

Maisthan-7 of Mahottari 

district on Thursday. The 

bodies of Indramaya 

Ghagha Magar and 

Jaymaya Magar were 

recovered 2 km downstream 

while Chetmaya 

Magar remains missing, 

police said. In another 

incident, two men went 

missing when a milk 

tanker plunged into the 

Trishuli river along the 

Prithvi Highway in 

Dhading district at 

around 1 am on Friday. 

A third passenger was 

rescued by police. (PR)


There is a fine 

line between 

technology 

transfer and 

espionage... 

everybody in 

the field knows 

where the 

bottom 

line is 

RORY CELLAN JONES 

FACEBOOK, like other Web 

superpowers, has always 

wanted to be seen as a 

technology business, not a 

media player. That’s 

because media companies, which 

control their own content, are under 

the spotlight from regulators, politicians 

and advertisers. 

But overnight the company has 

had to respond to a campaign by 

women’s rights groups, angry about 

its apparent tolerance of misogynistic 

hate speech on the site. Facebook 

has been forced to face facts—offensive 

content posted on its platform 

will be seen by many as its responsibility 

and could harm its business. 

Facebook’s first response to campaigns 

by people disturbed by hateful 

material of any kinds on its pages 

has usually been to point out that it is 

a self-policing community, with con- 

CHINESE 

CYBERESPIONAGE 

EDWARD WONG & 

DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW 

AGOVERNMENT-financed 

research institute in the 

Pearl River Delta boasts a 

range of specialties, from 

robotics to nanomedicine 

to magnetic resonance imaging. 

But not all the cutting edge developments 

may be the result of indigenous 

innovation, according to 

American prosecutors, who last month 

charged three Chinese scientists at the 

New York University School of 

Medicine with taking bribes to share 

findings with their real employers: the 

Shenzhen institute and a Shanghai 

medical technology company. 

Though considerable attention has 

been focused on Chinese cyberespionage 

efforts, the institute is at the vanguard 

of a related push to bolster 

China’s competitiveness by acquiring 

overseas technology directly from 

Chinese scientists working in the US 

and other countries, say American analysts. 

Those scientists are recruited to 

return to China or, in some instances, 

to share their knowledge while remaining 

overseas, according to the federal 

court case and a book released last 

month by three experts who do China 

research for the US government. 

The authors of the new book, 

Chinese Industrial Espionage, say that 

technology transfer is an official policy 

at all levels of the Communist Party and 

the state. It often takes place in a legal 

grey area, since laws governing technology 

transfer can be vague or nonexistent. 

The authors warn that the US 

and other nations need to acknowledge 

the extent of the Chinese campaign, 

which they say far exceeds those of 

other countries. 

“China is in a different league altogether, 

exceeding the international 

norm not just in scale, the number and 

variety of transfer venues, the moral 

agnosticism of its practitioners, and the 

degree of government support,” the 

authors, William C Hannas, James 

Mulvenon and Anna B Puglisi, said. “It’s 

trols that enable users to report 

offenders against its code. 

But now the social network 

admits that isn’t working. “In recent 

days, it has become clear that our 

systems to identify and remove hate 

speech have failed to work as effectively 

as we would like, particularly 

around issues of gender-based hate.” 

Facebook then outlined a series 

of moves to shore up those systems. 

The most significant appears to be an 

insistence that anyone posting cruel 

or insensitive humour—not hate 

speech—has to stand behind that 

with their own authentic identity so 

that they can be called out by other 

users. Women, Action and the Media, 

one of the groups which had been 

calling for action against antiwomen 

hate speech, welcomed 

Facebook’s move, hoping it would 

mark “an historic transition in relation 

to media and women’s rights.” 

Last month, the social network 

A new book by 

American authors 

alleges that the 

Chinese government 

openly appeals to 

overseas Chinese to 

‘lend’ it technology 

an entire mind-set.” 

China’s strategies range from setting 

up science parks for Chinese 

returnees to persuading foreign companies 

to open research centres in 

China, they said. 

A private intelligence company in 

the Washington area, Defense Group 

Inc, which employs Mulvenon, says the 

government-financed centre that the 

NYU scientists are accused of being 

part of, the Shenzhen Institutes of 

Advanced Technology, recruits overseas 

Chinese with technical knowledge 

and seeks “to develop relationships 

with foreign companies and research 

organisations which display high 

potential for technology transfer.” 

A spokeswoman for the Shenzhen 

centre said it was investigating the 

accusations in the case. A lawyer for 

Yudong Zhu, the lead scientist charged, 

said the government “has drawn some 

erroneous conclusions from some of 

the evidence they have observed.” 

The Commission on the Theft of 

American Intellectual Property concluded 

in May that technology theft 

amounted to a loss of more than $300 

billion a year, the equivalent of total 

annual US exports to Asia. 

“National industrial policy goals in 

China encourage IP theft, and an 

extraordinary number of Chinese in 

business and government entities are 

engaged in this practice,” said the 

report by the commission. 

An online biography says Zhu, who 

has a PhD in electrical engineering 

from Virginia Tech, has been invited 

every year since 1995 by Chinese ministries 

and local governments to give 

seminars and consult with industrial 

and high-tech parks in China. 

“If we transfer, we just bring our 

own technology,” he said. “There is a 

fine line to draw between technology 

transfer and espionage. I believe everybody 

in the field knows where the bottom 

line is and will not cross it.” 

The authors of the industrial espionage 

book said they were not trying to 

put all overseas Chinese under unfair 

scrutiny; rather, they want the US government 

and American companies to 

be aware of the sophistication of 

China’s efforts. 

The book notes that beginning in 

the mid-1950s, China built a system of 

information extraction from overseas, 

focusing on open-source material and 

blurring the boundary between ‘information’ 

and ‘intelligence.’ Today, the 

government openly appeals to overseas 

Chinese to ‘lend’ it technology. 

The technology is converted into 

products and equipment across China, 

including in designated technology 

transfer centres. Shanghai alone has 10 

such centres, and a single centre may 

have a bank of thousands of projects, 

the authors wrote. 

In the NYU case, prosecutors say 

the Chinese scientists hid their work in 

Shenzhen and Shanghai from their 

American employers. The scientists 

specialised in MRI technology and did 

research at NYU with millions of dollars 

of grant money from the National 

Institutes of Health. They were caught, 

prosecutors said, after the university 

secretly filmed their actions and 

reviewed their e-mails, including some 

written to the Shenzhen centre and 

United Imaging Healthcare in 

Shanghai. Zhu and a colleague were 

arrested in May, but the third scientist 

had already left for China. 

Asked about the case, a spokesman 

for United Imaging said, “Our company 

would never do such things.” 

—©2013 The New York Times 

FACEBOOK LEARNS A LESSON 

REFUGEE 

ICE-CREAM 

RANA F SWEIS 

TWO months ago, the most 

famous ice cream parlour 

in Damascus set up a new 

outlet on Al Madina Al 

Munawara Street, a trafficsnarled 

road in Amman. 

The original location for the ice 

cream shop, Bakdash, which is more 

than 100 years old, is in the Al 

Hamidiyah Souk, one of the oldest 

and largest markets in Syria. 

As violence rages across the 

country, it is not only helpless 

refugees who are leaving for Jordan, 

but also skilled labourers, proficient 

builders and prominent chefs. 

“Business is dead in Damascus, and 

it’s going from bad to worse,” said 

Muhammad Abed, who worked at 

Bakdash in Damascus before he settled 

in Amman about a month ago. 

“I was sent to come and work 

here, and it’s nice to see our product 

being sold in Jordan, because it 

always reminds me of home,” he said. 

Before the uprising began, more 

than two years ago, Jordanians were 

regular visitors to Damascus and 

other cities. They were lured by fine 

restaurants, high-quality design 

stores and a shared social culture. 

The distance from Amman to 

Damascus is barely 175 kilometres. 

“I used to visit 

Syria many times a 

year and always 

admired the theme 

and ambiance of 

their restaurants,” 

said Ibraheem 

Shokerat, owner of 

Areej Al Sham, one 

of several Syrian 

restaurants that 

have sprung up in Amman. 

Areej Al Sham has been 

designed—by a Syrian architect—to 

resemble an old Damascene home, 

with a small fountain in the middle, 

high ceilings that can open to the sky 

and black and white wall tiles. 

“Before the uprising in Syria, it 

would have been impossible for these 

skilled Syrians to agree to come here 

and to accept the salaries we are 

offering them,” he added: “But the 

war changed everything.” 

The UN has registered nearly 

400,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan as 

of June 3, with another 83,000 await- 

Is Facebook 

growing up as a 

media company and 

getting ready to take 

responsibility for the 

content created by its 

billion or so users? 

removed decapitation videos from 

the site, after first maintaining that it 

could not censor material posted by 

users that gave a view of the “world in 

which we live.” So, is Facebook growing 

up, aware at last that it is a media 

company and has to take responsibility 

for the content created by its 

billion or so users? 

Maybe, but it is also a business 

As Syrians flee 

conflict, their way 

of life follows 

ing registration. In a country that was 

already facing economic challenges, 

the refugee flow has created resentments, 

especially among Jordanians 

living in the north, where most of the 

refugees are living, and trade with 

Syria has been hit hard. 

Many refugees live in overcrowded 

apartments, where their presence, 

intermingled with the Jordanian population, 

has strained school classrooms, 

infrastructure and health 

services. Local residents accuse the 

refugees of taking their jobs and 

blame them for rising rents. 

Some economists see a brighter 

side to the picture. “The influx of 

Syrians has prompted greater aid to 

Jordan and increased demand for 

goods and services,” Yusuf Mansur, 

an economist and columnist, wrote 

recently in a newspaper. “Demand 

for apartments increased by 40 percent 

in the first quarter of 2013, and 

ushered in an increase in foreign 

direct investment in the industrial 

and service sectors by another 40 percent 

over the level of last year.” 

Still, whatever the economic benefits, 

the war presents daily business 

challenges. For Bakdash, which continues 

to make its ice cream in 

Damascus before transporting it in 

refrigerated trucks across the border, 

a worsening of the violence could 

force the closing of 

the Amman parlour. 

“We are not 

removed from the 

conflict,” Bakdash’s 

manager Khaldoun 

Abbabneh said. 

“The trucks are 

already delayed in 

delivering the ice 

cream from Syria 

and we are forced to buy larger quantities 

for fear we will run out.” 

For Shokerat, the owner of Areej 

Al Sham, there are other reminders of 

the conflict. 

“What happens in Syria affects 

my employees who have families 

back home,” he said. “At one point at 

least four of them couldn’t communicate 

with their relatives because of 

the violence in their cities, so last 

month they decided to take a risk and 

return home.” 

—©2013 The International 

Herald Tribune 

which desperately needs to keep 

growing its revenue from advertisers. 

It has been reported that a number of 

major companies have suspended 

their advertising after their messages 

were seen alongside offensive material 

on Facebook. 

The Nationwide Building Society 

used its Twitter account to apologise 

to those who complained and 

announce it was suspending advertising. 

“Our ads target a user’s profile 

based on location, not pages. We’ll 

suspend our ads. Sorry for any upset 

this has caused,” read a series of 

tweets. 

Lessons then, for the social 

media firm and for those campaigning 

to force it to change. Facebook 

has learned that the spotlight on its 

content will shine ever brighter—and 

the campaigners have worked out 

that if you want a speedy response, 

target the advertisers. 

(BBC) 

5

6&7 

The monsoon plays a major 

role in determining the 

performance of the country’s 

economy, and although 

forecasts for the coming 

months are positive, it will 

take sustained good fortunes 

year after year to turn around 

a decade-long stagnation 

SANGAM PRASAIN 

IT wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that 

the monsoon rains—generally arriving on 

June 10 and lasting until the third week of 

September—determine to a great extent 

the fortunes of Nepal’s economy. And 

global experts estimate that the large-scale summer 

monsoon rainfall, and the season as a 

whole, will most likely be within the normal 

range over most of the South Asian region in 

2013, which means Nepal’s monsoon rains are 

similarly forecast to be within long-term averages 

as well. 

Agriculture is the lifeline for millions of farmers 

across the country, providing as it does 

employment to 66 percent of the total population 

and making up about 34.33 percent of 

Nepal’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—the 

market value of all officially-recognised final 

goods and services produced in a country within 

a given period of time. The farming sector contributes 

to about one-third of the country’s nearly 

Rs 1.7 trillion economy. 

And because more than 62 percent of cultivable 

land in Nepal is said to be rain-fed, the 

coming of the monsoon represents a highlyanticipated 

annual event. When the monsoon is 

favourable, the economy sees a visible boost and 

growth in GDP. But if it is delayed—by as small a 

margin as 15-20 days—the losses incurred therein 

are very difficult to compensate for. 

“Fortunately, the pre-monsoon rains have 

been good so far, and if these patterns persist 

until the time crops mature, it will mean positive 

things for the country’s economic growth,” says 

agro-economist Hari Krishna Upadhyaya. 

Upadhyaya explains that if agricultural growth 

and non-agricultural growth were to increase by 

3 percent and 6 percent respectively, the 

economy overall would see a growth of 5 percent 

over the next fiscal year—the kind of encouraging 

figures that one witnessed during the early 

90s. 

While in the last fiscal year (2011-12), 

bumper harvests induced by good weather had 

contributed to a healthy 4.48 percent growth, 

that number had, however, been projected to 

plunge to a six-year low in this fiscal year (2012- 

13), thanks to a delay in the arrival of the monsoon, 

which had resulted in poor agricultural 

output and served a massive blow to the economy. 

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics 

(CBS), the farming sector is estimated to have 

grown a mere 1.21 percent, down from 4.94 percent 

in the last fiscal year. Nepal’s annual output 

of cereal crops, for instance, is projected to have 

dropped 7.6 percent to 8.73 million tonnes in 

POWER IN 

PREPAREDNESS 

The newly-introduced Monsoon Forum 

represents a positive step towards the mitigation 

of risks in various climate-sensitive sectors, 

such as agriculture and disaster management 

VOLATILE 

FORTUNES 

2012-13. According to the Ministry of Agriculture 

Development, the country produced 719,244 

tonnes less food grains this fiscal year compared 

to the last. Output of paddy, maize and millet too 

dropped 9.99 percent. 

The CBS has therefore projected the country’s 

growth this fiscal year to be at 3.56 percent, 

the lowest since the fiscal year 2006-07 when the 

growth rate was 2.75 percent. In fact, the GDP 

growth rate in the past decade on the whole has 

remained more or less stagnant at 3.51 percent 

on an average. 

IMPORT AND INFLATION PRESSURE 

In the last one decade, Nepal has maintained a 

food surplus position for six years and a deficit 

position for four years. According to the agriculture 

ministry, the country had the highest food 

deficit in 1994-95 of 485,000 tonnes. And in the 

fiscal years 2009-10 and 2008-09, food deficit of 

330,000 tonnes and 132,000 tonnes respectively 

were witnessed. But bumper cereal harvests in 

the fiscal year 2011-12 had ensured record food 

surplus in Nepal—after two years of deficits— 

with food reserves of 886,307 tonnes. 

Despite the significant drop in cereal grains 

production since, however, the ministry’s cospokesperson 

Tek Prasad Luitel says that the 

PRAGATI SHAHI 

108.34 

8,114,131 

country will not suffer such food deficits this 

time. He adds, though, that waning production 

figures have compelled Nepal to resort to the 

global market to obtain certain foods, thus pushing 

up inflation. Nepal imported around 227,000 

tonnes of food annually during the period 

between 2005-10. And in 2010-11, it imported 

290,000 tonnes of food. 

“Imports of rice, for example, have risen 

notably,” Luitel says. “Because rice is such an 

inextricable part of the Nepali diet, we’ve had to 

bring it in from outside to make up for our own 

production inadequacies.” 

Statistics from the Trade and Export 

Promotion Centre show that Nepal imported 

cereals worth Rs 14.35 billion in the first nine 

months of the current fiscal year, a figure that 

was at Rs 6.14 billion in the same period last year. 

And among the total cereal imports, rice imports 

alone stood at Rs 6.49 billion, up 173 percent 

compared to the same period last year. 

The record surplus in the last fiscal year had 

reduced the number of districts suffering food 

EARLY next week, the first drops of the summer 

monsoon rains—originating all the way in the 

Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh and moving 

through the northern parts of India—are 

expected to hit East Nepal before scurrying 

through the country in the days to follow. Unlike last year 

when the delayed monsoon followed by a weak surge had 

resulted in below-average rainfall throughout Nepal, a 

timely and favourable monsoon is expected for the country 

this year, news that has brought joy to many a farmer 

and revived hopes of a solid annual harvest. 

More than 80 percent of the average annual rains in 

Nepal fall between the second week of June to the third 

week of September, three months that are very significant 

for this agriculturally-dependent nation. With the 

economy riding on its back, the monsoon could either be 

a farmer’s best friend or his worst nightmare. A plentiful 

monsoon could lead to big harvests, driving the economy, 

raising farm incomes and boosting rural consumption, 

but should the monsoon be weak and crop yields 

unsatisfactory, farmers suffer heavy financial burdens, 

food prices go up, and there is general havoc in the 

national economy. Also dangerous is a severe monsoon 

that is characterised by too-heavy rains; at such times, 

flash floods and landslides tend to harangue the Tarai 

and hilly regions respectively. One such large-scale landslide 

occurred only a few days ago on Wednesday night at 

the Thukima VDC in Taplejung in eastern Nepal, just 

before the onset of the monsoon, a sign of the disastrous 

potential inherent in the rains. 

Given the critical role played by the monsoon in 

terms of food security, well-being of communities, and 

78.71 

7,762,656 

107 

8,615,383 

If the monsoon is 

as favourable in 2013 

as it was in 2011, it 

will definitely help 

the economy grow, 

but market inflation 

will not be easily 

suppressed 

the economic stability of the country, as well as in dictating 

major natural calamities and associated obstacles, 

the government has recently introduced the concept of 

the Monsoon Forum. This forum serves as a national 

platform that is hoped to bring together stakeholders to 

ascertain early on the features of the coming rainy season—its 

uncertainties and limitations—so as to facilitate 

timely planning and cultivation of crops. Besides helping 

farmers to prepare, the forum will also assist other potential 

users of climate forecasts such as authorities in disaster 

preparedness, policy makers and planners, all of 

whom could benefit from a better understanding and 

more detailed information on the incoming monsoon, 

allowing for efficient early-warning systems to be put in 

place with regards to climate-related risks, and enhancing 

preparedness planning and development works. 

The concept of the Monsoon Forum is one that is 

already in practice in many countries of South Asia and 

beyond—including in Bangladesh, Cambodia, 

Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, and 

Vietnam, among others. But, organised here on the last 

week of May by the Department of Hydrology and 

Meteorology (DHM) under the Ministry of Science, 

Technology and Evironment, this was the first such effort 

seen in Nepal. The forum brought together a great number 

of concerned parties, including representatives of 

technical institutions involved in generating climate and 

early-warning information, users of that information, 

international organisations and NGOs and donors, and 

represented a positive step taken in the mitigation of 

risks in various climate-sensitive sectors, including but 

not limited to agriculture, water resource management, 

disaster management and health. 

According to Saraju Baidya, the deputy director gen- 

101.1 

9,457,594 

8,738,350 

83.3 

deficits, brought down to 27 from 33. In 2009-10, 

the country’s food deficit districts had numbered 

43. But government officials estimate that food 

deficit districts this year are likely to increase. 

Nepal’s food inflation rose to 10.3 percent in 

mid-April this year compared to 4.6 percent in 

the same period last year, the latest figures show. 

The price indices of cereals and grains have 

increased by 13.5 percent and 11.8 percent 

respectively. Such indices had decreased by 3 

percent and 1 percent respectively in the corresponding 

months in the last fiscal year. 

“If the monsoon is as favourable in 2013 as it 

was in 2011, it will definitely help the economy 

grow, but market inflation will not be easily suppressed,” 

says economist Madan Kumar Dahal. 

The current ‘imported inflation’ will still be 

visible on food prices even if cereal production 

increase, adds Dahal. “There will only be marginal 

declines in 

food prices 

even if there is 

increased pro-

2009-10, 

umbered 

that food 

rease. 

ercent in 

ercent in 

res show. 

ins have 

percent 

sed by 3 

he corre- 

2013 as it 

economy 

asily supr 

Dahal. 

ill still be 

oduction 

margin- 

AVERAGE MONSOON 

(JUNE-SEPTEMBER) (in mm) 

FOOD GRAINS OUTPUT 

(in tonnes) 

POST FILE PHOTOS 

FARMS’ OUTPUT & 

MONSOON RAINFALL 

duction next fiscal.” A drop in supply has already 

pushed up retail prices of essential food items. 

Edibles like rice and wheat flour, for instance, 

have become dearer by 10-20 percent within a 

year. 

Clearly, a lot is at stake for the economy as far 

as the timing of the monsoons is concerned, and 

although projections certainly look 

good enough for the next 

fiscal year, it is going to 

take a few continual 

years of similar upward 

strides to make up for 

the country’s nonetoo-impressiveperformance 

in the last 

decade. 

MANISH GAUTAM 

IT was in 2009 that Nepal had witnessed 

a diarrhoeal outbreak of epidemic 

proportions. Jajarkot, a 

remote district in the mid-western 

region was affected the most among 

the 27 sites where the outbreak occurred. 

While government data showed the death 

toll in the district at 154, field reporters and 

other experts estimated fatalities to have 

been double that number. Negligence and 

inefficient response to the health crisis on 

the part of the government—it was said, for 

instance, that while officials arrived on site 

on helicopters, the necessary drugs were 

being ferried by donkeys—only served to 

compound the people’s woes. 

This was the year when, aside from 

those in Jajarkot, as per government data, 

51 people died in Rukum, 33 in Dailekh and 

33 in Achham. The total death toll stood at 

378 over the 228 affected VDCs. And this 

wasn’t the first such incident in the country; 

significant deaths were also seen, for 

instance, in the 2007 diarrhoea outbreak 

which claimed the lives of 247 people. 

Communicable diseases like diarrhoea, 

dysentery, cholera and other gastroenterological 

conditions still remain major public 

health concerns in Nepal, which see a particular 

spike with the onset of the pre-monsoon 

and monsoon rains. The government’s 

response mechanisms, though, 

have been paltry at best, although a huge 

public outcry following the 2009 incident 

over government apathy has brought about 

some changes in the way action would be 

framed in the case of epidemics. 

Since then, a significantly reduced 

annual death rate with regards to such incidents 

is proof of increased vigilance on the 

part of the government. However, even 

today, 30 to 40 people on an average die 

every year from these communicable diseases. 

To cope with possible epidemic outbreaks 

in the coming monsoon months, 

the Epidemiology and Disease Control 

Division (EDCD) under the Department of 

Health Services has claimed that preparations 

have been made and medicines and 

health personnel already put in place. The 

EDCD has classified 36 ‘epidemic-prone’ 

districts, where more than two epidemics 

have been occurring annually, a list that 

includes Khotang, Saptari, Udayapur, 

Siraha, Dhanusa, Mohattari, Sarlahi, 

Rautahat, Bara, Parsa, Dhading, Dolakha, 

Ramechhap, Gorkha, Myagdi, Kapilbastu, 

Nawalparasi, Banke, Jajarkot, Dailekh, 

Humla, Jumla, Kalikot, Mugu, Dolpa, 

Kailali, Doti, Baitadi, Achham, Bajura, 

Bajhang, Chitwan, Tanahu, Palpa, Dang 

and Rupandehi. But despite the EDCD’s 

assurances, experts have cited continuing 

problems with human resources and availability 

of drugs in these districts. 

Mugu, for instance, is reeling under a 

worrying shortage of medicines. The Post’s 

correspondent in Mugu, Raj Bahadur 

Shahi, reports that over 100 patients have 

been thronging the district hospital in 

Mangma—most with gastrointestinal complaints 

and other viral conditions. These 

THE STRAINS 

OF THE SEASON 

Communicable diseases generally see a spike with the onset of the monsoon, and despite 

assurances from the government that preparations are in place all over the country to deal 

with potential epidemics, experts are skeptical of how effective these will actually prove to be 

patients are being forced to buy medication 

from private pharmacies, Shahi reports, 

owing to inadequate drugs in health care 

centres in the district. 

Similarly, Jajarkot, where the effects of 

the 2009 outbreak were the most devastating, 

has been without doctors for almost a 

year now. The Jajarkot District Hospital, 

which has three sanctioned positions for 

doctors, has been unable to place suitable 

candidates in these seats, raising fears that 

if an epidemic were to hit, there would be 

no medical help for the people. These circumstances 

are echoed in Rolpa, which has 

also had a hard time filling vacant positions 

at hospitals. 

These instances, replicated all over the 

country, testify to the fact that there is still a 

lot that the government needs to do to amp 

up health facilities and emergency 

response systems in the districts, especially 

during times of the year when most epidemics 

hit. When asked for comment, the 

director of EDCD, Dr GD Thakur, said he 

did not have the authority to look into 

administrative matters, or into the issue of 

deployment of doctors to districts. 

Besides the problem with emergency 

response and vacant seats at hospitals, 

experts have also lamented what they call 

the government’s ‘weak’ epidemic surveillance 

mechanisms. The EDCD has a sentinel 

surveillance system which gets data 

from 40 specified sites. So when outbreaks 

The forum allows for 

farmers, researchers, 

climate scientists and 

related institutions to reap 

benefits from each other’s 

expertise and timely 

information 

Although the 

Epidemiology and 

Disease Control Division 

claim to have things 

under control, a poor 

epidemic surveillance 

mechanism, response 

systems and 

problems with human 

resources and availability 

of drugs still plague 

various districts 

occur in sites other than the 39 monitored 

by the system, response is naturally 

delayed. There are many who still believe 

that dealing with pandemic cases does not 

come under the government’s prioritised 

responsibilities, and that its job is more to 

handle maternal and child health issues, 

among others. Another problem is the poor 

reporting system that provides timely 

eral of the DHM, information on early or delayed monsoon 

arrivals—necessary for the farming community in 

order to plan out their crop plantation and cultivation— 

and the behaviour of the rains—whether they will be 

inadequate, normal or heavier than average—so 

droughts, floods and other calamities can be forecast 

early on and preparations made to save lives and property—should 

be shared almost a month before the monsoon 

rains begin each year. 

“There has been growing interest in recent times on 

the part of all concerned bodies regarding the onset of 

the monsoon and its overall characteristics,” Baidya says. 

“The forum allows for all these farmers, researchers, cli- 


information to Rapid Response Teams, 

which comprise personnel deployed to 

offer initial help at outbreak sites. 

With the monsoon headed our way in a 

week’s time, the rains will bring along with 

them the usual threats of waterborne diseases 

and serious viral infections, as they 

do every year. The EDCD claims to be ready 

to battle these head on this time, and has 

vowed to improve the surveillance mechanism, 

to ensure that officials are present, 

and to launch public health awareness programmes 

in various districts. But although 

directives have been issued and assurances 

made, only time will tell how well these 

have been implemented, and whether the 

number of fatalities see a much-needed 

downturn this year. Dr Sarad Onta, professor 

of Community Medicine and Public 

Health, also urges the government to focus 

on preventive programmes before these 

outbreaks occur, rather than having to 

expend resources just dealing with them, as 

is the case at present. 

“There have certainly been improvements 

in terms of awareness regarding the 

significance of sanitation, hygiene and 

water quality around the country, but it is 

still not as extensive as it should be,” Dr 

Onta says. “The Ministry of Health and 

Population should work and coordinate 

more efficiently with local stakeholders in 

districts so as to stem these outbreaks at 

their source.” 

mate scientists and related institutions to reap benefits 

from each other’s expertise and timely information.” 

In April this year, the 4th South Asian Climate 

Outlook Forum (SASCOF), an annual meeting of the 

World Meteorology Organisation participated in by senior 

meteorologists from all across the globe, 

was held in Kathmandu. The conclave came out with a 

consensus report suggesting that the monsoon in 2013 

would be ‘within the normal range with a slight tendency 

towards above average’ for South Asian countries, with 

probability of above-normal rain in Nepal. However, it 

also stated that the monsoon would be below average in 

some areas of the northwestern and southern parts of the 

sub-continent. 

According to Baidya, the basis for the early climatic 

forecasts during the Monsoon Forum every year will be 

based on this very consensus report prepared after every 

SASCOF, and, at the same time, local data, maps and patterns 

on rainfall and temperatures obtained from various 

meteorological stations would also be assessed, to come 

up with a more accurate picture of climate variations in 

the immediate region. 

The ability to predict and plan for the monsoon cannot 

be underestimated; forecasts a few days in advance 

could play a huge role in saving lives, and those a couple 

of weeks ahead could mean the difference between a 

good harvest and a disastrous one. In a country where 

farming is still rudimentary and very much dependent 

on climatic variations, the application of forecasts is 

essential in good decision-making in various sectors. The 

Monsoon Forum is therefore a welcome move in this 

direction, allowing as it does interactions and dialogue 

between producers of climate information and those 

who need it the most.

8 

There is a point at 

which this stable, 

ordered world begins 

to fall apart at the 

seams...Borders, 

boundaries and 

dimensions are 

semi-permeable 

membranes, letting in 

and letting out 

POETIC LICENSE 

The Night 

is Lonely 

I saw you coming 

through the woods 

in the early morning, 

wrapped in a magenta shawl 

appearing 

then disappearing behind the mist. 

You had had a sleepless night; 

your hair was a mess, 

you kept yawning 

as you walked, 

and each time you yawned, 

you blushed 

a little. 

I stooped and kissed 

the tip of your nose that 

had turned red with cold. 

You smiled and raising yourself 

on your toes 

kissed me on the forehead. 

Your breath smelled of coffee. 

I saw your ink-stained hands 

and looking into your bloodshot eyes 

asked- 

ONLY 

SKIN 

PRANAYA SJB RANA 

TO most of us, the nature of 

reality is not complex. It is 

all that we experience 

through the senses but 

mostly, it is what we see 

through our eyes. That is a watch on 

my wrist and a tree in the garden. This 

is a woman in my arms, whose inkblack 

hair cascades to her shoulders, 

whose eyes reflect the brown-black of 

her skin and whose smile breaks like 

dawn over a dusty city. We sit in a field 

of open green and there are people 

around us, friends, acquaintances 

and strangers, all of whom flit in and 

out of our cocoon like vague impressions 

on an oil painting. Our reality is 

confined to a bubble, which, in this 

case, includes her and me. But the 

bubble breathes; it expands and collapses 

like a set of lungs. She points to 

the moon, pregnant and full in the 

sky, and my reality grows to encompass 

that celestial rock in all its perceived 

glory. 

But there is a point at which this 

stable, ordered world begins to fall 

apart at the seams or rather, unravels 

like an old sweater caught on a nail. 

Borders, boundaries and dimensions 

are semi-permeable membranes, letting 

in and letting out. Her hand in 

mine no longer seems to have a definition. 

Instead, it is an unrecognisable, 

undifferentiated mass of fingers 

and blood vessels and no longer skin 

on skin but only skin. I look again at 

the moon and it begins to leak from 

its confines, spreading its hazy glow 

into a penumbra. The sky is not black 

but the deep, dark blue of rich velvet. 

Into this plush canvas comes the yellow 

of the moon, spreading like 

spilled ink, crafting Rorschach blots 

and shapes that live only in imagination. 

I see, she says, as if seeing what I 

am. Her pupils are dilated and she is 

wide-eyed, as if hypnotised. Her lips 

are parted and her breathing is slow, 

deep and steady. She follows the 

direction of my gaze and says again, I 

see. 

I stand and she stands with me. 

We walk directionless, arm-in-arm, 

occasionally jostling heads. We cannot 

seem to stop smiling and when I 

hold out my left hand, the palm facing 

downwards, my splayed fingers 

tremble as if afraid. There are ghosts 

in the trees and spirits in the leaves. 

We walk behind a massive oak and it 

hides us completely. We are a thousands 

hands, a thousand mouths and 

a thousand tongues. For what could 

be minutes, hours, days, seconds, we 

are no body. When we finally separate, 

there are still tendrils of desire 

between us but we are confused and 

our eyes are unfocused and staring. 

When the wind starts up, we 

instinctively draw together again. 

Her hair is in my mouth and the 

wind flings its strands against my 

face. Clouds have rolled in and 

the moonlight no longer guides 

us. In the darkness, we are bound 

and limited; our eyes no longer 

see and reality becomes 

Raindrops on my 

eyelashes create 

blurs of bokeh behind 

her and in that 

moment, I think she is 

the strongest protest 

against death 

infinitely more complicated. 

I can feel her warmth against me 

and her hair against the nape of my 

neck. We walk together, feeling our 

way forward with our feet. There is 

soft grass, in clumps and mounds, 

underneath. We sit down again and 

there is no one else around. She fumbles 

in the dark and there is the spark 

of flint being struck, that sudden 

light, sustained by the smoldering 

end of a cigarette. I hear her draw in, 

deep and long, and hold it and exhale. 

I feel the smoke against my face, its 

wisps like invisible caresses. I take the 

Not even the colors 

cigarette and the first inhale shocks 

life into my body. But I see cells dying, 

asphyxiated and blue. I see alveoli 

collapsing like shoddy structures 

from an earthquake. I see blood seeping, 

boiling, expiring. 

The first drop of rain lands unerring 

on my cigarette, effectively putting 

it out. Then the others arrive, a 

pitter-patter on my head and a 

dampness through my shirt. She 

makes a sound, like a squeal, only 

more pleasant. The rain catches us 

before we can seek an overhang and 

when soaked to my boxers, the water 

droplets clinging to every inch of skin, 

we stop trying. 

She moves away from me and I 

see her silhouetted against the hazy, 

far-off glow of a streetlamp. She 

stands, arms outstretched and face 

towards the sky. Raindrops on my 

eyelashes create blurs of bokeh 

behind her and in that moment, I 

think she is the strongest protest 

against death. She laughs and it is 

musical and rings out through the 

quiet night streets. There are other 

sounds—rain on roofs, harsh cloud 

rumblings and a din of voices tempered 

by distance—but her laugh 

penetrates through it all like an arrow. 

I smile because I cannot help it. 

Lightning and thunder and rain 

and she dances through it all, twirling 

like a dervish and though I call out, 

warning her to avoid the streets, she 

wanders into them as if wading into a 

river and being carried by the currents. 

The wind shakes the trees and 

leaves begin to fall. I am distracted by 

Lonely Planet North Sikkim 

in that outpost 

I'd run away to 

could wash through 

and diffuse 

the solid weight of you 

I carried within: 

Not the trees along the route 

wedded to the evening sky 

in a blaze of autumn hues. 

Not the river in the gorge below 

wrenching white peaks 

from its chaos 

of white and blue. 

Nor the colourful tourist couples 


their shapes, their outlines seemingly 

twisting and changing and morphing. 

I reach out, pluck one from the air 

and it is buoyed by a cushion of raindrops. 

They break apart and scatter 

like dust, floating in the air before 

splattering into nothingness. Then, 

another distraction as she weaves in 

and out of the light, scattering photons 

in every direction. She pulls me 

along and we run, heading for a horizon 

we cannot see. I trip and we both 

fall in a tangle of arms and legs. 

We are still laughing, now uncontrollably, 

and I do not feel the pain but I 

do feel the broken skin on my arms 

and on my shins and the blood that is 

escaping. 

As we lay there, slumped and 

knotted together, reality shrinks into 

a pinpoint. It is located in between 

the eyes, hers and mine both. I feel 

broken and she intuits it. She draws 

closer and ever tighter. And I begin to 

think that it is all in the mind and that 

reality is as much illusion as it is allusion. 

It is an intricate fashioning of 

idea into form and in this working, 

idea always seems to escape, leaving 

behind only a partially-filled shell. 

I begin to say this and she puts a 

finger to my lips. To say it would be to 

smash it. There is only so much language 

can do and reality is as much 

my ability to recite as it is my ability to 

perceive. The world of the senses has 

no room for documentary, only 

metaphor. And as we sit, soaking, 

bleeding and laughing, reality is all 

skin, broken and bruised but like 

always, an anchor. 

“What did you write?” 

You blushed and lowered your eyes 

sneaking smiles 

at the guide's couplets 

distilling sky, soil, rocks, roots. 

looking on the ground you 

And love. The cause of it all. 

whispered, “Just a line- 

Love, you: 

The night is lonely” 

too fine for me, 

and starker 

— PRASHANT DAS than living colour. 

— TIKU GAUCHAN


PERSPECTIVE 

The right way 

to do the Step 

Installing a 

permanent 

ladder to 

surmount the 

Hillary Step 

would be like 

slapping a 

Band-Aid on a 

hemorrhaging 

artery…It won’t 

solve the real 

problem, which 

is overcrowding 

on the most 

famous route in 

mountaineering 

VOICES 

SHRADHA GIRI BOHARA 

IN China, the one-child policy is now 

creating difficulties for young couples 

who’re left to care for two sets of greying 

parents. The situation in Nepal might 

not be quite the same, but here too, 

young and middle-aged couples, very often 

with children of their own, shoulder the 

responsibilities of taking care of their parents 

and parents-in-law. A happy family where 

grandparents and grandchildren live together, 

and where parents provide for everything 

might sound perfect. But things are hardly as 

simple as that. Caring for the elderly is a sub- 

ED VIESTURS 

SIXTY years ago, as Edmund Hillary 

and Tenzing Norgay approached the 

summit of Everest, they were 

stopped by a 40-foot wall of rock and 

ice. It was, Hillary later wrote, “a formidable 

looking problem...We realised that at 

this altitude it might well spell the difference 

between success and failure.” 

Hillary jammed his feet, hands and shoulders 

into a thin crack between a ridge of ice 

and the rock and, as he put it, “levered myself” 

up the wall. Then he brought Tenzing up on a 

tight rope, and together they climbed the final 

300 feet to become the first humans to stand 

on the summit of Mount Everest. 

Today, that 40-foot wall is called the 

Hillary Step. Each May, large numbers of 

climbers line up to attempt it, causing a 

lengthy—and dangerous—backup. But last 

month, it was reported that the Expedition 

Operators Association, a Nepali organisation 

that manages teams climbing Everest, has 

proposed a solution to this final obstacle on 

the standard route to the top: putting a permanent 

ladder on the Hillary Step. 

Between 1987 and 2009, I went on 11 

expeditions to Mount Everest, reaching the 

top seven times. I’ve climbed both up and 

down the Hillary Step six times. I think the 

ladder is a bad idea. It won’t solve the real 

problem, which is overcrowding on the most 

famous route in mountaineering. At its best, 

installing a permanent ladder to surmount 

the Hillary Step would be like slapping a 

Band-Aid on an artery that’s hemorrhaging. 

Because guided commercial expeditions 

on Everest have become so popular, hundreds 

of clients go for the top on the same day. Each 

May, the weather forecast pinpoints the optimal 

dates for a summit thrust. Most of the 

teams seize that precious window. That is 

what causes the overcrowding. And now that 

fixed ropes are strung by Sherpas up every 

foot of the South Col route, from base camp at 

17,000 feet to the summit at 29,035 feet, a perilous 

traffic jam inevitably forms on the final 

ridge. Because of their dependence on the 

fixed ropes, clients can move no faster than 

the slowest person in the queue. It’s become 

routine to have to wait two or three hours to 

tackle the Hillary Step. 

Even if a ladder is bolted to the rock on the 

Hillary Step, it won’t alleviate the bottleneck 

that inevitably develops there on summit day. 

Climbers will still clip their ascenders 

(mechanical devices that grip ropes) to the 

fixed lines that parallel and safeguard the ladder, 

and because there’s no alternative to that 

narrow passage, the two-to-three hour wait 

will still impose its treacherous delay. For that 

ject matter seldom discussed in Nepal. It is 

almost taboo to speak of indecisions and 

doubts regarding the issue because traditional 

societies here have always taken for granted 

that it is the eldest-born son who is principally 

responsible for his parents in their old age. 

The past few decades have seen massive 

changes in the way our society functions, 

though, and siblings often share responsibility 

for their ageing parents. Man and woman 

stand more equally today which means 

daughters shoulder almost as much responsibility 

as sons, and husbands and wives often 

find they have two sets of ageing parents to 

care for. It is in such situations that discomforting 

conflicts of interest arise. Whose parents 

do we prioritise when it’s time to take special 

care of them? The human impulse will be 

to shout out, “Mine, of course.” But these 

things are a lot more complex. Relationships 

themselves can never be neatly boxed in black 

and white. There are numerous shades and 

variations of grey that we have to navigate 

across if we’re to find possible, fair solutions. 

Our culture is very different from that of 

China’s, and we certainly do not belong to a 

‘one-child’ generation. It is hence easier for us 

to find the best ways to care for the elderly. We 

need not spend time fretting about prioritising 

parents over parents-in-law because we have 

brothers and sisters who’ll share this responsi- 

matter, wearing goggles, down suits and oxygen 

masks, mountaineers can hardly see their 

own feet, so climbing down the ladder promises 

to be every bit as difficult as rappelling the 

Step on a fixed line. 

It’s the traffic jam that causes the trouble. 

Climbers run out of bottled oxygen and collapse, 

or they push upward long after a sensible 

turnaround deadline and end up descending 

in the dark, or they succumb to hypothermia 

simply because they’re forced to stand in 

place for hours, waiting their turn. My fear is 

that if the ladder is installed, even more 

climbers will throng to Everest, convinced 

that a metal contraption has solved all the 

problems of the South Col route. 

A ladder isn’t the answer. Nor can the government 

of Nepal be expected to regulate how 

many climbers are on Everest, let alone how 

many go for the summit on a given day. It will 

The glory of mountain 

climbing lies in the fact that 

success is never guaranteed. 

In recent years, Everest has 

been degraded by its sheer 

popularity. Let’s not 

degrade it further 

be up to the climbers themselves to coordinate 

their schedules to avoid overcrowding. 

This is going to be very hard to do. Personal 

ambition, a herd mentality and summit fever 

all too easily overwhelm good judgment. 

Aside from these practical concerns, 

there’s an aesthetic issue at stake. The Hillary 

Step is a crucial part of the majestic challenge 

Everest still poses. Just when you think you’ve 

got the summit in the bag, the mountain 

throws one last roadblock across your path. 

It’s the final test you pass to earn the summit. 

When I first climbed the Hillary Step in 

1991, there was only a short section of tattered 

rope in place. Unwilling to trust it, I climbed 

the 40-foot wall without using the rope. Thus I 

surmounted the Step the same way Hillary 

had, and it was gratifying to solve its technical 

difficulties with no aids other than the ice ax 

in my hand and the crampons on my boots. 

The glory of mountain climbing lies in the 

fact that success is never guaranteed. In 

recent years, Everest has been degraded by its 

sheer popularity. Let’s not degrade it further. 

Let’s leave the Hillary Step as close as we can 

to what Hillary and Tenzing confronted at 11 

am on May 29, 1953. 

Ed Viesturs is the only American to have 

climbed the 14 highest peaks in the world, all 

without supplemental oxygen. He is coauthor, 

with David Roberts, of the forthcoming 

book The Mountain: My Time on Everest. 

—© 2013 The New York Times 

GUFFADI 

THE Losers of the Week 

award goes to our men 

in blue who have once 

again shown us that 

they are nothing but a 

bunch of savages. It seems like the 

only job for those who have sworn 

to protect the public is to prey on 

them instead. Our successive governments 

have failed to prioritise 

police reform and have instead 

used our chor-police to attack common 

citizens. 

Once again our police wallahs 

have made us proud by not discriminating 

against anyone. They 

will not leave anyone from Tibetan 

refugees to former Kamlaris alone. 

It doesn’t matter if the protestors 

are young or old or bold or beautiful 

or whether they are wearing 

Prabal Gurung or a Britney Spears 

t-shirt from the street hawker in 

Sundhara. 

The Nepal Police have become 

loyal servants of those in power 

since the beginning of time. Maybe 

our IGP saheb should change the 

training manual before he retires. 

The existing manual must have 

chapters on how to use foul language, 

harass common citizens 

verbally and physically, and ways to 

rob and rape vulnerable women. 

Our bideshi donors should 

send their overpaid consultants to 

train our chor-police on handling 

protestors. Where are our naari 

organisations when we need them? 

What happened to great dames like 

Arzoo Didi and Bandana Didi? 

Them ladies seem to get lots of 

funding from the kuireys to fight 

violence against women but I guess 

they are busy attending conferences 

around the world. Instead of 

going on foreign junkets and telling 

the bideshis how our women are 

oppressed, why not take to the 

streets and help the real women to 

fight oppression? 

And where are our ‘Occupy 

Baluwatar’ people, for that matter? 

Standing around, waving placards 

will not compel our incompetent 

government to listen to our 

demands. Shutting down the highways 

will only make it worse. We 

must ask our mothers and sisters to 

join the Kamlaris and arm themselves 

with brooms, sticks and 

whatever they can get. It’s time to 

fight back police brutality. 

It’s a shame that our police wallahs 

were so aggressive towards our 

former Kamalris and some were 

even molested and robbed. Where 

were our women police wallahs? If 

Nepal Police doesn’t have enough 

women personnel then this would 

be the good time to recruit a thousand 

more so that we don’t have to 

watch the men in blue lay their 

hands on women protestors. Where 

is the @#$!ing outrage? Where is 

Shades of grey 

bility with us. Parents, whether they’re my husband’s 

or mine, have given us our lives. It is 

important for us then to love them. We cannot 

abandon them when they need us most. 

My mother will turn 70 in seven months’ 

time and because we live 450 km apart, the 

fear of her being left helpless gives me nightmares. 

Statistics show that children and the 

elderly are among the world’s most abused, 

and the thought of what will happen to my 

parents when they’ll age further and need all 

the love, care and assistance in the world for 

the remainder of their lives alarms me. 

As my mother’s daughter, I feel a special 

kinship with her. She took care of all her children 

with such dedication that her love still 

inspires me every day. She is the driving force 

and the silent mentor who has shaped me into 

the person I am today, and she will soon need 

to be looked after herself. My mother loved me 

as I love my daughter, and I can’t imagine how 

she managed to raise six of us! And it is being a 

mother myself that has really made me understand 

how much love my own mother has 

showered upon me. My mother only gave, 

never asking for anything in return, and I feel 

that I know her better now. 

Care for the elderly seems to be an issue 

that has not as yet found its way into government 

agendas. As part of the nation’s workforce, 

men and women dutifully pay their 

HEADS AND TALES 

Khilly Dai and his bunch of incompetent 

bureaucrats? 

All of our political parties have 

their women organisations. Where 

are our women leaders? Maybe 

they are busy working on their 

speeches for the next convention. 

Our netri-nis like Sujata and Bidhya 

Didis have done nothing to help 

women in this country. They have 

only helped themselves to the allyou-can-eat 

buffets while they 

were heading ministries. 

Our clowns are still fighting 

over how many buffoons can enjoy 

the buffet in the new Constituent 

Assembly. We wasted billions of 

rupees on 601 good-for-nothing 

lazy bums. Now, the Kangaroos and 

Unidentified Moronic Losers want 

to downsize to 491 freeloaders. 

Well, that would at least save us a 

few millions. When will we have 

taxes, and yet when they grow old, they have 

no option but to fall back on their family— 

their children who are by the time grown up 

and taking care of their own families—for support. 

The Sanchaya Kosh is a small relief, but 

the introduction, even imposition, of a system 

akin to a social security scheme—through 

which employees would monthly contribute 

certain portions of their salaries to be pensionable 

when they retire—would prove more 

effective. Such an arrangement would be a 

much-needed gift from the government to the 

people, most of whom work for private companies 

all their lives and do not have the pension 

benefits government employees enjoy. 

Ageing generations all over the world have 

contributed to their nations’ development. 

The same is also true of Nepal and its elderly 

population who have every right to live a dignified 

life. It is not only the nation’s government 

but also its private companies and 

organisations that have failed its ageing population. 

There is no system, no plans in place to 

provide for employees once they retire. 

Affordable health insurance, retirement pension 

plans and dignified old age homes are 

altogether non-existent in Nepal, and one can 

only hope their need will be realised soon. 

Our culture has always focused more on 

the ‘we’ than on the ‘I’, and while this certainly 

adds to the integrity of our societies, it also 

as it is 

THE LOSERS 

STRIKE AGAIN 

Our police wallahs do not discriminate...They will not leave anyone 

from Tibetan refugees to former Kamlaris alone 

Standing around, 

waving placards will 

not compel our 

incompetent 

government to listen 

to our demands. We 

must ask our mothers 

and sisters to join the 

Kamlaris and arm 

themselves with 

brooms, sticks and 

whatever they can get. 

It’s time to fight back 

police brutality 

competent folks who will refuse to 

take a dime for their time from the 

state coffer? Instead of writing the 

constitution, our buffoons were 

selling their own diplomatic passports 

and what not. 

Our Foreign Ministry wants Rs 

750 million to buy luxury vehicles 

for them big-wigs for the SAARC 

Summit. Yes, we will be hosting 

them sharks sometime in 2014 and 

all them neighbourhood leaders 

will need to ride around in bulletproof 

Mercedes Benz. We should go 

green and save millions by getting 

rickshaws. Instead of purchasing 

bullet-proof vehicles, why not ask 

them VIPs to bring their own bulletproof 

vests and full-body armour? 

Maybe we could save all that 

money if we hosted the summit 

during the monsoon season. We 

can then take them heads of states 

around the city on boats. We have 

failed to become the next 

Singapore or Switzerland. Maybe, 

we can try to be the next Venice. 

Baidya uncle and his crew have 

decided to halt their protest programs 

during the monsoon season. 

They do not want the farmers to 

suffer or maybe they just don’t have 

enough funds to buy enough gumboots 

and raincoats for their 

cadres. The angry birds have been 

having a tough time collecting 

money and muscles for their 

protest programs. They could do us 

a favour if they gathered all their 

cadres and armed them with buckets. 

And when it rains and our 

streets are flooded, they can jump 

into action and clear the paths. 

That would certainly win the hearts 

and minds of Valley residents. Then 

we wouldn’t mind pitching in a 

rupee or two for their chiya-paan 

karyakrams. But no shutting down 

the country, please! 

Guffadi is a grumpy 

old man who blogs at www.guffadi.blogspot.com. 

You may contact 

him at maguffadi@gmail.com 

What happens when we become old and feeble? Will our children take time out from their lives to care for us? 

fuels a lack of accountability; there is no single 

person responsible for an error or failing. This 

is certainly true of our politicians who are 

busier playing the blame game than are promoting 

the nation’s and hence its citizens’ 

well-being. The modern Nepali middle-class is 

extremely uncertain of its future; low wages, 

inflation, soaring prices and limited job 

prospects plague our generation and it is difficult 

to provide for both our children and our 

parents. Having said this, the monetary costs 

of caring for our parents are not excessively 

burdensome. Of course, serious illnesses bring 

along hefty hospital bills but what our parents 

need most from us are love respect and a sense 

of belonging. 

Most of my college mates settled in the US 

and do not know if they will ever return. 

Limited job prospects might be the main reason 

most of them chose to stay back, but the 

‘joint family issue’ as some put it is also a 

major reason. I think it is important for all of 

us to take step back and understand that freedom 

alone does not signify happiness. Living 

in a foreign land without a family to take care 

of, does have its share of advantages, but it 

also comes with a significant set of disadvantages 

that we need to take into account. What 

happens when we start greying? Will our children 

take time out from their lives to care for 

their ageing parents? 

9

10 

books 

The seeds 

of Cheena 

Haraeko 

Manchhe 

sprout in 

grief over 

Meera 

Acharya’s 

death. But 

this fact 

doesn’t just 

hover over 

the book; it 

casts a 

shadow large 

enough to 

colour other 

memories 

NEW BOOKS 

REVENGE WEARS PRADA 

Lauren Weisberger 

Simon & Schuster 

WEENA PUN 

AT an interaction programme 

at the Nepal- 

Bharat Library, 

Haribansha Acharya 

was proud that his 

autobiography, Cheena Haraeko 

Manchhe, had sold a record 30,000 

in just the first 20-25 days since 

being launched. “Ten thousand 

more will be coming to the market 

soon,” he said, incredulous at the 

demand. What surprised him 

more, though, was the realisation 

that his readers were uncommon 

as well: from cobblers to drivers to 

housemaids. 

Acharya need not have been 

surprised. His fame as a common 

man’s comedian is what’s driving 

the record sales. Shows such as 15 

Gatey and Lalpurja are so relatable 

and funny because he is able to 

understand a common Nepali’s life 

and use it for comedy. But here at 

this programme and in his book, 

he seems to have failed to understand 

this, and hence his readers 

and fans. 

For instance, the book barely 

touches his life as one half of the 

MaHa Jodi and when it does so, it’s 

focused mostly on first encounters 

and places they travelled for live 

performances. The evolution of the 

Jodi and an honest account of 

Acharya’s complex or simple relationship 

with Madan Krishna 

Shrestha, the other half, is nowhere 

to be felt. This is surprising because 

the Acharya-Shrestha Jodi has 

been around for 34 years now, 

more than half of Acharya’s life. 

And they both admit they are nothing 

without each other. Even at the 

programme at the library, the audience 

was largely interested in the 

Jodi, their views on each other, 

their love for each other, the nature 

of their collaboration—and frictions 

if there had been any. Yet, the 

IT’S been a decade since Andy Sachs 

quit working for Miranda Priestly at 

Runway magazine in Weisenberger’s 

The Devil Wears Prada. But her career is 

back on track, she has met the love of 

her life, and is on the top of the world. 

Until the day of her wedding when she 

discovers a letter that reveals to her that 

nothing—not her husband, nor her 

beloved career—is as it seems. 

CHEENA 

HARAEKO 

MANCHHE 

Haribansha Acharya 

Fine Print 

book is devoted primarily to 

Acharya’s other incoherent bits of 

memories, peppered with pain at 

his first wife’s death. 

Granted Cheena Haraeko 

Manchhe is a solo project trying to 

encapsulate 54 years of Acharya’s 

life—too many memories, all dear 

and powerful, struggling to be contained 

within a mere 300 pages. 

And the seeds of the book sprout in 

grief over Meera Acharya’s death, 

although it wasn’t published 

until his second marriage. 

Unfortunately, these facts don’t just 

hover over the book; they cast a 

shadow large enough to colour 

other memories. Consequently, the 

book feels like an apology as well as 

THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE 

Neil Gaiman 

William Morrow 

A BRILLIANTLY imaginative and poignant 

fairy tale from the modern master of 

wonder and terror, The Ocean at the End 

of the Lane is Gaiman’s first new novel 

for adults since his No 1 New York Times 

bestseller Anansi Boys. This bewitching 

and harrowing tale of mystery and survival, 

and memory and magic, makes 

the impossible all too real. 

PHOTO COURTESY: HARIBANSHA ACHARYA/FACEBOOK 

THE COMMON MAN’S 

COMEDIAN 

Comedian Haribansha Acharya delves into his life experiences in his 

autobiography, but the book feels more like an apology and justification 

for his second marriage rather than the tell-all people would expect 

a justification for his second marriage, 

right from the start. 

Grief is personal, so is his decision 

to wed for the second time. 

Acharya needn’t have overshared 

the first and justified the latter, but 

he seems to have done so out of 

fear that his fans will never understand 

his need or desire to marry 

Ramila Pathak, that they might 

consider his love for Meera just a 

show. 

Acharya’s other sin: underestimation 

of his readers, which leads 

him to preach, instead of throwing 

perspectives, on everything—from 

love to life to patriotism to politics 

to ethnic diversity—in almost 

every chapter. He does offer an 

explanation for doing so, although 

not directly. At one point in the 

book, he talks about comedy being 

akin to medicine treating social ills. 

Messages are wrapped in comedy 

and offered to the audience. Sadly, 

though, his book has comedy, and 

memories, lost behind the veil of 

sermons. 

Sure, he himself admits he is no 

writer. Yet, when he lets go of the 

urge to be an apologist or a populist, 

Acharya shines. He writes in 

vernacular and lets memories 

speak for themselves. Chapters 

about his school-bunking days, his 

‘battle’ with the school’s principal 

and his difficulty in passing the 

School Leaving Certificate exam, 

are honest and hilarious. His portrayal 

of Narayan Gopal vivid. And 

the chapter in which he speaks of 

learning the royal meaning of 

‘thank you’ from former-king 

Gyanendra eerily superb. 

Such honest accounts are, 

however, rare. But he is 

Haribansha, or as ‘common’ people 

call him, Haribanshe. His life 

outside this book is grand, his talent 

for comedy unquestionable, 

and that’s enough to turn the 

pages. 

RED SPARROW 

Jason Matthews 

Scribner 

IN the grand spy-tale tradition of John 

Le Carre comes a shocking debut 

thriller written with insider detail and 

packed with brio. Page by page, veteran 

CIA officer Matthews’s Red Sparrow 

delights and terrifies and fascinates, all 

while delivering an unforgettable cast. 

Authentic, tense, and entertaining, this 

novel introduces the author as a major 

new American talent. 

READING & WRITING 

Sometimes the 

most honest and 

helpful thing a 

writer can do is 

to acknowledge 

that some 

problems are 

insoluble, that 

life is hard and 

there aren’t 

going to be any 

answers, that 

he’s just as 

screwed-up and 

clueless as the 

rest of us 

TIM KREIDER 

THERE seems to be a 

widespread presumption 

that writing is prescriptive 

(or proscriptive) 

rather than simply observational 

or meditative. Some people 

condemn or commend even memoirs 

and novels as though their purpose 

were to instruct or offer models. 

I suppose I can’t entirely fault 

readers for this misapprehension. 

Confident authority is an appropriate 

tone for straight reportage, but 

it’s become the default of columnists, 

essayists and bloggers. To 

some extent this is a deformative 

effect of the space restrictions 

within which most of us work; in a 

thousand-word essay you can’t 

include every qualification or second 

thought that occurs to you or 

you’d expend your allotted space 

refuting your own argument instead 

of making it. 

This voice is trained into us early 

on—we’re taught to make our arguments 

as succinct and cogent as 

possible, omitting wishy-washy 

qualifications like “in my opinion.” 

You’d think these disclaimers could 

go without saying; every piece of 

writing includes the tacit caveat: Or I 

could be wrong. And yet quite a lot 

of readers respond to your personal 

observations with outrage when 

they fail to reflect their own experience, 

as if you were proposing your 

idle speculation as totalitarian law. 

That rhetorical pose of weary 

expertise has metastasised to the 

Internet, where the amount of information 

available is so numbing, and 

actual expertise so rarefied, that 

almost nobody knows enough about 

anything anymore to have the right 

to any opinion at all. 

I’m always ill at ease when I find 

myself conscripted by the media 

into the role of Expert on some subject 

about which I have rashly written. 

I felt like the explanatory caption 

beneath my name on-screen 

ought to be: PERSON IN WORLD. 

Whenever someone writes to take 

me politely to task over some unfair 

generalisation, self-contradiction or 

unexamined blind spot, my riposte 

is usually something along the lines 

of: “Hm, yeah, I guess you have a 

point there.” I don’t always agree 

with me; I certainly don’t expect 

everyone else to. Being treated as 

some sort of authority is more 

alarming than flattering; it makes 

me wonder whether all the alleged 

sages I’ve ever admired were big fat 

fakes like me. 

This is another reason so many 

writers feel the need to impersonate 

someone wise or in possession 

of some marketable truth: 

it’s a function of insecurity, of 

fear. If we don’t assume 

some sort of expertise, why, 

exactly, should anyone bother 

reading us, let alone buy 

our books? The one thing no 

editorialist or commentator 

in any media is ever supposed 

to say is I don’t 

know: that they’re too 


The power of ‘I don’t know’ 

Tim Kreider is an essayist and cartoonist. His most recent book is We 

Learn Nothing and his cartoons have been collected in three books by 

Fantagraphics. His strip, The Pain—When Will It End?, ran for 12 years 

in the Baltimore City Paper and other alternative weeklies, and is 

presently archived at the paincomics.com. His essays have appeared in 

The New York Times, Film Quarterly, and The Comics Journal, and 

have been frequently anthologised. 

HARDCOVER FICTION 

1 Inferno by Dan Brown 

2 And the Mountains 

Echoed by Khaled 

Hosseini 

3 The Hit by David Baldacci 

4 12th of Never by James 

Patterson and Maxine 

Paetro 

5 Don’t Say A Word by 

Barbara Freethy 

ignorant about the science of climate 

change to have an informed 

opinion; that they frankly have no 

idea what to do about gun violence 

in this country; or that they’ve just 

never quite understood the Israeli- 

Palestinian conflict. To admit to 

ignorance, uncertainty or ambivalence 

is to cede your place on the 

masthead, your slot on the programme. 

Thucydides says: “Ignorance is 

bold, knowledge reserved.” The 

more someone knows about any 

given subject, the likelier he is to 

include a lot of boring, hard-to-follow 

caveats, complicating factors 

and exceptions in discussing it. 

Which is why, for example, climatologists, 

who have actually studied the 

data and know how to interpret it, 

tend to carefully hedge their claims, 

declining to assert any direct causality 

or make predictions, whereas 

professional obfuscators will confidently 

assure you that global warming 

is a lot of alarmist hooey. 

Affected certainty has more than 

rhetorical consequences. 

Since I am not and never will be 

anyone who knows enough about 

anything to be worth listening to on 

the basis of my expertise, my only 

possible claim to anyone’s attention 

is honesty. Unalloyed honesty is the 

iridium of the information economy—vanishingly 

rare, and therefore 

precious. I have no pretensions to 

any special knowledge, let alone 

anything like wisdom; if what I say 

doesn’t reflect your own experience, 

it’s possible that it isn’t about you. It’s 

also possible that something that’s 

not About You might still be of some 

interest or use. 

My least favourite parts of my 

own writing are those where I catch 

myself trying to smush the unwieldy 

mess of real life into some neatlyshaped 

conclusion, a sort of thesis 

statement. Real life, in my experience, 

is not rife with epiphanies, let 

alone lessons; what little we learn 

tends to come exactly too late, gets 

contradicted by the next blunder, or 

is immediately forgotten and has to 

be learned all over again. More and 

more, the only things that seem to 

me worth writing about are 

the ones I don’t understand. 

Sometimes the most honest and 

helpful thing a writer can do is to 

acknowledge that some problems 

are insoluble, that life is hard and 

there aren’t going to be any answers, 

that he’s just as screwed-up and 

clueless as the rest of us. 

—©2013 The New 

York Times 

BEST-SELLER LIST 

HARDCOVER NONFICTION 

1 Eleven Rings by Phil Jackson and 

Hugh Delehanty 

2 Happy, happy, happy by Phil 

Robertson with Mark Schlabach 

3 Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg with 

Nell Scovell 

4 Proof of Heaven by Eben 

Alexander 

5 Let’s Explore Diabetes With 

Owls by David Sedaris 

For the week ending June 7

Ashish proves he’s a future star 

PRATICHYA DULAL 


ASISH Chaudhary stole the 

show in the Inter-region 

Nation-wide President’s 

Cup Running Shield 

Championship by breaking 

three records. 

Asish, who hails from 

Sotkisira VDC from Dang, had 

been drawing the attention for 

the last three years ended up as 

the national champion. 

This year, however, 

Chaudhary—a grade XI student 

at Nightingale School in 

Bouddha—bettered his performance 

in the 100m race 

where his record in the event 

falls under the top three in the 

senior level as well. 

Competing from the Central 

region, he had set the record in 

100m race clocking 10.9 seconds. 

In the 4X100m relay team 

event too, his team comprising 

of Rajkumar Chaudhary, Sikhar 

Upreti and Prem Narayan 

Mahato won the gold. He also 

won gold in long jump. 

He also broke the record in 

200m race with the timing of 22.5 

seconds and took his gold tally in 

individual events to three. 

National coach Sushil 

Narshing Rana is impressed 

with the lanky 16-year old’s display 

and says the budding talent 

sportsdigest 

Everest Hotel golf tourney 

KATHMANDU: Prem Prabhat Gurung 

finished as the leader in the first day 

of The Everest Hotel Cup golf tournament 

with 42 points, played in the 

stable ford ¾ handicap formats at 

Royal Nepal Golf Course on Friday. 

Neeeraj SJB Rana trails Gurung by six 

points to settle at the second place 

while Gopal Chitrakar is currently 

standing at third position with 33 

points, leveled on points with fourth 

placed KD Acharya. The tournament 

will conclude on Saturday. 

White House beat National 

DHULIKHEL: Himalayan White 

House College registered a slim 

two-wicket win over National College 

of Engineering in the Kathmandu 

University Twenty20 Cricket 

Tournament at Dhulikhel on Friday. 

Electing to bat fist, National were 

bundled out for 130 runs. In reply, 

White House achieved the target with 

the loss of eight wickets with 20 balls 

to spare. Saurav Tiwari contributed 

highest 32 runs, Sagar Bhattarai 

cobbled 27 runs and Dinesh Raj 

Bhatta made 23 runs for the winning 

team. In the other match of the day, 

Kathmandu University School of 

Management defeated Nobel College 

of Management by four wickets. 

National Open kung-fu 

KATHMANDU: Aakriti Gurung and 

Riya Tamang, both from Kaski district, 

won gold medals in the National 

Open Kung-Fu at Buddhanilkantha 

on Friday. Gurung defeated Sanju 

Tamang of Kathmandu in the women 

40-45kg weight category, while 

Tamang ousted Manisha Timalsina of 

Kathmandu in the 30-35kg category. 

In other matches, Jebisha Thakuri of 

Kathmandu, Sabita Tamang of 

Khotang claimed gold in the 20-25 kg 

and 35-40 kg respectively. In men’s 

events, Abhijeet Thakuri of 

Kathmandu and Rajkumar Tamang of 

Makwanpur reached the finals of the 

50kg and above. 

Woodswill champions 

KATHMANDU: Woodswill were 

crowned the champions in the 

football competition of the Lalitpur 

district-level School Sports 

Championship following their 4-3 

win over Little Angels’ School in the 

tie-breaker on Friday. 

Xabi Alonso has surgery 

MADRID: Real Madrid and Spain 

midfielder Xabi Alonso has had 

successful surgery on a nagging groin 

injury, the Spanish La Liga runners up 

said on Friday. The 31-year-old was 

left out of the world champions’ 

squad for the Confederations Cup 

later this month, after having 

struggled during the latter half of the 

season with his club. Alonso had the 

surgery with a specialist in Munich. 

must be tapped. “He has shown 

tremendous potential and if he 

continues to be serious in the 

coming days too, I see him as the 

future star,” said Rana who has 

mentored a lot of athletes. 

Asish however is still undecided 

about making athletics his 

sole career. That is why when 

other players would have 

grabbed the opportunity with 

both their hands Asish declined 

an offer from Nepal Police to 

join their club. 

“They (NPC) have 

approached me but I declined 

as my priority is to compete my 

education,” Asish told the Post. 

Asish comes from a family of 

athletes. His father Yaga Prasad 

Chaudhary was also an athlete 

and veteran athlete Dhani Ram 

Chaudhary is his distant uncle. 

“From what I have seen 

players who jump into sports 

without completing their education 

rue the decision after a couple 

of years,” he added. For now, 

he will continue his two hours of 

daily training at the Dashrath 

stadium with Dhani Ram and 

think of getting a job after completing 

his bachelor’s degree. 

“This doesn’t mean I do not 

take my game seriously or 

appreciate the offer,” Asish 

explained. “I am serious about 

my game and will continue to 

participate with the aim of 

breaking further records and as 

for the job I believe they will be 

offered as long as I do well.” 

Asish was sad he missed the 

KATHMANDU: Nepal Karate 

Federation awarded International 

karate coach Debendra Amatya with 

Special Recognition Award, at 

a programme in Kathmandu on 

Friday. 

According to the president of the 

federation Dhawa Gurung, coach 

Amatya was given the award for his 

significant dedication towards 

karate, while in Nepal and in 

the USA. 

Gurung says that Amatya qualified 

for the recognition, by introducing 

Nepal in different communities 

in the USA through karate and is a 

true spokesperson for our nation. 

In March, Nepali karate team led 

by Amatya won three bronze medals 

in the US Open & Junior 

International Cup 2013 at Las Vegas, 

USA. During the championship, 

2300 athletes from 45 different 

nations participated in various 

events. 

Amatya is a licensed referee for 

the USA National Karate Federation 

and officiates their national and 

international championships as a 

judge, referee and chief referee. (PR) 

Ashish Chaudhary of the Central region competes in the long jump event in the President’s 

Running Shield at Dashrath Stadium in Tripureshwor on Friday. POST PHOTO: KAUSHAL ADHIKARI 

opportunity to meet with the 

President who had organised a 

programme to meet with the top 

three teams of the tournament. 

“I was informed late about 

the programme and by that time 

I had already booked my ticket 

back home,” Asish said. 

Shiva sends Manang into semis 

POST REPORT 


PROLIFIC midfielder Shiva Shrestha 

scored on either side of the half to 

guide Laxmi Hyundai Manang 

Marshyangdi Club to the semi-finals as 

they knocked out NMB Machhindra 

FC 2-0 in the Gurkha Cup on Friday. 

The first quarter-final of the 

tournament hosted at Dashrath 

Stadium was a slip and slide affair as 

the field suffered consequences of a 

heavy downpour which ceased only 

moments before the start of the match. 

Manang were first to sprout threat 

at their opponent’s den as Sujal 

Shrestha’s diving header connected on 

Yona Elias’ cross from the right flank 

but missed the mark by inches in the 

10th minute. 

However, the next header by Shiva 

ended at the back of the net. Sujal took 

the free-kick in the 14th minute to set 

up Shiva who rose above all to head the 

ball home. 

With the majority of the time still 

left to be played, Shiva once again 

assaulted the opposition’s end as he 

dispatched a powerful drive from the 

edge of the box but this time 

Machhindra custodian Dinesh Thapa 

made a full stretched dive to prevent 

the ball getting through. 

Minutes later, Machhindra came 

close to equalising when Karna Limbu 

was clear through on goal but his left 

footed attempt was well saved by 

Manang keeper Bishal Shrestha. 

The tempo of the match gained 

intensity with each passing 

second and players from both teams 

were on the hunt to either equalise or 

Amatya receives 

‘Special award’ 

Manang’s Shiva Shrestha (centre) 

celebrates with his team mates after 

scoring a goal against Machhindra 

on Friday. POST PHOTO 

double the lead. 

Although Machhindra were 

prepared to put up a fierce fight to get 

back in the game, Manang doused 

their fire soon after the break. Once 

again it was Shiva who got the better of 

Machhindra as he pierced a shot past 

Thapa in the 49th minute. Deepak Rai 

did well to trick his marker and set up 

Shiva who let loose a superb scorcher 

from the point which penetrated 

through to the left corner of the post. 

In a counter move few moments 

later, Shiva’s long ranged through ball 

was met by Elias who charged forward 

to find himself in a one on one situation 

with Thapa but he unselfishly cut 

across to Anil Gurung who could have 

scored a simple tap in goal if he had not 

tripped on the muddy surface; however, 

he did manage to recollect himself 

and dispatch a shot but Debendra 

Tamang of Machhindra was present to 

make a goalline clearance. 

Manang coach Amrit Panta commented 

that the ground was not in a 

suitable condition. “We thought 

today’s match would be postponed but 

still we came and performed well.” 

Meanwhile Machhindra coach 

Raju Kaji Shakya lamented that his 

team were unable to prepare at all for 

the tournament. 

“The new players in our team need 

more time to better their co-ordination 

and we cannot improve this aspect 

since we do not have a ground for 

practice. There needs to be more 

maintained grounds to develop the 

game, otherwise such consequences 

that our club has suffered will 

continue,” commented Shakya. 

GURKHA CUP 

RESULT 

Manang Marshyangdi 2 - 0 Machhindra 

TODAY’S MATCH 

Nepal Police Club v Nepal Army Club @ 15:30 

SOMESH VERMA 

WHEN Ireland were playing 

England in the Cricket World Cup 

2011, little did anybody know - 

until Ireland started batting - that 

we were in for a surprise. England 

had put up mammoth total of 

325 and Ireland were considered 

too small a team to overhaul the 

target. 

Led by Kevin O’Brien—who 

scored 113 off 67 balls—Ireland 

chased down the target, with five 

balls to spare, causing one of the 

biggest upsets in the history of 

the Cup. 

Yes, Ireland were minnows, 

an associate member of the 

International Cricket Council 

(ICC), not fitting the bill of top 

flight teams that a World Cup 

boasts of. At the same time, 

England were one of the pretournament 

favourites. 

Yet, the miracle happened, 

and as records tumbled the 

match stayed as one of the highlights 

of the richest cricket world 

cup yet (in terms of money generated 

for ICC). 

As teams prepare for the next 

World Cup (2015), especially 

countries like Nepal - who have 

to go through grueling schedule 

of getting through the World 

Cricket Leagues and World Cup 

Qualifiers - the proposed system 

of qualification for the teams to 

play in the 2019 Cricket World 

Cup, to be held in England, has 

come to the fore apparently 

through a leaked ICC document. 

And the number of teams to 

play the World Cup has been limited 

at 10, with top eight countries 

getting a direct entry, while 

two seats are to be contested 

among the teams having ODI status 

and from World Cricket 

Leagues. 

It was already announced 

that the 2019 edition would be a 

10-team affair. Nothing new in 

that. But associate nations would 

have hoped that the decision is 

reviewed, at least with reference 

to what they’ve done at the highest 

level so far. Consider a few 

results from past world cups: 

Zimbabwe beating Australia in 

1983; Kenya beating West Indies 

in 1996; Bangladesh beating 

Pakistan in 1999; and Ireland 

beating Pakistan in 2007. All in 

their debut World Cups. Repeat 

stories of David Vs Goliath. 

Instances shown by minnows 

that they could contest at the top 

level, with teams touted as the 

best in the world. 

In fact, ICC had previously 

said that the CWC 2015 would be 

a ten-team affair too, but eventually 

decided to add four more 

teams at the ICC meeting post 

2011 World Cup. The idea to keep 

the 2019 to a 10-team tournament 

beats logic. It has been said 

that the lesser number of teams 

would increase the level of com- 


11 

Cricket World Cup 

format: ICC against 

minnows? 

petition. A recent example of 

warm-up game for ICC 

Champions Trophy between 

India and Australia would be 

enough to quell that notion. 

In reply to India’s 308, 

Australia were folded for 65. Yes, 

it was unofficial match, but the 

players were not unofficial. Ask 

Australians if they wanted to lose 

like that, yours truly doubts if 

anybody would say ‘Yes’. 

A minnow beating a stronger 

team shows that the level of 

competition has increased and 

not diminished. Sri Lanka, 

before winning the World Cup in 

1996, had won as many as four 

matches in their previous five 

World Cups. 

OFF- SIDE 

When there is a 

target to play for a 

World Cup, teams 

train hard and try to 

achieve a spot 

Nepal coach Pubudu 

Dassanayake, who hails from Sri 

Lanka and has taken Canada to 

World Cup says, “Countries like 

Nepal can only become a cricket 

giant if we get the opportunity to 

play at the highest level regularly. 

When there is a target to play for 

a World Cup, teams train hard 

and try to achieve a spot, so level 

keeps improving.” 

Once teams qualify for World 

Cup, the ICC preparation funding 

keeps teams improving. In 

absence of World Cup goal, it is 

difficult to see how associate 

nations would keep their spirits 

high. Recently added ICC funding 

of $175,000 to Nepal and 

$350,000 to higher associate 

teams would go in vain, if the 

World Cup goals are removed. 

ICC, before becoming 

International Cricket Council in 

1989 and International Cricket 

Conference in 1965, was called 

Imperial Cricket Conference ever 

since it was established in 1909, 

for obvious reasons. 

A lot has changed since then 

and cricket power has shifted to 

South Asia. Probably that was the 

reason why talks of limiting the 

number of teams started making 

rounds following 2007 World 

Cup. In that World Cup, India and 

Pakistan had lost to Bangladesh 

and Ireland respectively, and 

were eliminated from the first 

round. 

Due to that, ICC had lost a lot 

of money. Doesn’t need a genius 

to tell you, limiting the number 

of teams at the World Cup is for 

reasons other than development 

of cricket.

12 

sportsdigest 

Gatlin edges Bolt in Rome 

ROME: American Justin Gatlin pipped 

six-time Olympic champion Usain 

Bolt to victory in the men's 100 

metres at the Rome Golden Gala, the 

fifth leg of the Diamond League, on 

Thursday. Gatlin won in a time of 

9.94sec, while Bolt, the world record 

holder in 9.58sec, was second in a 

season best of 9.95, with Frenchman 

Jimmy Vicaut claiming a surprise 

third place finish ahead of American 

Michael Rodgers in a personal best 

of 10.02. 

Kundra ‘may be suspended’ 

NEW DELHI: Rajasthan Royals on 

Friday said their co-owner Raj Kundra 

will be suspended and his shares will 

be forfeited if he is found guilty in the 

IPL spot fixing and betting scandal. 

Clarke out of England match 

LONDON: Australia captain Michael 

Clarke has been ruled out of his side's 

opening Champions Trophy match 

with England on Saturday due to a 

back problem, Cricket Australia 

announced on Friday. Clarke, 32, has 

already missed Australia's warm-up 

games with the West Indies and India. 

Malouda, Gallas released 

LONDON: Chelsea midfielder Florent 

Malouda and Tottenham Hotspur 

defender William Gallas were made 

available for free transfers on Friday 

after being named on a list of players 

released by their clubs in the English 

Premier League. France international 

Malouda, 32, has not played for 

Chelsea since their victory over 

Bayern Munich in the 2012 

Champions League final. Gallas, 

another former France player, leaves 

Spurs three years after joining the 

club in a controversial free transfer 

from their fierce rivals Arsenal. 

Jordan coach held in Sydney 

SYDNEY: Foreign Minister Bob Carr 

apologised on Friday after Jordan's 

national football coach Adnan Hamad 

was detained at Melbourne airport 

when he flew in for a crunch World 

Cup qualifier against Australia. 

Spain's Rafael Nadal celebrates his victory over Serbia's Novak 

Djokovic at the end of their French Open semi-final match at the 

Roland Garros stadium in Paris on Friday. AFP/RSS 

ASSOCIATED PRESS 

PARIS, JUNE 7 

RAFAEL Nadal won an epic semifinal 

against Novak Djokovic at 

the French Open to remain the 

King of Clay—for another couple of 

days, at least. 

Seven-time champion Nadal twice 

let a lead slip away in the fourth set on 

Friday, then came from behind in the 

fifth to beat the No. 1-ranked Djokovic 

6-4, 3-6, 6-1, 6-7 (3), 9-7. 

Djokovic blew an easy overhead on 

the opening point on the final game 

and went on to lose serve at love, sending 

his final forehand long. 

Nadal improved to 58-1 at Roland 

Garros, including five wins over 

Djokovic. The French Open remains the 

only major title Djokovic has yet to win. 

Nadal is trying to become the first 

man to win eight titles at the same 

Grand Slam event. On Sunday, he'll 

play the winner of the semi-final 

between Spaniard David Ferrer and 

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who is trying to 

Windies pip Pakistan in low-scoring thriller 

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE 

LONDON, JUNE 7 

WEST Indies just did enough to see off 

Pakistan as they opened their 

Champions Trophy campaign with a 

thrilling two-wicket Group B win at 

The Oval on Friday. 

When man-of-the-match Kemar 

Roach took the first three wickets to 

fall, Pakistan were 15 for three. 

In the end they were all out for 170 

with only captain Misbah-ul-Haq, 

whose 96 not out was his highest score 

in 118 ODIs, and Nasir Jamshed (50) 

making it to double figures. 

But the West Indies suffered a collapse 

of their own before tailender 

Roach hit the winning boundary with 

WI v PAK, CHAMPIONS TROPHY 

West Indies 172/8 (Gayle 39, Samuels 30, Irfan 

3-32) beat Pakistan 170 (Misbah 96*, Jamshed 

50, Roach 3-28) by two wickets 

more than nine overs remaining. 

On the ground where they won the 

2004 Champions Trophy, West Indies 

slumped to 15 for two after giant leftarm 

quick Mohammad Irfan removed 

Johnson Charles and Darren Bravo. 

Chris Gayle typically drove Irfan, 

world cricket's tallest player, for six, 

only to be bowled for 39 trying to slog 

off-spinner Saeed Ajmal. 

The match was in the balance at 81 

for four after Ramnaresh Sarwan was 

become the first Frenchman in 30 years 

to win the title. 

In the women's final Saturday, 

No. 1-ranked Serena Williams seeks her 

first French Open title since 2002 when 

she faces defending champion Maria 

Sharapova, who is 2-13 against her 

nemesis. 

They'll be hard-pressed to generate 

the sort of seesaw drama created by 

Nadal and Djokovic. In the fourth set 

Nadal twice was a break up, and twice 

found himself two points from victory, 

but Djokovic summoned his best tennis 

of the day and won 10 of the final 13 

points in the set to even the match. 

A rattled Nadal double-faulted in 

the first game of the final set, and 


Nadal outlasts Djokovic 

in fierce semis battle 

caught behind off a rising delivery 

from left-arm quick Wahab Riaz. 

Kieron Pollard took 18 balls to get 

off the mark as the West Indies crawled 

towards victory in front of a crowd of 

more than 20,000. 

But when Pollard was caught 

behind off Riaz for a 58-ball 30, his side 

were still 34 runs short of victory. 

West Indies captain Dwayne 

Bravo, who took 36 balls without a 

boundary in labouring to 19, was 

unable to see his side to victory, falling 

lbw to Ajmal. Sunil Narine soothed 

West Indies' nerves with two fours. 

But when he was caught behind off 

Irfan, West Indies were still six runs 

adrift before Roach slammed the 

clinching boundary off Junaid Khan. 

POST REPORT 


PRESIDENT Dr Ram Baran Yadav 

awarded the top three teams of 

the Presidents' Running Shield 

Championship at President's 

office, Shital Niwas, on Friday. 

Western region were crowned 

the champions of the 

competition with 223 points, 

Central region finished second, 

having 24 points adrift of the 

champions, while the Mid West 

region claimed third position 

with 192 points. 

Eastern region and Far West 

Djokovic broke to take the lead. But 

there were more plot twists to come. 

Serving at 4-3 in the fifth set, 

Djokovic came forward to hit a putaway, 

but his momentum carried him 

into the net and he lost the point. Three 

points later he drove a forehand into 

the net to lose the game and even the 

score once again. 

As the tension built, Nadal pulled 

off the shot of the day in the 14th game 

of the set. Retreating for a lob, he flicked 

the ball on the run between his legs 

with his back to the net. That left 

Djokovic with an easy overhead, but he 

dumped it in the net, and the crowd 

roared at the improbable sequence. 

The mistake didn't cost Djokovic, 

who won the game on the next point for 

7-all. But the next blown overhead did, 

and it appeared to shake him as he lost 

the next three points and the match. 

The last shot came 4 hours, 37 minutes 

after the first. A triumphant Nadal 

grinned, threw an uppercut and 

answered the fans' roar with applause 

for them. 

President Yadav awards top three 

teams of the running shield 

region finished fourth and fifth 

respectively. The top three teams 

were awarded with Rs 25,000, 

20,000 and 15,000 respectively. 

Meanwhile, Ashish 

Chaudhary of Central region concluded 

the championship with 

three records, with the last one 

coming in the final day. 

Chaudhary posted a new record in 

boys' 200m with the timing of 22.5 

seconds. Chaudhary surpassed 

Bimal Basnet's record of 22.9 seconds, 

created a day earlier. 

Central and Western claimed 

volleyball gold in the girls' and 

boys' events respectively. 

Published and Printed by Kantipur Publications Pvt. Ltd. Kantipur Complex, Subidhanagar, Kathmandu, Nepal, Phone: 4480100, Fax: 977-1-4466320, e-mail: kpost@kantipur.com.np, Regd. No. 32/048/049, Chairman & Managing Director : Kailash Sirohiya, Director : Swastika Sirohiya, Editor-in-Chief : Akhilesh Upadhyay

Inside 

CROSS CURRENCY 

USD EUR JPY GBP CHF CAD AUD INR NR 

NR 91.1400 120.7500 9.4100 1.4491 98.1100 88.8000 86.8400 1.6015 

INR 57.06 75.3534 0.5872 88.454 61.183 55.809 53.9217 0.6244 

AUD 1.058 1.3963 0.0109 1.6412 1.1317 1.0355 0.0185 0.0115 

CAD 1.0206 1.3472 0.0105 1.5819 1.093 0.9657 0.0179 0.0113 

CHF 0.9357 1.2334 0.0096 1.4491 0.9149 0.8836 0.0163 0.0102 

GBP 0.6445 0.8527 0.0067 0.6901 0.6322 0.6093 0.0113 0.6901 

JPY 96.94 128.009 149.2537 104.1667 95.2381 91.7431 1.7030 0.1063 

EUR 0.7571 0.0078 1.1727 0.8108 0.7423 0.7162 0.0133 0.0083 

USD 1.3208 0.0103 1.5516 1.0687 0.9798 0.9452 0.0175 0.0110 

HOW TO READ THE TABLE 

The chart shows the rates of nine world currencies. Move across the table to find rates of exchange between any two currencies. 

One unit of the currency mentioned vertically is worth that amount in the currency mentioned horizontally. 

CG’s high-end 

refrigerators in market 

CG electronics, a subsidiary of the Chaudhary Group 

and the sole authorised distributor of LG home 

appliances, has launched a new range of refrigerators 

embedded with new technologies. Pg: IV 

FOREX 

U.S. Dollar 91.14 

Euro 120.75 

Pound Sterling 142.01 

Swiss Franc 98.11 

Australian Dollar 86.84 

Canadian Dollar 88.80 

Singapore Dollar 73.24 

Japanese Yen 9.41 

Chinese Yuan 14.85 

Saudi Arab Riyal 24.30 

Qatari Riyal 25.03 

Thai Bhat 2.97 

UAE Dihram 24.81 

Malaysian Ringit 29.46 

South Korean Won 8.16 

Exchange rates fixed by Nepal Rastra Bank 

RBB, NIDC begin work to sell 

NIBL, Nabil cross-holdings 

The central bank had 

directed banks and 

financial institutions 

to end cross-holdings 

as cross interest 

would prevent a competitive 

environment 

in the banking sector 

PRITHVI MAN SHRESTHA 


RASTRIYA Banijya Bank and 

Nepal Industrial 

Development Corporation 

(NIDC) have started an initiative 

to sell their cross-holdings in 

Nepal Investment Bank and 

Nabil Bank respectively. The RBB 

has a total of 4.51 million units of 

promoter shares at the NIBL, 

while the NIDC has 1.24 million 

such shares at Nabil Bank. 

Although private sector 

banks and financial institutions 

have already ended their crossholding, 

these banks are yet to 

end theirs as per the central 

bank’s directive. 

RBB CEO Krishna Prasad 

 

Page IV Google chief Larry Page assured investors Thursday that privacy fears about the company’s 

coming Internet glasses will fade as people incorporate the eyewear into their lives. 

SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 2013 | ekantipur.com 

Will shut shop instead of bowing down: FNCCI 

POST REPORT 


PRESIDENT of the Federation of 

Nepalese Chamber of 

Commerce and Industries 

(FNCCI) Suraj Vaidya on Friday said 

industrialists were ready to shut their 

industries forever rather than bow 

down to protests of the All Nepal 

Federation of Revolutionary Trade 

Union (ANFRTU). 

The trade union affiliated to the 

Mohan Baidya-led CPN-Maoist called 

a two-day strike on Thursday and 

Friday against the recent pay hike of 

industrial workers which it said did 

not match its demands. The union 

was also excluded from the pay hike 

negotiations as it is still not a legal 

entity. 

During the strike, the offices of 

Lomus Herbal Research Centre 

owned by FNCCI Vice-president 

Pradeep Jung Pandey and Chaudhary 

Group’s Office in Sanepa were ransacked 

on Thursday, according to the 

FNCCI. 

Addressing a press conference 

here, Vaidya said they will be forced to 

shut the industries down if the anarchic 

activities continue. “We will not 

fear such threats, but we are ready to 

close down the industries,” he said. 

The FNCCI has also condemned 

the vandalism at Lomus Herbal and 

Chaudhary Group’s offices. 

A group of people entered the 

research centre, looking for FNCCI 

Vice-president Pandey, and threatened 

action against him, according to 

the FNCCI. “This makes it clear that 

the group wanted to assault FNCCI 

office bearers physically,” a press 

release issued by the private sector’s 

apex body said. 

It termed these two incidents illegal, 

violent, objectionable and a 

planned conspiracy against the country’s 

private sector. The Federation 

categorised these incidents as part of 

Sharma said the largest bank has 

formed a committee to determine 

the value of its promoter 

shares that remain in the Nepal 

Investment Bank Limited (NIBL). 

“A team headed by a board 

director will determine the value 

soon and we plan to start selling 

our shares in the NIBL within this 

fiscal,” Sharma said. 

On the other hand, a senior 

official of the NIDC said they are 

planning to issue a notice to sell 

their cross-holding at Nabil. “We 

have already sold 300,000 units of 

shares through auction in two 

phases,” said the NIDC official. 

The central bank had directed 

banks and financial institutions 

to end cross-holdings as 

cross interest would prevent a 

competitive environment in the 

banking sector. 

The NRB spokesperson said 

the central bank has asked them 

to end their cross-holdings as 

soon as possible. “They also cannot 

distribute dividend as per the 

central bank directive,” he said. 

However, the NIDC official said 

the NRB has exempted them 

from the dividend as it has continued 

selling the cross-holdings. 

“All the shares were not sold in 

the earlier attempts,” the official 

said. 

In the case of RBB, it backtracked 

from selling its shares in 

the NIBL four years ago after the 

Securities Board of Nepal 

(SEBON) rejected the price it 

quoted. The RBB had quoted Rs 

1,068 per share and SEBON had 

said that it was unjustifiable. At 

that time, the value of an ordinary 

share of the NIBL was 

around Rs 1,900. 

Later, as the share prices 

plunged due to recession in the 

stock market, the RBB did not 

make an effort to sell its shares. 

The value of NIBL’s public 

share was worth Rs 724 on Friday, 

which means that the RBB is likely 

to get far less than what it could 

have got four years ago. Usually, 

the value of promoter shares is 

kept less as compared to public 

shares. 

a series of attacks on the business 

community. It has mentioned attacks 

on the private sector, including the 

assault on Managing Director of 

Radisson Hotel BK Shrestha, vandalism 

at the NCL office, attack on the 

President of Nepal Bankers 

Association Rajan Singh Bhandari 

and vandalism of a car used by another 

FNCCI Vice-president Pashupati 

Murarka. 

The FNCCI warned that they will 

be forced to take ‘stern measures’ if 

the threats against the business com- 

ANFRTUSTRIKE 

FNCCI President Suraj Vaidya (fourth from left) addresses a press meet in Kathmandu on Friday. POST PHOTO 

munity continue. The private sector 

body has also demanded the government 

take stern legal action against 

those responsible for the latest 

attacks. 

The FNCCI termed ANFRTU’s 

wage demand as ‘not based on 

ground reality.’ It claimed that the latest 

recommended wage structure was 

the highest in South Asia, which is 50 

percent higher than the inflation over 

the last two years. “The newly recommended 

wage structure is already 

higher than what the domestic indus- 

The FNCCI warned that 

they will be forced to 

take ‘stern measures’ if 

the threats against the 

business community 

continue 

tries could have sustained,” the press 

release said. “Demanding the double 

of that wage and shutting down 

industries for that is guided by an 

intent to not allow industries to operate 

in the country.” 

The Minimum Wage 

Determination Committee recently 

decided to set the minimum wage of 

industrial workers at Rs 8,000 per 

month, against ANFRTU’s demand of 

Rs 15,000. The committee determined 

the daily wage at Rs 318, against the 

demand of Rs 700. The committee has 

representatives from the government, 

the private sector and 11 trade 

unions, excluding the ANFRTU. 

The FNCCI also said the minimum 

wage and representation of 

trade unions in the negotiations are 

not decided by it. “It is the government 

which determines who would 

be representing whom in the negotiating 

table,” said the federation.

II 

THE KATHMANDU POST | SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 2013 

200 Nepal-bound imported 

autos stuck at Kolkata port 

Officials said that 

imports from 

brands like 

Toyota, Skoda, 

Mazda, Ford, 

Kia, Nissan, 

Mitsubishi, 

Hyundai and 

Chevrolet, among 

others, have been 

stranded at the 

port since April 23 

BIZLINE 

REUTERS 

TOKYO, JUNE 7 

SANJEEV GIRI 


INDIAN authority’s notification 

to Nepali 

importers of third country 

( other than India) vehicles 

that they should either 

use rail wagan or container 

to deliver the vehicles 

to Nepal has resulted in 

piling up more than 200 

Nepal-bound vehicles 

at Kolkata port for one and 

half months. 

Officials of the authorised 

dealers of cars made in 

countries other than India 

said that imports from 

brands like Toyota, Skoda, 

Mazda, Ford, Kia, Nissan, 

Mitsubishi, Hyundai and 

Chevrolet, among others, 

have been stranded at the 

port since April 23. They 

said that the delay had 

caused them massive losses. 

Normally, vehicles 

imported from third countries 

arrive at Kolkata port 

by ship and are driven to 

Nepal. After they clear customs 

at the border, they are 

again driven to their respective 

showrooms or 

godowns. “We have been in 

China ‘mulls tariff action’ 

against EU luxury cars 

PARIS: China is considering imposing import 

duties on high-end European cars following complaints 

over subsidies that enable EU carmakers 

to sell in China at a loss, French daily Les Echos 

reported on Friday. The newspaper said, citing 

unnamed European sources, that Beijing was 

examining a complaint filed by Chinese automakers 

over luxury imported European models, amid 

rising tensions between two of the world’s biggest 

trade partners. China opened an anti-dumping 

and anti-subsidy inquiry this week into sales of 

European wine after the European Union 

imposed anti-dumping duties on Chinese solar 

panels. Any action on luxury cars could hurt 

Germany’s BMW and Mercedes-Benz, whose 

vehicles are popular in the country. (REUTERS) 

India’s retail inflation 

still high: RBI 

HYDERABAD: India’s retail inflation still 

remains high despite the wholesale 

price-led inflation cooling off, Reserve 

Bank of India Governor Duvvuri 

Subbarao said on Friday. He was 

speaking at an academic institution in 

the southern city of Hyderabad. India’s 

consumer price-led inflation was 9.39 percent 

in April, while the annual wholesale priceled 

inflation slipped below the crucial 5 percent 

threshold to 4.89 percent, also in April. Subbarao 

also said that there were several upside risk factors 

to inflation and the central bank has to 

remain sensitive to these. (REUTERS) 

British trade deficit falls sharply 

LONDON: Britain’s trade-in-goods deficit shrank 

by more than expected in April on the back of 

falling imports, boosting hopes over its slow economic 

recovery, official data showed on Friday. 

The deficit dipped to £8.2 billion ($12.8 billion, 9.6 

billion euros) in April, the Office for National 

Statistics said in a statement. That compared with 

a deficit of £9.2 billion in March. Market expectations 

had been for an April deficit of £8.8 billion, 

according to analysts polled by Dow Jones 

Newswires. (AFP) 

JAPAN’S government showed little concern 

on Friday to a spike in the yen, but the calm 

response masks a lack of solid policy 

options should the recently floundering currency 

surge further. 

The yen marked its biggest one-day climb 

against the dollar in three years on Thursday, 

underscoring the fragility of the early benefits 

from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s aggressive 

reflationary policies. Stock and currency markets 

in recent days have taken back a significant 

chunk of the feel-good effect of “Abenomics,” a 

policy prescription of sweeping fiscal and 

monetary expansion aimed at breaking 

years of deflation and reviving the world’s thirdbiggest 

economy. 

But as the market moves reflect a global fall 

by the US currency rather than any Japanese 

factors boosting the yen, Tokyo officials had little 

choice but to watch the market and hope for 

calm. Indeed, the yen has not rebounded to lev- 

talks with the government 

and the Indian Embassy to 

resolve the issue as soon as 

possible. We have learnt that 

the Ministry of Finance has 

written to the Indian 

Finance Ministry,” said 

Suraj Vaidya, president of 

the Federation of Nepalese 

Chambers of Commerce 

and Industry (FNCCI). 

Vaidya’s firm United Traders 

Syndicate imports Toyota 

automobiles from Japan. 

A Commerce Ministry 

official confirmed that 

a letter had been sent to 

the Indian authorities 

through the Ministry of 

Foreign Affairs. 

Meanwhile, according 

to Vaidya, around 80 Toyota 

vehicles have been stranded 

at Kolkata port. “It is very 

difficult to bring vehicles to 

Nepal by using carriers. The 

existing system of driving 

imported vehicles to Nepal 

must be continued.” 

Similarly, Saurabh Jyoti, 

president of the Nepal 

Automobile Dealers 

Association (NADA), said 

the harsh directive from the 

Indian authorities is difficult 

to follow since Kolkata port 

REUTERS 

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI, JUNE 7 

INDIA’S once-feuding billionaire Ambani 

brothers signed a long-expected pact for 

their rival telecoms firms to share mobile 

masts in a contract valued at more than $2 

billion over several years, in the biggest 

deal between them since a reconciliation. 

Reliance Industries Ltd, controlled by 

India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, will 

lease up to 45,000 mobile masts from 

mobile carrier Reliance Communications 

Ltd in a deal valued at more than IRs 120 

billion over the lifetime of the contract, the 

Japan says no panic over yen spike 

els that would cause real pain for Japan Inc. 

But after firing policy on all cylinders in 

recent months, Abe has few obvious steps to 

take if markets should move more sharply 

against him in the days ahead. “We are watching 

these moves, but this is not about intervention 

and I don’t think we have to respond immediately,” 

Finance Minister Taro Aso told a regular 

news conference after the dollar slumped to 

a seven-week low of 95.90 yen overnight. “The 

moves in the market are rough.” 

The US currency, which had hit a 4-1/2-year 

high of 103.74 yen last month, was being battered 

as investors unwound long dollar positions 

ahead of a closely watched Friday US jobs 

report to gauge the health of the world’s biggest 

economy. The yen’s jump pushed Tokyo shares 

into bear territory, as the benchmark Nikkei 

average slipped more than 20 percent below its 

late-May high, before rebounding off its lows to 

end the day off 0.2 percent at 12,877.53. 

“What’s important is the fact that Japan’s 

economy is steadily recovering,” said 

Economics Minister Akira Amari, noting that 

companies said on Friday. Reliance Jio 

Infocomm, a unit of Reliance Industries, 

plans to roll out a nationwide 4G network. 

The company won airwaves in 2010, but is 

the market moves are being driven by external 

factors. “We will finalize a growth strategy shortly 

... and steadily proceed with implementation,” 

Amari told a news conference after a cabinet 

meeting. Investors panned the third 

tranche of Abe’s growth strategy on Wednesday: 

the Nikkei reversed a solid rise while the premier 

spoke, ending that day down 3.8 percent. 

He pledged to raise Japanese incomes by 3 percent 

annually and set up special economic 

zones to attract foreign businesses to the 

world’s third-biggest economy. But the package 

offered few specifics and will not be submitted 

yet to start commercial services. Reliance 

Jio said the tower deal will help “accelerated 

roll-out” of its planned 4G services. 

A Reliance Industries spokesman said 

the long-term contract has no fixed length. 

The deal is a boost for Reliance 

Communications, controlled by Mukesh’s 

younger brother, Anil. Reliance 

Communications is India’s third-biggest 

cellular carrier by customers but profits 

have been under pressure, mainly due to 

its heavy debt burden. 

“This is going to be a positive for 

Reliance Communications as it opens a 

new source of revenue for them,” said KK 

to Parliament until the fall. The Cabinet is to 

approve the final version of the growth strategy—which 

is meant to transform the shortterm 

boost of monetary and fiscal stimulus into 

durable growth—next Friday. It is not expected 

to contain much new. One obvious omission 

from the growth strategy so far has been corporate 

tax cuts to spur economic activity. 

The idea is stuck in political gridlock, amid 

opposition from the powerful Finance Ministry, 

which is concerned over the ballooning of 

Japan’s government debt to well over twice the 

size of the economy. Chief Cabinet Secretary 

Yoshihide Suga said on Friday that such tax cuts 

would be something to consider from the perspective 

of Japan’s international competitiveness, 

but Finance Minister Aso remained cautious, 

saying such they would not have an 

immediate impact on the economy. 

Similarly, the Bank of Japan, meeting next 

week, looks unlikely to add to the massive stimulus 

it unleashed in April, which spurred the 

surge in the Nikkei and drop in the yen that 

have been nearly erased in the market turmoil 

MONEY | ekantipur.com 

Ambani brothers sign $2.1b telecom tower pact 

New India FDI rules a 

setback for retailers 

REUTERS 

MUMBAI, JUNE 7 

NEW rules requiring foreign 

supermarkets to set up their own 

warehouses and stores in India are 

likely to further delay the entry of 

companies like Wal-Mart Stores 

Inc, increase costs and hurt cashstrapped 

local retailers eager to 

partner with foreign companies. 

India allowed foreign chains 

to enter the country to set up retail 

stores in September 2012, but 

ambiguities in the policy means 

that so far, no foreign company 

has applied to the government for 

permission to set up shop in the 

$500 billion industry. 

Under the new rules, the government 

late on Thursday said 

global supermarket operators 

cannot acquire existing assets of 

Indian companies and said the 

initial mandatory $100 million 

investment to set up supply chain 

infrastructure and stores must be 

new. That means any existing sup- 

lacks essential equipment 

like cranes and ramps. 

“From the perspective 

of both cost and infrastructure, 

I think the current 

way of importing vehicles 

should be continued,” 

Jyoti added. 

“If we were to transport 

cars to Nepal by vehicle carrier, 

the cost would go 

up by at least Rs 150,000 per 

unit.” He said that customers, 

who are already 

paying 248 percent import 

duty on motor vehicles, 

would be hit hard by the 

additional cost. 

As imported vehicles are 

stuck at Kolkata port, Nepali 

dealers are having a hard 

time explaining things to 

their customers. “If the situation 

continues any longer, 

we might not be able to 

deliver vehicles on time to 

customers who have 

booked them,” said Mahesh 

Dhakal, senior sales and 

marketing officer of the 

Padmashree Group, the 

authorised importer of 

Mazda cars from Japan. 

According to him, around 

16 Mazdas are stuck at 

Kolkata port. 

ply chains, including those owned 

by a domestic retailer that a foreign 

company might look to buy, 

will not count towards the $100 

million minimum. “In a nutshell 

this will delay everybody’s plans,” 

said Devangshu Dutta, who heads 

retail consultancy Third Eyesight 

in Bangalore. “Companies like 

Wal-Mart, Tesco can acquire 

assets later on but not initially and 

that means more time to start 

their operations,” he said. 

A spokeswoman for a joint 

venture between Wal-Mart and 

Bharti Enterprises said the company 

was studying the government’s 

clarification on retail rules. 

Companies such as Future 

Retail Ltd, which runs the Big 

Bazaar hypermarkets, Shopper’s 

Stop Ltd, which runs Hypercity, 

and Trent Ltd with its Star 

Bazaar hypermarkets, are all open 

to selling stakes in their 

operations to foreign partners in 

an effort to access funds required 

for expansion. 

Industrialists turn to machines 

for relief from labour unrest 

LILABALLAV GHIMIRE 

BIRATNAGAR, JUNE 7 

HARASSED by continual labour 

unrest, industrialists have been 

turning towards advanced technology 

to reduce their dependence on 

manual labour. 

For example, there are only 20 

workers in the recently opened 

Everest Solvent Factory which makes 

chemical turpentine. Proprietor 

Abhinash Bohara said they invested 

around Rs 180 million in the factory. 

“We would be hiring more than 

100 workers if we didn't have these 

modern machines,” said Bohara, 

who is also the president of the 

Morang Merchant Association. “This 

equipment has removed the hassle 

of dealing with militant labourers 

besides ensuring quick and quality 

production.” 

Similarly, MM Polymers of 

Hetauda has employed only 12 

workers in its plastic factory. If the 

company had not installed modern 

robot-operated machinery, they 

would be required to hire more than 

30 workers. “There is no environment 

for employing many workers 

these days,” said proprietor Suyash 

Pyakurel. “Investing in modern 

equipment is a better option as the 

owners can work in a hassle-free 

environment.” 

Likewise, industrialist Rakesh 

Surana also plans to go for modern 

machines when he expands his 

operations. “It is easier to bring up 

an elephant than workers.” 

Lack of skilled manpower and 

the existence of politically motivated 

workers unions has prompted 

industrialists to go for modern factories 

that require few workers. Many 

factories have shut down due to conflicts 

between management and 

labour in recent years. 

Two years ago, multinational 

company Surya Nepal situated at 

Tankisinwari of Morang closed its 

garment factory as a result of a confrontation 

between management 

and workers. As a result, more than 

500 workers have been made jobless. 

There were 450 female workers 

employed in the factory. The factory 

complex, which is spread over six 

bighas of land, consists of three 

buildings in which modern machinery 

has been installed. The property 

worth around Rs 500 million lies disused 

till now. 

Factories are being shut down 

due to politically motivated strikes 

organised by different trade unions. 

In a recent incident, a trade 

union affiliated to the CPN-Maoist 

closed factories across the country 

on Thursday and Friday demanding 

annulment of the wage increment 

agreement signed by other big trade 

unions with the employers and the 

government. 

Factories in the Sunsari-Morang 

Industrial Corridor suffer losses 

amounting to more than Rs 400 million 

during a single day of banda. 

The more than 500 factories have to 

bear losses of Rs 200 million directly 

while the Biratnagar Customs Office 

is out Rs 40 million in lost revenue 

whenever there is a strike. 

Similarly, around 500,000 workers 

from the organised and nonorganised 

sectors lose their wages. 

Calculated on the basis of the minimum 

wage rate, a day without work 

means more than Rs 150 million lost. 

Due to the increasing trend of 

strikes and shutdowns, losses have 

been mounting. Factories are going 

through a slump due to new and different 

issues being raised by different 

groups and political parties. On 

top of that, the constant strikes 

called by workers have spread terror 

among factory owners. 

Food items are the main products 

produced in the Sunsari- 

Morang Industrial Corridor. Rice, 

lentils, mustard oil, refined oil, 

wheat flour, ghee, noodles, beaten 

rice, bhujia, biscuits and chocolates 

are produced in the area. In addition, 

construction materials are also 

produced in the corridor. 

Mital, head of portfolio management at 

Globe Capital Market. “It’s also good for 

Reliance Jio because they are getting 

ready infrastructure and the big benefit 

is there is no upfront investment in building 

infrastructure.” 

The tower deal comes after an agreement 

in April to lease Reliance 

Communications’ optic fiber network to 

Reliance Jio, in what was the first business 

tie-up between the two billionaire brothers 

since ending a long-running feud. 

Dhirubhai Ambani’s death in 2002 led to a 

power struggle between his two sons that 

split the Reliance empire. 

Subramanian Ramadorai (left), Vice-Chairman of Tata Consultancy Services, Aung San Suu 

Kyi (centre), Chairman of the Myanmar’s National League for Democracy and Jaime Augusto 

Zobel de Ayala II, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Ayala Corporation, Philippines 

attend a televised session of "Taking Myanmar to Work" at the World Economic Forum on East 

Asia in Naypyidaw on Friday. Myanmar's investment suitors should be prepared to commit 

long term to the rapidly-opening nation, experts said, as foreign firms weigh the risks of doing 

business in the former pariah state. AFP/RSS 

of recent days. The BOJ is expected to avoid 

increasing its huge purchases of government 

bonds and other assets in Tuesday’s decision, 

but people familiar with the central bank’s 

thinking say it may consider offering funds 

beyond one year in money-market operations 

to dampen volatility in long-term interest rates. 

One reason Tokyo officials are not overly 

concerned about the yen’s level is that even 

though the export-reliant Japanese economy 

generally benefits from a weaker yen, the 

nation’s companies can still live with current 

levels. A Reuters poll in late May found that 

Japanese companies wanted the yen to stabilize 

or even recover a bit. 

After the dollar broke above 100 yen, the 

Reuters Corporate Survey of 400 firms found 

that 48 percent of the companies wanted the 

yen to settle around 100 to the dollar. Just 7 percent 

wanted the yen to weaken to 105 to the 

dollar and 8 percent to 110 yen. By contrast, a 

full 29 percent wanted the yen to strengthen 

back to current levels around 95 to the dollar 

and 9 percent would prefer a 90-yen level.


SANGAM PRASAIN 


AROUND 79 percent of the 

arrivals in 2012 were making 

their first visit to Nepal. 

According to the Tourism Ministry, 

there were 803,092 visitors to Nepal 

last year, among whom 632,767 were 

first timers. 

The male-female ratio making 

their maiden trip to Nepal is almost 

equal. There were 331,731 males and 

301,036 females. 

Travel trade entrepreneurs said 

that first-time visitors were good for 

the tourism industry as they participate 

in more activities and explore 

more destinations. However, they 

said that the industry should not neglect 

repeat visitors who, despite 

spending less money, project a positive 

indication of tourist satisfaction. 

Traders added that the industry 

should strive to achieve a balance 

between first-time and repeat visitors 

which is important for the sustainability 

of Nepal’s tourism. 

“Due to diverse tourism products, 

Nepal has a good history of encouraging 

first-time visitors to plan their 

next trip to Nepal,” said Aditya Baral, 

spokesperson of the Nepal Tourism 

Board. “However, the number of 

repeat visitors is nominal.” 

Baral said that Nepal’s diverse 

tourism products were one of the 

main reasons encouraging visitors to 

make a second trip. For instance, 

tourists who visit the Everest region 

on their first trip may go to other 

completely different destinations the 

second time around. 

There are more than 20 percent 

repeat visitors annually. “If the country 

succeeds in attracting more than 

30 percent repeat visitors, it would be 

79pc of arrivals in 2012 

were first-time visitors 

Jet Airways CEO 

Kardassis resigns 



INDIA’S private carrier Jet 

Airways said Friday that its 

chief executive Nikos 

Kardassis has resigned 

from the firm. 

“Nikos Kardassis has 

resigned with effect from 

June 5,” the airline said in a 

statement to the stock 

exchanges, without disclosing 

the reason. 

The carrier’s chief operating 

officer Hameed Ali 

will be the “acting CEO”, 

until a replacement for 

Kardassis is appointed. 

The airline thanked 

Kardassis for his “significant 

contributions” to the 

airline over a period of five 

years, the statement said. 

Jet Airways in April 

approved a landmark deal 

through which Abu Dhabibased 

Etihad will pick up a 

24 percent stake in the 

Indian airline. 

Etihad is reportedly 


ISTANBUL, JUNE 7 

good promotional medium for 

Nepal’s tourism industry.” 

Repeat visitors are loyal visitors 

who stay longer but spend less than 

first timers since they are destination- 

keen for a change in Jet’s 

management. 

On the newly 

revamped Jet Airways 

board, the Indian carrier 

will have four members 

and the Gulf carrier three 

members, including the 

CEO. 

The Jet-Etihad deal is 

the first overseas investment 

in an existing Indian 

carrier since the government 

eased restrictions 

in September to allow foreign 

firms a 49 percent 

stake in domestic airline 

companies. 

Jet is India’s secondlargest 

airline, with a 22.6 

percent market share, 

according to the country’s 

civil aviation regulator. 

Last month, Jet reported 

a quarterly net loss of 

4.96 billion rupees ($90 

million) in the three 

months to March, against a 

loss of 2.98 billion rupees a 

year earlier, after being hit 

by rising costs. 

HOTEL reservations may be down 

after a week of violent mass protests 

in Turkey, but plucky tourists on the 

ground have taken the unrest in their stride. 

“There was tear gas everywhere. It was 

quite an adventure,” said one visitor from 

Iceland. 

Eva Carla Thorisdottir’s arrival in 

Istanbul in the heat of clashes between antigovernment 

protesters and police a few days 

ago was “scary” but not off-putting, the 32year-old 

Icelandic said, recalling how sympathetic 

bystanders helped clear makeshift 

road barriers to allow her taxi through. 

Turkey’s largest city, where East meets 

West, is famed for its ancient mosques, exotic 

markets and bustling nightlife, luring nine 

million international visitors last year. 

But it’s also where a tough police 

response to a small campaign against plans 

to raze a park near the city’s Taksim Square 

sparked nationwide protests against Prime 

Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, 

seen as increasingly authoritarian. 

The unrest has left three people dead so 

far, while over 4,000 have been reported 

Repeat visitors are 

loyal visitors who 

stay longer but 

spend less than first 

timers since they are 

destination-aware 

tourists 

aware tourists. Travel trade entrepreneurs 

said that repeat visitors perceive 

the overall value for money. 

“Besides, they are a promotional 

medium who recommend Nepal to 

friends and relatives, resulting in a 

positive word-of-mouth effect,” said 

Baral. 

Meanwhile, Ganga Sagar Pant, 

chief executive officer of the Trekking 

Agencies’ Association of Nepal, 

believes that political instability and 

safety issues have discouraged visitors 

from returning to Nepal. “As a 

result, the number of repeat visitors is 

gradually declining, and this scenario 

has worried travel trade entrepreneurs.” 

However, due to the cost factor, 

Nepal has not lost repeat visitors in 

significant numbers. “The industry 

needs to satisfy new visitors by offering 

new products and packages so 

that they keep coming back,” Panta 

said. An increasing trend of first-time 

visitors is always a worrying factor, 

and there is a need to balance the 

number of first-time and repeat visitors 

for the sustainability of the country’s 

travel industry, he added. 

According to him, an increase in 

Chinese and Indian arrivals who love 

exploring new destinations is also a 

reason why there are more first-time 

visitors to Nepal. Since 2010, Nepal 

has been witnessing an increase in 

tourist flow from both the neighbouring 

countries. 

Last year, tourist arrivals hit an alltime 

high, although the average 

length of stay was shorter. The average 

length of stay of tourists in Nepal 

slipped to 12.87 days in 2012 from 

13.12 days in 2011. According to the 

ministry, 48 percent of the total 

arrivals visited Nepal for travel and 

holidaymaking. 

Around 14 percent of the tourists 

went trekking and mountaineering, 

the segments that require tourists to 

spend long periods outside 

Kathmandu. Similarly, over 13 percent 

of the tourists in Nepal last year 

came for pilgrimage, according to the 

ministry. 

Nepal recorded the highest length 

of stay of tourists in 1996 which 

reached 13.50 days. The shortest stay 

of 7.92 days was recorded in 2002. The 

contribution of tourism to the country’s 

GDP increased to 2.0 percent in 

2011-12 from 1.8 percent in 2010-11. 

In 2009-10, tourism contributed 2.4 

percent. 

The country earned Rs 30.70 billion 

from the travel sector in 2011-12 

against Rs 24.61 billion in 2010-11. 

Tourists take photos in Istanbul’s Taksim square on Friday. Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan returns on 

Thursday to a nation racked by protests against his leadership, in what could prove a pivotal moment in Turkey’s worst 

political unrest for decades. REUTERS 

Turkey tourism takes a hit 

but visitors shrug off unrest 

injured across the country. For the tourism 

industry, the timing could scarcely be worse: 

June is the start of Turkey’s high season. 

Tourism is a key foreign currency earner 

for the country bringing in almost $30 billion 

last year, official figures show, when 

more than 31 million foreign holidaymakers 

flocked to Turkey to enjoy its golden beaches, 

historic ruins and vibrant cities. 

But widely broadcast images of police 

using tear gas and water cannon on demonstrators 

who could be seen throwing stones 

and tearing up pavements in cities, including 

Istanbul and the capital Ankara, have 

rattled nerves. 

Hotels on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, 

a favoured destination for families on package 

holidays, have not yet been affected 

PRESS TRUST OF INDIA 


KINGFISHER Airlines chairman Vijay 

Mallya on Friday told his agitating 

employees, who began a hunger strike, 

that he did not have money to clear their 

salary dues. 

“I don’t have the money to pay your 

salary dues, because I cannot use the 

proceeds from the United Spirits-Diageo 

deal for this due to an injunction from 

the Karnataka High Court,” Mallya 

reportedly told the striking employees. 

The employees of the grounded airline 

have been on a hunger-strike since 

yesterday at the Kingfisher House here 

seeking salaries which have not been 

paid since last August. Mallya told the 

employees that the airline’s chief executive 

Sanjay Agarwal would hold meetings 

with them. 

The employees, however, said that 

the meetings with Mallya earlier did not 

yield any results and that they would 

continue with their hunger strike. 

Last November, Mallya clinched a 

deal with British liquor major Diageo to 

sell majority 53.4 percent stake in United 

Spirits for IRs 111.66 billion. The deal 

though “there has been a stagnation in new 

reservations”, according to Osman Ayik, the 

head of the Turkish Hoteliers Federation 

(TUROFED), suggesting that some travellers 

are waiting to see how Turkey’s crisis plays 

out. Ercan Durmus, head of the Ankara 

branch of the Association of Turkish Travel 

Agencies (TURSAB), said there had been 

“some cancellations” but “we believe things 

will return to normal soon”. In the new town 

area of Istanbul, where the unrest began, 

hotels have seen cancelations of 10 to 25 

percent, according Kasim Zoto of 

TUROFED’s Istanbul branch. 

One establishment, the Midtown Hotel 

near Taksim Square, told AFP that 35 percent 

of its bookings had been cancelled in 

recent days. But for some intrepid travellers, 

the lively scene at the square and nearby 

Gezi Park, where a festival-like atmosphere 

has reigned since police withdrew at the 

weekend, has become its own must-see destination. 

“Everybody seems quite relaxed,” said 

Joan Kavanagh from Dublin as she took in 

the chanting, whistle-blowing demonstrators 

milling around Taksim, where a few 

entrepreneurial vendors were hawking protective 

masks and goggles. 


TOULOUSE, JUNE 7 

FRENCH aerospace giant 

Airbus’s new long-haul carrier, 

the A350, should make 

its maiden flight at the end 

of next week unless bad 

weather or unexpected 

problems crop up, sources 

told AFP on Thursday. 

“The final ground trials 

went very well. Weather 

permitting, it should fly 

next week,” said one of the 

sources, tipping a Saturday 

flight. Pascal Verneau, the 

chief engineer for flight 

tests, said “personally, I am 

hoping the first flight takes 

place before Bourget.” 

The Paris Air Show at Le 

Bourget airport opens on 

Monday, June 17. Verneau 

said a couple days of 

engine testing plus two 

III 


Mallya tells striking 

Kingfisher staff he has 

no money to pay them 

also involves Mallya selling 19.3 percent 

of his personal/promoter holding in 

United Spirits to Diageo for a consideration 

of IRs 57.42 billion. Kingfisher 

employees were expecting Mallya to 

bring in funds from the proceeds of the 

Diageo deal. 

Driven by mounting losses, the airline, 

which never made any profit since 

inception in May 2005, has remained 

grounded since last October and the regulator 

DGCA cancelled its flying licence 

in December. 

“As many as 60-70 employees are 

currently on an indefinite hunger strike 

at the Kingfisher House near the domes- 

tic airport,” sources had told PTI late last 

evening. 

Though the flamboyant chairman 

Vijay Mallya has been promising 

relaunch since February this year, nothing 

has happened so far. 

Meanwhile, the 17 lenders to the airline, 

which owes them nearly Rs 7,500 in 

principle, excluding arrears since 

January 2012, have sold 

sureties and shares of the airline as well 

as group companies worth around Rs 

1,000 crore so far as part of their recovery 

process. 

Rolls-Royce wins 

Singapore Airlines 

engines deal 


LONDON, JUNE 7 

BRITISH aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce said 

Friday that it has won a $4.0-billion (3.0-billioneuro) 

engines deal from Singapore Airlines. 

“Rolls-Royce has been selected by Singapore 

Airlines Group to power 50 Boeing 787 Dreamliner 

aircraft with Trent 1000 engines,” it revealed in a 

statement. “The announcement, which includes 

long-term TotalCare service support, is worth $4.0 

billion at current list prices.” Rolls-Royce added that 

30 Boeing 787-10X aircraft will be operated by 

Singapore Airlines. 

The airline’s subsidiary, Scoot, will operate 10 

Boeing 787-8 and 10 Boeing 787-9 aircraft. 

Singapore Airlines and Scoot currently operate a 

total of 88 Rolls-Royce powered aircraft, with 88 

more on the order books. 

“We are very proud that Singapore Airlines, one 

of the most respected carriers in the world, and its 

subsidiary Scoot have placed their trust in our Trent 

1000 and our ability to deliver superior product and 

service performance,” said Eric Schulz, President - 

Civil Large Engines at Rolls-Royce. “This decision is 

a tremendous reflection of the deep relationship 

that Rolls-Royce and Singapore Airlines.” 

Airbus A350 to 

make maiden 

flight next week 

tests reaching takeoff 

speed remain. 

The maiden flight 

should last around four 

hours, he added, with the 

A350 flying over the 

Pyrenees mountains or the 

Brittany region depending 

on the weather conditions. 

Airbus officials downplayed 

the possibility the 

A350 could make an 

appearance at the Paris Air 

Show. Airbus hopes the 

314-seater will compete 

with Boeing’s 787 

Dreamliner by being 

both lighter and more fuelefficient 

than previous 

models. 

The first deliveries of 

A350s to airlines are scheduled 

for the end of 2014. So 

far, Airbus has received 

orders for 616 of the aircraft.

IV 


The new LG 

refrigerators feature 

inverter linear 

compressor and green 

ion door cooling 

technology, making 

them stand apart 

from products from 

rival companies 

in the market 

A model poses with Martian Watches’ new "Voice Command Watch" which are compatible for when speaking 

with iPhone and Android mobiles, during Computex 2013 in Taipei on Friday. Computex is Asia’s biggest annual 

IT trade fair, which opens on June 4. AFP/RSS 


SAN FRANCISCO, JUNE 7 

GOOGLE chief Larry Page 

assured investors Thursday 

that privacy fears about the 

company’s coming Internet glasses 

will fade as people incorporate the 

eyewear into their lives. 

“People worry about all sorts of 

things that actually, when we use the 

product, it is not that big a concern,” 

Page said while fielding questions at 

an annual shareholders meeting 

at the company headquarters in 

Silicon Valley. 

“You don’t collapse in terror that 

someone might be using Glass in the 

bathroom just the same as you don’t 

collapse in terror when someone 

CG’S HIGH-END 

REFRIGERATORS IN MARKET 

POST REPORT 


CG electronics, a subsidiary of 

the Chaudhary Group and the 

sole authorised distributor of 

LG home appliances, has launched a 

new range of refrigerators embedded 

with new technologies. 

According to the company, the 

new LG refrigerators feature inverter 

linear compressor (ILC) and green 

ion door cooling (GIDC) technology, 

making them stand apart from 

products from its rival companies 

available in the market. 

According to Purshottam 

Bhandari, manager, LG Division at 

CG Electronics, LG is the first company 

to develop and install the 

inverter linear compressor in refrigerators. 

“Inverter linear compressor 

technology consumes less energy, 

Glass privacy fears will fade, says Google chief 

Glass lets wearers take 

pictures, record video, 

perform other tasks 

with touch controls or 

by speaking commands 

comes in with a smartphone that 

might take a picture.” Page’s remarks 

came in response to a shareholder’s 

expressed worry that Google cameraenabled, 

Internet-linked eyewear is 

“a voyeur’s dream come true”. 

“Obviously, there are cameras everywhere,” 

Page said, after taking a quick 

poll to find that nearly everyone at 

which makes the refrigerator highly 

energy efficient and the five star rating 

obtained by the refrigerators 

proves the efficiency of the appliance,” 

Bhandari said. 

CG Electronics has SAID that 

three new models of refrigerators 

equipped with inverter linear compressor 

technology come in the 

range of 480 liters to 700 liters. 

Refrigerators having a capacity of 

483 liters with five doors and ILC 

technology equipped in it costs Rs 

162,000, according to the company. 

The other refrigerators with capacity 

of 566 liters with two doors is priced 

at Rs 168, 000, while the 669 liter 

device is priced at Rs 220, 000, it 

said. “The ILC technology helps 

these new refrigerators in producing 

less operational noise and vibration,” 

Bhandari said. 

Similarly, the double door refrig- 

the gathering had smartphones 

capable of taking photos. “I love 

using Google Glass,” he continued, 

noting that the company had “gone 

through some pains” to safeguard 

people’s privacy. 

Google last week put out word 

that it won’t allow facial recognition 

capabilities in applications being tai- 

erator series from the company 

comes with the green ion door cooling 

(GIDC) system. Bhandari said 

this technology is also an energy efficient 

technology and has been rated 

more than five stars. There are six 

models available in this series and 

they boast of storage capacity of 250 

liters to 600 liters. The 250 liter 

device is priced at Rs 34,000, the 280 

liter version will cost Rs 36, 000; 

351 liter Rs 49,000; 392 liter Rs 

53,000; 422 liter Rs 64,000 and 600 

liter Rs 75,000. 

The company said it has targeted 

high-end refrigerator seekers 

through the ILC technology. 

Likewise, the ones with GIDC 

technology will cater to the middle 

income people, while the single 

door small refrigerators are targeted 

at middle and lower middle 

class families. 


TAIPEI, JUNE 7 

IT may not be able to carry the 

clubs like a caddie but a new 

“smart watch” can help a golfer 

find his range on the course, and 

its makers are taking a swing at 

the global market as part of a new 

trend in wearable computing. 

The smart watch, on display 

at the Computex trade fair in 

Taipei, comes amid rumours of 

an Apple “iWatch” device to be 

worn on the wrist, and amid 

ongoing hype around Google’s 

pioneering Glass. Developed by 

Taiwanese company Sonostar 

Inc, it can access the layouts of 

30,000 golf courses around the 

world and can also be used by 

people when they jog or cycle to 

record distance travelled and 

calories burned. 

Apple chief Tim Cook has 

forecast that there will soon be 

“tons of companies playing” in 

the wearable computing sector, 

with the frenzy sparked after 

Google announced the development 

of its high-tech eyewear. 

The five-day tech extravaganza in 

the Taiwanese capital has provided 

an opportunity for lesserknown 

brands to get in on the 

act, and like the Glass, the 

wrist-worn caddie can be wire- 

lored for Glass at its release expected 

later this year. “We won’t add 

facial recognition features to our 

products without having strong privacy 

protections in place,” Google 

said in an online message aimed at 

software developers creating applications 

for Glass. 

“With that in mind, we won’t be 

approving any facial recognition 

Glassware at this time,” the message 

continued, revealing how the company 

intends to refer to software 

designed for the devices. 

In May, a group of US lawmakers 

asked Google to answer questions on 

the privacy implications and possible 

“misuse of information” of its Glass 

project. Some small establishments 

in the United States have vowed to 

Bhandari said that the company 

is confident of its new products as 

they boast of superior features and 

the brand LG in itself carries a deep 

penetration in the domestic market. 

“LG being one of the leading 

brands in the home appliances segment 

in Nepal has more than 36 percent 

market share in the refrigerator 

segment,” he said, adding that the 

market of high-end refrigerators is 

high in Kathmandu, while the small 

devices sell outside the valley. 

Apart from the strong brand 

name, CG Electronics has a wide 

network of above 300 dealers across 

the country. Likewise, the company 

has designated 211 service camps 

with 24-hour service facility to facilitate 

LG appliance users in 

Kathmandu valley. Apart from this, 

the company has 40 service stations 

around Nepal. 

Fair tees up ‘smart 

watch’ for golfers 

lessly tethered to a mobile phone. 

Linked to an Android or 

Apple device over Bluetooth, the 

smart watch allows users to read 

emails, browse social media sites, 

and read ebooks. All of this is 

done using a 1.73-inch e-ink 

paper touchscreen, which like 

the Kindle display is easy to view 

in the sunshine. “We are optimistic 

about the demand of this 

new smart watch, particularly in 

markets like Japan, the United 

States and Australia where golfing 

is popular,” said Sonostar 

spokeswoman Marie Liu. 

The company, which already 

sells handheld GPS devices for 

golfers, said the watch is set to hit 

the market in the third quarter 

with a price tag of $179. “This is a 

new technology. I want to wear a 

smart phone on my wrist. I don’t 

want this notebook,” said 

Stephen Hurford, who works for 

a London-based cloud computing 

firm, as he visited what is 

Asia’s biggest IT fair. 

But some analysts are less 

optimistic about wearable technology. 

“If I had to make a prediction 

I’d say Google Glass is a 

Segway for the face,” tech author 

Edward Tenner told AFP earlier 

this week, referring to a personal 

transport device that flopped 

after great initial hype. 

ban Glass due to worries about how 

being able to discreetly take pictures 

or video might be seen as invasive by 

patrons. Facebook, Twitter and major 

news organizations have already tailored 

applications for Glass, which 

has only been made available to 

developers and a limited selection of 

“explorers” who paid $1,500 each for 

the eyewear. 

Envisioned uses range from practical 

tasks such as shopping or delivering 

local weather reports to sharing 

real time video streams or playing 

augmented reality games in which 

the world is the board. 

Glass lets wearers take pictures, 

record video, send messages or perform 

other tasks with touch controls 

or by speaking commands. 


MARKET WATCH 

RETAIL PRICE 

Vegetables Unit Price (Rs) 

Red Potato Kg Rs 20 

White Potato Kg Rs 18 

Onion (Indian) Kg Rs 32 

Tomato Small Kg Rs 20 

Tomato Big Kg Rs 26 

Squash Kg Rs 14 

Cabbage Kg Rs 18 

Egg Plant Long Kg Rs 29 

Green Peas Kg Rs 64 

Fruits Unit Price (Rs) 

Apple Kg Rs 115 

Pomegranate Kg Rs 220 

Orange Kg Rs 110 

Water Melon Kg Rs 25 

Sweet Orange Kg Rs 110 

Pineapple 1Pc Rs 90 

Cucumber Kg Rs 40 

Pear Kg Rs 140 

Papaya Kg Rs 60 

Banana Doz Rs 80 

Lime 100 Pcs Rs 350 

DAILY COMMODITIES 

Commodities Unit Price (Rs) 

Pokhreli Rice Kg Rs 60 

Jeera Mashino Rice Kg Rs 65 

Indian Bashmati Rice Kg Rs 95 

Mansuli Rice Kg Rs 55 

Sona Rice Kg Rs 46 

Beaten Rice (Taichin) Kg Rs 85 

Beaten Rice Kg Rs 42 

Big Mas Kg Rs 110 

Small Mas Kg Rs 100 

Big Mung Kg Rs 140 

Musuro (No 1) Kg Rs 110 

Musuro (No 2) Kg Rs 100 

Rahar Kg Rs 130 

Chana (Big) Kg Rs 110 

Chana (Small) Kg Rs 100 

Chilli Powder Kg Rs 250 

Jeera Powder Kg Rs 350 

Sugar Kg Rs 75 

White Soyabean Kg Rs 100 

Black Soyabean Kg Rs 120 

Fried Mustard Oil lt Rs 240 

Soyabean Oil lt Rs 140 

Dalda Ghee lt Rs 120 

Nepali Ghee lt Rs 540 

GASOLINE WATCH 

BULLION 

PRICE PER 10 GRAMS 

Hallmark Gold Rs 45,010 

Tejabi Gold Rs 44,795 

Silver Rs 752 

INT’L MARKET 

SOURCE: NEGOSIDA 

Energy Price (US$) %Change 

BRENT CRUDE FUTR (bbl) 103.49 -0.12 

GAS OIL FUT (ICE) (MT) 863.50 -0.14 

GASOLINE RBOB FUT (gal) 284.37 -0.25 

NATURAL GAS FUTR (MMBtu) 3.85 0.50 

Agriculture Price (US$) %Change 

COCOA FUTURE (MT) 2,351.00 -0.51 

COFFEE ‘C’ FUTURE (lb) 127.35 -1.62 

CORN FUTURE (bu) 553.25 0.91 

COTTON NO.2 FUTR (lb) 84.89 0.02 

ROUGH RICE (CBOT) (cwt) 15.93 0.47 

SOYBEAN FUTURE (bu) 1,533.75 0.43 

SOYBEAN MEAL FUTR (T) 459.2 1.15 

SOYBEAN OIL FUTR (lb) 48.13 0.31 

SUGAR #11 (WORLD) (lb) 16.41 -0.42 

WHEAT FUTURE(CBT) (bu) 698.75 0.14 

Industrial Metals Price (US$) %Change 

COPPER FUTURE (lb) 327.65 -1.28 

Precious Metals Price (US$) %Change 

GOLD 100 OZ FUTR (t oz) 1,385.70 -2.13 

SILVER FUTURE (t oz) 21.92 -3.47

HLPC sets date with Regmi to settle poll law issues

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