#464 14 - 20 August 2009 16 pages Rs 30 Weekly Internet Poll # 464 Q. Should the PLA integration happen RAM AND KRISHNA: President Ram after the constitution is written as the Baran Yadav arriving at the Krishna Maoists say? Mandir in Patan on Thursday for the Total votes: 1,209 ritual worship on Krishnasthami. This ceremony used to be performed by Nepalís kings. Weekly Internet Poll # 465. To vote go to: www.nepalitimes.com Q. Has someone you know been injured in a traffic accident in the past year? KIRAN PANDAY THINK GLOBALLY, NEW, IMPROVED, MELAMCHI RAJIV TO THE RESCUE ACT INDIVIDUALLY The Melamchi project can be The descendant of the Raja of What can we do ourselves as adapted to generate 265MW of Jajarkot, Rajiv Shah, was so private citizens to curb global electricity and irrigate large impatient with the slow warming and slow the melting of tracts of the Tarai besides response to the epidemic in the Himalaya? Miki Uprety runs a supplying water to the capital. his district, he launched marathon to raise awareness about So why isn’t the government his own relief. mission. retreating glaciers in the Khumbu. doing it? Post mortem of an epidemic What can I do? p8-9 Editorial p2 p10-11 2 EDITORIAL 14 - 20 AUGUST 2009 #464 Published by Himalmedia Pvt Ltd, Editor: Kunda Dixit CEO: Ashutosh Tiwari Design: Kiran Maharjan DGM Sales and Marketing: Sambhu Guragain [email protected] Marketing Manager: Subhash Kumar Asst. Manager: Arjun Karki Circulation: Prakash Raut Hatiban, Godavari Road, Lalitpur [email protected] GPO Box 7251, Kathmandu 5250333/845 Fax: 5251013 www.nepalitimes.com Printed at Jagadamba Press 5250017-19 Win-win-win MKN should use his India trip to take HARM REDUCTION Kathmandu-Delhi-Beijing ties to a new plane Trust our rulers to try to wreck what is working. In a country where adhav Kumar Nepal can role. Enhanced Chinese empirically noting that there is there are so many other priorities (ensuring there is no famine by either do what every PM engagement is a fact, and Nepal an asymmetry in China’s favour winter, planning now to avert next year’s cholera epidemic, keeping M before him has done in would like to use the economy on all tangible determinants of prices down, creating jobs) you’d expect any sane government to be Delhi: bargain on a few bilateral to the north for growth but national power. India cannot and in permanent crisis management mode. Not here. Here, we are too issues, win some concessions, without hurting India’s ought not seek any kind of busy trying to fix things that ain’t broke. go out on a limb to prove that legitimate security interests. military equivalence but innovate his will be a friendly Mr Nepal may think this is through astute use of government, and in the process too risky an approach to adopt technology.” CHITWAN criticise his domestic with a Delhi dispensation that Combine this strategic realism One of the few things this country can be justifiably proud of is the opponents. has been kind to him. But such in Delhi with its diplomatic setting up of national parks like Chitwan which rescued tigers and an open and frank approach is offensive. Last Saturday, India rhinos from the brink of extinction. Chitwan is cited the world over and China decided to set up a PLAIN SPEAKING necessary for the sake of future as a model for people-park relations and in community mobilisation political stability and economic hotline between their two Prashant Jha th for buffer zone protection. development in Nepal. leaders. To observe the 60 Credit goes to Nepal’s visionary conservationists, who in the Otherwise each time a anniversary of the establishment 1980s had the creativity and foresight to find home-grown solutions, He has another, more government here gets cosy with of relations, the two countries and had the integrity and management skills to implement them. Chitwan became synonymous with ecotourism: the healthy statesman-like, route. Besides Beijing, its political rivals will decided to hold the Year of symbiosis between private sector entrepreneurship and the state’s discussing the peace process cuddle up to Delhi and attempt Friendship with China in India, responsibility to protect the environment. and India’s bottom-line on army to dislodge it. This is also a with Beijing reciprocating with World-renowned, award-winning resorts like Tiger Tops integration and constitution good moment to raise the issue similar celebrations. pioneered responsible conservation tourism and set standards for writing, Nepal has the because lots has been Bilateral trade is now $52 others not only in Nepal but internationally. The area around these opportunity to take the happening between India and billion, the two are close allies on resorts have the richest biodiversity within the park, and the contentious China-Nepal-India China. the climate change issue and the presence of tourism helps stop poaching. Other parks with no eco- relationship to a different level. In a path-breaking policy fact that India’s new foreign tourism have been decimated by poachers. One of the unsaid, but speech this week, Indian Navy secretary, Nirupama Rao, is an old And now, on the pretext that their contracts need to be renewed, apparent, causes for the India- chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta China hand will also help in the government has closed down the lodges inside the park. We Maoist falling out in May was spoke about the prospect of shaping a nuanced bilateral understand there is a lot of vested interest at work here: buffer zone lodges want the resorts inside parks closed down, or they want to the latter’s attempt to fiddle China consolidating its relationship. be inside too. Resort owners inside the park are trying to run each with the geopolitical balance of comprehensive national power Of course, there is still deep other down, and there is evidence new ministers and senior power in South Asia. As a and being more assertive in its distrust, border disputes remain. bureaucrats want a piece of the action. former ambassador told Nepali immediate neighbourhood. The rhetoric has got sharper from Nepal’s reputation for being an eco-tourism pioneer is at stake delegates at a Track Two event in “The gap between India and the Chinese side over Arunachal here. Income for conservation from royalty, jobs for villagers in the Delhi last month: “There is a China is too wide to bridge and Pradesh. ‘Non-official’ media and buffer zone are threatened as tour groups cancel peak season Laxman Rekha, a red line, on is getting wider by the day,” he academic circles have called India bookings. Our recommendation: immediately reopen the lodges China. The Maoists crossed said, “in military terms, both a paper tiger, and highlighted inside the park while the longer-term issues are worked out that.” conventional and non- India’s fissiparous tendencies. rationally. If Madhav Kumar Nepal conventional, we neither have Nepal has to know how to tap wants to rise above petty party the capability nor the intention into the realism and diplomatic ELAMCHI interest, he could say that to match China force by force.” wisdom of the Indian M Nepali and Indian political Mehta emphasised that establishment, while allaying its Sometimes, the lack of logic in our planning defies logic. leaders need to discuss China’s cooperation rather than concerns. Analyst Uday Bhaskar Kathmandu Valley’s population has doubled to 3 million in the past competition or conflict would advises: “Nepal could engage 10 years, outstripping its limits to growth. The be preferable since it would be India in sustained talks about summer water shortage has turned into a year-round “foolhardy” to compare India where and how it plans to crisis. Back then, there was a workable and increase ties, one presumes affordable plan: building a necklace of storage and China as equals in terms of reservoirs on the Valley rim, upgrading antiquated economy, infrastructure and economic, with China and mains to cut loss and improve distribution. military spending. assuage concerns that this is not But, of course, we decided 30 years ago to opt for Some critics dismissed the yet another way of the much more grandiose $500 million Melamchi statement as defeatist. But as ‘encirclement’.” project to divert snow-fed streams from Helambu to retired Commodore C Uday He has a warning though, Sundarijal through a 26km tunnel. It was foolhardy to Bhaskar, director of the National “Most nations that deal with go for a white elephant when cheaper, more Maritime Foundation where the China aver that it strives for sustainable, alternatives were available but we went chief spoke, explained to Nepali a win-win, but in such a ahead anyway. Times in an interview: “The manner that both wins are Today, one could make the argument that with the lecture was a reality check, with Beijing.” z present rate of urbanisation, Kathmandu will need Melamchi in future. But by hurriedly inaugurating the tunnel last week Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal’s government has compounded the original mistake by making another. If Melamchi is inevitable, then it makes much more sense to LLL ETTERS increase the radius of the tunnel from 3.7m to 5, add hydropower and irrigation components in the Bagmati for very little additional FOOD contributor to disease in Nepal cost and reap huge side-benefits. (See: ‘Revisiting a multi-purpose I would like to thank the and further reductions in the food Melamchi’, Nepali Times, #379) Nepali Times for its timely supply will only put greater You kill three birds with one stone with this plan that has been articles on the consequences pressure on an overburdened floating around for five years, and yet successive governments and of this season’s failed health system.