#350 25 - 31 May 2007 16 pages Rs 30 Weekly Internet Poll # 350 Q. Do you expect that the government can pay the country’s petrol bills and ease the supply crisis any time soon? Total votes: 3,079 Weekly Internet Poll # 351. To vote go to: www.nepalitimes.com Q. Should all sides cut their losses and let Melamchi die? OFF ROAD VEHICLE: This tractor accident near Kagbeni in Mustang killed two people on Sunday. The road from Myagdi to Mustang is claiming fatalities even before it is finished. GRAHAM TILLOTSON Falling off the road n Sunday afternoon, into the river. already altered the aura of this and telecommunications than trekkers relaxing after The accidents have also drawn arid and scenic valley located in bringing in a road. O crossing the Thorung La at attention to what the roads are the Himalayan rainshadow. For trekkers Judy Smith and Muktinath’s Nightingale Lodge doing to a once-pristine “There are already hundreds of Robin Boustead, the Kali Gandaki heard a loud bang. Annapurna Circuit trekking route. motorcycles and tractors on this may now become like the Police from a nearby APF Most locals in Jomsom, Marpha, road, it may turn away tourists,” Karakoram in Pakistan. “Like camp were seen running with and Tukuche welcome it, saying says Jomsom lodge-owner here, the locals wanted the road stretchers. The driver of a tractor it will make food items cheaper Santosh Sherchan. and the outsiders didn’t,” says who was racing another one down and also give access to markets for On the Manang side, the road Smith, “but seeing the endless the mountain died instantly and the region’s apples and plums. from Besisahar to Chame is under stream of lorries, motorcycles, his helper died later. Even before Many Indian and Nepali pilgrims construction and has received and SUVs on the Karakoram the Kali Gandaki highway to going to Muktinath pay Rs 700 unfavourable comments on Highway you wonder at Tibet is completed, the road has roundtrip from Jomsom on trekkers’ blogs this season. Lodge- what cost.” claimed more lives. Last year tractor trailers. owners in Manang say their once- Adds Boustead: “The accident two people died south of But tourism entrepreneurs remote valley would be better is ironic, really, proves that haste Jomsom when their tractor fell and trekkers say road access has served by upgrading the airport makes waste.” z 2 EDITORIAL 25 - 31 MAY 2007 #350 Published by Himalmedia Pvt Ltd, Editor: Kunda Dixit Executive Editor: Anagha Neelakantan Design: Kiran Maharjan Web: Rupendra Kayastha Director Sales and Marketing: Sunaina Shah [email protected] Circulation Manager: Samir Maharjan [email protected] Subscription: [email protected],5542525/535 Hatiban, Godavari Road, Lalitpur [email protected] GPO Box 7251, Kathmandu 5543333-6, Fax: 5521013 www.nepalitimes.com Printed at Jagadamba Press, Hatiban: 5547018 Critical masses They will force open the doors to the feas AN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS emographics are the turn at the wheel. The recent shields and talking like C viruses of the human race. Uttar Pradesh election result is medieval popes. If you thought the prolonged closure of all the nation’s schools is DThey are far from obvious, just the first of many. India’s In the United States, about education, you better think again. but they quietly replicate and demographics cannot be denied. Spanish speakers are already the ‘Education Republican Front’, even the name gives it away. This assert their version of a new Iran’s mullahs and cavorting largest non-white minority and is the hitherto unknown group that has forced nearly eight million reality as inexorably as the prime minister cock a merry Asians are the most students to stay home for the past week. Most people ask: how can passage of time. snook at the United States and economically successful. Poor they do that? Why don’t the parents rise up? Why don’t teachers defy What are seen as realities its ridiculously inept whites and African Americans the call? today are forgotten conceits administration. They are aren’t invited to the party. What Two reasons. First, there is a genuine crisis of tomorrow, after demography has nurtured in the petridish of do politicians do? They pretend commercialisation of the country’s education system. This has pushed costs and put quality education out of reach of most Nepali Washington’s ire and cloak they can build walls and enforce families. This is a genuine grievance, and represents the failure of themselves and their words in official language policies to HERE AND THERE Islam’s cadences, flicking their reverse the tide of history. The successive governments to regulate private education. Second, Daniel Lak students, teachers, and parents are not defying the strike call eyes towards god’s realms at real threat to American because it comes with the direct threat of violence. Militant teachers every opportunity. But their prosperity is not foreign waves and students padlocking schools have warned staff that those who fellow citizens are young, but neglected backwaters remove locks can have their hands chopped off. unfolded. India rockets along its unemployed, and fed up with within—communities and In an ironic twist, the Maoists have achieved a classless society, economic arc, becoming a global empty rhetoric and corruption. people mired in poverty and at least temporarily. If this long-term, nationwide closure of schools business giant and multilateral Iran will change beyond all exclusion, left alone with their was really about improving education, the Maoists would have tried political player. Yet, at home, recognition soon. anger. to upgrade the quality of government schools so we wouldn’t need some 300 million people—most Western Europe lurches What about demography in private ones. of them young, low caste, along, taking lengthy vacations Nepal? This too is a young Simply put, this is mass political action by the Maoist party to excluded, and angry—await their to escape the angst of change in country, where most people keep up the pressure on the governing alliance. It is a cynical use of post-World War II realities. beyond a narrow ethnic and children for political ends which has been France atrophies but dines well religious definition are left out condemned in the strongest terms this week by even as its self-conceived of power and prosperity. Count human rights groups and child rights activists. This civilisation becomes ever more on that youthful dynamism outrage is bound to politically boomerang on the irrelevant. Germany deludes forcing open the doors to the Maoists, but the culture of violence seems so itself that German genius will feast and stealing dishes from ingrained in the comrades’ psyche that they seem overcome all obstacles. Only the banquet or privilege. It’s oblivious. Britain shows the slightest happening already. Count as The Maoist affiliated teacher’s union, its strong- awareness of the coming well on the disappearance of arm student wing, the militant trade union, or the assertion of demographics. national tropes that seem so YCL, are all part of the Maoist attempt to assert power during their transition. Implicit in the modus Sometime this century, Islam relevant now—anthems, operandi of all these groups is the threat of violence. will become the most important costumes, religious practice, and Pushpa Kamal Dahal and the YCL can’t have it faith in a continent that has long political symbols from Marx to both ways. The chairman has to convince his regarded itself rather militantly the Shah dynasty—to be largely militants in mufti at their central committee meeting as Christian, and that has a forgotten in a decade or two. this week to start behaving, otherwise they will history of war with Muslim Human history moves at a undermine his own effort to project himself as a civilisation. This change will be stately pace, through legitimate political entity. But if the threat of force brought about by immigration generations, fuelled by continues, we can only conclude that Dahal can’t and family dynamics, not war or demographics, new critical face free elections. policy. What’s alarming is not masses in the making, and the In a recent tv interview, the Maoist leader that change is coming, but that cumulative aspirations of the presented a pragmatic face, trying to convince a Europe’s leadership is wilfully young, the excluded, the newly skeptical interviewer that doctrines change with blind to this prospect. Even the arrived, the ambitious. time. He sounded like he meant it. But can he simplest step, admitting Turkey If I had two words of advice convince his own young hotheads before it is to that Christian club called the for anyone in power anywhere too late? European Union, has them in the world right now they reaching for crucifixes and would be: stand aside. SAGAR SHRESTHA The Prajatantrik party is over Deuba will have to go his own way if he doesn’t unite with the NC ournalists waiting to ambush Sher the NC was engineered by the palace to a madhesi/janajati leader than an NC-D. rejoining the NC. Diehard kangresis will Bahadur Deuba after his meeting with derail democracy. Deuba just didn’t get it. Sharad Singh Bhandari and Narayan then go where they belong. Opportunists JGirija Prasad Koirala this week in But instead of reuniting with the parent Khadka find solace in the company of will weigh their options and chose Baluwatar didn’t have to chase him for a party, he went crawling back to the king Krishna Prasad Bhattarai. between RPP, Janshakti, and MJF, parties soundbite. The five-time prime minister two years later with his tail between his The only people Deuba has around him that are even more anti-communist.