www.nepalitimes.com #170 14 - 20 November 2003 16 pages Rs 25 Weekly Internet Poll # 110 Q. Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic about Nepals future? Total votes:1,357 Weekly Internet Poll # 111. To vote go to: www.nepalitimes.com As passenger volume peaks, airlines cash in. Q. Should the political parties patch up with the king, the Maoists or continue with their agitation? Winging it KUNDA DIXIT ○○○○○○ NAVIN○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ SINGH KHADKA drive. But they add that traffic is reaching Because of its larger fleet of six In an effort to meet passenger demand, n Tuesday evening, a Buddha Air saturation point because of capacity and Beechcraft, Buddha has profited the most Buddha has shunted nearly all its Biratnagar Kathmandu-Biratnagar flight flew infrastructure bottlenecks. from the current crunch, carrying nearly half and Bhairawa flights to late evening and night by mistake to Bhairawa. Domestic airline capacity has been of all domestic passengers since Dasai. But because they are the only airports with night- Given the present rush in severely cut because airlines with larger its managing director, Birendra Basnet, says landing facilities. Nepalganjs nightlanding is domestic airline traffic and the chaos at the aircraft like Necon have grounded their 50- the traffic will drop off once the buses start out of action because of technical problems terminals, a slip-up like that was bound to seater ATRs and Cosmic is only operating running normally again. Basnet also says with equipment, making matters worse. Ohappen sooner or later. Domestic airline one of its SAAB 340s. This means airlines airlines dont like to work under such With morning fog in Kathmandu, there just executives say they are reaping a bonanza with smaller planes like Buddha, Yeti, pressure. It is difficult to maintain arent enough hours in a day to fly because security concerns along highways Skyline, Sita and Gorkha are stretched to schedules and we have to make sure our everywhere. have diverted travellers to fly rather than the limit to pick up the slack. customers are happy, he told us. continued ð p5 owned by local political activists and are farming it commune- style. This trend is spreading east. In Sindhupalchok, a Maoist flag flutters on a tree in the property of UML leader Amrit Bohara. “First we were targets of the panchayat government and now we are under attack from the Maoists,” Bohara told us in Kathmandu. Land grab In Panchthar, Maoists looted the granary of RPP leader Padma Sunder Lawoti and, after harassing his 80-year-old The Maoist policy of confiscating mother, they looted his house and took away his horses. In Dhankuta, the ancestral home of Prime Minister Surya Bahadur land aggravates an already Thapa, his land and property have been seized. In Morang, the precarious food situation. Maoists harvested the entire rice crop of Nepali Congress leader One of the remaining families Amod Upadhyay and took it away. In Bhojpur they forced local ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○SHARAD KC in Rajapur winnowing grain. UML leader Hemraj Rai to hand over one-third of his harvest, aoist threats to farmers not to harvest grain, but later apologised and returned the grain. confiscation of land and looting of granaries has spread concern that Nepal’s already- Maoists have not only targeted rich landowners but also poorer farmers who they suspect of precarious food situation may worsen in the coming months. being informants, or those who refused to cooperate with them. All this goes against the Across the country, the Maoists are occupying farms taken from absentee landlords or revolutionary agricultural plan of the Maoist United Revolutionary Peoples’ Council that pledges not Mconfiscated from political opponents. There is no estimate how much farmland is directly under to confiscate land from farmers and lays out a land-to-the-tiller policy. So far, most farmers Maoist control, but reports from across the country this is a nationwide trend. Elsewhere, tillers who targeted by Maoists own less than 10 bigha. used to hand over a part of the harvests to landlords, are now forced to give the produce to local The Maoists justify their action, saying it is against zamindars and capitalists. But it is the Maoists. Food security experts say this has set off a chain reaction of lower harvests, falling middle-income farmers who have suffered the most—the same hardworking Nepali farmers who ENJOY productivity and a general food shortage. long ago gave up expecting anything from the government and had built and cultivated their own Since the landlords know they won’t be able to collect the harvest, they do not invest any farms. t Every Friday more on fertiliser, seeds and other inputs. The tillers or sharecroppers can’t afford to make that With reports by Jhalak Gaire in Nepalganj and Rajendra Nath in Nepalganj The Sumptuous Barbecue Dinner investment and the Maoists are too busy fighting to help with farming. As a result, productivity is dwindling and adding to the plight of middle and lower-income farmers. and military fascism was rooted out from the at our illuminated Courtyard and Garden A large number of landowners in western Nepal have abandoned their property and this trend has accelerated after the Maoists descended to the tarai during the post-Dasai harvest season. country. He accused the Royal Nepali Army of For Vegetarians Maoist supremo Prachandas fiery statement acting under instructions from the United States Special Sish Kebabs and many more. Many farmers have migrated to India, or to the cities. In the fertile Rajapur region which is an Prachanda feeler? island between two branches of the Karnali, many farmers have simply stopped planting because Thursday in which he lashed out at the army, to set up a unified command, which he said was For Reservation: 552 1810 of Maoist extortion and threats. government and Washington, had an trying to establish military control in South Asia Sita Devi Upadhyay, a 51-year-old widow, lost all her land to the Maoists when she could not overture to the political parties. He asked and encircle China. Another Maoist leader, Ram meet their donation demand. She took a loan of Rs 30,000 to pay them off, but the Maoists them not to dismiss his movements Bahadur Thapa (Badal), in an interview this wanted more. Now they have taken over her land. Her neighbour, Shankar Tharu, was forced to commitment to multiparty democracy. But, week with the party paper Janadesh said that hand over all his harvest and since he had nothing left to feed his family, he left for India. Further west in Kailali, the Maoists have confiscated more than 200 hectares of land mostly Prachanda added that a multiparty system his group was trying to coordinate with the would only work after feudal dictatorship anti-king agitation of the political parties. 14 - 20 NOVEMBER 2003 2 EDITORIAL NEPALI TIMES #170 Nepali Times is published by Himalmedia Pvt Ltd, Chief Editor: Kunda Dixit STATE OF THE STATE by CK LAL Desk Editor: Trishna Gurung, Design: Kiran Maharjan Webmaster: Bhushan Shilpakar [email protected], www.nepalitimes.com Advertising: Sunaina Shah [email protected] Subscription: Anil Karki [email protected] Sales: Sudan Bista [email protected] Sanchaya Kosh Building, Block A-4th Floor, Lalitpur GPO Box 7251, Kathmandu, Nepal Tel: 01-5543333/ 5523845 Fax: 01-5521013 Printed at Jagadamba Press, Hattiban: 01-5547018/17 ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ ARTY POOPERS Halt...before○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ militancy the and militarism alms devour therace country from within. P hings are finally moving on Nepal-India cooperation. Whatever created the discrepancy between word and knows who his real bosses are. There are were stooges of the British and helped logjam, it seems to have been removed. Several hydropower projects are deed is one of the defining features just too many signs of creeping out militarily whenever the empire moving ahead simultaneously: Budi Gandaki, Upper Karnali and even the on- of authoritarian regimes. militarisation. found itself in a bit of a tight corner. again-off-again private sector joint venture West Seti. The last is such good news in India that the Economic Times newspaper gave an exultant headline to the story this Pronouncements usually hide real A study of the militarisation of Where will the process of militancy and Tweek: ‘Nepal to light up North India’. intentions of the authority. A politics and society in Southeast Asia militarisation lead us this time? In other fronts, the Birganj dry port agreement was finalised amidst cheers from the Acontradiction between a governments has shown that there are parallels across The process of militarisation usually business community here. Nepali banaspati ghiu exporters are happy that they can policies and their implementation over a Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. means that authoritarian regimes are start selling again in India. Even the Nepal-Bhutan bilateral agreement on prolonged period hollows out a regime In addition to unnecessary violence, more loyal to the forces that prop it up repatriation of refugees, however flawed, appears to have unjammed. This week, after more than a decade, India announced it is resuming bilateral cash grants to local from within. And when such regimes militarisation results in: than to the people of the country. bodies with a first package worth Rs 500 million. finally fall, their collapse is so sudden l Repression and human rights Which doesnt augur well for the future For the intrigue-minded in Kathmandu, all this is too good to be true. Where is the that it takes even its opponents by violations of democracy in the country. It seems catch, they ask. Is all this tied up somehow with domestic political developments? surprise. l Loss of resources that the promises of the current crop of To be sure, Indian aid to local bodies comes at a l Underdevelopment ministers notwithstanding, the time when elected VDC and DDC councils don’t even exist.