Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Dateline

Niraj Aryal

Lastly, the ambassador to the Kingdom of Nepal from a friendly country in the South has responded positively and affirmed surely to the, by implication, unchanging stakes of his country in the nooks and corners of this country. Perhaps his were the affirmations that there existed three governments in Nepal- namely the Nepal Sarkar, Maobadi Sarkar and the Indya Sarkar- running all in parallel in a remote country that is India locked- both geographically and geopolitically .

The question is not that the so-called Kingdom of Nepal will remain or not? And it is also not that his mentors in Delhi would wish it to remain unharmed but it is the stakes that his country have in Nepal that would demand his country’s permanent interest in this country. Take for example, the current Terai outrage, India obviously showed lots of interest and as usual was the first country in the globe to comment on Nepal ’s internal matters. The Nepali Terai is not the limit there are other stakes as well for India in Nepal . What are those stakes? And how they are fulfilled? Which way to be fulfilled?

The outgoing ambassador Mukherjee talking to an English weekly magazine published here in Kathmandu felt it necessary to respond to some noble gestures made here and there, on his personal interest in traveling across the country and supporting people through doles and grants without notifying the Ministry of Finance in Nepal as is demanded of the prevailing diplomatic protocols. Our Lilliputian stature does not allow us to teach His Excellencey the ambassador on the matter relating to diplomatic protocols to which his country is, I presume, a signatory?

The ambassador, to a rather awkward query posed by the weekly, replies, “ Ten per cent of Nepal ’s population have benefited from them ”. At a time when the past His Majesty’s Government and the Maoist Command were themselves unable to declare the percentage of people benefiting from their support, it was indeed puzzling for a foreign ambassador to come up with exact figure of Nepalese people that are benefiting through solicited/unsolicited doles and grants. Interestingly, how ambassador Mukherjee will keep on with his habits of traveling in the nooks and corners of the host country is to be watched when he arrives in London , where he is going to be posted very soon.

Finally, bidding adieu to the Ambassador- who is being replaced by Jayant Prasad , this time the columnist here would like to thank him as this story is completely based on the figures (ten percent) extracted from his views rather than using our government’s own data -by the National Planning Commission or of the National Bureau of Statistics. The NPC and the NBS as well, must thank the ambassador for a job very well done.

In the end, we imagine that ambassador Mukherjee must have got such exact figures through his “men” residing in the remote mountains who come to the district head quarters for collecting their “pensions” on a monthly basis (Read The Dristhi Weekly for details, Last Month).

In London , continuing with his humble work, how the ambassador will reveal the percent of people living under his doles and grants will be interesting to watch. Hmmm!