Two-Hundred-Day Administration Of Madhav Nepal

Siddhi B Ranjitkar

Fattening Madhav Nepal and thinning Nepalis

If you take a look at the latest pictures of Madhav Nepal you find him fattened during the two-hundred day of his administration while millions of Nepalis have been thinning because of the skyrocketing prices of food items Madhav Nepal has skillfully increased in conjunction with the cartel of potato, lintels and rice businessmen, and sugar mill owners for their mutual benefits at the cost of millions of Nepalis. Mr. Nepal and his energy minister have been successful to keep Nepalis in darkness for almost twelve hours a day and some hours of unannounced power-cut. Nepalis cannot expect any improvement in their lives from the administration of the backdoor Prime Minister.

Recently, the Madhav Nepal administration has suddenly increased the price of sugar from Rs 60 per kilogram to Rs 90 per kilogram working with the sugar mill owners obviously benefiting both the circle of the Madhav Nepal’s people and the sugar mill owners, as this season is the time of crushing sugarcanes and producing sugar in Nepal. So, the government buys sugar from the mill owners at the highest possible price, as the government has the monopoly on buying and selling sugar, and selling it to the consumers at the highest price. The Madhav administration has neither imported sugar from abroad nor has allowed any private companies to import sugar in order to ease the higher price of sugar. So, we simply assume that Madhav Nepal has deliberately raised the price of sugar not importing sugar from abroad thus squeezing Nepalese consumers for getting him fattened from the unscrupulous benefits he has made for himself and his sugar mill owner friends.

Immediately after the price rise of sugar in Nepal, smuggling sugar from India has started in a massive scale. The sugar price difference between Nepal and India has been Rs 30 per kilogram. This price difference has encouraged the smugglers to bring sugar from India to Nepal in large quantity. Obviously, the Madhav administration and the sugar mill owners have not anticipated such a quick reaction of the smugglers to the rise of sugar price in Nepal. So, the Madhav administration has lowered the price of sugar from Rs 90 to Rs 80 per kilogram still almost twice the regular price for the public consumption. However, some market analysts have suspected that Madhav Nepal must have link with the smugglers, too, to make money from the illegal trade of sugar, as such illegal traders could not be active in such a short time without the cooperation of the Madhav administration.

The Madhav administration has been saying that the government is importing sugar from Brazil, China and India since Madhav Nepal became the Prime Minister. However, the government has done nothing except for increasing the price of sugar ultimately making it highest possible at the time of the government buying sugar from the mill owners. It is clear that Madhav Nepal as the Prime Minister and sugar mill owners are making millions if not billions of rupees from the buying and selling of sugar.

As the result of rise of sugar price, Nepalis have to pay high prices of any food item containing sugar. The price of a cup of tea mostly the poor drink whenever feel hungry has sharply increased. Most of them cannot afford to pay the price of a cup of tea have switched to sugarless tea. Prices of sweets have also sharply risen.

The government of Madhav Nepal in conjunction with the cartel of the potato businessmen has abruptly increased the prices of potatoes. Different varieties of potatoes have been regularly selling at Rs 15 to Rs 20 per kilogram before Madhav Nepal became the Prime Minister. After Madhav Nepal became the Prime Minister, the prices of potatoes have gone up to Rs 40 to Rs 50 per kilogram. In order to keep the prices at these levels, the police have stopped anybody except for the Madhav’s people bringing potatoes to Kathmandu. These prices have come down only after the harvesting of potatoes in the Kathmandu Valley, as the government could not control the farmers in Kathmandu selling the potatoes at lower prices.

Similarly, the price of onion has jumped from the retail prices of Rs 20-25 per kilogram to Rs 45 per kilogram after Madhav Nepal became the Prime Minister. Possibly, the price of onion would not come down until Madhav Nepal is fired from the position of Prime Minister.

Prices of lintels and rice have skyrocketed thanks to Madhav Nepal. Varieties of lintels selling at Rs 50-70 per kilogram have risen to Rs 100-150 per kilogram after Madhav Nepal came to power. His administration has stopped the export of lintels from Nepal on the pretext of lowering the prices of lintels but the high prices of lintels have continued at the Nepalese market. Similarly, prices of various varieties of rice have been raised from Rs 30-40 per kilogram to Rs 80-100 per kilogram. Thus, Madhav Nepal and his co-workers have been making easy money from the high prices of lintels and rice that have became off-limits to poor Nepalis. The Madhav administration has done nothing to ease the price rise of lintels and rice, yet.

Currently, Nepalis have been living in darkness for twelve hours out of twenty-four hours a day thanks to Madhav Nepal. His party CPN-UML had vehemently opposed the proposal the Prachanda administration had put forward for setting up a 200 MW thermal plant for mitigating the power shortage, and successfully blocked the building of such a power plant threatening the then Prime Minister Prachanda to pulling out of the coalition government in August 2008. The CPN-UML gave the reason for blocking the building of a 200 MW thermal plant was the high price of the power produced by such a thermal plant.

If the then Prachanda administration had built 200 MW power plant then Nepalis would not need to live in such darkness and lose billions of rupees worth of businesses and industrial production. Currently, Nepalese workers have to keep quiet for twelve hours out of 24 hours a day due to the power-cut everyday. Nepalis have been losing billions of rupees worth of industrial production, as factories stop working due to the power-cut. Many business offices have to keep alternative source of power or stop their regular businesses. The power-cut has hit small businesses hard, as most of the small businesspersons could not afford to set up alternative sources of power. Poor students have to work on the candlelight or stop working. Consequently, Nepalis have been losing billions of rupees worth of business opportunities, and have been suffering from unreliable supply of power thanks to Madhav Nepal and his energy minister.

Immediately after Madhav Nepal became Prime Minister, his Energy Minister Dr. Prakash Sharan Mahat had said that he would not let increase the power-cut more than 10 hours a week in other words not more than one or two hours of power-cut a day. He had also said that his ministry would rehabilitate and build thermal plants and import power from India to mitigate the power shortage in Nepal. However, Dr. Mahat has done nothing for mitigating the short supply of power except for accompanying Prime Minister to India, Copenhagen and China.

Energy Minister Dr. Prakash Sharan Mahat had accompanied Prime minister Madhav Nepal to India, Copenhagen and then China when Madhav Nepal had visited those countries at the cost of the Nepalese taxpayers’ money. What Energy Minister Dr. Prakash Sharan Mahat did in Copenhagen had not come to light but he had talked to the Indian authorities for importing power and building new power plants, similarly, he had talked to the Chinese authorities for building new power plants in Nepal according to the Nepalese press. However, nothing has happened so far. Nepalese ministers particularly Madhav Nepal and his ministers have the habit of doing nothing if they do not get under-the-table payments for doing anything.

The power-cut has also hit hard the already short supply of drinking water in the Kathmandu Valley. The Kathmandu Urban Drinking Water Company has been pumping underground water and supplying the citizenry but the power-cut has reduced its capacity to pump up water and then distribute to the consumers. Consequently, people in Kathmandu receive water from the Kathmandu Urban Drinking Water Company hardly twice a week. So, most of them have resorted to collect water from the ancient stone spouts and wells.

Prime Minister Madhav Nepal had laid the foundation stone of constructing a 26 km long tunnel for bringing water from the Melamchi River to the Kathmandu Valley; however, his deputy holding the portfolio of Physical Planning and Work Bijya Gacchedar has done nothing to get the construction of the tunnel start off.

Madhav Nepal as a Prime Minister has done many times worse than Girija Prasad Koirala as a Prime Minister had done in the past. The Girija administration sold two planes belonging to the current Nepal Airlines Corporation, destroyed the Trolley Bus Service between Bhaktapur and Kathmandu, sold many profitable state-owned factories and made a lot of losses to the country just to benefit his relatives and party people. However, Madhav Nepal has done much more badly than Girija Prasad Koirala increasing the prices of sugar, lintels and rice causing tremendous sufferings to the poor in Nepal.

Girija Prasad Koirala in his last term of office of Interim Prime Minister from 2006 to 2008 had run the shortage of petroleum products in Nepal causing tremendous inconvenience to consumers and untold amount of business losses only to benefit his relatives and people. His administration had sold a half of the total petroleum products coming to Nepal at the Indian market to benefit from the high prices of petroleum products in the Indian market. So, his administration instead of keeping the prices of petroleum products in Nepal at the par of the prices at the Indian market had deliberately kept lower in Nepal.

During the almost fifteen years of his administration, Girija Prasad Koirala had done nothing to build even a single hydropower plant to mitigate the short supply of power. Madhav Nepal has simply followed the footprints of Girija Prasad Koirala, and has even not thought of the ways and means of mitigating the short supply of power. As a result, Nepalis have been facing the power-cut for twelve hours out of twenty-four hours a day, and billions of rupees worth of business losses.

Madhav Nepal has done much more worse things to Nepalis than Girija Prasad Koirala had done as a Prime Minister. Madhav Nepal has been hitting the poor Nepalis hard making them not possible to have potatoes, lintels, sugar and even rice because of the high prices. Time will soon come when Nepalis will punish Madhav Nepal and his cabinet ministers for all the ills his ministers and he have created for the innocent people if Madhav Nepal does not open the Nepalese market letting anybody to import these food items so that poor Nepalis can have two square meals a day.

January 23, 2010.