As we are less than a week away from the Nepali Political League (NPL) season finale, our major political parties have come up with another gimmick. Why dole out empty promises when you all know that with limited funds, no political courage and incompetent and self-loathing bloated bureaucracy, no reform is actually possible?
Who will believe you when you say that you will eradicate corruption in five years. Butt you can't even promise that when it comes to poverty or unemployment or things that actually matter. Promise what you can deliver!
Yes, Tourism is important. We get roughly a million tourists a year. It's been six years since COVID and we are yet to cross the number of arrivals from then. Who are they actually kidding when they tell us in their manifestos that they will focus on Tourism this time and reform the aviation sector, get more entry routes from India and get us 2 million tourists in 5 years?
Now, let's start with tourism itself. We are getting a million tourists even without trying very hard. I don't want to make fun of Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) at all. They are doing their best with their Rs 1.5 billion annual budget by attending Travel Expos around the world, paying for two chairs and a table and maybe 500 travel brochures. They talk about sustainable tourism and what not and they themselves have no clue what it means. I hear NTB hasn't even presented audited financial reports for many years.
Let us not blame NTB for all the problems with the tourism sector. Every time, we get a new Tourism Minister, he or she seems to be only interested with our national carrier, Nepal Airlines while the ministry actually also looks after Tourism, Civil Aviation and Culture. And every few years, the airlines is in some controversy for corruption when it comes to purchase of aircraft or some other reason. So, maybe we now know why every Tourism Minister is laser-focused on the airlines while forgetting the rest of the other departments.
The highway connecting Pokhara from Mugling is almost complete but it took us so many years that half of the folks living on that route already suffer from some kind of respiratory illnesses due to the dust they were forced to breathe for years and years in the name of development. Yes, it takes time but a job that take a year and half should not be stretched to five or seven years and blame either the contractors or lack of funds or lack of donors or lack of anything.
Look at the so-called Asian Highway from Kakarvitta to God knows where. If we had better roads, it would take you less than 12 hours get to Kathmandu but it has been taking roughly 16 to 17 hours for years now because the majority of the roads there are either dug up, destroyed or left alone with potholes. I don't know if it's the contractor's fault or the government just didn't give the funds on time to finish their work. I think the progress is like 35% in the past two years. If we do the math, then it would take the another 4 to 5 years to finish the job.
And have you seen the highway connecting Narayanghat to Butwal? The Daune section is such a mess that I think for the past six or seven years, it appears like you are in the middle of a desert storm in the Middle East and if one truck gets stranded then expect traffic jam for hours and hours and sometimes even a day or two.
If we do not have enough funds then why do we even start such projects? When it comes to tearing up a 100-km stretch of roads, the contractor will finish that job in less than 100 days. I don't know why? Maybe because the demolition job is easier and you get your contract funds quick enough but then to build the same 100-km road, it will take us five to seven years when adequate budget and manpower could do the job in less than two years. Yes, I understand the reason in our hilly areas but Kakarvitta side and the Butwal side should have been easier than in Sindhuli or Manang or any other hilly regions.
Now let us talk about the aviation sector. For the past few months, the foreign media has been making a big issue about fake rescue missions in our mountain areas and how our travel operators were scamming international insurance agencies by arranging fake rescue to mint some extra dollars.
Then, we have airplanes crashes every two years and the world says, Nepal's planes are not safe. And most of the time, we do blame the pilots while those who own the airlines do not get any warnings or fines or any punishment for not maintaining their planes on time.
Even Nepal Airlines, our national carrier acts like it is operating a Microbus from Sindhuli to Itahari. They go for maintenance and the plane is stranded not for days or weeks but months and sometimes a year and flights are cancelled as if there are landslides occurring up in the sky every other month. Actually, I apologize to the microbus drivers because they are usually on time, a little fast and furious on the road but they are doing a far better job!
And then we have the EU, the holier-than-thou Europeans, blacklisting us and telling us our national carrier is not safe enough to fly to Europe. They have been asking our government to split the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal into two, one as a regulator and one as an airlines for the past two decades and what have our successive government done so far? Nothing.
If we really want to privatize Nepal Airlines and make it competitive and fly to Europe and all of Asia then the Nepal Government cannot have a 51% stake. It should stick with a token 10% and let it go private. Our government is not honest enough to be a majority partner in anything.
Even if we have a new party heading the government, it's the same old bureaucracy. We can change the coach maybe but if the players on the team have been making suicide goals for years for their own benefit then do you expect them to band together and win the championship?
Politicians are there to make policies to help the nation and its citizens and the civil servants are the real players and if they don't perform then we all lose. Politicians come and go. Our government workers are in there for at least 30 years of smooth ride and what have they really done when they were in the same train for these many years?
The verbal piranhas have been getting on and off the gravy train but it's not like they have been messing it up for thirty straight years. They come in, steal our honey, well the nation's money and they get voted out of power then they wait till the tide turns and somehow gets back on the train and it's been going on like this since the 90s.
We have been blaming our politicians for far too long but when will we actually smell the coffee or the Bagmati river as the weather gets hotter and realize that for the past thirty years, our bureaucracy, who are loyal to their respective political parties and not the nation are much to blame for the mess we are in today. Well, if you follow the Pareto Principle then yes, we do have 20% honest, hardworking civil servants but then the 80% are in it for God knows what.
How will we double the number of tourist in five years? When we say a million tourist then we should be or I think we are counting our neighbors. India and China. I think less than hundred thousand Chinese visit Nepal every year while maybe the Indian tourists are three times more. There are more than 190+ nations in the world. Not every nationality will visit Nepal but why are not we getting like 100,000 Japanese or 100,000 Saudis or 100,00 Malaysians or Kuwaitis or Qataris?
If NTB really wants to promote Nepal in foreign lands. They don't have to go that far. Order 5 million t-shirts and gift them to all of our folks who are working abroad and sending us more than 10+ billion dollars every year to keep the country's economy stable.
Maybe their 1.5 billion Rupees budget could be used for this purpose. You could get a printed t-shirt in China for less than Rs 100. The government then should ask our national carrier to bring back home the t-shirts from China for free then ask the customs people to give it a tax break. There you go, NTB will still have a billion Rupees left in their budget for this year.
Now, what do we do with the t-shirts? We then send it to all of our Embassies abroad and then ask them to personally call every Nepali citizen who are in the country there and if needed ship the t-shirts to their addresses. Maybe, this will also once and for all finally help and also force our Embassy people to collect all data of those working abroad instead of spending most of their time thinking of their foreign stints as a luxury postings and avoiding phone calls whenever there are emergencies or help needed by a Nepali citizen there.
Okay, we have shipped the t-shirts to foreign lands. We have handed the t-shirts over to our students, migrant workers and highly-paid professionals or scientists or whoever and now we need to ask them to wear it when they are out shopping or hanging out on weekends. I think this will be more effective than wasting money for brochures and expos and conferences.
But what will the t-shirt say? Well, I almost forgot about it. It will say 'Visit Nepal' Mountains are complimentary'.. doesn't matter if the first one goes on the back or the front. Or if you have a better slogan then let me know and I will send you a t-shirt and maybe you can help start his campaign. It could or would or should be fun!
And the last thing is the airport. We have three international airports now. India has not allowed us to fly any planes from across the border straiight to Lumbini or Pokhara. What will change after March 5th? Nothing. India is happy to have a trade deficit of more than US$ 70 billion a year trading with China but unhappy to buy even less US$70 million worth of electricity from any hydropower projects built with Chinese loans. I don't understand the logic here but I guess only Anil Ambani could explain it because he got hundreds of millions of loans from Chinese banks while the Indian banks then didn't trust him.
If India and China are happily engaged in a US$ 100 billion trade thing... why is India having a problem with Nepal? We don't know and nobody has actually figured out how to get good deals from the Indians but come election time or their Independence or Republic Day, we do get like 50 school buses, 100 ambulances and 200 vehicles for election duties. If you really want to celebrate your Republic Day then send us like 30 million packets of Jalebis, Peda or Kheer for Modi's sake!
If we really want to make our country better than we can ask for help for a white revolution, a green revolution and many other stuff like partnering with IITs and IIMs and AIIMS to build similar-type of institutions in each of our provinces and hopefully someday, we will have a million highly-skilled professionals who will then go to the West and make billions of dollars or trillions and then in the next 50 years, we will be able send our own spacecraft to Mars.
We cannot expect Nepal to have a million highly-skilled engineers in five or ten or twenty years. If we begin today, Generation Alpha and Beta will create their own Google, TikTok, Microsoft that too by 2050. We can't expect to build a Burj Khalifa in ten years. If we get a 8.0 magnitude earthquake tomorrow, we will lose half of our people depending where we will be then and almost all of our buildings will be flattened because it will be two times more powerful than the 7.8 one we experienced more than a decade ago.
Can you believe it? It's been more than ten years and the government has failed to even fully repair or reconstruct new government buildings in thousands, not hundreds. And have we come up with a very strict building code yet and have we strictly enforced it if we have come up with an adequate one to handle any major earthquakes? Nope. Nada. Tata. Bye Bye!
We could learn from the Japanese and even the folks from Chile where a 8.0 doesn't do much damage for them because they have learned their lessons well. And we haven't and those in power who can bring changes and enforce the rules have been lost in corruption and nepotism and acting like they don't even care about this country anymore.
Maybe, we will attract two million tourists in five years. Maybe in five years, most of our highways will be all repaired, built or maintained well so that driving to Pokhara will take less than 5 hours (well, our microbuses can do that now but it comes with a slightly greater risk of being involved in accidents or hanging by your seat and hoping all will be well) and you can drive from Kakarvitta to Kathmandu in less than 8 hours. Maybe in five years, Nepal Airlines will be a separate entity, privately owned with minority government shares and then EU will allow us to fly in their skies like we used to do back in the 90s.
And hopefully someday, we will be able to tap in the 60 million folks in India who make more than US$10,000 per year and 60 million folks from China who make more than US$ 100,000 in their own land to visit Nepal. Even if we get 5% of them, it's 6 million folks who will pay Rs 10,000 and up for hotel rooms and spend more instead of the 80% of Indian tourists (using the Pareto Principle) we get today, who use their own vehicles to come here, 60% of them will then cook on our roads, throw the garbage everywhere while 10% will come for all the wrong reasons expecting and engaging in illegal stuff.
Yes, we need all kinds of tourists but why not give a little bit more focus on the 12 million Chinese and Indian tourists who can happily afford to spend at least US$100 for a hotel room and another US$100 for their daily food or shopping or visits. We don't even have to go that far, do we? Nepal Airlines could make hundreds of millions of dollars just ferrying the Indian and Chinese tourists to Nepal along with the carriers from their respective countries.
And why should only big business houses and their luxury hotels profit from high-end tourists? The government should allow all of us to host foreign tourists in our homes not only in home stays or in villages or hills. Then the naughty ones will warn us that it will take away the millions of jobs and millions of profits from investors. No it won't... anyone who can afford US$100 200 or 300 will not want to stay in my house, in a room and eat with my family to save some dollars. I will charge US$20 per night, the small hotels charging US$5 at this day and age for beds should charge US$40 minimum and the price increases as per the amenities of your hotel or lodge or anything.
And we all need to pay taxes on any extra income we may make. So if I make twenty bucks from a tourist by hosting him or her at my house then I must give her a government certified receipt and then pay the taxes. Plain and simple. That is how the government gets more money and can use it for healthcare, education and development. Well, I am not a politician. I am not standing up for election and I will not be in the House to make new laws but hope someone who is elected will work on this as well.
And not everyone wants to stay in someone's house. Some may need more privacy, more freedom to wake up and shout at 2 am in the morning or walk around Thamel till 4am. Yes, we need all kinds of tourists but not the nasty cheap ones who will pay a thousand dollars or more to come here and then want cheap rooms, cheap food and then extort our bad ass taxi drivers which is nearly impossible for us and then make a million dollars by writing a book on how he or she survived with US$100 for 30 days in Nepal!
The current situation is that foreign airlines are minting money in Nepal while our national carrier is in a coma and we don't even know when it will go bankrupt and not be able to pay its debt if it does not go for privatization because our government does not really have any extra funds for anything or in a layman's term, it is broke. And our foreign debt is more than US$ 20 billion dollars and we borrow money every year like a few billion dollars to stay afloat while our exports is like a billion dollar and we import 13 times more.
We were promised that we would become Singapore or Switzerland in the 90s. It's been 30+ years and if we don't change course and admit we have been wrong then we will be something else. In the 90s, they said at least we were better than Ethiopia. And the most shocking thing for me or I don't know if I want to laugh or cry or actually I am happy because Ethiopian Airlines' annual revenue is now more than 7 billion dollars and they transported 19 million passengers. And some are still boasting that we were richer than South Korea in the 60s or our Re 1 was worth twice the Indian currency when I don't know what decade or generation was that if it really was the case!
We really need to reform everything in this country not only the aviation sector and start with it from day one when the new House begins its tenure. It took Mr. Lee from Singapore almost 30 years to turn his malaria-infested swamp of a country to a developed one. So if we do the math then come 2056, we will be a better nation in terms of peace, prosperity and people. So, it's the Generation Alpha and Beta who will enjoy the fruits of our labor today. And we should be happy finally at least our children and their grandchildren will have their passport ranking in the top 10 list by then if we actually start doing the hard work now.
It is up to the Gen Zs of today to make it better for their kids by 2050 because Gen X were lost and Gen Ys do have the opportunity to be mentors for the Zs. Sorry, Gen X, even the Economist calls you a loser generation. But don't lose hope. The Gen X are the luckiest generation on Earth. From dial-up to Startlink, from typewriters to laptops, from computers the size of elephants to AI. You have seen it all and more than any other generation ever will. So I call you Gen Xers the luckiest unluckiest generation. I hope you get my point!
And when it comes to our Nepali context, the Gen X have seen nearly all of the political changes in this country. Stop talking about 2007 BS when Nepal was still a forbidden kingdom. The real changes actually began from 2046 BS (1990s). The Gen X grew up with an absolute monarch, then a constitutional monarch, then no monarch and also got to witness 30+ years of common people like us lead the nation to ruins and gave us a window to our own souls.
We may have gotten rid of the monarchy because we thought they were the reason for our problems but our politicians so far have proved to us that in reality, they wanted to be the new monarchs and enjoy more than before.
So at the end of the day, the moral of the story is we don't want any kings or dictators or tyrants. We have been searching for our own Mr. Lee Kuan Yew who can change the economy but it also comes with a price of limited freedom of speech and assembly. But for a small city-state with a multi-racial society, maybe it was needed to ensure communal harmony.
But so far we haven't gotten our Mr. Lee yet but our politicians have done a great job to violate our human rights, freedom of speech and assembly and while the economy is in shambles. So they haven't gotten anything right. I am not advocating less freedom for prosperity. Let us live and let live. I want to live in a country where education and healthcare are affordable for all. I want to live in a country where I don't have to pay to drink dirty water and adulterated food products or even expired ones while the government turns a blind eye. Let us be tolerant and respect each other, our different faith and preferences and whatever.
Right-wing or left-wing is not what Nepal needs. If we really want to be the next Singapore, all we need is integrity, pragmatism and meritocracy. I didn't say that... the old Singaporean politicians said it back in the 60s and they continue to say that to the developing countries if they want to be like Singapore.
Our political parties should stop promising us anything except jobs! More than 50% of our current registered voters are under 40. And it is up to them to decide the future of this country and the future of the ten million young ones who are not even eligible to vote because of their age and come 2050, those young ones will be the ones who will finally live in a peaceful, prosperous Nepal and who will they thank? You!