The aspect of Nepali party politics that caught our attention last month is a simple one at first glance: the number of parties that registered for the – maybe – upcoming election in November this fall. Aside from the number, however, there is little simple about it. 140 is the count of political parties right […]
What’s it like to be a staffer at the lowest level of government: in a VDC? Many VDC secretaries will tell you it’s not the greatest job in the world. Pick any point in time over the last decade or so and you’ll find quite a lot of VDC secretaries absent. Many posts are often […]
It’s hard to say how it happened and who did it. In a way it’s everybody’s fault and so nobody’s fault in particular. It just turned out that way, didn’t it, as we came to enjoy more and more of what’s good for the country – progress, development, modernisation. You underwent change, Bagmati. Used plastic […]
Never since the 1950s has Nepal been without elected local bodies for so long. How long has it been? Well, more than a decade. The last local election was held in 1997, and the popular mandate expired back in 2001/02. So it’s been a while! Since King Gyenendra took power in 2002, and continuously under […]
We just checked the headlines in the daily papers. Was there a lot about manoeuvres in the high halls of power in Kathmandu, national issues like the economy and crime, and a bit of foreign affairs too? Indeed, like on any other day. The local level was not that prominent in most newspapers. Does that […]
We once chatted with some villagers at a teashop about the topic of “development”. Had anything been achieved in their community? Sure, everybody agreed, there was something. Well, of course there was still much to do about the road and the electricity which didn’t reach to their remote part of the VDC. But at least […]
