And here are more of the whys. And yes! they are still trying to smile.
When a child is born here, s/he is born with a $190 burden of loan over her/his head.
We faced the Apocalypse Now on the last April in the form of ever destructive 7.8M earthquake and thence we live in a primitive commune hovel erected out of rubble.
We are land-locked and only feasible border on the south is on the blockade for two couple months, unannounced and still unofficial.
And many more.
Don’t take me wrong but we represent pathetic of population. I am a patriot but heck who cares if I can’t get to half-fill my stomach, working. Everywhere now, queuing up has been our fate. We queue. We queue in petrol pumps; we queue in gas depot; we queue in the airport’s lost-and-found counter to claim our luggage. We queue where possible; we queue almost everywhere such as that in the public toilets. Three days and two nights constitute 60 hours –that is the length of time we spend to get a five-liter petrol share. It may sound strange but border blockade has invariably blocked every road owing to the random filing of the vehicles in petroleum line.
We live in a country where a gasoline is sold half the cylinder double the price in the illegal market—lucky we are to get cooking gas after three weeks of ‘dry-food only’ stint. In the place such as ours, every scarce stuff is easily available in the black market. And every so often black markets are easily available in the open market. There are chunks of people lining in the queue for non-ending hours to get a 104-rupee liter petrol and then the rear side of the queue comprises many of many illegal marketplaces selling a 500-rupee liter petrol off-the record. Having money or not determines which side of the queue you are choosing to go or going to choose. Notwithstanding, when counted the time spent, onus of pushing and careening vehicles erratically, staying bored day and night in the open sky of winter, meals of street vendors and ensuing health issues of all above mentioned, the legal side of the purchasing price tops the illicit side. We are the wounded, and the queuing vehicle-holders show up the placards in which is written, “Get well soon, India.” For salt and sugar there are queues increasing in length as the day passes. In less than three weeks cooking oil price hikes more than one hundred fifty percent in our Nepal. Since the blockade, price of merchandise you name it has significantly mounted—no matter where.
Due to the paucity of raw materials, industries are witnessing the indefinite furlough and workers are home on silent hunger. Game of political power play and power sharing never finishes here. For heaven’s sake! Nowhere in this world should have six deputy prime ministers but Nepal has every single one of them. The cabinet is ever expanding and there are no signs of stopping. Top leaders are quenching their desire while southern terrain is burning in fire. Further, people are on the brink of worst fate every next minute leaders are not doing something, god anything fruitful, to solve the political imbroglios.
A couple of weeks back, little hope was there when a contract was signed with China for the supply of fuels, but little hope thawed more when news of topographical difficulties laid vehicles movement in jeopardy. Snowing in the winter and landslips in the rainy season are longitudinal weather enemies standing between China and us. More to it, even in the loophole season, the distances are tiresomely long.
Very little, something that is perishable within days is coming from India. Nothing from the third country seems to have come through the dry port. Amidst limitations and scarcity we have just celebrated our great festivals Dashain and Tihar. If this sanction continues, grisly hours are certainly to loom here for quite a long time.
Adhikary Rabindra
Independent Opinionator
Nepal
Adhikary Rabindra
Independent Opinionator
Nepal
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