The outpourings in most Nepali media demonstrate that 'political hogwash is the opiate of the masses'. From Comrade Awesome with his claims that he 'rules' 80 percent of Nepal, to Ram Sharan Mahat's unlikely claims that the coffers will overflow now that he's in charge, I think the Nepali people have trouble coping with the verbal diarrhoea.

Can Comrade Awesome enlighten us about his 80 percent of Nepal? Does he know that 15 percent is under permanent snow and 18 percent is barren rock? Towns and urban areas account for 30 percent and he can hardly claim to 'rule' them. Simple arithmetic leaves him or anyone else 37 percent of the country, of which he claims 80 percent. But only ignorance would claim that it comes in a neat, ready-to-be-ruled package.

Is his realpolitik for real, or will he get by as before, preaching to the uninformed? As an non resident Nepali (NRN) whose family survived by working abroad, I want to know, in straightforward, un-doctored statistics, what achievements result from small groups of badly-informed but thoroughly indoctrinated cadres threatening rural householders with guns, not to mention other atrocities ever-so-diligent 'human rights' folks have not picked up on. Have harvests increased over the last ten years? Are more children, particularly girls, in school, or out toting guns, their adolescent hormones raging against an adult world that has failed them? In the areas he 'rules', has income increased (without counting our remittances, or the money received from daughters trafficked into the flesh trade)? We'd like to hear more policy and less political twaddle.

And to Mahat: does he know the impact on the economy if NRNs stopped sending remittances? Does he plan to create jobs so people have the satisfaction of earning their own living instead of relying on 'aid'? Can he guarantee that everyone who should pays taxes? I ask this because the other gentleman is swift to condemn donors for imperialism, but how many Nepalis realise that aid money comes for the most part from the taxes of people very like themselves? They are ordinary people with ordinary pleasures and they work darned hard for their livelihoods. Our politicians and Comrade Awesome talk as if this 'assistance' comes from some kind of imperial cash cow. If they realised how hard those working classes who support aid programs actually work, they'd be a little less liberal with their labels.

KA Tamang,
Middlesborough