So our country's name is about to be changed again. The latest formulation that the Maobaddie central committee came up with is: People's Federal Democratic National Republic of Nepal (PFDNRN). The fact that the letters 'NRN' are contained in the new national acronym must be deliberate.
But as the official name of Nepal gets longer and longer have we left anything out? Just so we don't regret it later, we should lump everything together once and for all and call ourselves: United People's Revolutionary Independent Democratic Nationalistic Federal Republic of Inclusive Nepal, known in short as: UPRIDNFRIN. That should give us some added stature at international conferences where our name tag will be even longer than the DPRK. Nothing else seems to matter, but size does.
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Why is Pukada getting so paranoid these days about 'The Foreign Hand'? After broadly hinting that unnamed members of the international community were trying to turn Nepal into a failed state, this week he actually named names at the party conclave and accused western countries and India of arm-twisting him. Luckily, PKD told his centcom delegates, he was able to balance this pressure by using China as the counterweight. Lotus Flower also seems to be spooked by the deliberate leak of news that His Excellency met His Majesty, and intelligence of another impending visit by an ex-Viceroy Rajan who is said to be pally with the erstwhile rajah.
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No wonder Comrade Chairman is sweating: he's getting grilled from within his party as well as from without. This has made his hypertension go haywire as he tries to divide up the spoils of government to everyone within his party who wants a share of the pie. PKD tried to appease hardliner Kamred Biplop by trying to push him to take the thankless job of heading the commission on land reform, but the smarty pants refused, so he appointed Comrade Gaurav's cousin, Horrible Gajurel, who immediately showed symptoms of foot-in-the-mouth disease at the Reporters' Club.
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Till press time, not a single car costing more than Rs 20 lacks had been sold after the new govt regulation requiring proof of income went into effect this week. But Marutis were flying off the racks. And over at the Land Revenue office, bureaucrats were advising property sellers how to under-invoice their land so as to avoid the Rs 50 lack minimum for showing income source. All for a facilitation fee, of course. Looks like the well-meaning BRB has underestimated the extreme creativity Nepalis exhibit when it comes to cheating the government. The upshot of all this is that there are now billions in black money floating about, and it looks the casions where Nepalis can now legally gamble is going to be where it is all going to be laundered. And the beauty of it is that everyone gets his cut, and the GDP expands.
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You have to give it to the PM, the man's a genius. This week, he got to inaugurate the 70 megawatt Mid-Marsyangdi project which was started when Nepal was still a constitutional monarchy, and would have been completed four years ago had his guerrillas not threatened and extorted the living daylights out of the contractors. The supreme irony in all this was that in the speech he gives before cutting the red ribbon, PKD takes full credit for the project and even pronounces no more load shedding. And we find out why: his government is about to declare an energy emergency and order diesel powerplants to generate 200 MW--in a country with the world's highest per capital hydro power generation potential. Why not approve all the hydro PPAs that are in the queue?
The adulteration mafia is also trying to lubricate the government machinery to re-instate the price differential between diesel and kerosene. The demand for kerosene has dropped by 70 percent since diesel and kerosene were priced the same last month, proving once and for all that subsidised kerosene was never the fuel of the poor but the fuel of choice for the adulterers.
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Tailpiece: Comrade Ferocity described Maoism the other day as a political philosophy that is "truly scientific". In that case, maybe they should've tried it out on animals first.
ass(at)nepalitimes.com
