While some in the UML and NC are licking their wounds, others may be rubbing their hands with glee. Who wants to be in government at hard times like these with fuel and food prices rocketing, the trade slump and massive capital flight? ('Food insecurity' and 'Not just supply and demand', #394).

This week, the lines at the gas stations have started again. Every month, we add another billion rupees to our huge debt to Indian Oil. The state can't afford susbsidies, and previous governments have tried and failed to increase fuel prices.

GDP growth is behind population growth, per capita income is stagnant, exports have plummeted, the trade gap with India is so great that the thinktank IfDS is not joking when it says Nepal's number one export item to India now is the US dollar. And even that isn't buying as many INR as it used to.

Domestic investment is at an all-time low, and capital flight is catastrophic. Foreign investors are hanging by the skin of their teeth. The Maoists are coming to power at a time when incomes have plummeted and prices of essential commodities have risen, and they will now have to make good on utopian electoral promises.

Expectations are high for dramatic and immediate improvements. The trouble is there are no quick fixes to Nepal's economic woes. It's clear we need jobs, jobs, jobs. But employment generation needs investments which in turn requires political stability, the right economic climate and proper infrastructure. All this takes time.

With great power comes great responsibility. Maoist ideologue Baburam Bhattarai is making the right noises (see: interview p6). Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal went out of his way to reassure business at the FNCCI on Wednesday that he is actually a closet capitalist. He wants to launch a program for rapid economic growth. But how are they going to convince Nepali businessmen that they shouldn't be investing in real estate in India, but creating jobs at home?

Dahal also said he doesn't want to go at it alone and asked for the cooperation of other parties. He is right. The Maoist government is going to face difficulties from day one, but this is not the time to gloat about it or exploit political capital out of it. We're all in it together now.

The parties will be tempted to use the economy as a battering ram to get back at the Maoists. That will be the old way of doing things in Old Nepal. In New Nepal, let's build a political consensus on poverty.

For too long our economy has been held hostage by politics. The time to start changing that is now.