When the Kosi washed away an entire section of the East-West Highway in August, the cable ferry at Chatara was the only point linking eastern Nepal with the rest of the country. This week, the ferry is in use again, but for a different reason.

Flood victims have blocked off the repaired highway downstream for a week now, demanding the government keep its promise of resettlement and compensation. So, hundreds of buses and trucks are lined up on the steep Kosi gorge at Chatara, waiting to get across. Tens of thousands of people are stuck. On new year's day, passengers who had been waiting all day were hunkering down for the night without food and water because their buses didn't get a turn to cross.

What the passengers don't know is that even if they get through tomorrow, they will be stuck again in Rautahat, where the highway has been blocked by the landless. If they are going to Birganj, they can't: the section south of Patlaiya has been closed for three days because a local was killed by a poacher in the jungle. On the way to Kathmandu in Dhading, the Prithbi Highway has been closed by relatives of a woman killed in a hit-and-run. Even passengers heading east can't get beyond Pathari?Morang and Jhapa were closed on new year's day because of the murder of a taxi driver. In fact, eastern Nepal was closed down for 156 days in 2065.

No one remembers things being this bad on Nepal's roads. "It wasn't like this even during the war," says a businessman from Dharan, trying to get home for a wedding. The cost to the economy is incalculable, the human misery is staggering. Nepalis expected much more from a government that they elected last year, and judging by the comments of trapped passengers here, their patience is running out.

An estimated 55,000 people lost their farms and homes last monsoon when the Kosi burst its levee and washed off the highway and powerlines. The villagers, mostly Madhesis and Muslims, were promised compensation that never came. Local administration and police in Sunsari say they are powerless because there are no instructions from Kathmandu.

"The highway connecting the capital to Nepal's second biggest city is blocked for a week and no one in Kathmandu is bothered," complained one official.

Local police say they have orders to negotiate without using force and locals blockading roads seem to know this. Said one frustrated APF officer: "We may have guns, but we are like toy soldiers."

As the stalemate drags on in dozens of other highways across the country, it is clear that the people and the country's economy can't take this for much longer.