CK Lal blaming the "US insistence on market liberalisation" ("Do our banners yet wave?") for all evils of Nepali politics and our society may be a bit far-fetched. But fact remains that disadvantages may outweigh benefits of our market-driven economic concepts. The obvious question is who drives market in countries like Nepal, where vast majority of the population remain in the poorest of the poor category. A good example of evil side effect of market liberalisation is in the telecom sector. Our 205 elected law-makers unanimously passed a bill liberalising telecom (probably brain-washed by the "the mantra of macroeconomic reform" and constantly educated by two famous M's of the Nepali Congress: Mahat & Mahesh), not realising that direct implication of the new Telecom Act is that the cost of calling Humla from Hetauda will now equal that calling Kansas from Kathmandu. I happened to talk with a few MPs about this and they confessed that they had not studied and analysed the new act before passing it.

SR Kansakar
Kamaladi

- CK Lal writes well, like a poet. On occasion, his pieces are well-informed. But isn't there a limit to stretching this license to passing judgement on absolutely everything? Mr Lal thinks that post-1947 the US retracted its traditional warmth to Nepal. That this retreat is due to the growth of "free market ideology and privatisation" have not only "devastated" the political economy of poor countries, but also allowed a Madam Chang to meddle in Nepal's corridors of power. That "precise" empiricism was needed to establish certain "correspondences", but these clearly existed among "structural adjustment", "privatisation of national economies" and "the rise of insurgency" among other unfortunate consequences. That the "fortress in Panipokhari" has now re-fashioned itself from a beacon of hope for Nepal that helped "modernise Nepali society" to being a patron that "insists on market liberalisation" which incidentally has "failed" to "purify" Nepali politics, but "succeeded exceedingly" in "ruining our society". And oh, Michael Malinowski is probably a nice guy, by the way. So, to all literate people of the world, let's unite to throw away the "unholy triumvirate" of...get ready for the wisdom of the century: "liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation."

Never have I yawned so painfully. How reckless can one be in one's choice of words? You can't quantify qualitative variables to draw causal inferences because the degree of association is scientifically indeterminate. There is no such thing as "correspondence" between two ambiguous variables. And most importantly, correlation is not causality. As a person who is paid to write, Mr Lal owes it to us to do better than this. The least he could have done is thrown a few numbers around, and pretended that he knew what he was talking about.

"Paschim"
by email