Knockoff Knation
Nepali Times ईspecial 29 August - 4 September 2025 #1276
Lately there has been a slew of news items about fake doctors prescribing fake medicines to patients, counterfeit bank notes, phoney telephones. Even gold smuggled into the country through Kathmandu Airport are only half-real, sources said on condition of anonymity.
Could this weekly newsletter also be AI-generated? (Can Democracy Survive AI? by Ian Bremmer, page 5).
The great thing about living in a knockoff knation like Knepal is that since just about everything in this country is fake, none of the bad stuff is real either. In other words, this is not the real Nepal. It is all virtual and augmented reality. There is a parallel universe out there in which the actual Nepal exists where we already have an annual per capita income of Switzerland.
And that is the subject of the Editorial I dashed off in this week’s Nepali Times (Size Does Not Matter, page 2). Nepal could punch above its weight if only we had clean and competent technocrats running the country. Maybe then, and only then, can we hope to have the per capita GDP of at least Swaziland by 2050.
The NC-UML coalition government seems to think that democracy and a free press will keep Nepal poor, and its leaders want to emulate our two draconian neighbours to leapfrog to a bright rich future. So, they are jailing journalists, bringing a law to tap phones, giving the CDO the authority to deregister media, and introducing another Bill in Parliament to control civil society (Big, Beautiful Bills by Shristi Karki, page 1).
Despite all this doom and gloom, there is a silver lining at the end of the tunnel. Clean energy economist Bikash Pandey takes a retrospective look at the World Bank’s cancellation of the Baby Arun hydropower project exactly 30 years ago this month. Pandey argues it was a blessing in disguise — allowing Nepal to decentralise electricity generation and encouraged domestic financing for new projects. This is a must read on what went right in Nepal (30 Years After Baby Arun, page 6-7).
We have been breathing easy the past few months because a vigorous monsoon has washed down Kathmandu’s air pollution. But the bad air season will soon start again, so bring out your masks and scrub the air purifier filters. This year’s Quality Life Index report brought out by the Energy Policy Institute in Chicago says people in Kathmandu can live two-and-half years longer if the air is cleaned up (Warning: Breathing Is Hazardous To Health, page 4).
Finally, the festival season is coming up. Yay! Go to page 8-9 for the Nepali Times roundup of events, eateries, concerts, getaways and more.
Kunda Dixit
