Why Greenland? Take Nepal.

Nepali Times ईspecial 24 - 30 January 2025 #1245

Nepali Times #1245 24 - 3- January 2025

Hi Everyone,

We at Nepali Times have often been asked for our take on the second Trump presidency and how it will affect Nepal. So, to answer everyone at one go, Political Correspondent Shristi Karki decided to dash off an Editorial this week (Trump’s Second Coming, page 2).

We hope that answers some of your questions. But may I suggest that besides Greenland, the Panama Canal and The Gulf of Mexico, The Don also lay claim to Nepal?

What better way to stop the arrival of undocumented Nepali migrants into the US via Mexico than to annex Nepal itself? It’s a win-win: all Nepalis get to be US citizens and therefore don’t have to pay dalals 80 lacks to cross the Darién Gap, and America gets to tickle China’s soft underbelly from its new colony.

Meanwhile, this may be the right time for Nepal’s MoFA to reciprocate with a travel advisory of its own for Nepalis travelling to the US. Here is a draft press statement to that effect: ‘The Ministry of Foreign Affairs GON remains concerned about the overall security situation in the United States and strongly urges Nepalis to exercise extreme caution, avoid political rallies or large crowds, cancel all non-essential travel and be fully armed while visiting affected areas.’

The Nepal Embassy in DC should lobby Congress to demarcate ethnically-based federal provinces for Hispanics and African-Americans. Ambassador Khatri can also strongly urge the new US administration to exercise restraint and work in a spirit of consensus to safeguard human rights, democracy, a free and independent press, and to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion in all aspects of national life in the United States.

We have an action-packed Nepali Times this week with, among others, a future-proof analysis by Sudiksha Tuladhar of how the Dalai Lama succession question may affect Nepal (What, or who, after the Dalai Lama? page 4-5).

Nepal is trying to move to a paperless future to make the government more efficient (and less corrupt). But alas, as Vishad Raj Onta reports on page 10-11, things are anything but convenient for those making National IDs, driving licenses or passports. After filling online forms, they still have to put fingerprints on paper documents and pay off middlemen to push their files through the system (E-GoN).

A passport should work as citizenship and National ID. There are four different types of private vehicle license plates on the roads, and all are valid. The whole ordeal is annoying, exhausting, and humiliating. It is also redundant, and does not save any paperwork. Illustration: DIWAKAR CHETTRI

Sonia Awale takes stock of Nepal’s success in snow leopard conservation (Ghosts of the Himalaya, page 6-7), and how various agencies are helping the government to build portable yak corrals so communities do not retaliate for livestock loss. I did not know that Nepal has the fourth-largest population of snow leopards, and the highest density of the rare cats in only 2% of the range.

Japanese student Sakuya Yamanoi uses a field trip to Nepal with his classmates to use clues from old family photographs to track down a public facility that his mountaineer grandfather built in Patan (My Grandfathers’s Footsteps, page 12).

I am also taking this opportunity to introduce you to the small Nepali Times editorial staff so you can put faces to names. Here they are planning online coverage and next week’s issue on the terrace with a backdrop of Himalayan peaks: (l-r): Langtang, Gang Chenpo, Gurkapo Ri, Dorje Lakpa and Phurbi Gyachu.

Oops, sorry, those are the mountains. Here are the journalists: (l-r) Vishad Raj Onta, Sudiksha Tuladhar, Sonia Awale, Shristi Karki.

All the best from all of us here.

Kunda Dixit