Equal Opportunities

PRIME Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba pledged to ensure equal opportunities for all the ethnic groups for the sustainable development of the country. Realising the urgency of equal development of all the ethnic communities, the government has been committed to bring the indigenous people into the mainstream of social and economic development of the country. Inaugurating a special function in Kathmandu the other day organized by Nepal Federation of Nationalities World Indigenous Day-2001 Celebration Main Committee on the occasion of World Indigenous Day, Prime Minister Deuba said that indigenous people constitute almost half of the country’s total population and their equal development is a must for the speedy and sustainable development of the country. Prime Minister Deuba is, in deed, right in saying this, as Nepal is a mosaic of several ethnic, cultural and linguistic groups. It is, thus, His late Majesty Prithivi Narayan Shah described Nepal as a garden of 4 castes and 36 sub-castes. The Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal has also stated that Nepal is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-linguistic country and has guaranteed equal development of all the ethnic communities. In fact, the ethnic and cultural diversity is one of the assets of Nepal. This diversity needs to be maintained and a conducive atmosphere has to be created so that all ethnic groups can enjoy equal rights and opportunity. For this, the government has already formed a National Committee of Indigenous People and Nationalities through which different programmes for the development of nationalities and indigenous people are being carried out. As said by Prime Minister Deuba, all citizens are equal and must get equal opportunities for their development and nobody should feel neglected. The development of the country is possible only when all people equally contribute in the society for nation building. As a member of the Untied Nations, Nepal has ratified several UN instruments concerning human rights. At the call of the United Nations, Nepal has been carrying out different programmes for the development of the indigenous population. However, Nepal may not have been able to completely translate its promises into action yet due to the complicated social structure, deep-rooted superstition, massive poverty and ignorance. Poverty is the root cause of all the problems in the country. The government has, thus, concentrated all its efforts to alleviate poverty for the solution of several other problems. Once poverty is eradicated, social problems being faced by the indigenous people would also be solved to a large extent.

Requiem On RNAC?

ALL signs are that Nepal’s flag-carrier Royal Nepal Airlines Corporation (RNAC) is crippled. Years of mismanagement and wrong decisions in leasing aircraft have sapped this public sector undertaking of all its flying power. In a clear indication of bad planning, bad decisions, bad financial management and bad everything else, the national airlines last week decided to pull out of the European sector, Singapore and Dubai beginning next month. The decision comes smack on the eve of the peak tourist season. It has cited heavy financial loss and inadequate fleet in reaching that decision that is sure to seriously hurt the country’s tourism industry already rocked by various tourist-scaring national crises Nepal has been engulfed in over the recent past. The decision will throw out of gear vacation plans of over 6000 RNAC ticket-holders for the period between September and November, with all that it implies in terms of the negative publicity for the country. The European sector has always been a loss-making sector for RNAC, with its present yearly red figures standing at 130 million rupees. It is another story that so many other foreign airlines like Austrian Air, Transavia, Qatar Airways and Gulf Air are doing a good business in the Nepal-Europe routes. From the national perspective, that loss was perhaps a kind of offset to some extent by the air service it provided to tourists who would otherwise find connections more difficult.

The decision to suspend flights is a direct result of the supreme inertia, only broken by plane-leasing financial hanky-panky, that the airlines has been steeped in for years. The expensive Lauda deal seems to have come as the proverbial straw to break its back. With the deals on both the leased planes, one each from Lauda and China South West Airlines, prematurely terminated recently, RNAC fleet is critically truncated. It now has only two Boeing 757 aircrafts for its international flights and the two can cover only a limited number of routes. It has no money to find a third aircraft. The latest RNAC crisis was bound to erupt given the totally careless attitude with which the behemoth was being run. The big question now is whether the dying airlines can be resuscitated. Pumping governmental money to rescue it should be out of the question. If it is not yet time for a requiem on RNAC, the first step would be for the government to get the current management to bring out a comprehensive long-term plan on all aspects of its operation. That should be the pre-condition for any discussion on a possible salvage operation.