Commitment To Peace

PRIME Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand has said that His Majesty's Government is fully committed to maintaining peace in the country and the main agenda in the talks with the Maoists will also be peace and stability. Addressing media persons in Dhangadi the other day, Prime Minister Chand said that the country was in need of cooperation from all sectors in order to restore peace and revive national economy and the development activities. It is true that all political forces and responsible citizens must cooperate and extend helping hand in order to transform the peace process into a lasting one. However, some political parties are raising the issue of constitutionality and creating a roadblock to peace process. This is by no means a responsible behavour. Peace is the need of the hour in the country. We must support whoever comes forward with the concrete programmes and plans for restoration of peace. The Maoist problem was born and grew in the last seven years- the period when all today's major political parties had been in power at different times. The country saw a record political instability, horse - trading and all forms of political perversions during the period. However, these parties were engaged more in the bitter struggle for grabbing power than solving the country's burning problem. As a result, the nation fell into a quagmire of crisis. Nepal, which used to be known as a peaceful Shangri-La in the world, lost this image due to violence and political instability. Thus, the parties who were in power in the last 12 years are responsible for the problems the nation is facing at present. The irony is that those who failed to solve the problem are raising doubt over the intention of the peace process. The government is, no doubt, serious to restore peace in the country, the results of which are the declaration of cease-fire and the code of conduct. The Maoists too have publicly expressed their commitment to fully observe the code of conduct and restore peace. The formal peace talks and negotiation with the Maoist, as said by Minister for Works and Physical Planning Narayan Singh Pun, are to start soon. There should be no efforts from any quarters to derail and disturb the peace process. The nation has already suffered much due to the violence and terror and it can not afford any more violence. Violence only breeds violence. Nowhere in the world violence has been successful. It is the peaceful political exercises in keeping with the interest of the people only that bring progress and prosperity. Thus, violence must end and the present peace process must be successful in the larger interest of the nation and the people.

Population Spectre

A TWO-DAY workshop on population management at the local level was jointly organised in Biratnagar by the Ministry of Population and Environment and the Morang District Development Committee. The participants from different government offices, NGOs and social institutions not only forwarded various suggestions on the role to be played by the local bodies and non-governmental organisations in the identification of the population management programmes but also underlined the need for the cooperation of all sectors in population management. Population, of late, has not only become a major international issue, but also one of the foremost challenges for the nation. Presently, Planet Earth is having to feed and host billions of people. Each year, it is having to host millions more, thanks to the yearly rise in the world's population. But then, Planet Earth's feeding-or, in population speak, carrying-capacity, as all population experts worth their unnerving projections are wont to aver, is said to be limited. The world's population experts, to further reinforce their grim projections, maintain that if the population of humans tend to increase in a geometrical proportion, then the feeding capacity of Planet Earth only increases in an arithmetical proportion. In other words, if Planet Earth can only feed and host a limited number of humans, then the capacity of the humans to increase their numbers is unlimited. Concerning the latter, the exponential proliferation in the world's population since the times of, say the ancient Mohenjodaro civilisation, does lend credence to a part of their assertion. Had human civilisation not made technological breakthroughs in coaxing up more yields from the soils, the other half of the population experts' assertion could very well have come true.
However, this is not to say that the population experts were wrong, at least in a part of their common affirmation. Nor is it to say that Planet Earth, with the aid of continued scientific achievements to increase farm yields, could still be coaxed to feed and host additional billions to the existing billions of humans. For, just as the saying "There is a limit to everything", Planet Earth's capacity to continue feeding and sustaining the additional billions of humans hinges on certain immutable factors remaining constant-and which are still beyond human control. Hence, if human civilisation is to flourish for centuries to come, all nations much unitedly at various levels to control their respective populations.