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January, 2005 |
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No Laughing Matter |
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Actors and Attitudes In my professional life I have come across different situations and different people. Here are few examples which show the actors and their attitudes reflecting our society today. When
tenders were floated for the tunnel of the Melamchi Drinking Water Project
many international construction companies vied with one another to get the
contract. The stakes were very high as the job of digging inside the rocks
and mountains required great engineering skill and construction expertise.
Nepali contractors also took part in the bid. Their estimates were, however,
significantly lower. Curiously the board invited the Nepali bidder over to
discuss the plans. The chairman of the board asked the Nepali bidder ‘Have
you any experience of undertaking this kind of work?’ ‘Indeed we have,’ was the
prompt reply. ‘We dug a lot of tube wells in the valleys and Terai areas
of Nepal and we can bore holes anywhere.’ ‘This is not as simple as
that. How will you connect the tunnel from one side of the hills to the
other?’ ‘Simple,’ replied the
Nepali bidder, ‘I will dig from one end and my colleague from the
other.’ The chairman was astounded.
‘You don’t realise that it will need a lot of accurate calculation to
get the two tunnels to meet at the same point inside the hill. The foreign
companies’ estimates are over USD 500 million each and you think you can
do the same job for USD 200 million. How will that be possible?’ ‘What is bothering you?’
demanded the Nepali bidder, ‘if our two tunnels don’t meet, you will get
two tunnels for the same cost instead of one.’ Meaning
of Inflation A senior official of the
Central Bank was trying hard to explain the reasons of inflation in a simple
language to the newly recruited management trainees under the Financial
Sector Reform Project. The trainees could not understand how a galloping
rate of price rise occurs when the income level remains the same. So the
officer tried to explain it by giving an example: ‘The price of an entrance
ticket to the Birendra International Convention Centre for the ongoing trade
fair is Rs. 50 per person while it was Rs. 10 only four or five years ago.
That is inflation. Did you get it?’ ‘Yes sir, that is trade
fair inflation. Then what do you say about the vast increase in the number
of visitors in the trade fair?’ The officer, bewildered for a
while, replied, ‘Call it population inflation.’ Knitting
Time A woman working for the
Department of Industry, started to knit a sweater for her husband. Several
days passed without any progress on the half done sweater. Her husband asks
her why. She replied, ‘I have not
been going to the office for the last few days, so I did not have the time
to finish it.’ To
be an Accountant A senior official of the
Nepal Oil Corporation was interviewing an applicant for the position of the
Accounts Officer. The manager knowingly asked very simple question to the
candidate, ‘How much is two plus two?’ The person jumped up, opened
the door, and peered up and down the hall. When he was sure that nobody was
within earshot, he closed the door as well as all the windows, returned to
the desk and whispered, ‘How much do you want it to be?’ He was hired on
the spot! Nepal’s
economy An economist who is said to
be close to the government, said in a seminar on poverty alleviation
organised by the World Bank, ‘Despite the ongoing war, Nepal’s economy
is still not bad. It is looking up.’ A journalist promptly replied, ‘Yes towards the heavens! Only God can save it now.’ |
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