Two gentlemen from Tengra village, Rauthat district

N.P.Upadhyaya

Nepali media has a habit of highlighting the roles and the contributions of those who belong to higher political or social or even economic echelons. I, for one, don't know as to why my colleagues do this? However, barring a few, not so many Nepali newspapers do report on those who remain well below poverty line and confront problems two meals a day. We in the media normally ignore those who loiter in the footpath considering them as not worth the news. In doing so, we are committing crimes of the highest order and that is unpardonable. We have left those untouched who in effect should have been brought to the fore so that the society, the leadership and the establishment could know as to what is happening outside the glittering lights of the Kathmandu valley.

To day I present my readers the two gentlemen from Rauthat district. This is the constituency of Monsieur Madhav Kumar Nepal, the man who makes and unmakes governments in Nepal. Madhav Nepal has reasons to be happy when he gets invitations from Thailand and Korea for trips. He has also reasons to rejoice for having been able to swing the country's politics as and when he so desires. The UML leader is a national hero but not for the voters who voted him to power. He is absolved from his parliamentary duties for he is above the nitty-gritty's of his own constituencies. His voters have become less-demanding for they know that he will not keep the promises that he made at time of the elections nor this time if he happens to be there. His voters say that he has not even traveled to his constituency after the elections. But then yet people feel elated when they listen through radio Nepal that their representative controls the country's politics.

Consoling oneself is the best medicine, it is said. For so many reasons, the UML leader has become like a stranger in his own constituency. So is Madhav's party colleague, Dr. Bansidhar Mishra. He too refrains from meeting his own voters in the district's ward number 3 from where he got elected last general elections.

All these penned in the preceding paragraph is not my own conclusion but of those whom I met at my office Saturday afternoon. The two gentlemen thus express their pains to me. The text follows.

I am Bhubneshwar Lal Sah and my friend is Sukh Lal Sah. We both hail from the same village, TENGRA, which is some ten miles South-West from a town, Chandra Nigah Pur, in Rauthat. We have to walk for four hours to our village from the town. We have no roads, no electrical power and other facilities that are due to us.

I luckily educated myself up to the fourth standard. Rest I could not continue for want of money. And more so I have parents who are suffering old age problems. I have to feed them from my Kathmandu earnings.

This years' flood caused panic in the village close to us. Every thing was damaged. The people have lost all they had.

My friend, Sukhlal, too has a family bigger in size. Altogether fifteen or so and he has to feed them all together with his two brothers. It is all chaos in the village. People from my village either take shelter in Kathmandu or flee to Punjab and other parts of India for jobs. A rough estimate would have that about hundred Nepali villagers from my own villages would have gone either to Punjab or come to Kathmandu in search of jobs. The Nepali government has yet to reach to our villages and understand our problems. Our future has already become uncertain and the government and the leaders appear apathetic to our genuine concerns.

We both work together with a joint funding. At the moment we are moving from one place to the other and repair Gas Stoves or even Kerosene Stoves an thus manage two meals a day. Since the earnings are meager, we have yet not been able to send money to our parents in Tengra.

We would wish that our leaders seated in Kathmandu listened to our concerns and do the needful or else our faith on them will vanish.

Is Madhav Nepal and Mishra listening? Perhaps not. They apparently are busy in providing a shape to the government that ultimately suited to their party interests.

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