News, Views From Nepal

Yuba Nath Lamsal Nepal has been deeply shattered and shocked by the devastated earthquake that struck the country on April 25. The magnitude of the earthquake was 7.9 in the Richter scale with epicenter in Barpak village of Gorkha district. But there are still debates on the magnitude of the April 25 earthquake. National Seismological Center has recorded it 7.6 in the Richter scale, western media call it of 7.8 and 7.9 magnitude , while Chinese media have termed   the April 25 earthquake of the magnitude of 8.1 in the Richter scale. Whatever the debate on its magnitude, the earthquake was powerful and massive, which has caused colossal damage to Nepal in terms of both collateral as well as psychological level. Even almost three weeks after the first powerful quake hit, fear has not disappeared from the mind of the people. It is because aftershocks continue to hit. Since then hundreds of smaller tremors have been felt. The earthquake killed more than 8000 people, injured...

Yuba Nath Lamsal It seems as though the constitution writing process has taken a back seat as political parties are heavily preoccupied in power sharing. Now political parties and their leaders are making their own calculation to reap maximum benefit out of the present situation of crisis and take the reign of power at their hands. In this race are the two largest parties namely the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML. The UCPN-Maoist and other smaller parties, too, are not an exception. Although it has not come into surface, the two ruling parties themselves are at odds internally.   Their discontent is related to the leadership of the government and not the constitution. The CPN-UML has already raised the issue that the time for the Nepali Congress to lead the coalition government is up and Sushil Koirala should quit to hand over the reign of the government to CPN-UML chairman KP Sharma Oli. The UML is citing the agreement reached with the NC in general and NC chief Sushil Koir...

Yuba Nath Lamsal Some call him as a Goggle Boy and some as an incarnation of God because of his exceptional mental ability and knowledge. But he says he is a common man. Aditya Dahal, a four year old boy, who has never set foot in school nor is he physically fit, possesses exceptional mental state that he has answer to every question and everything from politics, religion and philosophy to mathematics. Given his special quality and mental state, despite physical deformity, Aditya is, without any shade of doubt, a miracle boy. He cannot speak, stand and even hold his own head for which he needs support from others. Yet he writes and gives answer to every question in multiple languages including Nepali, Sanskrit and English. His parents claim that he can also write in Korean, Russian, German, Japanese and Chinese languages. Is this not a miracle? When asked to say something about The Rising Nepal, Aditya wrote in English ‘Barun Shamsher did well as the first editor of The...

Lately, politics in Nepal seems to be slowly limping back to normalcy. New political polarization is in the offing with UCPN-Maoist adopting different approach to let the constitution writing process going, while the ruling parties especially the Nepali Congress also appears to be little more flexible and accommodative to opposition’ demands and concerns. If these positive developments keep going for another couple of weeks, political parties are expected to hammer out a new formula for delivering the new constitution upon which the fate of the country and its thirty million people is directly linked. However, it is not yet certain that parties will really strike a compromise because of their dwindling credibility. In fact, parties’ credibility has declined so badly that people do not easily believe that our leaders will really make compromise for the country and the people. The new situation has installed optimism among the people as the opposition parties led by the UCPN-...