RUBEL CHAUDHARY CASE HEARING MONDAY

Kathmandu, 25 Dec.: The high-profile case of Rubel Chaudhary, Bangladeshi son-in-law of Deputy Prime Minister Suhata Koirala , will be taken up by the supreme court Monday.
Because of time shortage, a scheduled hearing wasn’t conducted Friday.
Complaints of irregularities have been filed against him by an advocate.
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KRISHNA PRASAD SHITAULA INSTIGATED RUBEL, NC

Kathmandu, 25 Dec.: Paras Shah and Rubel Choudhary are probably having a hard time counting the number of people thankful for the Chitwan fracas.
The Nepali Congress has managed to paper over – if temporarily – the rift created by party president Sushil Koirala’s contentious appointments. Sujata Koirala, who was on the verge of striking an alliance with Sher Bahadur Deuba to prise the general secretaryship away from Krishna Prasad Situala, has now been emboldened to go it alone, courtesy of her live-in son-in-law, Maaila Bale writes in Nepali Netbook..
Sitaula, it emerged early on, was the man who instigated a hesitant Rubel to file the complaint against the former crown prince. But Maila Baje feels that was aimed more at influencing the Nepal component of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s talks with his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao in New Delhi. Bringing all those skeletons out of the Mandikhatar closets while Sujata was abroad was secondary to Sitaula’s last-ditch effort to disprove the inherent inanity of the 12-point agreement.
The Maoists, for their part, managed to forge a semblance of unity between Mohan Baidya and Pushpa Kama Dahal factions as well as name India as the principal enemy. Granted, they clubbed “domestic reactionaries” with our southern neighbor. But the ex-rebels’ end-justifies-the-means reaction to the Paras controversy put all that in context. Chief dissident Dr. Baburam Bhattarai did rail against ex-royalty for trying to fish in troubled waters. But when he blamed the current leaders – his rivals within the party included – for emboldening them, Bhattarai sense of glee was unmistakable.
The Chitwan mêlée allowed the CPN-UML to deepen indecision on whether to espouse ideology (Maoists) or expediency (Nepali Congress) in going forward. That is no mean achievement for a party that exacerbated the farce succeeding the resignation of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal. As for the pro-monarchist Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal, rumors of a rift with the ex-royals seemed to be just that, considering the sustained street action.
The Americans were frantically trying to contain the embarrassment likely to result from the Wikileaks revelations on Nepal. Yet Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood, who faced Maoist black flags in Dhankuta, was the greater beneficiary. The Ministry of External Affairs’ public embrace of the ambassador did little to appease Sood or brighten his prospects in Nepal. With the hands of the law having reached the former crown prince, a public offense case has been filed in Solukhumbu against the local Maoist leader for hurling shoes at Sood over two months ago.
The special treatment police meted out to Rubel must have emboldened the kinsfolk of all the other drivers of new Nepal. Whether the women and children will be off limits, allowing the principals to monopolize the name-calling and finger-pointing, is another matter.
What else might have gone on behind the crescendo is anybody’s guess. If there were unusual arrivals or departures – aircraft as well as individuals – at the airport, someone somewhere must have taken note. Less visible would have been any private deliberations at key venues.
If Nepal were to take a decisive turn in the new year, it would be hard not to see the ambience – if not entirely the essence – of this period as a key spur.
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How NGO careerists cruise around

Kathmandu, 25 Dec.: For a full fortnight, Violence Against Women (VAW) was mounted in Nepal once again recently. Actually, the term “Nepal” might be a misnomer, considering that the campaign was basically confined to Kathmandu. While the topic is both timely and relevant not only in Nepal but even quite a few developed nations, VAW seems to be an area specialized by a small number of people claiming to be gender activists, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review..
Going by media reports, it seems that Nepal is the only country in the whole world to celebrate the occasion with such massive campaigns. National media in this country give wide coverage, as compared to their counterparts in other South Asian countries, to such issues. What is the outcome? Pat will come the answer, “Awareness raising.” Great, but talk shop limited to the capital alone will not render the desired results.
A number of NGO activists lick their lips whenever the fortnight arrives. It means money to spend in interaction programs and rallies. Substantial amounts of the allocated budget are spent for “coordination” and such other heads that support the lavish lifestyles of most of those projecting themselves as gender activists. It would be the least surprising if these individuals joined a chorus to condemn the complaints such as the one penned in this column. They would not hesitate to put the tag that the writer is extremely biased against women.
But tongue wagging cannot conceal facts. Those making a lucrative career out of campaigns supposedly launched to promote the welfare of the underdog will go to any length to claim “big achievements”, as if whatever positive achievements have been made on the gender equality front in this once heavily patriarchal society should be credited to them. Some writers complained in a number of newspapers during the VAW fortnight recently that much money was wasted on empty talks at five star hotels by a few who had the right contacts to secure funds for rollicking in the capital.
This author, however, would not dismiss the importance of interaction programs altogether. But year after year, confining an issue to the capital would not make a campaign effective. Efforts should be made to tax one’s brains and reach out to the larger parts of Nepal with new ideas and initiatives.
If all the money spent by the nearly 300 INGOs were to be accounted for in public, transparency would be translated into action in Nepal as a model country worth emulating. INGOs in the past decade are known to sanction funds more on the basis of political patronage or personal contacts. This writer does not go about with a begging bowl for personal benefits, and hence you can rule out any suspicion that this writing is an outcome of pure and simple spite. I am a fervent champion of exposing the pretentious and charlatans, even if they happen to be of the fair sex who deal in not so fair schemes in the name of “positive discrimination”.
It has been too long that a handful of women based in Kathmandu have been fluttering around, with claims that they are not only the best but also the only ones equipped with the knowledge for campaign for women’s issues. Not long ago, there was this lady from the land of the Melting Pot who organized Pot Luck every month for Nepali women of her nomination to contribute to the gathering and discuss anything and everything. Dance, entertainment and merriment were also part of the treat. A couple of the patricians used to gate crash shamelessly. No crackpot would deny the spirit behind the gathering. But the content of the talk left most participants bored to nearly death. It was only the prospect of being in the good book of the coordinator for an IVVP trip or some financial support for a program that sustained them on two feet. The organizer lady returned to the land of opportunities, and our gender activists failed to give continuation to the show.
Note the various programs organized by gender specialists. Their key speakers and indeed the chief guest are more often than not mostly males. Many of the organizers blame all but themselves, admonishing the media to do this and not to that. They spend literally crores of rupees on “training” writers, teachers, lawyers and journalists, and yet they themselves cannot produce something substantial by way of books or well-researched articles on a theme they so loudly claim to have developed such expertise that happens to have upgraded their lifestyles beyond recognition so quickly.
A fictional A. Deuba would not be able to maintain her current lifestyle had she been a mere salaried staff at a Western agency, even if she happens to be the grand child of the man who ordered the murder of the quartet hailed by Nepalis as great martyrs. She would not have been able to raise the mansion she has built for her hubby who goes about saying that he never made money from politics.
Busy Bee Rana, who, before joining a Gender Communication Group, was a lower secondary school teacher and later joined as a newsreader at Nepal Television, has become such a globe-trotter without any known contribution of substance. A B.A. in humanities, she has secured many commissions from UNDP and its ancillary agencies as an expert on—Holy Lord—MDGs (Millennium Development Goals)! St. Mary’s network works, you know. As she was only a B.A., the related regulation was specially amended to suit her particular academic qualification to head the National Women’s Commission. I do not know whether her current successor benefited from it or the qualification had to be lowered more. In Loktantra, the lowering of the minimum academic qualification has been a norm rather than an exception.
Dream Malla advocates through tons of donor funds and goes about giving opinions on beauty tips and all that. Apparently, her legal expertise invested in NGOism has raised her living standards considerably. Then there is UNFAMOUS agency that makes a lot of noise for the pots of funds it obtains and distributes. Just go through what activities it has sponsored and check the public credentials of the trainers and organizers. The state of affairs will, consequently, become crystal clear.
This is how INGOs-NGO nexus runs in this country where most people have a negative impression of these groups that make lofty promises but rarely deliver the goods thus assured. They make a career out of NGOism. More details will follow, if available some other time.
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