Nepali audience has become quite used to, to hear about incessant political conspiracy that has thrived as a very lucrative industry here for last couple of decades now.  It in fact undermines the inherent capacity of the corporate world to conspire at least at par to their political peers. One wonders, are the conspiracies and intrigues less in Nepal’s corporate sector or is it just the case these aspects are getting less coverage in media than they actually deserve? A thorough investigation is warranted. 

 

Before government finally picked Dr Chiranjibi Nepal as the sixteenth governor of the NRB, the rumors were rife that several groups of corporate honchos were conspiring to put their candidacy for this hot chair. One particularly tempting story was the search of a candidate capable of unlocking a big purse of four billion rupees flown in from a distant island to an unnamed project of a business group that has recorded meteoric rise in recent years.

Whether the group used multiple tentacles reaching out to every possible candidate including ultimately successful Dr Nepal is indeed a matter of investigation. But it unequivocally establishes the fact that our corporate world is not lagging behind in running the conspiracy industry.

 

When a Turkish Airlines plane skidded away from the TIA runway last month, there was very huge corporate hustle and bustle around. The advocates of new airports found an opportune movement to push their cause and invited their possible foreign partners to discuss the matter with the Nepali authorities. The wholesalers of heavy-duty crane sellers were suddenly active to outsmart their potential competitors to push sell their products to CAAN, so that this government undertaking can handle other similar accident. 

 

Even the workers’ strike at Upper Tamakoshi could be part of corporate conspiracy, the insiders claim. There is a very concerted design to prove this supposedly most attractive hydel project a failure. Is this conspiracy game less interesting than a politician trying to oust its opponent from the post of the prime minister?

 

Even in banking sector, stealing, sacking and picking of CEOs has always been a mysterious game. Nobody knows why our dear friend Parshuram Kunwar Chhetri chose to join the Grand Bank as CEO and why was he so quickly relieved from the position. If you look at movement of experts in banking sector, facilitated greatly the popular tactics of head hunts, it is not difficult to make out how much cooking goes within the corporate world, before taking these decisions.

 

It is precisely the reason why our regulatory agencies are filled by the political cadres who are well trained carrying out effective conspiracies. That is how a transmission mechanism of skills from the political sector to the corporate sector could be established. Every regulatory body now looks like a sister organization of the political party in power and the executives in them are very efficient conspirers to put corporates and other stakeholders of opposite political beliefs at bay.

 

In this case, one cannot blame to the politics of the country for not teaching anything that is emulative to the private and corporate sectors. The expertise gained by the corporate sector on how to conspire effectively to evade regulation, tax and corporate responsibility and yet to be able to keep the influential supervisors at good humour is not the quality one could easily undermine.

 

Interestingly in Nepal, even the business media hardly gives any space to corporate conspiracies, which could well be the case of another layer of conspiracy. The business entities may be conspiring to conceal the real information or it has become a trade-off with the business they offer to the media outlets. 

 

Whatever may be the case, there are conspiracies abound. Which conspiracy is more intense ? Political or corporate ? It is the question that I and you should now conspire to answer.