You must first agree to me that the pace of transformation in Nepal is much faster than anyone can imagine. Just in a little more than two decades, we toppled panchayat system and restored multi-party democracy, fought people's war, signed truce, abolished monarchy, held two Constituent Assembly (CA) elections and so forth and so on. Career of some politicians was on a roller-coaster ride. They became richest citizens in matter of years and some completed full circle landing into jail cells.

 

This must give you some hint what I intend to talk about. My first piece of advice is: let’s forget about the so called long horizon planning for Nepal. That is simply not required for us as we can change the face of this country in matter of five years at the maximum. For certainty of this, one can swear by the name of CA members who promised to give you a new constitution in two years time. Oopps! That was the old promise. The new one is: within one year!

 

Do you have any idea how Nepal will look like after five years? I have some and you may add on to them. While some people continue to cry foul that the country is faced with a gripping financial crisis, the profit margins of the banks will not narrow down. The trade union leaders will become true owners of the mills and factories replicating the casino story. This will create a new equitable business society. The new criteria for CIP will be introduced such that it will be awarded to the largest tax evaders who have managed to siphon funds to global safe havens. Those who can't evade will have prison cells wide open.

 

The central bank will consolidate its policy of regulating good institutions with the clear intention of ruining them and the practice of protecting all the bad ones who have failed the stress test will be further enhanced. Changing the indirect practice of awarding the Home Ministry to the politician who provides patronage to goons and dons, there will be direct appointment from among the dons themselves to avoid confusion. And, the finance portfolio will only be given to the one who is the largest 'donation' contributor to the ruling party. This also is analogous to the direct deal.

 

Education will become universal as every next household of the street will be converted into a private school by those teachers who continue to draw salary from publicly funded universities. Every SACCOS will turn into a large scale commercial bank and there will be at least three central banks to avoid the unhealthy contest among political parties to appoint their respective candidate as the governor. It is absolutely logical to do so. When BFIs increase, you need more supervisors.

 

We will have a separate stock exchange to trade the developing license of hydropower projects as every possible creek will have been licensed by then to the occupiers, not the developers. When the communist influence in running the state augments, every private business will be nationalized and every follower of any big political leader will have chance to become a general manager of an SOE. 

 

The real eye-catcher will be the scenes from the cities, where all cars will be displaced by bicycles as there would be no road left to run the cars. As the symbol of social status, however, the car owners will keep them in large showcases constructed by demolishing their ground floor rooms of the residence. Petrol will be sold in milliliters and will be used as the perfume to give a message that the user actually owned a car.

 

As all the males will migrate to work in the Gulf or East Asia as workers, the female-male ratio is likely to be two to one and the NGOs working for male rights will flourish. Our currency will vanish and we will be proud users of foreign currency even to buy vegetables on the streets. As you are aware that this visioning is a never exhaustive exercise, you can keep on adding to the list of what could happen in five years from now.