--- By Madan Lamsal 

 

Of late, the debate over how Nepal could be developed faster has become more frequent in mass media and among intelligentsia. The answer to this seemingly complex question is rather simple, as it suffices to have a single strategy — Go abroad! By the time you read this piece, our Prime Minister Sushil Koirala should have been back from his foreign junket meant for his health check-up. UML parliamentary party leader KP Oli is already back with killing spirit from Bangkok after being perfectly healthy to take on his rival MK Nepal in the head-on fight for his Party's chairmanship. These trips by our great leaders vindicate Nepal's established credibility on quality of health service providers. They are truly specialized in referral services. After all, health check-up is an essential component of Nepali excuse to travel abroad.

 

Not only the sick and the dilapidated have incentive to travel to foreign countries, healthier, younger and more adventure-seeking lot has a compulsion to do so. Look at young college students! There may be colleges with all foreign names ranging from Harvard, Oxford to mush customized Kath ford, but there are not any facilities like discotheques, night clubs, parks, dedicated red-light areas and other hangouts to hold their heart back here. They cannot waste their youth-hood without enjoying these basic facilities.

 

Our government employees are also on constant look out for the opportunity in foreign country in any pretext available – seminar, workshop, meeting, training or studies. As divulged by our own minister for general administration, these clever bureaucrats ranging from a junior clerk to the secretary in a ministry make double, treble or quadruple use of these trips. They attend the said programme, meet their offspring studying there, explore opportunities to obtain permanent residency and above all save their perks and allowances paid in dollars. For this reason, each government employee is keenly peeping into another opportunity to leave the country no sooner his one trip is over.

 

Foreign travel is natural for the entrepreneurs and business people in connection with their businesses, but their families are also forced to be there for shopping, adventure and family reunions. We are not unfamiliar with the unemployed people travelling en masse to foreign land. Thanks to our country's overall development explained by our politician in their so frequent public speeches and media interviews. Our own Mustang riding former Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai had proclaimed long ago that the key to Nepal's development is in the hands of the foreigners. Therefore, only way to develop Nepal faster is to send more and more of Nepali politicians to foreign countries, particularly to the neighbouring ones. It also saves our politician from frequently entering into embassies based in Kathmandu, which is a risky proposition from the secrecy point of view.

 

The members of Constituent Assembly (CA) are too dying to visit those resorts in a foreign country where part or whole of our constitution is being drafted. In fact it is the duty and responsibility of every CA member to find out about the Nepal's new constitution writing process. That is why you see so low attendance in the House meetings. Only worrying recent news to these CA members is that there are occasional legal actions for those who use their diplomatic passports for other than their own travel purposes. In fact, no such actions should be taken in the name of misusing the red passport, as it is only a creative use of available resources without costing anything for Nepal.

 

If everything we use, from salt to satellite, comes from foreign countries, every decision of mapping and delineating the borders of new provinces in Nepal, and also the task of drafting the constitution is not done in Nepal, why should we stay here? Let’s all plan to leave this country. This is indeed the best strategy to develop Nepal.

 

It may sound like a detour in development discourse, but it is unquestionably the best strategy.