Farewell to YSR and The New York Times Archive

This post is not intended to be a detailed one. Just a small post out to bid goodbye to Dr. YSR.

First the sad news, The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Dr. Y.S Rajashekhara Reddy’s untimely demise on helicopter crash yesterday has brought this State of Andhra Pradesh in a state of shock, despair and grimming situation. The man was popular as the recent landslide victory of his in State Assembly Election and Lok Sabha Election has brought him again in power after being his victory in 2004 Election. He has just surpassed his 100 days in office. Despite numerous allegation of corruption against him, and allegation of factional politics in his native place Cuddapah, he was the man of masses. He promised a lot to the poor and the reports says that he promised most of them. That was the reason that he was elected again to serve the people of State of Andhra Pradesh. But, the God was very unkind to him and God wanted something otherwise.

Dr. Reddy was travelling to some remote village in Andhra Pradesh in a small helicopter and there were only five people. The climate and the nature’s fury, as the reports says, compelled the pilots to change the route. The plane left on wednesday morning around 9 and the helicopter went contactless with ATC immediately after some 15 minutes and nothing was heard. All machneries of state and Central Government was pressed in action and he was found along with 4 others, almost after 24 hours of his departure from Hyderabad, but when he was found, he alongwith other 4 were already with God. How merciless the God can be !

All the national Indian media have widely covered this incident and human sea on Hyderabad are there on the streets to pay their last respect. My office has also been closed for two days, yesterday and today, to pay respect to him. Eventhough I know him little and his political career, I had lots of respect for his hardwork and feel utterly sad for his untimely demise.

What we can do, when god has some other ideas! My farewell to Dr. YSR, and I am sure State of Andhra Pradesh will miss him for years.

Goodbye Dr. YSR, and May you rest in peace! Wish the God bestow courage to  family members to bear this hard truth.

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Sometime back, I was browsing The New York Times, one of the best newspapers in the world with wide range of information for any readers. The Economic and technology related columns are the things that are most read by me(by me!, I do not know about others.) While browsing the website, I stumbled on a great service of this NYT. About this, I wanted to write sometime back. This was the archive service.

The archive section gives you all the news from 1851 AD. You can read the free preview and to read the full article, you have to buy/subscribe. For all those reachers, I think it is a very great service though for normal common man like me, It may not be of that much value, or may be I can not afford.

But, I feel it is a revolutionary service.It helps greatly for the researchers and specially for the students of economics, political science and history, it should be of great help.

You can access NYT’s archive section from here:http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=a&query=nepal&srchst=p&submit.x=30&submit.y=11&submit=sub&hdlquery=&bylquery=&daterange=period&mon1=01&day1=01&year1=1981&mon2=09&day2=04&year2=2009

There you can see that I had searched the term Nepal and some of the news were of 1960-70 when there was Panchayat era in Nepal under the leadership of King Mahendra and there are archived news about B.P. Koirala, the first elected Prime Minister of Nepal.

You can see another link where it reports that King took the direct control of Government.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30814F73A541A7A93C4A81789D95F448685F9

Okay all, read this news and make the full use of them.

Have a good day.

Nepali Politics: Cant stay without commenting!!!

There is no difference between entire Nepal and my room in Hyderabad these days, in terms of power trouble. There is frequent electricity power cut in Hyderabad these days and in Nepal, both political power in addition to electricity power has dried up.

My laptop has some power back up and I have been rendered jobless in this dark night. It’s dark enough to be called dark at this night as the lights from candles are fading away even before they reach me.

I am jobless in this dark night, have been compelled to use internet through wireless( wi-fi) card. Had there been power, I would be using internet only but my net would be certainly faster on broadband n I would be roaming from one website to another. Now, in this powerless darkness, we have limited option and feel like commenting about power-political power, of course.

This week, when we start commenting on power and political power in Nepal, the name cerianly erupts in mind is Prachanda- the most hated, despiged, loved, hailed as leader etc. etc. depending on your choice and political inclination.

We are all aware of political dramas unfolding in Nepal. the sacking of army chief by Government, re-instatement of Army chief by President, PM’s prachanda’s resignation and his speech against foreign power. He said that he held his head high when foreign powers were forcing him to bend as per their wishes.

Many hailed Prachanda——-it was a ‘Hail Prachanda Era’.

In some speech, it was reported that he said that his resignation was a missile against foreign dogs or something like that. Hail Prachanda became louder.

N Today’s THE HINDU, one Indian Newspaper, published Prachanda’s interview that came as a real missile to many of us. U can see his interview and new related to this here:

THE HINDU NEWS    

THE HINDU NEWS   

Here, in the above news, Mr. Prachanda shamelessly reveals that he asked for India’s help to resolve the issue. Is that his greatness? When army row is Nepal’s internal matter, why he approached for India’s help?

That means all his tallks on nationality and not being influenced by foreign interference is just a tall claim, and how long he expects to make people fool by his inconsistent big talks??

I am sure we will soon hear on our backyard people saying, “Down with Prachanda”.

New Education Tax in Nepal: An Open Letter to Nepalese Finance Minister

This letter is written as comment to an article published by Dr. Baburam Bhattarai in his Facebook Profile. Dr. Baburam Bhattrai is Finance Minister of Nepal. The article that has been published in Dr. Bhattrai’s Facebook profile is of one of the Editorials published in THE KATHMANDU POST.

My Dear Bhattarai,

I am not sure if you are the same who we presume you to be, the Finance Minister of Nepal. I hope that you are the same Dr. Baburam Bhattarai maintaining your facebook profile by yourself. I will be delighted to know even if your close well-wisher is maintaining your profile on your behalf and of course, on your supervision.

Dear Hon’ble FM, I am after this news of educational tax/educational cess/educational service tax, whatever name is more appropriate, to know more about it and to understand its modalities. My efforts to know more has become very futile and am not able to get any satisfactory answer how this tax will be administered. I have a clear answer why this tax has been imposed but how it will be administered is far from clear, at least to me. The above Post editorial also throws light of Rambhakti only to a babu (referred to government in India) like you but is not clear what negative impact can it make to people of this country.

I have some doubts and opinion about this tax which I am going to raise in this comment and I hope that you will respond at least to some comments. I do not be waiting your direct reply to me as that is probably not possible but hope that you take your own time to address some of the issues.

Now, let me talk about the impacts of this tax. As I read some online news sites sometimes back, one of the eminently respectable Minister in the field of education of your cabinet said that it is the tax that shall be paid by private School organizations whereas the some learned Inland Revenue Department’s officers opined that parents of school going kids need to pay this extra tax out of their pockets. I have not understood if the tax is direct in nature or indirect where the liability is shifted to the customers (school going kids’ parents).

Assume that before the tax is imposed, A School is charging Rs 1000 per admission and Rs. 100 per month as tuition fees for 12 months. Now, does your law prohibits these schools to charge Rs. 1000 as admission cost and Rs. 50 as Education Cess (hereinafter referred as ‘EC’) and Rs. 1200 as tuition fees and Rs 60 as EC for a year? I do not think so. And if they charge in that way, the government hopefully gets Rs. 50+ Rs. 60= Rs. 110 as Education Cess per student and that also when these School administrations do not play fraud and create forge documents bribing notoriously corrupt administration. Assume that your kitty swells by Rs. 110 per student per year, but who has to face the burden finally?

Has the per capita income of people grown up in the last 6-7 months after you formed government? Can they bear this increased cost? If yes, what are the supporting data/statistics in addition to Mao and Marx says so, if their ideology says anything of this nature.

Assume that these school administrators do not raise separate invoices but raise a single amount without bifurcating the basic costs and tax amount and give parents a single invoice of Rs. 2310/- in our above example, what remedy and alternatives these parents have except to sell out more money from their pockets?

Your 5% Education Cess is surely going to burn the customers’ pockets only and the end results is that may be some parents have to drop their kids from the school? is this what you want?????

Any way out?

I think here You and I agree on one point. Yes, the EC should be imposed to education sector and on private organizations but modalities need to be clearly worked out before imposing this tax.

The first and foremost but fundamentally flawed presumption here is that all private schools earn profits and all are there for selfish motive of making surplus profits.

We need to stop seeing private sector as evil organ of state. We need to appreciate the contributions they have made in this country when you revolutionists were busy demolishing state infrastructures without making any distinctions for what communists are known for. Anyway, my point is that there are private schools today even in country side imparting good education. These schools can not be compared with those heavy weight business institutions which are educational in nature.

So, we need to make a distinction between who are liable not to pay tax and who are liable? How?

1. The Amount of Revenue earned: We can make a flat exemption limit something like an institution earning less than Rs. 10,00,000 per year is exempted from this additional tax. This ten or nine or may be five, should be decided from the committee of experts which are naturally endowed with more wisdom than me. Here, when I say ten, it is not profit but the total income received by that private school without any deductions.

2. We can designate areas in various levels and can provide exemptions to schools straightway even if their total turnover is more than that threshold limit. For example, a private school opened in a VDC in Karnali Zone can be exempted from this tax even if their turnover is more than threshold limit. Or we can provide incentives to private schools exempting from this tax if they are opened in less developed areas and where the backward classes reside. Say, exemption from this tax if cost per student per year is less than Rs. 1000, and exemption continues for 10 straight years. If we really need education to all, we need to provide incentives to private sectors to go to villages. There is no point just to encourage YCL to go to villages and continue their unholy violence.

3. On what turnover, you are going to impose that 5% EC? This is one of the fundamental factor to decide how progressive you are. If you are saying that School A which earns 1000 as profit and School B which earns 20 as profit should pay tax at uniform rate of 5% i.e.; Rs. 50 and Re. 1, that is just proportional to their income and School B is in fact, paying more in terms of money value as determined as per basic principles of economics. The principle of diminishing marginal utility makes Re. 1 for School B more valuable than Rs. 50 for School A. This is a good incentive to hide incomes, not to get registered, to forge documents, to bribe public servants and to do many more illegal things than to pay tax.

Then, what should be done???

First of all, it should be decided that in which income, the tax is to be levied. It comes to my mind that most naturally, it should be levied on profits before tax after all the deductions and exemptions if any as per other fiscal legislations.

Suppose as said by above editorial, the rate of income tax for Educational body is 25% as per company law or under any law as it has been administered today.

Suppose School A earns 1000 Rs. profit and School B earns Rs. 20 as Profit. Then, their tax liability till today will be Rs. 250 and Rs. 5. Now, the 5% EC should come here. It should be 5% of Rs. 250 for School A, and 5% of Rs. 5 for School B. That means total accumulated tax that School A and School B shall pay will be Rs. 262.50 and 5.25 respectively.

This makes their EC liability proportional to Educational tax liability. This is little more scientific than other ways and more progressive.

There can be another way to tax educational bodies which is more progressive based on certain slabs. Therefore, the more they earn, the higher percentage of tax they have to pay. The higher percentage of tax they have to pay, the higher amounts of tax they need to pay. Therefore, instead of imposing anything extra 5% tax uniformly, we need to work out systematic tax levy mechanism where these 5% will be automatically couched and tax be levied progressively.

That’s all for now. Hope I be back to comment more on other matters.

जोखिमपूर्ण जातीय विभाजन/Risky ethnic Devides.

(In the series of Consolidating Debates on Constituent Assembly Election and prospects of Federalism, these two articles in Nepali and translation in English have been published here. I agree most of the points presented in this Article.) 

जोखिमपूर्ण जातीय विभाजन
डा. आलोक बोहरा
कसरी युगौंदेखिका नेपाली समस्याको समाधान नेपाललाई जातीय धारमा विभाजन गरेर सम्पन्न गर्न सकिन्छ ? जातीय तथा लैंगिक विभेद, आर्थिक अभाव, पश्चिमी पहाडका भोकमरी तथा खाद्य सुरक्षाका समस्या, कमजोर प्रशासन संयन्त्र, स्वास्थ्य सेवाको अभाव, पर्यावरणीय असन्तुलन, सहरी अपराधहरू, बढ्दो जनसंख्याको चाप, बेरोजगारी, शैक्षिक भिन्नता, प्राकृतिक प्रकोपहरू जस्तै- तराईको बाढी सामना गर्ने असमर्थता, बालश्रम, चेलीबेटी बेचबिखन, सामन्ती प्रथा र कतिपय अकर्मण्यता इत्यादि सबै नेपाली समस्या हुन्, न कि मधेसी, लिम्बुवान, बाह्मण । 

Constituent Assembly Election and Federal System

[Though I disagree with the learned Authors on some of the minor points in this Article, I hope that this Article will make an interesting and educative reading. I will make some of my "notes of dissent" clear after some days, in a separate Article.]

 

By Surendra R Devkota and Shiva Gautam

 

Nepal, since its existence, never had a citizen-centered governance structure. All state machineries during the Rana and earlier regimes were focused on only tax collection from the citizens and power consolidation at the center.

 

Come One, Come All To Vote Your Destiny: Election Commission

[ My few Words: This article is a copy-paste Article written by Dinesh Wagle in United We Blog. I have copied this article from UWB's website as it helps to spread information about Constituent Assembly Election in Nepal. For further information about its original publication, see the bottom of this Article. All Copyrights over the Article and images belong to Original Authors.]

By Dinesh Wagle

As part of its unprecedented campaign, Election Commission will send 8 thousand volunteers in each and every house of all villages of Nepal to deliver invitation cards: You and your family members [who are registered at the Commission] are heartily invited to the nearby voting both for the Constituent Assembly election on November 22.

An invitation to your family to vote. Sketch by Dewen via Kantipur

Something politically motivated!!!!

I have not written anything in my blog so many days. So, feeling like I have missed out something.
I am somewhere far from my temporary-but-usual place. People call it Hi-Tech City. Yes, Hi-Tech City of Hyderabad. Flooded with fancy buildings, fancy offices with fancy names. It has given job to many, status to many, and of course, quick bucks to many. Hi-Tech City in Hyderabad is a part of changing Hyderabad to Cyberabad.

NEPAL in a New Height

It is a great pleasure for this blogger to share this News with its Readers. The date for Constituent Election (Sambidhan Sabha) has been declared in Nepal and It is going to be Mansir 6, according to Nepali Calender, i,e; November 22, 2007.

This is an election that decides the fate of ill fated monarchy in Nepal. That means, the oppressive royal regime and its coterie in Nepal can not impose their criminal, anti-social and undemocratic actions on 27 million freedom loving people.

Maoists’ Atrocities and Government’s Dillema: Both Obstacles to Peace Process

{THIS STUPID INTERNET/BLOG IS NOT ALLOWING ME TO EDIT MY POST AS I WANT. I WANTED TO PRESENT THIS ARTICLE WITH JUSTIFIED TEXT AND 1.5 SPACES BUT UNABLE TO DO SO. IT LOOKS VERY DIRTY AS OF NOW BUT I AM UNABLE TO EDIT IT FURTHER. I APOLOGIZE FOR THIS INCONVIENCE.}

There have been a lot of days since I posted a last entry in my blog. A lot of events have taken place during this period. Though nothing great and nothing significant.Life is like this, nothing great to mention and nothing great happening here in this foreign land……….

Reading news on the web has become a regular event, and the problem you will have when you have Internet in room is, you tend to read the same news again and again and whenever you open net next time, you expect very hot and breaking news. There is nothing great news I am going through these days but one particular type of News is particularly catching my eyes.Sometimes, my eyes are wide open and sometimes…….too narrow, coz of lots of surprises.There is a peace process going in Nepal among Maoists and Nepal Government. That’s great!!! But the pace of the peace process is too slow to observe even by some scientific instruments which, if available to detect pace of any dialogue.

That has worried a lot of Nepalese people around the world. It’s not going to help any one to achieve any long-term solution. There are a lot of factors that has contributed to this slow paced peace process. Meanwhile, whenever I read any news two things clearly emerge from the given situation.The first thing that clearly emerge is Maoist’s Proud in arms……This “Dambha”, “ghamanda” and disrespect to ceasefire code and other existing agreements is going to cost a lot to them. There were some sorts of sympathy and respect towards Maoists for making April Revolution Successful and for making people literate about the evil effects of monarchy and feudal forces. But, Maoists are slowly losing their place among the people. Their continuous extortions, kidnapping, and proud over their guns is going to cost a lot to them, to peace process and in long term to peace process. The people who were supporting Maoists and more importantly to republic cause may turn their face in hope of peace to some other retrograde forces.

When this happens, there is no one to blame but Maoists. There is another party to be blamed for slow peace process. They are once discarded but self certified democratic parties. The sheepish stand taken by GP Koirala about monarchy has hampered them to cling together. GP Koirala is making everything exposed that he never did politics based on principle rather than motivated by opportunities.

It is his democratic right to express his views but he does not have any right to enslave Nepali people under royal Maya. It is high time at this juncture to make unified Republic forces and start working for the peace. If Girija fails to board the republic flight, it will be he alone among the masses and let’s not swept by his views……….What Nepali want at this day is peace and Maoists must have that sense of responsible party not by way of force and terrorism but by conviction and dedication to peace process and human rights issues.

I wish everybody understand his or her responsibility.

Restructuring the State -Legally and Politically

[Somedays ago, when I again started blogging, I am writing on some light issues. Today, I have tried to write on the state of affairs of my country and since it is a very complex subject, I have tried to view entire process from my aspiration which I hope, will be Similar to majority of Nepalese People.]

Nepal, a beautiful Himalayan Kingdom of South Asia, is in cynosure of the people around the world because of the insurgency by the Maoist forces for more than 10 years. This revolution has meant many things for many people and brought the Kingdom almost at the brink of disaster. The Kingdom’s grievance was even more aggravated by King Gynendra’s stupid dreams of becoming powerful King and true incarnation of God. Now, all his dreams have been shattered after the people’s uprising, popularly called JanaAndolan—II and has pushed the King out of the periphery of Mainstream Politics stripping all his powers. The subsequent development of uprising has relieved him from all his responsibilities and he has so much free time to play Online Gambling.

This has created some hopes on the Nepalese People and their aspiration for peaceful Nepal seems to be close to them. But, sometimes, it looks like a delusion in the sense that you see peace very close to you but still very far from you and you hardly know how many hurdles are there before you to reach that destination of peace. We do not know how far we have to walk with our shattered dreams to shake hands with the peace.

The Recent News tells us the state of affairs of our state and both the parties in the peace process are busy in playing some kind of blame game to each other. These types of mud singlings from the respective parties do not help to solidify the peace process.

There were two agreements signed by political parties and Maoists- the first one was in Delhi; 12 point Agreement and second were in Kathmandu; 8 point agreements. These both agreements were termed as historic and there should be sincere efforts not to make them mere history. Even after signing these agreements, still some points are unclear-about the decommissioning of arms, dissolution of present parliament and People’s governments, status of king in the Interim Constitution, involvement of Maoists in the Government and arms management, among others.

The Government looks very listless to implement the agreements truly and a kind of feudal slavery among the political parties is very persistent. The letter sent by government to the United Nations without consulting the Maoists and immediate reservation letter by CPN (Maoist) President Prachanda shows the chaotic state of affairs.

Similarly, unabated lootings, extortions by the Maoists despite the Maoists leaders’ promises, raises serious concerns about their sincerity in the Peace Process. There is a great lack of confidence in each other and if this persists, peace can not move ahead.

 

The work of constitution assembly election and forming a new constitution are even more challenging jobs. The Interim Constitution Committee is busy to frame interim Constitution but the lack of consultation among the people and different sectors may create problem in its implementation. The Empowerment of women, Dalits (Low Castes People), JanJati ( People of different Races, Kinship & Tribes), workers, farmers etc. must be guaranteed in New Constitution with necessary Mechanisms of Affirmative actions and reservations.

When we all aspire to see a peaceful Nepal, Then, everybody’s obligation is there to caution them who are holding the power on our behalf. We must guide their actions and provide way to them to use the state mechanisms for the long term and viable just order in the Society. The Parties in the Peace Process must understand that peace is not just the absence of war but Peace is a comprehensive human security in all the sectors and should be long term achievements.