Photo: SUMAN NEPALI On Thursday, Ram Chandra Paudel of the Nepali Congress (NC) was elected the third president of Nepal, defeating Subhas Nembang of the UML. Paudel received 33,802 votes out of out of 49,591 cast votes by weightage, while Nembang received 15,518 votes. 831 out of 881 eligible votes were cast in the election. This included 313 out of 332 members of the upper and lower Houses of Parliament as well as 518 out of 550 members of the Provincial Assemblies. The election of Paudel of the  as president was a foregone conclusion, but what is less certain now is what the bruisi ..read more

After the Nepal government announced it would provide Rs15 per meal for community schools to serve lunch (दिवा खाजा) to students, headmasters in Kathmandu took a stand. “Rs15 is not sufficient, we demanded additional money. The municipality also realised that Rs15 was not enough,” says Dilli Prasad Sharma Khanal, principal at Vijaya Memorial Secondary School in Dillibazar. Last year, Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) responded by topping up the Rs15 with another Rs10, and also said it would provide the full Rs25 to feed students in Grades 7 and 8 in its 89 community sc ..read more

After the Sugauli Treaty of 1816 that brought the Anglo-Nepal War to an end, Nepal was nominally independent, but was treated by the British as just another Indian princely state.  Jang Bahadur Rana took power after the gory Kot coup in 1847, and to gauge if it was wise to go to war with Britain to wrest back territory lost in 1816, got himself invited by Queen Victoria — becoming the first subcontinental royalty to visit England in 1850.  After inspecting cannon factories and military installations, Jang was awed by the might of the British Empire. He and his descendants who ru ..read more

Despite the recent decrease in global oil tariff, Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) this week decided not to reduce prices of petrol, diesel and Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF), saying it needed to make up for previous losses. However, high fuel costs have had a dampening effect on aviation which in turn has affected the revival of post-Covid tourism in Nepal. International airlines serving Kathmandu say they can add frequency, but are deterred by fuel costs, as well as high ground handling and landing charges at Kathmandu airport. NOC officials say this is because of the need to bring th ..read more

High fuel costs and concerns about air safety have dampened growth of Nepal’s domestic aviation sector despite passenger demand remaining high. Prominent media coverage of the crash of Yeti691 in Pokhara on 15 January led to massive cancellations just as bookings were being firmed up for the spring trekking season. For one month, passenger volume dropped sharply, but is now picking up again.  Pokhara still wears a deserted look, and tourist footfalls have fallen along popular trails in Manang and Annapurna. Even so, Nepal’s biggest domestic airline Buddha Air is making Pokh ..read more

This is the 25th instalment of Diaspora Diaries, a regular series in Nepali Times with stories of Nepalis living and working abroad.  I am 70 years old, and finally got to travel to the UAE where two of my sons live. It was multiple firsts: the first time I left the country, the first time I got on a plane, and more importantly, it was the first time I saw what my sons, Krishna and Ram, had been describing to me for the last decades that they have been working overseas. We struggled to raise our children amidst poverty and hardship to ensure they got a g ..read more

Illustration: DIWAKAR CHATTRI The candidacy of Ram Chandra Paudel for Nepal’s next presidency backed by eight parties including the Nepali Congress and Maoist Centre this week is the latest proof (if any is still needed) of Nepal’s entrenched political patriarchy. The series of backroom deals in the run-up to presidential elections on 9 March was meant to stop K P Oli of the UML from being all-too-powerful two-and-a-half years down the line when his party would have president, prime minister and speaker. In this quagmire, we are losing a chance to elect a non-political president respected ..read more

Photos: SUMAN NEPALI Subha Shrestha (pictured) got married at 18 and became a mother at 21. A few years later, she was a struggling single mother trying to earn enough to raise her young son. She had become the sole breadwinner of her family, and had to do all the unpaid household work as well. “If you ask me, it is harder to be a homemaker than working outside the home,” says Shrestha. Ask any Nepali: being a doctor or engineer is the most desired and respected profession in the country. A job in the military is regarded as being the toughest, and bank CEOs make the most money. But ..read more

Pratibha Rajbhandari, CEO of NABIC. Photo: NISHU JOSHI When Pratibha Rajbhandari worked with small business owners in New York as an MBA student, she had no idea that in some years, she would be applying what she learned to help Nepali women back home start their own businesses. Rajbhandari had a Bachelor’s degree in Finance, and first worked at a hedge fund in New Jersey after which she joined the MBA program at New York’s Pace University. There, she joined the university’s Small Business Development Center as an adviser.  “The plan, since the very beginning, was to return to Nepal ..read more

All photos: NEPALI TIMES ARCHIVE Spring is in the air. On Holi on 6 and 7 March, people shower each other with coloured water and paint faces with pigment.  Holi is fun, flirtatious, and philosophical: marking the passing of seasons and the material world, and new beginnings.  In the week leading up to Holi, the Manandhars of Kathmandu have erected a tall chir bamboo pole outside Hanuman Dhoka Palace. From the three circular pagoda-like tiers at the top hang multi-coloured fabric which flows out in the breeze.  Inspired by the famous episode from Kri ..read more