All Fake Things Must Come to an End!

Everything seems to be fake in his land of ours. We have fake pilots, fake doctors and fake engineers. I guess these folks just wanted to follow their dreams so badly that they had to resort to such nataks. 

It looks like we might have to ask for original certificates attested by the government whenever we visit a doctor, fly on a plane or if we have to build a house or a bridge for the community.  There are thousands of doctors in this land. There might a few hundred who have fake SLC or ISc certificates. But the fake ones give the real ones a bad name. 

But we should tell them that they should not lose hope. So what if you can no longer fly a plane and have to stay on the ground instead of the air?  You can still work at the counter and sell tickets and at least give a better orientation to the passenger on the flight time and what you can see up there. 

Yes, you can no longer practice medicine or your specialty but you can still be a health worker and assist the doctor in some ways possible. At least that would help folks in the rural areas where witch doctors continue to rule and get to eat the chicken and local moonshine. 

Yes, go to our hills and mountains and work at our health posts and you can always refer the patients to the doctors if they suffer from major problems. But for simple headaches and stomach problems, a health worker can do much than the quacks in the villages.

Well, you might not be allowed to build a house or a bridge or even pave the road but you can still walk around carrying the big ruler or a measuring tape for another engineer. You can still be close to your dream or you can go back to school and do it all over again and show us that you really want to do it the right way. 

I think our fake fakirs should just join a political party and be a neta. After all, you really don’t need any certificate at all to be a neta. You don’t even have to pass high school. There are probably a million netas in this land and all of them are fake. Yes, we have yet to find one genuine leader in this land. And we have seen it all. 

Even having a PhD won’t make you a leader. And just because you are eight-class pass doesn’t make you a neta either.  All these politicians only know one thing. They know how to talk gibberish and they can go on for hours while for the most of us, our conversation will end in less than a minute or two. 

But for our netas, they can talk and talk but will never walk the walk. They are not doers . They do not get things done. They would rather break things up for their own personal gain. They would sell this country to the highest bidder. They do not care about the people at all. 

They are in it for make as much illegal money as possible and leave the country in tatters. So, our netas are evildoers and maybe we might have to find a witchdoctor who can get rid of all the evil in this land with just a help of a cock and a bottle of local raksi.

And the funny thing in this country is that when the government takes action against such fake fairs, we get bandas instead. Yes, some of our hospitals are shut down because these folks are not happy that the government wants to punish fake doctors. Our cooking gas bottlers give us faulty cylinders The cylinders explode and folks die. 

The government wants to punish the gas wallahs but instead the gas wallahs threaten to shut down their business. It’s the same with the bus wallahs. Our transport mafia ply old rusty buses on the road and get away with it. They fix their prices and the government can’t do a thing about it. We, the common folks are the ones who get the short shift.

It seems that our byaparis can get away with fake VAT bills and evade taxes. It seems that our private school wallahs can continue to fleece parents in the name of education. It seems that folks can sell adulterated stuff be it fuel or food and nobody can do a thing about it. Who run this country anyway ?  

Is it our stupid corrupt clowns or lazy civil servants or shady contractors or stone-hurling cadres? No, this country is run by fake fakirs who continue to break the law and can get away with it because they pay off our netas and sarkari hakim sahebs. And these corrupt buffoons don’t want to kill the golden goose because if they do then they will be without dough and without the dough, they will be without power and without the power, they will be just another Nepali. 

And our netas are not just another ordinary Nepali like you and me. They are special. The country owes them everything while they owe nothing to this land and its people. That’s how it is and we need a million Dr KC if we want to get rid of evil in this land. Until then , we will continue to be ruled by clowns and we have no option but to enjoy their circus acts even if it means losing your wallet, life savings , your house and in the end, your own country!

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at maguffadi@gmail.com

Naya Shakti

Amrika has Bill & Hillary. What do we have? We have our own Baburam and Hisila. Bill used to be a dirty young man who liked to chase other women. Today, he is running around campaigning for his woman to be the first naari in the White House.  Well, he also has his own foundation that works to improve global health and provide opportunities for women as well. 

Our Baburam used to be a smart young man who wanted to change this country.  Today, he is running around trying to persuade us that his new political party, Naya Shakti ,  will solve all the problems in this land.  Bill has charisma and he got away with anything because of it.

Baburam has Karishma and if our Kollywood superstar continues to host any of the programs of Naya Shakti then his party might get nothing. With due respect to Karishma, but why did no one ask her to do her homework, and maybe a rehearsal or two before making fool of herself? 

I think it would be better to stick to Nepali rather than trying to impress us with Angrezi words.  And please make sure you get the names of bideshis right instead of trying to figure it out at the last minute. But we have to give her some credit for it is not an easy job to speak in front of thousands of people. And  Pradeep Giri should be happy that he has been awarded a honorary doctorate and his ancestors were actually Bhattarais.

When Bill was busy smoking a cigar with an intern at the White House, Baburam was busy writing the 40-point demands. But did Dr Saheb fufill those demands when he was living in Baluwatar?

Our border with India is not controlled yet and vehicles with Indian plates are free to roam around the country.  We are still stuck with the old treaty with India. Our young lads continue to service in the British and Indian Army. It would be better in terms of pay and honor if we offered to contribute a strong 100,000 force to the United Nations as rapid reaction force anywhere in the world instead. 

Yes, maybe we can just disband the national army in this country and just make it a UN force. At least half of our soldiers won’t be sleeping in bunkers then while only senior Army officers get to have all the fun. At least our soldiers will get a few thousand dollars and our Generals can make ten times more if we just became a standing UN force.

Baburam wanted the government then to institute work permits for foreigners. When he was our PM, he must have forgotten about it. He did not want foreign investment then but signed BIPPA with India. And whatever happened to banning everything Hindi from cinemas to magazines and what not? Or we can watch Hindi movies with our actors doing the voice-overs.

We do have a new constitution but what good is it if our Madhesis and Janjatis are not happy with it?  Our comrades then wanted all special rights of then King and his family to be ended but Gyanu Uncle continues to get security from the state. 

Well, if all our mini-Maharajas get thousands of security personnel for their security then giving the Ex-Maharaja some should not hurt the state.  After all, we the taxpayers have to foot the bill anyway.

We are a secular state today but Kamal Thapa is not happy with it and it looks Khum Bahadur, the corrupt convicted Congressi is getting all the love from some folks across the border. The only good thing about the 40-point demands then was that daughters should be given equal property rights as sons. 

But the discrimination and exploitation based on caste continues even today. We hear about folks accused of being witches are made to eat human waste and suffer physical assault. The state does nothing about it.

It’s funny that Baburam wanted to hang all the dalals in the land and have their property confiscated but when our comrades came into power, it was the dalals who got closer and made more dough as usual. Swiss voters rejected the guaranteed income proposal recently but our comrades had wanted a stipend for all and guaranteed work twenty years ago. What happened to that natak when they were in power?

The government has yet to control inflation and daily essential goods are no longer affordable to common folks. It seems that our purchasing power declines every year whereas the net worth of our clowns, civil servants and contractors increase every year.

So what did we learn from Baburam’s demands from twenty years ago? That coming with the demands is easy but implementing is difficult even for those who demanded such stuff and then came to power and had the authority to implement their own demands.

So can Naya Shakti really change Nepal? Nope. Half the members of the new party are former Maoists and they want a leftist party. The other half are former civil servants and common folks who just want a democratic party that follows the rules. We all look at Baburam and see a smart Phd wallah. His only claim to fame is that he was a SLC board first once. Yes, he has the brains but does he have the balls? After all you need both money and muscles to be a power player in this land.

Hillary is more than likely to be the next Amriki President if she can convince all the minorities to vote for her instead of a shady businessman who wants to be the next Hitler. Will our Hisila did be the first naari PM in our land? Nope. I sometimes feel sorry for Baburam. Yes, he is man of simple taste. 

He is not in it for the money. Two daal and some saag is his staple diet. But Hisila didi is something else. She is a strong woman and we must give her credit for her sacrifice to fight the system even though she came from a well-to-do family. But then, when once in power, she was no different than our Sujata auntie. 

Naya Shakti is the new kid in town. The old bullies, our Kangaroos and Unidentified Mundrey Leaders are still around. Our Maoist and Madhesi parties will continue to share the loot with the old bullies. So if Naya Shakti really wants to change this country then first Baburam should apologize for the violence of his old football team where he was one of the leading midfielders. 

And if he really wants to bring peace and prosperity to this land then all those who are above 60 in his new party should have no active role except for being mentors to the young generation.  Baburam should also find another emcee for his programs and Hisila Didi should stop her corruption and nepotism nataks as well if Naya Shakti really wants to win the hearts and minds of the common folks.

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at maguffadi@gmail.com

The Lost Decade

It's been almost a decade since our seven party alliance (SPA) and our Maoists (M) signed the comprehensive peace agreement and so far our SPAM wallahs have only divided the piece of the loot among themselves while we have yet to experience any peace and freedom in this land. 

This is what happens when our netas don't use the Oxford English Dictionary to find out the real meaning to the words that come out of their mouth but leave all the homework for shady deals to their personal aides (PAs). 

If you really have a get quick rich scheme that will drain the state treasury and will not benefit the public then get hold of the PAs instead of the mantris. 

A mantri is just another ignorant son or daughter of a seedless cucumber. They have no idea how their ministries work. They have no vision to make this country great. Their only aim is to make as much dough as possible while in power. 

If a mantri makes 10 croroes in kickbacks, he or she will share half with the party and keep the half for near and dear ones. That's how our politicians work and so far, nothing has changed in the last decade. 

Well, when it comes to corruption, the things are still the same since the 90s. Then, only the Kangaroos enjoyed the loot. Now, it's just everyone's turn to make some money as they play musical chairs when it comes to forming a new government every other year.

It seems that our corrupt clowns have been pissing on us and getting away with it while we can do nothing but make a hissing sound and then go back to our daily routine of making sure we have enough supply of cooking gas and fuel and make sure that the water tanker wallahs show up on time to bring us drinking water. Even the tanker wallahs have jacked up their prices citing shortage of water from wherever they get it from. 

Our government claims that we will be egg sufficient in a year or two. Maybe that's why our egg wallahs have jacked up the egg prices by more than 20% since last month. They have to make the money now for if we are egg sufficient then prices will definitely go down then. 

Even ice-cream prices are up by 20% since last week. It seems that our experts buy their daily essentials directly from the wholesaler since their figure is always half of what the reality is. 

We have a Constituent Assembly for the second time and we also have the world's greatest constitution. We are wasting billions of Rupees each year to feed our greedy loafers and once we are done with our provinces some day, we will need billions more to feed the lazy bums who become our state lawmakers. 

We had a six-month long blockade and it didn't really have any effect on the lives of our netas. We were the ones who suffered and it seems that we will continue to suffer happily for another decade or so. 

As usual, our lawmakers get to enjoy the perks and now they can play with more money to not develop their constituency but to develop their own bellies and that of their cadres. And we have to thank Biplab dai and his cadres for showing us all that we will continue to have bandas in this land and somebody will lose his Micro bus, taxi or motorcycle thanks to our cadres who like to burn things up. 

And the good thing for our protesters is that they can vandalize both public and private property and get away with it during bandas. Our police wallahs are on the streets as mute spectators and provide security to the protesters instead of the public.

So are things better than it used to be ten years ago? Nope. Things will still be the same for a kid born in 2006. In another decade, he or she will be in college and will then want to go overseas either for further studies and then settle there or work in the Middle East to make a few Dinars more. 

When our SPAM signed the peace agreement they pledged to resolve the problems related with class, ethnicity, and regional and gender differences. Well, it's easy to pledge but difficult to deliver. We should have been another Singapore or Switzerland by now but so far our netas have failed to deliver on anything. 

Our top comedian Krazy Pompous Oli has pledged everything that comes to his ingenious mind. While the half the country thinks the man has gone mad, the other half thinks that at least he has promised us stuff that will one day become reality even if it takes us a century. 

And then our descendants can all remember Oli then and pay homage to the man who at least had the guts to dream even if he never fulfilled his vision. Aren’t our netas just lucky to have such passive populace to rule over?  

Our netas talk about bringing peace and prosperity in this land. They tell us that the country will experience progressive social and economic transformation. But the only transformation has been of our netas, civil servants and contractors while the common folks have neither good health nor enough wealth because this country is run by sick people who get free medical treatment abroad at the expense of the taxpayers and they are the ones who continue to live a good life with their ill-gotten wealth. 

We have seen the mandaleys, the morons, the Maoists and also our Madhesi netas. What can ‘New Power’ deliver where others have failed? 

What this country needs is not another communist or socialist party. We all want to make another extra Rupee. Maybe somebody should open a capitalist party and we can become like India and China someday rather than continue to be ruled by a bunch of extortionist scumbags?

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at maguffadi@gmail.com

How to spend a Trillion Rupees?

Let us congratulate our incompetent government for presenting a trillion Rupees budget. For us common folks, we have to think twice before spending our monthly paycheck whereas for our corrupt government folks, they only think about spending the cash they don't have.

Half of our budget will come from our taxes. And our government hopes to get loans and grants from bideshis to cover the other half.  If our sarkari hakim sahebs were not that corrupt then we could probably cover all of our budget from taxation alone. 

Our fake-VAT Bill byparis pay off our politicians and civil servants so that they can evade taxes. The state treasury get a Rupee while our con artists, civil servants and corrupt clowns make more.

Our Finance Minister Lord Bishnu tells us that the government hopes to achieve an economic growth of 6.8% this year which means that most of our economists and even bideshi consultants from ADB and World Bank must hold fake academic certificates. Maybe the CIAA should ask for original transcripts from all of them.

The experts think that we won't be able to even achieve a 1% growth.  Either our government needs to buy new Japanese calculators or somebody just doesn't know how to use the Excel spreadsheet at our Finance Ministry.

Our hawatari government tell us that we will have local elections by December. Yes, finally we will have our own ward chairpersons and mayors. Well, the last time we had our own representatives at the local level was back in 2002. Since then, our local bodies have been run by civil servants who really don't care much about the local needs and are scared of the so-called All-Party Mechanism. 

Yes, share the development budget among the political parties while the public gets nothing. Even if they carry out development projects, it's mostly half-baked jobs which doesn't help anyone except the netas and the contractors.

It's been more than a year since we got hit by the Big One and the government is yet to carry out any reconstruction and rehabilitation projects in the affected districts. The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) will get roughly 1.4 billion US$ dollars and earthquake-affected families will get additional 300,000 Rupees each. 

We all know that the real victims will get peanuts whereas our local netas and their cadres will pocket the rest by adding fake victims on the list. And the billion dollar reconstruction dough will be shared by everybody from our civil servants, contractors, clowns and cadres but not the common folks.

Our civil servants will get a 25% salary hike this year. Yes, give them a raise because they do work hard to provide services to the people. A peon will make twenty thousand Rupees while our hakim sahebs will make fifty. And then we have the over-time bonus, dress allowances and other chiya kharcha as well. 

But we all know that it is still not enough. How on earth do you think a government secretary is able to build a nice mini-mansion in the capital and send his or her kids abroad for further studies. 

Well, most do get free gift hamper from the Indian Embassy for their kids to attend schools in India but not everyone is lucky. As for their mansions, they seem to be either a frugal spender or received tons of gold and cash from their rich in-laws.

As usual, this government has also gone crazy and has announced to end load shedding in two years while we will have 10,000 MW of electricity by then. It has taken us a decade to generate 40 MW of electricity and we have only half of what we need so far. 

If we do the math, it will probably take us another century to achieve the hydro target. But by then we will not need hydropower. Somebody will come up with a new technique to generate electricity from your hair, nails and even booger.

Our government has allocated two billion and half dollars for the School Sector Development Programme. Yes, as always our public school teachers get paid for not doing much while our school kids don’t even get textbooks on time. 

Each district headquarters will get Rs 9 Karod each. Half of it will go to projects that benefit no one but the cadres. And the idea of developing 10 cities as smart cities is nothing but another joke. 

First, show us that you can make our capital a smart city by having adequate drainage, water supply and 24 hour electricity. Our government can't even manage the sewage flowing into the Bagmati River and yet they come up with more nataks.

And talking about self-sufficiency, we will be self-sufficient in eggs in a year and we will get to eat our own chicken, goats and buffaloes in two years while we will no longer have to drink Desi milk in the next three years. Yes, the government can make all this possible only if each household in the country gets a dozen chickens, four goats and two buffaloes and one Holstein cow. 

I think our government can reduce our budget deficit if we implement austerity measures in the government. Why do our thulo mancheys need to ride around in luxury vehicles with a dozen or more security personnel. It's sad to read about how more than 10% of our police force works as slaves for our politicians and high-ranking civil servants. 

I think we can save a few percentage points on our budget if we curtail such wasteful spending of state treasury to provide perks to our buffoons. Well, let us wish our civil servants all the best because without their help, the government will not be able to spend all the money. 

It's the same story every year where not even a third of the money allocated for development projects get spent. It will be the same story this fiscal year as well but at least our civil servants, contractors and cadres will be happy. After all, isn't that why we have a government in the first place?

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at maguffadi@gmail.com