A beautiful gateway reflecting indigenous Bhutanese architecture marks the Indo-Bhutan border with Jaigaon, West Bengal on the Indian side and Phuentsholing on the other.

Is it an international border? Pedestrians and traffic are freely passing through the gate to enter/ exit the country of each other! Citizens of both countries are not required to acquire passport or visa to visit each other’s country. While Jaigaon consist of haphazard buildings with no specific character, all structures of Phuentsholing bear Bhutanese architectural signature.

Apart from the absolute change of scripts from Bengali to Dzongkha language, the Indo-Aryan population gets replaced by people possessing Mongoloid features. This type of drastic change is witnessed just within a couple of steps after crossing the border.

But we came to notice an interesting difference during our recent trip to Nepal. Though the travel protocol between Nepal and India is similar to that of India and Bhutan — people do not need visa to cross the border — when it comes to Nepal and India one hardly realises he or she is on a foreign land after crossing the international border. Topographically also Nepal and India are similar.

There is hardly any different in the architectures of houses and overall environment. India and Nepal also share the similar Devanagari script. Also, people from both sides share the same language, culture and attire. So the trip to Birgunj from Raxaul hardly invokes any feeling of entering a foreign country.

International borders often throw up various interesting things.

Kajal Chatterjee, Kolkata

Labour bank

Apropos of the write-up “Breaking bread” (THT, Perspectives, April 8, Page 5), it is shocking to know that even bread industry suffers from shortage of manpower in a country that has a high level of unemployment and under-employment. In fact, the lack of manpower seems to dog most business and industries except perhaps the white-collar jobs.

A close acquaintance who invested heavily on a restaurant on the slopes of Pani Pokhari rued that he could not retain a good cook. Then, another restaurant in Jhamel owned by a relative is on the verge of closure as the owners are no longer interested in “pampering” their staff. While small businesses and service industries can beat the manpower shortage by hiring matured, experienced pensioners, the manufacturing and agricultural industries will have to throw big pay and perks to lure and retain strong hands. What about agriculture industry? It is time the government came up with the concept of labour bank to lend farmers to tap agriculture potential.

The government should be well-versed in not only plodding in the farm but also on the concept of pooling labour for hire to farmers. Without this the government can forget about agricultural development in the country as the masses do not want to soil their hands any more.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu