While price and quality are important factors, they will be nothing if the textbooks are not made available to all the students across the country on time Four months is left for the new academic session for the schools to begin. But from the viewpoint of making the textbooks available in all the 75 districts of the country, the time available becomes even less than that as the logistics of transportation and distribution will take much more than a couple of weeks. The Department of Education, with approval from the Ministry of Education, has fixed the prices of the government textbooks. The prices will increase somewhat because of the inflation and also when the physical quality of the books improves. For example, from the coming session, the textbooks of Grades I and II will go up because they will be made colourful. The sets of core books for various classes have been set differently, while those of other subjects, that is, the prices of technical, vocational and other optional subjects for Grades IX and X will be different. But the government should also set the price lists of the government textbooks for the schools which are translated into English. So far their prices are several times the prices of their Nepali originals. Whether this wide discrepancy is right or needs to be corrected should be decided. Just because most of those English versions are mostly bought by the students of private schools is no basis for setting the prices of the English versions much higher. The English versions are gradually becoming popular among the students of community schools too, particularly because an increasing number of community schools have started giving their students a choice between writing in the Nepali or in English medium. The government also needs to apply a reasonable control over the prices of the school books published in English by private publishers. Indeed, private publishers deserve a certain degree of freedom in fixing the prices of their textbooks to cover their costs and include a fair return on their investment. But failure to monitor them effectively and exercise a certain level of control will give them a licence to overcharge the parents and students, often in collaboration with the school managements who get a big cut in the sales of the books prescribed by them. While price and quality are important factors, they will be nothing if the textbooks are not made available to all the students across the country on time. And in this respect, the Janak Educational Materials Centre (JEMC) has always lagged behind, always blaming things or agencies other than itself. This time around, among other things, JEMC is reported to be running out of funds to buy paper to print the books. For the upcoming session, it has to print twenty million sets of textbooks from Grade VI to X. But it is reported to have applied to the government for a loan of Rs.250 million to overcome its cash crunch. JEMC is incurring a loss of Rs.150 million every year and is yet to repay loans amounting to Rs.700 million. While its current financial problems should be addressed without delay, otherwise the printing of the textbooks will be delayed. But the problem of its perennial losses should also seriously be investigated and effective corrective action taken. Comply with directives All the parliamentary committees act as mini-parliament and their directives or any decisions taken by them are binding to the government and its agencies. Failure to implement the directives given by the parliament committees to the government is tantamount to disrespect for the parliamentary system and the principle of check and balance between the legislature and the executive. The government either has to say clearly that those directives are impossible to implement for the time being or they should put them into action once it promises to do so. The parliamentary Development Committee has lamented that the 41 various directives it issued to the government and its line ministries have yet to be implemented. A report prepared by the committee in 2016 has said that none of them has been put into action. Some of the directives issued by the committee will have far-reaching implications in nation’s development while others are of immediate effect. The directives were issued after the government ministers and secretaries expressed their commitment to the committee meetings that they would fully implement those directives within the set deadline. Therefore, it is high time that the full house of Parliament took up this issue of non-compliance with the directives from the government side.