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KATHMANDU, JANUARY 31
The public is fully aware that Nepal is an extremely corrupt country, with corruption stretching across both the government sectors and private sectors. Even while being fully aware of this, it still came as a surprise to me when I reviewed the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) – Asia, which stated that Nepal is the most corrupt country in Asia. In the GCB survey, 58 percent of the public perceived that corruption had increased in the past 12 months, even during the time of the global pandemic.
What led me to write this article is not that the country is in a downward path, with politicians and leaders in all sectors focussing on illegitimate ways of making money while hurting the public and misleading them. That much we all know.
What angers me more is the extent of greed that the politicians of our country have, so much so that we cannot even walk anymore in peace. I live in Bishalnagar, Kathmandu, an area that many might say is an optimal residential area in the capital.
Take a look at the footpaths around our neighbourhood, and they are all the same with ads everywhere.
This is the greed of our socalled leaders. This isn't an act of planting more trees, going green or going against climate change. It is not that, this is ultimate greed. Whoever is making money out of this is probably being paid by the number of bank advertisements in place, and while using the falsehood of "going green", they have decided to bombard most of our footpaths across the capital with stands that eat up 70 percent of the already tiny footpaths.
Look, I am not saying don't put up ads, don't make money, but at least do that without taking away the basic necessity of pedestrians. Just because they themselves don't walk on these roads doesn't give them the right to infringe upon the land of the public and make it even more pathetic than it previously was.
There are other ways to put up ads along footpaths, while allowing the public to still be able to walk properly.
But they wouldn't do that, would they? As the old saying killing two birds with one stone goes, on the one hand you create this lie that you're actually doing this in order to "go green" and "save the planet", and on the other hand you put up advertisements at each and every single stand to make as much money as you can.
I have yet to see anyone water those plants, which have already started dying, but that was never their original intention, was it? The intention was to put up as many bank advertisements as possible and make money, while making it even harder for the public to do something that is their basic human right, to walk.
