Madhukar SJB Rana

Kathmandu:

This plan must be subject only to the acts as promulgated by Parliament but free of the unnecessary, stifling control of the central ministers, planners, bureaucrats and bankers for regional and local export promotion, mobilisation of foreign direct investment, productivity enhancement and employment creation.

Confidence building and trust between local government authorities and District Chambers of Commerce & Industries, product and professional organisations, cooperatives, user groups, and organisations of the poor is vital to develop through institutionalization of mechanisms for public-private partnerships for policy dialogue, planning, monitoring and execution of regional and local plans.

Everywhere you visit Pokhara one is struck by the presence of youth, be they managers and staff in the various service establishments or entrepreneurs.

Pokhara is, I felt, a vibrant, dynamic city of youth, initiative, enterprise and positivism that can act a role model for the youth and their role in society in the rest of Nepal.

I met young entrepreneurs in their early thirties with MBAs from Sydney and Boston universities; also entrepreneurs who had happily quit their university and civil services to enter the world business and create jobs for the larger social good.

Pokhara is also a mystical place as I experienced en route to see for myself the fabulous Manipal Teaching Hospital. More such international standard schools and colleges in medicine, management, biotechnology, information technology, along with IT Park, Special Economic Zones, Export Promotion Villages, Inland Container Deports (dry ports) should be aggressively promoted by inviting foreign direct investment (fdi) into Pokhara. No one can mobilise fdi better than Pokhrelis themselves since to do so successfully one needs to “think global and act local (in Michael Porter’s wisdom about competitiveness and what makes nations rich and powerful).

This mystical experience took place when paying homage at the Narayan Mandir when, at a time, the melodious voice of Nepal’s bhajan samrat, Binayak Shumshere, filled the air. As I prayed interalia for the eternal peace for the victims of the tsunami and for God’s mercy and guidance for their surviving family members, I could not help think if we should not, as an act of SAARC solidarity, offer on long-term lease a land area in the somewhere in the Pokhara valley for the resettlement of, and investment by, Maldivians to be safe from future threats from tsunami and global warming.

Given the vast exposure of the Gurkhas, the backbone of the Pokhara economy, to the outside world one feels that here is a society in Nepal that is ready to go cosmopolitan and not be afraid to embrace globalisation head on.

These Gurkhas know they have something unique, a niche, to offer to the rest of the world. They also know that we have much to learn from the world outside to be a just, dynamic society free from hunger, deprivation and all manner of injustice, inequality, inequities and non-inclusion.

(Concluded)

Madhukar SJB Rana is the finance minister of the Kingdom of Nepal. He is also a regular contributor to various national and international publications.