Unity of NC and NC-D

Dr Shashanka Koirala’s initiative to unite the two NCs as commended by Yadav Khanal (THT, March 25) stops far short of our national need. In the first place, the NC did not split for ideological reasons, but due to the fratricidal feud between Girija and Deuba factions over power and pelf, even as the country plunged into hopelessness. The country’s need, therefore, is not to help strike a deal between them (and for Shashanka to emerge as still another kingmaker from Koirala dynasty), but to purge the parties of corrupt elements, so that the re-united party could re-incarnate itself as a political force committed to people’s cause. So, Shashanka should instead be spurring the Young Turks in them to prevail and to

re-kindle people’s hope and faith in the party. As to the purported international interest in the unity, the USA and the UK should be rooting for the people of Nepal, and not for restoring the corrupt politicians to power. And India’s help would be seen as being genuine if it stopped the Nepali Maoists from operating from its soil, and helped repatriate the Bhutanese refugees who were shown one-way street over its territory into Nepal more than a decade ago.

Bihari K Shrestha, Lalitpur

Outsourcing

As Rakesh Wadhwa said in his article, we must open the market and let the multinational companies fight and this is exactly what all the industrially developed nations like the US, Australia and Singapore have done. But no less important is outsourcing that helped the US to become an economic giant. That is to send work to other countries where labour is cheap.

Most US industries are multinational — they not only market products in foreign countries but uphold production facilities in other nations. In the late 1990s, US corporations entered into

international partnerships. One of the first methods of foreign outsourcing was the maquiladora (Spanish for “mill”) in Mexican border towns. Manufacturers built twin plants, one in Mexico and another in the US where partially finished products from home were sent to labour-intensive Mexico. The finished product was sent back to the US for sale. And that pace peaked after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994.

Outsourcing is indeed another thing the country should focus on if it really aims to bring about boom in the industrial sector.

Alankar Khanal, via e-mail

Visionless

Former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba now wants to talk to all parties (THT, March 29) after playing a spoilsport for which history will mention him as one of the major

contributors to the chaos the country has been plunged in. It was his rash decision to dissolve the parliament overnight in an irresponsible and unpardonable act which, no doubt, was his undoing of all the good that was introduced in the aftermath of restoration of democracy in 1990. Even the common man has no second thoughts about it. It is very hard to believe that the same man wants to forge a coalition or evolve a common agenda now. How can we trust an individual who did not even think twice about the pros and cons of dissolving the House of Representatives back in 2002? Even after being appointed as the prime minister last year, he rarely carried about like a man in charge. There is no hindsight in him nor any vision for Nepal. That was the public image he created of himself last time he was the prime minister.

Shobana Phuyal, Mahendranagar