Wrong decision

The Higher Secondary Education Board (HSEB) has decided to remove Nepali from Class Eleven. This is not good because Nepali is the mother tongue of most Nepalis. And as it is, the knowledge of the Nepali language is poor amongst the young people today. Though students will have to study it in Class Twelve, it will not be very useful to them, because the gap of one year between SLC and Class Twelve will make it very difficult for most students to cope with this paper, particularly because the students of English-medium schools are generally thought to be weak in Nepali. During this gap, most students are likely to forget much of the subject matter, particularly grammar, and thus lose interest in it. We should motivate the students to acquire a deeper knowledge of the main language of the country. The board’s decision does not help achieve this objective. Therefore, it should reconsider its decision.

Deepesh Raj Rimal, Old Baneshwor

Be civilised

It’s surprising how uncivilised and jealous even the city people have become nowadays. Recently I went to Thankot to visit my aunt with my father on his bike. We stayed there for an hour and as we were leaving for home we noticed that the leather seats of the bike were badly torn. Though my father was furious since he had only installed the new leather seats just a couple of days back, we were helpless. This is the most common problem facing the majority of the bikers in Kathmandu today. Mostly the children and even young people are involved in this activity. It is high time Kathmanduities grew up and acted like civilised people.

Vibek Manandhar, via e-mail

Stay healthy

The Midway article “Skinny matter” by Richa Sharma published in THT on June 28 was a good piece of writing. It depicted a true picture of the so-called modern girls’ lifestyle. Today 80 per cent of the young girls suffer from some illness or the other usually related to diet problems. Because of the growing fear among the girls of getting fat, they do not eat much. This leads to dangerous weight loss and such a condition is called ‘Anorexia,’ as described in the article. She has also focused on healthy living and positive thinking, which are the real problems of girls nowadays.

Prem B Budha, Salyan

Tourism

China and India are making amazing progress in most fields, including economics, science and technology. But Nepal, once a peaceful country, has been torn by violent internal conflict.

After India liberalised its economic policy, the number of Indian tourists visiting Nepal has fallen. Therefore, Nepal needs to change its strategy for promoting tourism. It is important to build big shopping malls for Indian and Chinese tourists as in Dubai. Let us make our country tax-free and attract the big retailers from around the world and organise big trade fairs. We too have the advantage of good weather and beautiful tourist spots. Massive marketing of our

pilgrimage spots like Pashupatinath, Muktinath, Manakamna and Lumbini too has to be done to attract pilgrims from India and other countries.

Sandeep Garg, Kathmandu