Apropos of the news story “Sacrifices on Buddha Jayanti” (THT, May 11, Page 5), as the world celebrates the 2,561st birth anniversary of the most celebrated son of Nepal, a certain section of its society decides to sacrifice 20,000 living beings to earn good health and prosperity. Nepali society is clearly divided now and has many dangerous fissures that might one day bring the nation to the brink of dangerous catastrophe. Foreigners outside looking inside into Nepal on this day may be laughing at our double standard – celebrating non-violence by sacrificing poor animals and birds in thousands in the country. What is the government that has declared Buddha Jayanti a national holiday up to? Can’t it stop all killings for a day, on this auspicious day? I was also amused to read a few FB posts from a female, a champion of free Madhes, claiming Buddha as a Madhisi. So, we are going to fight over the ethnicity of Lord Buddha? As it is, the violent Buddhists in a certain country in our neighbourhood are giving a bad name to Buddha through their violence to other fellow beings. No Buddhist compassion there. While we are on animal violence in Nepal, I would also like to draw the attention of our civic authorities in this regard.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu

Not feasible

This is with reference to the news story “The High-powered committee for integrated development of Bagmati civilization” (THT, April 21, Page 2”). It mentions that the second phase of the Bagmati River basin improvement project begins, and is in the process of preparing detailed project report. The total cost of the second phase activities is $ 36 million. The main purpose of the project is to increase water flow in the Bagmati River by building a 95-meter high dam in the upstream of the Bagmati River. The dam in the Bagmati River will store excessive water during monsoon. Regulated flow will be allowed to pass downstream of the dam into the Bagmati River for the whole year. I totally disagree with the concept of the project as mentioned above for the following reasons. The water could be stored only for a limited period, maybe for less than one month, that can be discharged downstream of the river. In the rest of the year the situation will remain the same as it is now. Building a 95-metre high dam will not help increase the flow of water in the river throughout the year as the dam will not have enough storage capacity so that water can be discharged in a regulated manner as claimed by the planners. Definitely there could be other options such as recharging the ground water of the Kathmandu Valley, or constructing a series of check dams along the river etc. The concept of building a high

dam upstream of the river is not feasible.

R.P. Rajbhandari, via e-mail