Apropos of the news story “NRB in no mood to bend rules to help out banks” (THT, January 29, Page 1), we must applaud the NRB stand. Nepal’s commercial banks should stop looking up to NRB and the government to fish them out of the whirlpool that they merrily jumped into by showering money on what NRB’s Chinta Mani Siwakoti terms as ‘short-term and high profit-oriented sectors like hire purchase, real-estate, home loan, margin lending and overdraft’,  sectors that  are most unproductive and useless for the country. NRB should let the current situation naturally take care of the erring banks which are not really functioning as respected and responsible financial institution but as speculators, high-stake rollers and gamblers. Since NRB has already given the banks enough space and time to do business by following its norms, terms and directives, it should allow the exigencies of business to take its own course. Banks must display professionalism of the highest order, which can come only from rigorous financial discipline, clean conscience, restraint, and not necessarily from expensive suits and shoes, foreign holidays, paper business degrees and, humorously, Salvador Dali moustache. Meanwhile, NRB must completely ban free use of Indian currency in the country unless the Indian government, and not RBI, gives unequivocal guarantee that Nepal will not suffer for any monetary fluctuations in India.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu

Health

With the pace of time people’s perception has been changing day-by-day no matter what they are. As such, eating food habit is also one of them. In the past, people used to eat homemade traditional foods such as maize, millet, rice, home grown food, leafy vegetable, milk, butter and ghee. Nowadays, foods are hardly cooked in Nepali kitchen, especially in urban areas. This is changing our lifestyle. Of course, eating healthy food will keep us healthy, mentally and physically. Most importantly, research shows that ‘what you eat is what you are’ at the end. If we are taking lightly this simple mantra for healthy life, then we will encounter many diseases in the early stages of our life. So, it matters a lot. When one eats unhealthy food one is sure to encounter health problems. Better we eat healthy foods with fiber content rather than junk foods. Therefore, we should consciously eat healthy food so that we will be living a better life.

Saroj Wagle, Bara