Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal seems to be still on cloud nine vis-à-vis the Everest Cabinet Meeting held in December, 2009. Recently, he expressed such elation while felicitating the ‘meet helpers’ and unveiling an inscription on the Cabinet Meeting held at the foot of the highest mountain on earth.

Even as the Himalayan glaciers continue to recede at a vertiginous pace, PM Nepal considers the meet a ‘grand success’ in that, on one hand, it pulled global attention towards the Himalayas prior to the not-so-fruitful Copenhagen summit on climate change; and it made a unprecedented publicity of Nepal through leading international media coverage, on the other.

Nonetheless, his elation is utterly bogus, understandably. The current state of the State is in a mess; no one in their right mind can be elated about it and if one is, that may be called sadism, not elation. When the present sucks and the future seems to be precarious, one typically tends to resort to some exhilarating moments of the past. PM Nepal has done that too; he has derived a purely personal fulfilment from the event. Frankly, apart from the apple polishing coterie around him, no one seems to share this risible elation.

Holding a Cabinet Meeting at the Everest Base Camp can not be termed a success; it’s just that no such meeting was held there before. Any past government could have done that and any future one can do that! If the snow continues to melt at the ongoing pace and the glaciers continue to recede, future governments may go even further up to hold a meeting, even atop Mount Everest. But shall we consider that an achievement? Hardly!

It’s nearly pointless to talk about all the ills crippling Nepal currently. They are so common and rampant that public interest just eludes them. The daddy of all ills is, of course, insecurity. Forget prosperity - that’s a forlorn hope for the ill-fated ‘majority’ lot of Nepalese people. Just ensure security to the people: they will deal with whatever the future has in store for them. When security is lacking, everything pales into insignificance. Ensuring security is the acid test of the present government. In order that the PM and his colleagues feel elated, they should pass this test: the corollary of that can only be a genuine, collective elation.