So Nepal has gone and declared an Emergency. Now all of the country's 14 kilometres of railway from Janakpur to Jayanagar will run on time, and the middle class will be happy at the thought. When Indira Gandhi declared Emergency in 1975, she had younger son Sanjay Gandhi to do her dirty work. Fortunately, Sher Bahadur Deuba's son is all of seven years old, and so there is little fear of forced sterilisations and slum clearances, and for that we thank Lord Pashupatinath.
However, the Emergency could certainly be put to good use in the land of the Gurkhas, Sagarmatha/ Everest, Mechi-to-Mahakali stretch, Lumbini-of-Buddha's-birth, and Hindu-Buddhist amity. How about using this time of draconian measures to build footpaths along Kathmandu's thoroughfares. The Minister for Urban Development asks — "what are they?" But of course, you see, there are these raised platforms that run the length of a road, on the side, so that citizens who cannot afford a Zen, a Santro or a Pajero can walk on this platform (otherwise known as a 'footpath') without fear of vehicular molestation.
Maybe an Emergency does not only have to be used to wage an under-reported war on a violent insurgency. An Emergency could be the time to get the public used to a world without bandhs, highway closures and chakka jams, where schools attended by millions are not closed arbritrarily by party diktat, and where examinations are held as announced. Let the tourists come to a bandh-less Nepal, let the economy surge and achieve a momentum which will continue into the period when the Emergency is lifted.
Or how about using the Nepali Emergency to actually make people pay their taxes? Nepal's fatcat businessmen may not have become fully corporate, but liquid they are, and they can pay. It is just that nobody has asked them forcefully enough. How about, in these emergent times, using this window of governmental potency to push through a sewage treatment plant for Kathmandu, so that all raw sewage – from the compounds of the highest to the spanking new slums of Naya Baneswor – that presently makes up all the inflow of the holy Bagmati is converted to water.