In today's Kathmandu, there are two kinds of rich: the lords and the masters. Who are they?
Any story about poverty in the third world cannot be complete without mentioning the "lords of poverty", the faithful servants of the international aid business. (The term is used by Graham Hancock in his expose' of the international civil service, Lords of Poverty, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989)
"Unsavory", "greedy", and skilled at "enriching" themselves at the pretense of serving the world's poor and unfortunate, the lords of poverty can be seen in Kathmandu behind the wheels of their air-conditioned Japanese four-wheel-drives, or ensconced in splendid mansions whose monthly rents are five times the take-home salaries of their "counterparts" in the Nepali bureaucracy.
Occasionally, the lords engage in debates over whether or not to fund projects for the people whose lives do not in the least resemble their own. They receive hardship allowances for serving in faraway Nepal and return to comfortable suburban living at "headquarters" when they are done, in New York, Washington DC, Montreal, Geneva, Rome or Nairobi.