As a teenage boy, Yubaraj Karki was a top student. His parents, school teachers and friends in his village in Jhapa were proud of him as he passed SLC with top scores. He gave continuity to this excellence in his study by securing 86 percent in the I Sc some 38 years ago. He was awarded with the prestigious scholarship, Colombo Plan, for higher studies. Already active in the Communist movement, Karki rejected the offer and vowed not to go abroad for studies.
After a gap of some time, he joined Bachelor’s in Public Administration. He was awarded with full scholarship as he topped the college in the first year. But he quit the study without completing the Bachelor’s course as his erstwhile party CPN (Marxist-Leninist) had launched a campaign of boycotting the bourgeois education. Devoting himself to party works, he went underground for 10 years.[break]
Karki became Constituent Assembly (CA) Member under the proportional representation from CPN-UML in 2008 and became minister for general administration in the government led by Jhalanath Khanal three years ago. After the dissolution of the CA last year, he worked on various plans and concepts to do something new that would be productive, would make him self-reliant in financial matters and contribute to the society as well.
“A major challenge for a political leader is to maintain financial transparency, become self-reliant and remain clean of any corruption-related activities,” Karki told Republica. “Therefore, I decided to spend my time in a productive sector, and I found that agriculture can be the best option for economic development in our society.”
He has registered a firm to trade in agro-herbal tea products and is spending his time in promoting organic tea produced in Ilam District. “At present, we collect and package the organic tea produced in Ilam and supply it in the local market. We have a plan to export the products to European and other Western markets as well because there’s a high demand for organic tea and coffee,” he said.