Paradox of republic

June 18, 2020 08:00 am

Impartiality has been one of humankind’s longest and the most elusive pursuits. Despite a variety of reforms enacted throughout history, none of them seem to be enough to get us past the finish line. One would assume that a democratic framework, through increased representation, would gradually bridge the divide in society—and it does to a certain extent—but when the pace of progress appears to be sluggish, there is the risk that passive public participation might end up being the same as compliance to an unjust regime.

At the end of an intensive two-day training on semester-based teaching organized by Tribhuvan University in Nagarkot last May, we asked the seventy or so university faculty members from around the country to pick between two groups. One group was asked to  strategize how to institutionalize the teaching excellence training, building on a few years of work done mainly online by a grassroots initiative. The other group would discuss a new topic: how to pursue and promote research and publication in the university. To our pleasant surprise, over two-thirds of the participants went to the research group. We had to come up with a quick way to better regroup the scholars.

KATHMANDU, Dec 30: Minister for Information and Communications Gokul Baskota has claimed that the much awaited Digital Nepal framework will be completed within a month.

KATHMANDU, June 21: Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that China is willing to strengthen cooperation with Nepal in infrastructure connectivity, post-disaster reconstruction, and trade and investment under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

KATHMANDU, June 18: A draft of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) prepared by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) has drawn flak for proposing to make Mathematics as an optional subject in grades 11 and 12 of the science stream.

KATHMANDU, March 3: Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) has introduced ‘Payment System Oversight Framework’ as part of its objectives to ensure sound legal foundation of payment systems and enhance their risk management and control.

The government has tabled the budget for the upcoming fiscal year 2017/18 amid positive economic outlook of the country with growth rate in the current fiscal year projected at 6.94 percent -- the highest since 1993/94.  The International Monetary Fund has also made a projection of 5.5 percent of GDP growth for Nepal. Sagar Ghimire of Republica caught up with Andreas Bauer, the Senior Resident Representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for India, Nepal and Bhutan, to talk about a broad range of economic issues of Nepal. Excerpts:

Common framework for GESI launched

March 17, 2017 07:39 am

KATHMANDU, March 17: Group of development partners working on gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) in Nepal launched ‘A Common Framework for GESI’ on Thursday.

KATHMANDU, March 8: Responding to long-standing complaints from various sectors that most of the medical laboratories in the country are ill-equipped and lack required human resource and quality assurance, the Ministry of Health (MoH) has issued a directive to bring them under a regulatory framework soon.

KATHMANDU, Feb 13: The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) has decided to form a high-level committee under the leadership of Chief Secretary Som Lal Subedi to prepare a framework regarding flow of fund for the operation of Reconstruction Fund.