World impression still has it that we Nepalis are only brave and brawny. No doubt, our history testifies to it. We gallantly fought against the erstwhile world power and stood insurmountable. We were never under any foreign hegemony at any point of time throughout our history, and we take pride in this fact. That was in the past. Now we modern-day Nepalis have proven to be brainy and brilliant as well. Many Nepali research scientists working in various universities and institutions abroad have proven their mettle. Their outstanding performance makes us feel proud and provide a valid reason to claim that our intelligence level is not lower than that of the most intelligent people in the developed world. But the upsetting fact is that we are unable to harness the potential of our talent on our own soil.

Forget about the brain that has already been drained, we still don’t have the vision to retain our budding talents. It is the uncertain economic prospects of our country that have a lot to do with our young talents’ outflow to foreign lands looking for better opportunities and a secured future. Today’s world is an open-technology society where the knowledge of applied science for human welfare is very open to all. Only resources are required to apply the already proven technology for development. If we could better manage our financial resources and mobilise our own manpower, the development, progress and prosperity of our country could be somewhere very near in sight.

But our perennial problem is that we do not trust ourselves. We hire foreign consultants to formulate our agricultural policies; we ask outsiders to figure out what our exact needs are and we pay hefty sums to overseas experts to just oversee a construction site that our manpower could reliably do for one-fourth of the salaries paid to them. There is always a trust deficit issue in us. If we never provide opportunities to our national companies and their technical manpower to carry out major projects, how will it be possible to develop our own technical workforce? The onus lies on the government to give our national talents a chance.

No government can guarantee employment to all university graduates. One can argue that jobs must be created by the educated people themselves—the role of the government is limited to providing an environment. But has there been any assessment of how favourable a condition the government has been creating to promote our young entrepreneurs? Are all those young people willing to toil in foreign lands as the first choice? Or are they selling their mind and muscle abroad only out of compulsion? The time has come for our policymakers to think about it.