How many roads must be dug up before the monsoon season begins? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the budget. Every year, it’s the same old story where our government agencies fail to use their allocated budget till the very end.

It’s a rush job where our contractors are busy with the so-called development projects.  And the sad thing is that our incompetent government fails to spend the capital budget by more than two-thirds. What good is a surplus when your house is all broken down without electricity, drinking water and plumbing?

Why can’t these lazy bums begin work after the monsoon season and wrap things up before the next Nepali New Year? It’s because our civil servants don’t do their homework on time and only begin to plan things after they get the funds. Maybe our hakim sahebs should go back to the days when they stayed up all night studying for the civil service exams. But now when they are in positions of power, they stay up all night drinking bideshi whiskey with con artists figuring out how to siphon off the funds for themselves. And they spend most of their office hours running around for promotion or lucrative transfers!

Our crazy comedian Oli tells us that the upcoming budget will make this country prosperous and make us Nepalis happy. The only people who prosper in this land are our corrupt clowns, lazy civil servants, shoddy contractors and business con artists! For the rest of us, we have to deal with the inflation, corruption and pollution while we remain frustrated. Yes, let us keep on fighting with each other while the buffoons hang out together and enjoy the loot!

We seem to elect the same bunch of clowns who continue to loot the state treasury and seem to believe that they are above the law. This is the land where lawmakers are lawbreakers and they get away with anything.

Our incompetent government can’t even fire its own incompetent civil servants. This is the only land on earth where it is easier to transfer a hakim saheb but near to impossible transfer a low-level employee to another place without the approval of their affiliated trade unions. This is the only country where contractors get paid for doing nothing and do not get penalised for carrying out shoddy works. And let us not even talk about our byaparis who are actually con artists hell bent on forming syndicates to prevent new, better competitors to enter their market place.

I think we need to remind our government that our highways belong to the government and not to a group of transport entrepreneurs who have total control over who gets to ply their buses and who do not.

So what’s wrong with our traffic police increasing the fines for traffic violations? How did our bus wallahs become so powerful that they can carry out strikes across the country and even attack school buses while our police wallahs and CDO sahebs do nothing against these hooligans?

We had a chakka jam the other day. Our transport wallahs even attacked Nepal Army’s school bus. I think the attackers should be sent to Nepal Army Headquarters and made to carry a 50kg rucksack and an unloaded machine gun and jog for the whole day. Yes, let us have a law where protestors who vandalise property and harm innocent folks have to carry out community service for a year. Yes, a few hundred could carry out all the trash from Bagmati River in a year if they can work 9 to 5 every day!

Maybe, these stone-hurling thugs were not happy with our army wallahs welcoming Bollywood actresses at our international airport. But what does that have to do with our school children?  Maybe we must have done something evil in our past life to deserve such corrupt buffoons. Why can’t our protesters leave our school children alone? Let us not close down our schools and shops. Our kids need to go to school and we need to go to the shops to buy a packet of Wai Wai and make Binod Dai a few rupees richer. Yes, you can shut down our government offices because it won’t really affect us. Our civil servants never do their job on time and we, the people, have to run around for at least three days to get all our papers in order. So, why not shut down our government agencies that do not work for half of the day anyway? But of course, our byaparis can loot us all by selling adulterated products or charging us more because they do voluntary contribute funds to our political parties. And our politicians turn a blind eye even when people suffer due to their bandas or black marketing nataks.

As usual, our government will increase the price of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products.  But why do they have to increase the prices of juices and soft drinks as well? Maybe our politicians want us Nepalis to be healthy instead of drinking powdered fruit juices and sugary drinks.

It seems that our byaparis have their own trade organisations and can shut down the country because they are not happy with the government. But how can we, the people, show our frustration against the government’s lack of action to control inflation, corruption and pollution. Why should we keep on paying taxes only to feed our government employees who get salary hike every other year? Why should we keep on paying taxes for the services we do not receive? We are paying for water that never comes in our taps. We pay NEA for not providing us electricity. We pay and get nothing in return.

Maybe, somebody should come up with a ‘Pay No Taxes and Be Happy’ slogan instead. Do we really need a government in this land where all those in power only know how to suck us dry? How long will these corrupt clowns make us cry? The answer, my friend, is that nobody has the answer so far!

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at [email protected]