The good thing about having India as our chimeki is that we don’t need a visa to cross the border. And of course, Indians don’t need one either. If the Desis think that they are like Amrikans then maybe we should consider ourselves Candians. We are much friendlier and laid back while the Desis do want to rule the world someday and do act like the Amrikans in the SAARC region.

They want to be a superpower while we don’t know what we want to be. Thanks to our incompetent government, we are not able to capitalise on the middle-class Indians and Chinese who could visit our land and spend some dough.  We are not talking about a few million, we are talking about hundreds of millions of Chindians.

We mostly get Indian tourists who book a bus, throw a few cylinders of cooking gas on the roof, bring their own food supplies and have picnics along the highway as they come to visit our temples or those who come for a few days to have fun in our casinos and that’s about it. Maybe, we need to ask the Ambanis to host a wedding party for one of their kids in Chitwan or Everest or Pokhara.

Let us ask Jack Ma to visit Nepal and tell us his stories at Bouddha.  If we had really good officials at our Ministry of Foreign Affairs then we would have asked Prince Harry to plan his honeymoon in Nepal.  Our Nepal Tourism Board has millions of Rupees in its promotional budget and we don’t know where they spend it.

Just attending travel expos or placing ads on buses in Western countries is not enough. Why not give a free trip to Nepal to a person from each country in the world? And we, the people can provide free room and board for the promotional campaign. But it’s sad, that most of the tourists don’t even spend ten dollars a day while visiting our land while domestic tourists spend five times more in Chitwan, Pokhara and even Rara.  Maybe, we should have a rule for our citizens as well, that makes it mandatory to visit at least one rural district other than your own and get a stamp on your special passbook before you can go abroad.  It could help us bond with our brothers and sisters as well  as help bring in some dough to the local economy.

We need tourists who can spend more so that our government can make more from taxes, our byaparis can have a decent return on investment and millions of us can find jobs in the tourism sector. Yes, we really need to learn a thing or two from Bhutan when it comes to making money from tourists.

It’s about time Oli and Modi sit down and work on a wall so that we don’t hear about Indian border security forces throwing away the border pillars and harassing our citizens in our own land. Instead of an open border, it’s time we regulated our border and kept track of all those who use our checkpoints, be it our own folks or the bidehis. I think this will make both countries safer and we can also help our citizens who may need help across the border if we at least have some information about where they were heading.

It’s sad but true that many of us do pay tons of money to visit India for medical treatment. We, the people pay cash while our corrupt netas use the taxpayers’ money to fund their treatment.  Our civil servants and netas should learn a thing or two from the Desis when it comes to medical and other education institutions. It’s about time, our incompetent government asked the Desis to help us set up schools like IITs and IIMs in Nepal.

We can have seven such schools in each of our provinces and select the best of the best. Instead of allowing only byaparis to open medical schools, it’s about time, the government asked for help with our chimekis to open medical schools run by the government. It’s not only about asking the Desis for help. We can also ask the Chinese to pitch in.

Millions of our brothers and sisters work in India and they do their best to support their families back home. But they don’t get any respect neither in India nor in Nepal. Yes, washing dishes in Japan will help you earn more than if you do that across the border. But work is work and even a few Indian Rupees helps to provide for families in our villages. It’s about time we have a database of our folks who are living in India and contributing to our economy as well.

Yes, the Indians have their special agents in the Capital taking care of business.  Yes, most countries have their intelligence folks doing their stuff in foreign lands except ours. Do, we have our special agents in Amrika or even in Delhi? It’s time the Desis change the name of their intelligence agency from RAW to something that sounds a little bit more scarier like the CIA or Mossad.  And we need to revamp our intelligence services as well.

After all, except for our land, all countries in the world first look after their self interest and then only figure out how to help their chimekis. For our government, our civil servants and our politicians, it is the other way round.  Let us hope Modi will have a good time here and Oli will use his tricks to get us more than the usual cheap gift hampers. Maybe, we need some help with setting up a nuclear plant. If the Desis are not willing to help, just call the French. Now, that could finally help our chimekis to listen to us once in a while!

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com.

You may contact him at [email protected]