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I first learned of the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake late in the evening from a text message while at home in the USA. By then, I had served as a firefighter for 10 years and had spent many years off-and-on in Nepal and was therefore determined to do something. With generous help from friends around the world, I collected about 100 kilos of medical and survival equipment and within a few days was on a plane to Kathmandu. Among the items I bought was sufficient food and water purifying equipment to ensure I did not take away any resources from the people in Nepal. Having set up camp in the courtyard of a monastery in Tinchuli, I immediately went to work. By then, the rescues had largely concluded, except for maybe the miracle case in the Gongabu area of a boy trapped under a collapsed hotel. Nonetheless, much needed to be done. Assessing the impact American firefighters are trained extensively in building construction. As an assistant fire chief at the time, I had become an instructor of just such courses. We did not instruct our firefighters to act as engineers, rather the purpose was simply to determine whether staying in a compromised structure was exceedingly dangerous. The Nepali government had already been engaging in building inspection, marking structures with various colors to indicate the danger level in entering them. Still, in Kathmandu Valley thousands upon thousands of buildings had suffered damage. Government officials simply could not inspect them all in a short time. So, that is where I began. I inspected hundreds of homes, monasteries and shops throughout Kathmandu, particularly in the Bouddha and Kapan areas. Along the way, I provided medical treatment for minor injuries such as lacerations and contusions. To make my efforts possible, a Tibetan monk accompanied me as an interpreter; he spoke impeccable Nepali, English, and Tibetan. Search, rescue and reunion On several occasions, locals approached us asking for help to locate loved ones. In those first few days, phone and internet availability was sporadic, making it very difficult to communicate. These folks would provide a photo and some information about the person missing, and we would inquire with others as we moved from place to place. With incredible luck, we located nearly half of the people we were tasked with finding. In every case, the people had simply fled to the safest place they could find, unable to communicate by phone. As aftershocks continued, many people were reluctant to move about if they had found a reasonably secure location at which to remain. Once we found them, we would happily escort them back home for their reunion with their families. Indeed, for my own family back home, I myself remained ‘missing’ for some time as I could not find sufficient internet to inform them of my condition for nearly two weeks. Aside from inspecting buildings and dressing minor wounds, I also joined several missions into the higher terrains to deliver food, tarpaulins, medical and other supplies. Riding upon heavily laden trucks on mountain roads made dangerous by frequent aftershocks and landslides plagued my dreams for months afterwards. An emergency manual Upon my return to my family and job back in America, I was committed to continuing efforts toward making Nepal a safer place in the event of future disasters. First, drawing upon my expertise as a first responder, I drafted a manual on preparing for emergencies. The manual provides a guideline for institutions to set up an emergency plan. It is intended for places where many people might congregate at once, such as schools, hotels, monasteries or other public buildings. Written in simple language, it explains how to plan ahead, account for all the visitors and guests, and weather the storm afterward until professional help arrives. Doing simple things like establishing meeting points and evacuation routes, and designating “emergency managers” can save many lives and reduce the inevitable chaos disasters bring. The manual is available in hard or soft copy, in Nepali, English, and Tibetan. Since the publication of the manual, I started a new foundation called EALS Global. After my career in the fire department, I joined American law enforcement. My specialty there was technology crime, and I became quite adept in many different aspects of technology, such as application development, digital forensics, remote sensing technologies, and others. EALS Global is an organization designed to assist communities living in potential disaster zones. We are developing applications and other programmes to provide advanced warning and real-time emergency information to those facing disasters, location information to responders and media, and disaster data to research organizations. Our goal is to do whatever we can to reduce injury or death from incidents by informing people about imminent dangers, helping responders locate those who cannot escape, and providing data to planners and government officials. Living in a remote area should not mean people should not have information in advance, something that could save their lives. My foundation receives extensive input from first responders—people who have made a career of heading into disaster zones, at their own risk, for the benefit of others. In addition, we are growing our network of researchers, scientists, software engineers and like-minded organizations to launch our programmes wherever they are needed throughout the world. I have spent a career helping people living through all kinds of calamities—fires, floods, earthquakes, and crime. This foundation is a new chapter where I hope to put two decades of experience and training to work toward helping more people than I ever thought possible.

In general terms, insurance is a contract whereby the insurance company pays compensation to its policyholders or their kin in case of occurrence of any eventuality mentioned in the insurance contract in consideration for the receipt of a premium. Insurance covers diverse subjects like a person's life, health, wealth etc. Health as a subject of insurance has emerged as one of the most important topics both in the health and insurance sectors these days. Many developed and developing countries use health insurance as a public health financing plan. Health insurance in fact has been an important tool for achieving the public welfare objective of a state. Both the insurance and health domains have multifaceted characteristics with public-centric nature. There are chances of coherence between these two sectors with mutual leveraging effect as well as some level of synergy. The concept of insurance seems to be younger than the concept of healthcare. Whereas the concept of social health plan is one of the late-emerged ideas packaged with two verticals of health and insurance together. This amalgamation concept emerged to cater to the need of social developments, rising health facility cost and increasing public awareness towards a healthy life. When it comes to healthcare, the sector in itself is a multi-disciplinary one with a big ecosystem including versatility of stakeholders requiring multiple regulators. Probably, the health domain is the only sector having multiples of regulators for any single domain. Let’s think of aviation as one of the bigger industries where there is only one regulator. Likewise, the financial sector, which is equally or even more crucial and larger, has got only one regulatory body. The area which we are talking about—insurance—is also having a single regulator. This whole ground of discussion is reflecting the size and wider dynamics of the health sector. Against this backdrop, the question arises: “Can we fit insurance into health or does health deserve to accept insurance?” The shortest answer is yes. The length of the answer can be stretched up to making a series of books. Many a time, we are pinched and pricked by a common question regarding the above-mentioned importance of insurance in the healthcare domain. Then why is Nepal not practicing health insurance in full-swing? Per se, Nepal is one of the Low Middle Income Countries (LMICs). By default, we will be able to taste the development later than any other developed country. Nevertheless, we have been practicing it for a long time in the case of road traffic accidents, providing health services to foreigners and some range of employee health benefits. It won’t be an overstatement to point that Nepal is now leapfrogging in this matter directly from the phase of crawling, something we were observing till four or five years back. Thanks to the government for introducing a national health insurance plan and including a health component in the Social Security Fund. Insurance pundits differ on this matter and they are not ready to accept these two big plans as an insurance scheme. In their viewpoint, this does not get reinsurance protection and it is including pre-existing disease conditions too with disregard to underwriting and other technical procedures. They take these two schemes as social schemes. The ambivalence and dilemma in this incorporation are in the fundamentals of these two domains. Health is regarded as a social domain whereas insurance is regarded as a financial and profit-oriented business. Despite this difference, there are enough grounds that these two sectors can be adhered to support each other, to thrive together and finally to keep end-users i.e. the general public in a more beneficial position. The basis of a golden handshake that these two domains can have are: They both are public-oriented businesses, both of them follow the theory of ‘beneficence’ and ‘non-maleficence’ and they both follow strict protocols. The healthcare industry, being a full-population touching industry, can provide a strong ride to the insurance sector in helping its expansion and increasing level of acceptance. Insurance, on the other hand, can support and promote the health sector in making it more responsible, more protocol-centric and well-documented. On top of that, they can synergize in introducing digitization showing fingers to each other, which ultimately benefits every stakeholder.  Last but not the least, they can create enhanced skills in the employee and introduce another area of service like a third-party administrator (TPA). Thus, insurance and health should be blended as two separate engines or better say co-rotator wheels. For getting this done, a series of workouts are required in the form of smart-work rather than in the form of hard-work. This is the call of all three ‘C’s, namely citizens, community and country. The writer is a CEO at Reliance Life Insurance

Nepali politics is gradually becoming synonymous to coalition politics and we are worse off for that. There is no single party in the country that has a realistic prospect of creating a government on its own.  It has been proven time and again that coalition governments are less pragmatic. We have all seen that coalition governments lead to political instability. A coalition government will invariably collapse and create the condition for re-election. It is unquestionably less effective, non-durable, and untrustworthy compared to a government constituted by a single party with defined principles and a distinct ideology. In case of a coalition government, the majority of ministers are nominated on the suggestion of parties. These candidates were never vetted for their competence and qualifications, and at the end of the day, it is the country that suffers. Another disadvantage of Nepal’s coalition government is horse-trading. Horse-trading in politics is often seen as unethical and unpleasant, and it should be prohibited. It is claimed that horse-trading occurs in order to influence a no-confidence vote. True, consolidation of democracy sometimes necessitates coalition politics. This, however, is not the case in Nepal. Ideally, formation of a new government should promote qualitative advancement, notably inter-ethnic harmony and social concord. And coalition governments, which share power between two or more political parties, should encourage and contribute to democratic consolidation. It should contribute to the improvement of democratic institutions. These objectives are not being met by coalition politics in Nepal. Most of the countries in South Asia have adopted the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system, which was inherited from the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent. The single-member territorial electoral districts, where victory is guaranteed for the candidate who receives a majority of votes, have their own advantages and disadvantages. In a developing nation like Nepal, there must be a reasonable link between coalition politics and the advancement of democracy. Nepal has been heavily impacted by the subcontinent’s postcolonial political landscape. The underlying causes that have contributed to the establishment and growth of electoral and governing coalitions by South Asian political parties have had a significant influence on Nepal’s electoral system. The major political parties in Nepal have substantially adopted their democratic and public policy features. As in the rest of the region, the dynamics driving coalition politics as a recurrent character of government formation are prevalent in Nepal. Nonetheless, the question of whether the coalition administration has offered chances for ethnic minority representation to influence public policy making processes is relevant. Even if there is a slip-up in the electoral system, it cannot be removed by simply reforming it. The voters’ verdicts have determined the kind of the political candidates they prefer—the political parties mostly fail to apprehend the people’s sentiments, potential popular candidates, and election system and management experts. Party leaders have misused the election system to consolidate political power and financial strength since they do not select the right candidates. Nepotism and favoritism are rife in the candidate nomination process. It seems that the trend has become the core mode of politics in Nepal. After the restoration of democracy in 1990, politicians, election administrators and stakeholders have increased interest in elections. Everyone has started paying attention to the electoral reform process. In this context, it is natural to discuss what kind of electoral system is suitable for the land. There is no doubt that political stability is necessary for institutional development of democracy. However, what constitutes political stability has been the subject of intense research. Nobody disagrees with the reasons why our democratic system is not fruitful and sustainable, since almost all our elected governments in the past have been unstable. Not a single government since 1994 has been formed and led by a single party. And, as in other parts of the region, Nepali political leaders only concern themselves with winning elections, gaining political power and enhancing individual success in petty political ambitions that always lead to accumulation of wealth to ensure victory in the next election. They put aside all the common pro-people agendas and policies as long as they cling on to power. This scenario, therefore, convinces us that there is a real need for systemic reform in the electoral system in Nepal. Changing electoral systems is always risky. However, if we want the good of the country and the citizens as a whole, we must dare to change the system, improve the method and process. As the FPTP system failed to meet the requirements of relatively proportional inclusive representation, we adopted a mixed electoral system. Although some achievements have been achieved through this system, it has been seen and experienced that the representation has not been fully proportional, and the election has become very expensive and many distortions have been introduced in the use of the system. Not only this, there was not even a proportional representation of all classes, regions and groups in the elected bodies. So, changing our electoral system is an urgency of the time. The author is the PhD scholar at DIRD, TU  

Sometimes back a national media published a news regarding the unusual and hateful names of Dalit people in their citizenship documents. The news disclosed the naked reality of our society where the traditional caste system is deeply entrenched. It shows how the so-called upper caste people treat minorities in our society. The officials involved in the citizenship issuance process apparently had no qualms approving the certificates issued to the people whose names were clearly assigned as insults by the people from the so-called upper caste. These civil servants are no doubt academically qualified to hold their respective jobs, but they also lack morality. This is the sad reality of our bureaucracy, which is run by mindless pen-pushers. The Dalit community of Nepal is the most victimized and oppressed groups of our society. But our society by and large rather than voicing their solidarity with the Dalits, they resent reservation actions like reservations for minority groups. In a democratic system, certain policies are made to ensure participation and representation of marginalized and deprived groups. In the context of Nepal, Dalits are more deprived of their socio-political and human rights. Due to this discrimination, the presence of Dalits in mainstream politics and state bodies is very little. The very structure of Nepali society is responsible for depriving Dalits of their rights. The caste system doesn’t give proper space to Dalits in the social sphere. For example, most Dalit candidates in local level election didn’t get votes from non-Dalits, particularly for executive position. Take any local unit of Nepal and you will invariably find that its head is a non-Dalit. This indicates the poor view of our society towards Dalits. The majority of non-Dalits openly dismiss a candidate if he or she happens to be a Dalit or a member of other minority groups. They cannot imagine a person whom they have oppressed and insulted all their lives becoming an elected official. This anti-Dalit stance runs deep in our society. So ensure Dalit participation, the government has provided nine percent reservation facility for the community. It has done the same thing for women, indigenous groups, disabled, Madhesi, Muslim, etc. But for many non-Dalits, reservation for Dalit community is intolerable. They argue that the reservation for Dalits has reduced the opportunity for qualified non-Dalit people. If so then why is Nepal, which was ruled over by the so-called upper caste people for centuries, still underdeveloped? It is only the reservation policy for Dalits that irks the non-Dalits. They believe the Nepali society is free of caste discrimination and that the reservation facility for Dalits is unnecessary. Clearly, as non-Dalits, they have no idea what it is like to be a Dalit in Nepal. They certainly do not reflect on their own biases when they vote, when they hire workers and even when they make friends. They don’t know the pain and suffering faced by Dalits. They don’t know what it is to be ostracized and discriminated against all their lives. They don’t know the feeling of being told not to enter someone’s house or a temple. They don’t know the shame planted by society on the minds of Dalit children, who grow up to resent themselves when they grow up because they were born to the so-called lower caste family. Therefore, the nine percent reservation quota for Dalits is not enough to right all the wrongs they have gone through since ages. But the non-Dalits do not see this, as they have never put up with the humiliation of being a Dalit in Nepali society. There are many Dalits who don’t want reservation as long as the society guarantees equal treatment and respect to them. They say reservation facility can’t heal the wounds of caste discrimination. It can’t revive the lives of Navaraj BK and Sete Damai, who lost their lives on the account of being Dalits. Every non-Dalit should come to the terms to the fact that reservation policy is not a compensation for caste discrimination. It is just a gesture offered by the state in hopes of healing the Dalit trauma. To grow up in a hateful environment and compete with those who have been enjoying the structural dividend from ages is unfair to Dalits. Non-Dalits should realize this. It is easy to criticize or form half-baked opinions. But it takes a lot of introspection, historical understanding and moral courage to understand the pains of Dalits.