Off the Record 082: Those who tell the truth shall die
Issue 082 • 27 January 2023
It’s January 27, 2023, and you’re reading Off the Record.
I’m Pranaya Rana and in this newsletter, we’ll stop, take a deep breath, and dive into one singular issue that defined the past week.
You can read Off the Record for free by visiting this link to receive this newsletter in your inbox every Friday.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening from Kathmandu once again in mourning. A lot has happened this week. The biggest bombshell dropped on Friday with the Supreme Court deciding against Rabi Lamichhane in the case over the validity of his citizenship. Lamichhane has now effectively lost his position in Parliament and the Deputy Prime Ministership and the Home Ministership. But that also means he’s stateless for the time being — neither American nor Nepali. What happens next will be fodder for next week’s newsletter as the drama is certain to play out over the coming week.
But I’d rather not talk about anything else. It wouldn’t be right; it would take attention away from what deserves to be read. And what must be read is this:
The deep dive: Those who tell the truth shall live forever
On Tuesday, January 24, 36-year-old Prem Prasad Acharya walked up to the street outside of the federal parliament in Baneshwor, doused himself in petrol, and set himself on fire. As he burned, a VIP motorcade passed by. It did not stop. Shocked passersby attempted to throw water on him and extinguish the flames with cloth but by the time the fire had been put out, Acharya was grievously injured. He had severe burns to over 80 percent of his body. He would die the next day during the course of treatment.
Before his self-immolation, Acharya had made a lengthy post on social media, outlining just why he felt compelled to take this drastic step. His story is truly a deeply depressing one that deserves to be read in full. Annapurna Post has the entire post, you can read it in Nepali or use Google Translate. Let me attempt a summary here, for it all bears repeating.
Acharya was born and raised in Fikkal, Ilam. His father died of a brain tumor when he was still a student. Acharya got married and moved to Kathmandu, finding work in various private schools and travel agencies. He sold his ancestral home in Ilam and built a house in Budhanilkantha. Eventually, he managed to save some money and started his own travel agency, catering mostly to tourists and Plus Two students.
In his post, Acharya complains that Chinese tourists would often haggle over prices or come up with excuses to pay less than the agreed-upon amount. So he switched to providing tour packages to Plus Two students, taking them to Ilam, Darjeeling, and Sikkim on school trips. But even here, he claims that the schools would refuse to pay him in full, giving him an advance but not paying him the rest. He names two of these schools — Kathford College and SAAN International College.
In order to take clients on tour, Acharya decided to purchase a car. Out of the Rs 600,000 downpayment asked for, Acharya managed to pay Rs 400,000 and asked for an extension of two months to pay the remaining Rs 200,000. The car dealership refused and when the deadline arrived, it seized his car and the Rs 400,000 he had paid. This was the Suzuki showroom in Thapathali, he writes.
With his travel agency in debt and losing money, Acharya decided that he had no choice but to migrate for work. He got a job in Qatar as an office assistant and managed to rise through the ranks to become a sales and marketing manager. He was making 5,000 Qatari riyal, roughly Rs 179,000, every month. After working in Qatar from 2014-2017, Acharya returned to Nepal, having paid off his debts and with some savings to boot.
This time, he decided to move back to his hometown and start an agro-business there. Instead of buying land, as most people with some savings do, he decided to put the money into a more productive sector and invest in a business. But that was his biggest mistake, he writes.
Acharya’s new business sold agro-products from Ilam, like ghee, gundruk, and akbare pickles. He sold these products to numerous large department stores in Birtamode, Damak, Itahari, Dharan, Biratnagar, and Jhapa. But none of them paid him up front. All of the goods were received on credit on the condition that he would be paid when they were sold, as is the general custom all over Nepal. Later, some of the retailers returned the goods they had been unable to sell, saying they had expired. They did not pay him for these.
Meanwhile, Acharya still had to pay for the raw materials, factory operation costs, salaries to his employees, and taxes. He also had a family to support and children to send to school. On paper, he was making a profit of 30-35 percent but in reality, all his profits were stuck with his customers. And he had loans to pay. Since he didn’t have enough cash on hand, he was forced to take out more loans to pay the interest on his old loans. He was soon mired in debt.
Still, he tried a different tack. He wanted to retail the goods himself but he wasn’t allowed to since the government mandates that factories cannot also be retailers. There were myriad taxes and regulations he needed to follow but these weren’t outlined properly anywhere, leading the authorities to take advantage. In order to bring his goods from Ilam to Kathmandu, he would have to bribe numerous police officers on the road. Some would even step into his truck and seize his products for themselves.
When the Province 1 government announced a grant program for agro-businesses, Acharya applied and was shortlisted four times. Each time, he was told that he had good products and would definitely receive the grant. But he never did. Instead, the ward chairman of his neighborhood received numerous grants three years in a row. Acharya soon realized that he wasn’t going to get the grant unless he was affiliated with a political party and had some clout.
Acharya goes on to name the many big businesses that looted him. Like Upendra Mahato, who is nearly a billionaire, whose Gramudhyog company bought ghee from Acharya. Initially, Mahato’s company paid him on time and in advance but gradually, it too began to go the same way as other retailers. The company began to produce its own ghee so it would allow Acharya’s ghee to remain in the warehouse. Then, after months in storage, the ghee was returned to Acharya on the grounds that it had expired. Acharya received no payment.
Acharya also calls out Min Bahadur Gurung of Bhatbhateni for demanding a 30 percent margin on all goods sold in his superstores. Payment was promised within a month but Acharya only received a check in three months, and that too with his name spelled wrong. In order to get the check corrected, he had to come all the way to Kathmandu from Ilam. Given this experience, he stopped supplying Bhatbhateni with his products.
Another chain supermarket, Big Mart, also only paid him for sales. Despite ordering goods worth Rs 500,000 to 600,000, he would be paid Rs 75,000 to Rs 150,000. Some months, he wouldn’t receive any payment on the excuse that the billing cycle had not ended. When he decided not to do business with Big Mart anymore and went to collect his products, he found that over half of the stock had already been sold but he’d never received the payment for them. “Why did you rob me like this?” Acharya asks in his social media post.
Industriast Pawan Golyan’s Golyan Agro also ordered 110 cartons of ghee from Acharya. Once Acharya delivered the cartons to Kathmandu, he was told that the order had been canceled because there was no market demand. “Why did you order the products without conducting a feasibility study first?” Acharya asks again.
Similarly, NepExpress UAE via metrotarkari.com ordered gundruk and taama (fermented bamboo shoots) from Acharya but never paid him. At Dabur Nepal’s Bara factory, Acharya said that an employee named Shankar Pant asked him for a commission. And despite promising to pay upon delivery of goods, he was paid three months later and that too an incomplete amount.
Faced with mounting debts, Acharya tried to go abroad again. But the ‘manpower’ companies demanded exorbitant amounts for any good job he could’ve gotten. He had no capital to pay them either. Mired in debt and with no cash flow to pay them off, he thought about dying by suicide numerous times, even trying to do so but was ultimately unable. He realized then that his wife too was depressed and was also thinking of suicide herself.
And so, he came to the conclusion that he needed to do it first. In his social media post, he asks that no one try to save him, and even if they do, he will try to kill himself again. He only asks that his well-wishers try to help his wife with their debts so that she doesn’t follow him and leave their two daughters orphaned.
In the days leading up to his suicide, Acharya came to Kathmandu from Dang on a night bus. On the journey, he realized that his seat had been sold to two others, one of them a woman. When he saw her standing, he gave up his seat. “Even at the end of my life, I was still looted,” he wrote.
At the end of the post, Acharya provides a list of 25 actions that the government can undertake so that others will not have to suffer the same fate he did. Some of the suggestions are easily implementable and some a bit misguided. You can read them in full here (use Google Translate if you can’t read Nepali).
As a side-note, if you’d like to donate to Acharya’s wife and family, you can do so using the following bank information:
NANUKA ADHIKARI
SAVING AC: 2907010001814
GLOBAL IME BANK, NEW BANESWOR BRANCH
The entire letter is articulate, heartfelt, and deeply saddening, made all the more so because it is so familiar. His complaints are what every small business complains about — the seemingly insurmountable burden of taxes on small businesses when large ones launder money and get tax write-offs; how the entire economy basically operates on a credit system; the monopoly of certain industries; the unnecessary bureaucratic red tape; and the unceasing corruption that pervades every sector.
His ordeal seems to have touched many Nepalis as social media is replete with condolence messages and angry rants towards the government. Public protests and memorials have been held. Even Kathmandu Mayor Balen Shah commented, saying that he blamed the nation for Acharya’s suicide. Shah, who has spent his tenure forbidding street vendors from plying their trade and attempting to evict squatters from their homes, did not seem to notice the irony.
Acharya called his self-immolation an act of protest. That is what it is. He chose the very public and horrific route that he did so that other Nepalis and the government would be forced to acknowledge the problems he underwent. Self-immolation is often an act of revolutionary protest, whether it is Thich Quang Duc protesting the persecution of Buddhists, street vendor Mohammad Bouazizi protesting the confiscation of his goods by municipal authorities, or Karma Ngedon Gyatso protesting China’s continued occupation of Tibet. Acharya had long pleaded with others to hear him out and help him. His desperation brought him to such ends that he felt he needed to scream so loud that people couldn’t help but hear him.
What led Acharya to his final drastic act are many issues, which he has outlined himself. His experiences show just how difficult it is to do business honestly in Nepal. Though governments and ministers claim that they will create more jobs within the country and establish a proper ‘environment’ for Nepalis to do business in Nepal itself, young people continue to leave the country in droves. They realize that staying in Nepal is a fool’s gambit. There’s no real life to be had here. The only ones who make money and become successful are those already rich. The game is rigged, but you cannot lose if you do not play. And so, they wash their hands of this country and go abroad the first chance they get. Can anyone blame them?
Nepal really is no country for anyone except for those who already have a lot. The capitalism that is practiced here is the crony kind, where you need vast networks of agents and middlemen to get anything done. The most lucrative contracts, the biggest government grants and subsidies, they all go to the party faithful. Businessmen donate millions to politicians and in return, they become ministers and Members of Parliament. Those without patronage networks or an unwillingness to indulge in corruption get nowhere.
Acharya is not the only one mired in debt. I’ve written before about the plight of those trapped in a ‘meter byaj’ where loan sharks charge poor, largely uneducated peasants and farmers exorbitant interest rates on small sums of money. Or the perennial plight of sugarcane farmers who have to protest every year in order to be paid their dues by powerful mill owners. There is something deeply rotten with both the formal and informal credit and lending system in Nepal, one that needs to be thoroughly investigated and overhauled, with strict oversight from the authorities.
Then, there’s also the elephant in the room that very few actually want to talk about — mental health. It is clear that Acharya was not in the right mental state for a long time. He describes feeling depressed and suicidal long before he took the final drastic step. But he had no one to reach out to and talk to. We might see his suicide as something tragic yet brave but that’s romanticization. No one should feel the need to die by suicide to be heard. Perhaps if Acharya had access to professional help or even someone who understood what he was going through, he might have reconsidered ending his life.
The changes that Acharya has demanded in his farewell note are extensive and will require a thorough rethinking of many ways of doing things. It is clear that they are not working. The economy cannot run on credit. Big business houses with billions in capital can afford to operate on credit but small businesses cannot; they need a constant cash flow in order to make ends meet and keep their businesses running. Contracts and payment agreements must be enforced by law. While working as a freelancer, I’ve realized just how difficult it is to get people to pay you what you are owed. They want the work done immediately but payment is postponed for months later; often, there is no payment at all.
There is much I want to say but somehow I fail to find the words. It is a deeply distressing state of affairs when a young man, just 36 years of age, feels so beaten down by his country, its government, and the powerful that he sets himself on fire in public. But unlike Tunisia after the self-immolation of Mohammad Bouazizi, there will be no mass protest, no Arab Spring, no changes to legislation, or long-lasting policy measures that seek to change the bedrock of the system that led Acharya to suicide; there will only be publicity stunts, crocodile tears, and perfunctory statements.
Acharya is not just one person; there are many more like him across the country, trapped in inextricable situations that are slowly bleeding them of their money, their health, and their lives. On Wednesday, 57-year-old businessman Mohan Neupane of Biratnagar hung himself due to mounting debts and his inability to pay them off. On Tuesday, the same day as Acharya’s death, the body of Tilak Bahadur Karki arrived in Kathmandu in a coffin. Karki was once a section commander of the People’s Liberation Army and still retained shrapnel in his stomach from wounds suffered then. He had gone to Saudi Arabia last year to work in an iron factory, earning Rs 35,000 a month. He had Rs 300,000 in loans to pay back and a family back home to support. On January 11, just a few weeks ago, he came home, went to bed, and never woke up. Despite being healthy and suffering from no ailments, he had apparently suffered a heart attack in his sleep.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, the supreme commander of the People’s Liberation Army, is currently the prime minister of Nepal.
That same day, seven other coffins carrying dead bodies arrived at Tribhuvan International Airport.
One final incident before I go.
In Saptari, far from the streets of the Capital city, 45-year-old Ramdev Marik had taken out a Rs 100,000 loan from two cooperatives in order to pay for his son’s wedding. He paid each installment on the 9th of every month but on Monday, the 9th of the Nepali month Magh, he was unable to get any money together to pay the monthly installment. On Tuesday — the same day Prem Prasad Acharya burned himself to death and the same day that Tilak Bahadur Karki’s body arrived in Kathmandu — Ramdev Marik was found dead. He had hung himself.
I leave you with Prem Prasad Acharya’s words:
I was unable to become a successful businessmen, unable to earn money, unable to fulfull my dreams and ambitions. I encouraged many young people to not go abroad, to stay in Nepal and do something here. But my failures taught me why they don’t want to stay here and choose to go abroad. I learned about corruption, monopoly, nepotism but by the end, I had lost everything, I fell in such a way that I couldn’t get back up. To all those who I encouraged to not go abroad, I rescind my encouragement. Please forgive me. Nothing can be done in this country. There is injustice and discrimination in every step. This country is corrupt.
That’s all for this week. Off the Record will (probably) be back in your inboxes next Friday. I shall see you then, in your emails, for the next edition of Off the Record.
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