Kathmandu metropolis: A chequered history

Mayor Balendra Shah’s mismanagement of Kathmandu Metropolitan City is in keeping with the lack of vision of the body’s past heads, observers say.

Kathmandu Metropolitan City has been besieged with chronic problems such as mismanagement of garbage, decades-old squatters’ issue, encroachment of open spaces, poor heritage conservation, shoddy drinking water system, and lack of footpath and sewage management. Successive mayors have spent years addressing these problems, without much success. But what accounts for this lack of progress?