Nepal cannot leave children’s safety to chance when floods strike

A photograph published by a national daily shows a student at Bageshwari Secondary School in Baireni, Dhading, searching through a mud-caked schoolbag. It was taken on August 31, five days after the Bhotekoshi flood, with dozens of other bags abandoned nearby. The caption says no more, and I will not invent more.

Yet every teacher knows what a schoolbag holds: a worn textbook, a half-finished exercise, a tiffin box, and the quiet certainty that tomorrow’s lesson will happen. My own hometown in Dhading lies close to the Trishuli; hence these are not distant rivers to me. As Dashain unfolds, two floods ask a harder question of Nepal: are we teaching our children to be ready before the river arrives?