Distractions of their own making

What Prime Minister KP Oli and his challenger, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, seem to have forgotten is the sorry state Nepal is in, caught between a killer pandemic and a disastrous monsoon.

As I had alluded to in one of my earlier columns, there are those who, having come to power, readily succumb to the ‘great man’s disease’. That is when a politician assumes that winning an election has somehow conferred on him (and, it is mostly a him) god-like omniscience. That is clearly the affliction of our prime minister, KP Oli, who has throughout both his prime ministerial stints taken to launching into impromptu lectures without consideration of the audience, including at times providing ‘scientific’ advice to a room full of scientists. His performance in Parliament in early June when he asserted that a supposed Nepali exceptionalism resulting from our geography and food habits have made us resistant to viruses, corona or otherwise, is a classic instance to prove true the old saying: ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing’.