The make-belief world of ‘Made in Nepal’

To make the policy work, policymakers must first identify the products that we can produce at lower costs.

Every year, at the dawn of policy formulation—like this year, when President Ramchandra Poudel unveiled the government's policies and programmes for Fiscal Year 2023/24—the government promises to promote the consumption of Nepali products. The 'Made in Nepal' slogan, though, evaporates as soon as the government is done with the formulation. No government has failed to include this slogan in the past few decades in their policies, yet we import almost everything we consume. Perhaps the government has been embracing such a slogan for its inherent sense of patriotism among the electorate.