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Is Harka Sampang going to the Jungle?


Harka Sampang is a good man. He used to love singing in the dark or in the evening to be precise and could have been our 'Bob Dylan' bringing changes by his songs if he had not decided to quit his job as the Mayor of Dharan and be a lawmaker and a chairperson of his political political party.

I think where Harka lost most of his credibility except for his 'I can work all day doing hard labor' credentials was when he rushed to Kathmandu after the Gen Z massacre, to get an opportunity to lead this country even if it was only for a six-month 'hold elections and move on' stint.

Harka is a good man. I say that again. Good luck to his party members and well-wishers but somebody has to remind our Daju that he is not in the government. He is not a minister and please don't walk around town, boasting your chances of one day living in Baluwatar and working from Singha Durbar and trying to preach his stuff to Balen and his crew. Your time will come, hope so but until then be a good opposition and or join RSP now and be in the hot seat as well!

Give the new government five years, and then if we don't like them, we will definitely choose you and your party to lead us to the 'Great Labor Revolution' in this country. For now, let your friend Balen, our PM and his homies do their job, and even if they screw up along the way, give them a helping hand, not amilo paachaks every other week till we all get bored.

Now let's get back to the story of the day. Well, Harka is out with his 33-point demand. Why do I get the feeling that it reminds me of the 40-point demand put forth by the Maoists to Sherey's government thirty years ago?

Well, Mr. Sampang is not threatening to go to the jungle and wage another 'uncivil' war, but we know very well that neither the government nor the public have to force or encourage him to go to the jungle to dig some roads, break down some stones or do any work that requires hard human labor. He is the volunteer-in-chief of our land!

We admire him for that but we need to remind him that one day, when you become the PM, do not go to Darchula to build the jhulungey pool yourself. Make a nice concrete six-lane highway, if possible, and that too with the help of engineers and skilled labor please.

Well, so what are his 33-point demand? I wouldn't want you to stop scrolling and go to other social media stuff to get some instant gratification so I will just summarize most of it and then you can decide if Harka is really serious or it is just the similar Maoist-like demands of the late 90s which we know were never fulfilled when those rebels became the Rajas!

Well, Harka Daju wants the Balen government to do a lot of stuff like in Frank Sinatra's 'My Way' or we could call it the 'Harka Way'. Prachanda-Path is now in the trashbin. Harka-Tarka is not a new concept, it is more or less similar to what the RSP wants to do but with less spice and more Choila than Kaley Bangoor maybe!

When it comes to our border security, Harka wants the Nepal Army instead of the APF and the Nepal Police dancing around. A separate Border Security Force would be nice but we are not in the red zone like the Indians facing the Pakistanis and the Chinese so I really don't see the Army doing anything at our borders! I would rather see our government lobby seriously for a rapid reaction force for the UN manned mostly by our soldiers. Better paycheck, more global experience in peacekeeping and helping all sides from killing each other in conflict zones!

I think many of us are conspiracy theorists and therefore think all this MCC and SPP thing will invite American troops to Nepal. I have no idea where this idea came from. Reminder to our Mel Gibsons that we don't have oil and we don't have a nuclear bomb yet and the Americans are not thinking of fighting the Chinese and the Indians sandwiched in between with nukes facing from both sides. They own the oceans and they can do whatever they like and they don't need us.

The only way Harka's dream of a directly elected head of state will be when RSP gets the same percentage of the seats in the Upper House as well and that could be a possibility next time but for now, a little messy with the Upper House being controlled by the same old chor old school wallahs. So better luck next time around when either RSP or your party gets 75% of the seats in both Houses!

And when it comes to education reform, I like the idea of Harka's more days of non-textbook stuff for our school kids. But instead of hard-core muscle-tearing labor, better to teach our small kids about plants and stuff and when in teens, how to at least operate the tractors, trailers and other agro-equipment and by the time they are old enough, they could also get the license to operate such machinery as well.

The academically strong will turn out to be agro-experts, while vocational ones can man the system to make us a food-exporting nation once again. Maybe more STEM, coding, drone skills and AI Prompt Masters than simply going to dig ditches and carry rocks manually like the old days. If we can have a million young students speaking not only Nepali but fluent English, Spanish, French, Italian, and most importantly Mandarin, then we could do better on the global stage.

And I scanned all the other points and it talks about ending corruption, end of politicization of our bureaucracy and other branches of the government and how to help the vulnerable, MARGlNalized communities as well as our farmers and stuff. I think the Balen government is working on these issues, so Harka could instead come up with a concept of 'Labor Land' and give all the Disneylands all around the world a run for their money.

Then we could get like 100 million tourists a year, mostly from developed countries or high net-worth folks from China and INdia who want to engage in a week or two-week Labor Camp and carry rocks, beat them, dig ditches and build local bridges and like a Labor Summer Park for the rich tourists and we could be making at least US$ 100 billion dollars in revenue a year.

Who needs AI or dreaming of bringing in foreign investment to bring Walmart and Amazon or even BYD to Nepal when we can have the fast and the furious money-making zombies come here and spend their money to carry stuff in dokos and experience the hardcore Harka lifestyle? Why am I seeing Harka as our Rambo minus the violence, but rescuing hundreds of millions of foreign tourists from laziness and bringing them back to life by engaging in some hard labor?

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