Opinion | Wealth, professionalism and political responsibility in Bikram Sambat 2082

The last major story of Bikram Sambat 2082 was how collectively wealthy our new cabinet is. The ensuing furore—albeit confined mostly to social media, the preferred venue nowadays for debates and discussions—focused on the fact that almost all the ministers have done pretty well for themselves. Questions were raised about how it was possible for these relative youngsters to have accumulated so much; insinuations made that something somewhere does not sound right; and there were calls for the ministers to prove their wealth was all kosher. It is easy to understand the source of such angst. Having long been socialised to view politicians as folks who do nothing but politick their whole life, we idealise leaders like the late Bhim Bahadur Tamang, who, as reported, lived in a small room at the end of his life with nothing ‘beyond bare necessities’, and Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, who famously entered the prime minister’s residence in 1990 with equally bare necessities and left a year later with the same items. But the world has long moved on from those antiquated Gandhian notions of a politician, and that is the reality we now see in our government ministers today. For the first time, we have a Cabinet full of not career politicians but professionals with careers backing them. The variety and volume of wealth disclosed by the ministers are substantial enough to raise eyebrows. Not, by the way, in terms of presuming some sort of nefarious dealings by them but in learning it is pos