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Showing posts from May, 2012

Pie in the Sky: Apartment living in the Kathmandu Valley

I’ve lived in Kathmandu since i was born  in 1973. It has  gone from a small city of about 300,000 to about 3 million people.  With the upsurge of population has come unregulated growth of huge housing complexes and apartment buildings, much of it rumored to be backed by Maoists. The sight of giant "modern" buildings rising out of the broken and crushed historical neighborhoods, bulldozed by Baburam Bhattarai's determined march towards modernity, is an odd one. These neighbourhoods would be protected heritage neighborhoods in Spain or Italy, but in Nepal are mere "old" and "feudal" areas to be destroyed as quickly as possible. Baburam Bhattarai, who's gone on record saying: "Give me five years and I will turn Nepal into Bihar", seems to be on track to completely ruin and destroy the historical nature of Kathmandu for some imagined Bihari wonderland of skyscrapers and multi-lane highways which he imagines will turn the switch to prosperi