THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

I was travelling in Jumla, a remote district in mid-western Nepal in 1992, when I became acutely aware of how scary diahorrea can be. I was all of 19 years old. I’d flown there on a rickety plane that landed in a small runway. The plethora of tea-shops that I was assured, by the non-governmental organization that had hired me and had sent me out, were in existence and would take care of my food and lodging never materialized. Instead, there were small homes selling a few items-perhaps a biscuit packet, some cigarettes or matches. Tea was still a luxury.  After tramping around the villages for six weeks, and living off fox tailed barley bread sprinkled with salt and chilli, and recording stories of mysterious deaths on the side (“my sister was walking back home to her husband’s house and she fell down dead on the way”, “about seventeen people have died in that village that-a-way, we don’t know why”) my fellow guide suggested we try to climb up to Rara lake. “It will take ...

I’m not sure if I caught all of Indian PM Modi’s speech to the Nepal Parliament, but the portion I did was   powerfully articulated, well thought out, and persuasive.   What came across most clearly was the PM’s interest in decreasing poverty not just in Nepal but all across the 7 SAARC nations. I’d read a great deal about Modi—from Modi’s critics. One criticism was that his much vaunted results about decreasing poverty in Gujarat was hyped up. His poverty figures, said critics, were less than what the Modistas claimed the numbers were. After listening to his speech, it was clear to me that PM Modi has a clear anti-poverty agenda—not just for his own country, but also for the SAARC region as a whole. Whether he can show results is unproven. But clearly he’s putting a remarkable amount of energy and devotion to this project, traveling thousands of miles and meeting people of all persuasions in order to inspire them with this vision. And that, I think, is achievement en...