Thapa’s “informers” of the past……

http://www.telegraphnepal.com/news_det.php?news_id=2532

N.P.Upadhyaya - It is said that the State runs through “informers” who collect the news and views about the State being commented by politicians, leaders and the media in opposition. The State thus pays some amount to the one who “informs”.

We are told that any State at any time seeks the need of such informers and does the needful in order to quell the possible unrest that the men in the opposition might bring for the State machinery any time in the future. And thus the need for such informers.

We are even told that during the time when Sher Bahadur Deuba was the home minister in the early 1990s, one media men who was very close to Deuba used to leak the strategies that Nepal was going to adopt as regards the Bhutanese refugee crisis. Such a leak approached the Bhutan government much ahead of the Nepali team either went to Bhutan or a bilateral talks team was in Kathmandu for resolving the refugee issue. The “leak” thus allowed some more space for the other side to devise mechanisms in order to “linger” the issue and this is what has exactly been happening even as of today.

It is said that such a leak by that particular informer, a Nepali citizen in effect, benefited the Bhutanese regime and in lieu of such “substantial” support, the Nepali media man used to get his “salary” in Indian currency through one of the trusted men of the Bhutanese regime based in Kathmandu.

We are told that the same media man is still the pay roll of the Bhutanese regime. Or in other words, the same media man over the years for the “service” rendered to Bhutan government must have amassed wealth which would be sufficient for generations to come.

The next part of the story runs like this.

When the Lokendra Bahadur Chand’s government failed or had to resign only to be replaced by Surya Bahadur Thapa government in the late 1990s, a press meet was organized by one of the media society in Kathmandu. The media society had invited the new prime minister of this country for a chit chat over a cup of tea.

One journalist who is a self-styled “democrat” to which he is not, made a sharp question to Thapa-the country’s Prime Minister Thapa perhaps hoping that the new PM would be pretty annoyed. However, contrary to his thinking, Thapa-a noted conspiratorial brain of this country, responded in a some what different manner much to the chagrin of the self styled media man.

The question ran like this, “Well Mr. Prime Minister, how you have been feeling in being the Prime Minister of a democratic country given your past back ground that you have had served many a times the Royal regime in the past?”

PM Thapa took this question in a lighter vein and pat came the reply from the new PM that, (sic) “Well, I am pleased to know that those media men whom I had put into the service of collecting information in the Panchayat days for 20-30 rupees per month appear now to have come of their age”.

This was Thapa’s answer. And how the media man felt listening upon Thapa’s befitting response is any body’s guess.

The gist of my writing is that those who make tall claims be it in the media sector or some where else, are the real converts and informers.

What else I can say of this “august” journalist who is, I am told, is still in the Bhutan government’s pay roll.

Shame would be the fitting words perhaps for such a Nepali who is “supplying” information to some alien forces in lieu of some money and in the process he is “insulting” his credentials of being a Nepali as well.

2007-12-19 06:36:26