Thirty-four years after Nepal achieved democracy, the golden jubilee of the Nepal Praja Parishad party was observed in Kathmandu in June 1985. On the occasion, “living martyr” Tanka Prasad Acharya made the following observation: “Even to this day, we have to suffer from regressive policies. Nepal remains a very backward country. The rulers back then controlled and fooled the public at large with threats and enticements, and emasculated their self-respect. The policy of ruling by demoralising the people has not yet ceased.”

(Essay) America will rule the world forever.” This was my uncle sloganeering. He, an oncologist in the United States, had come to visit us with his family. Being younger than many present during this imperial diatribe, I stayed silent. I heard one of my other uncles—one who had not abandoned the homeland for exotic places—mutter words crafted to perforate the stoutest ego in an undertone that was clearly audible.

Thought to be ‘Muslim’ by some, but originating in the land of the five rivers — Punjab, east and west — the salwar kameez has nearly completed its conquest of the South Asian clothesline. What politicians, diplomats and activists have not been able to do, this piece of stitched cloth has.

There are those who have learnt to ‘filter’, and have emerged with a wardrobe which is Western in thought but desi at heart.

Census and sex workers  Two million census workers in India are counting more than a billion people. Census officials say by the time the month-long count ends on 28 February, they will have a fairly accurate idea of how most Indians live and what they do for a living. They say while everyone will be counted, some people on the margins of society, including those involved in illegal activities such as sex workers, will be classified as beggars. That policy has upset some women involved in India’s huge illegal sex trade.

The diseases are in the developing South, but the money and the patents are locked in the post-industrial North. The world’s poor are in a free fall.

Popular Cinema and Conflicts in South Asia Hindi cinema feeds the mass imagination of most of South Asia, so what are we in for when Bombay’s production houses start feeding  lightweight Indian nationalism to this mass?

The success of the Pashtoon people in the martial arena has been offset by their defeat in the sphere of cultural representation. Just look at the new crop of Hindi films.

India & IT A desi entrepreneur in Silicon Valley promises an Internet gurukul—for a fee of course. Online is the assembly line of the New Age, and the Indian-NRI bourgeoisie could not be happier.

Ernie is the prankster who loves  to play with his rubber ducky in the bathtub. Bert is the whining pinhead, his character a bit like R2D2’s. Big Bird is young, innocent and bumbling, and Cookie monster devours, well, cookies. Ernie, Bert, Big Bird and Cookie Monster all speak Urdu. These innovative creations of the master puppeteer Jim Henson (1936-1990), probably the furthest advance anywhere in children’s television programming, is now available in South Asia to all who understand simple Urdu, Hindustani or Hindi. The only problem is that the Sesame Street in Urdu airs on Pakistani Television, one of the least-watched channels in the rest of the Subcontinent outside Pakistan. Besides, it is not publicised.

Chicken Shit and Ash: A Visit to Paradise Huhnerdreck and Asche, Austria, 1997/98, colour, Beta/SP PAL, 68' Original language: Nepali, Tamang. By Karl Prossliner, Gabriele Tautscher and Peter Friess

People-to-People Contact in South Asia by Navnita Chadha Behera, Victor Gunawardena, Shahid Kardar, Raisul Awal Mahmood Manohar, Delhi, 2000, 143 pp., INR 270