The country will be a better place to live in five years: Baskota

Biratnagar, Sept. 18

Minister for Communication and Information Technology Gokul Prasad Baskota said on Wednesday that the country's journey to development and prosperity would be realised in the leadership of the present government.

"The government will be successful in institutionalising the reform initiatives started with the promulgation of the Constitution in 2015 and leading the country to development," he said while speaking at an interaction organised by the Gorkhapatra Corporation here.

According to him, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has got the opportunity to lead the country's travel to development and prosperity like Deng Xiaoping in China and V.I. Lenin in Russia.

The country will be a better place to live in within the five years' tenure of the current government, he said.

"The first year after the formation of the government was the base year as we needed to spend much time in making legal and procedural arrangements. But concrete results will be delivered from this year," he said.

Minister Baskota said that the Nepal-India cross-border pipeline was recently started while other large and pride projects were moving ahead satisfactorily.

He maintained that Nepal achieved the economic growth rate of 7.6 per cent due to the right steps taken by the government. "Import is being substituted and export is increasing. The recent agreement with China will also open new avenues in future," he said. "Next year, we will be adding about 1,000MW electricity to the national grid. The government is asking people to increase the electricity consumption."

He said that Nepal-China railway agreement will be materialised someday.

Minister Baskota said that bilateral relations of Nepal with India have risen above from formal and traditional relationship. Nepal has maintained the highest level of cordial and political relationship with India, he said.

 The country has now entered into an economic transformation stage by ending all types of political movements.

Minister Baskota, who is also the government spokesperson, said it would only be a day dream for the defeated force of the country to intervene the present political change taking advantage of some loopholes.

The present government was in a race of development and prosperity. The government was trying to address the grievances of the public, who were aspired for change and development, he said.

There is no other alternative to Loktantra (democracy) in the country. Now, people cannot bear any kind of autocracy as people’s conciseness level has risen than earlier, he said.

He said it was people’s vote which decided the fate of the political parties and if the present government committed any mistake, they would be the real force to alter the elected government.

The Constitution of Nepal was possible after sacrifices of many countrymen. The Constitution should be established as an important document, he said.

 Though the Constitution has given rights to every citizen to demonstrate and show black flag to show dissatisfaction towards the Constitution, but it would be a counterproductive to them one day from the public perspective, he said. 

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 19 September 2019.