Balen vs businessmen

The Himalayan Times

26 January 2024

Kathmandu’s Mayor Balendra Shah is now a popular name, who now has been listed as one of the 2023 TIME100 Next emerging leaders shaping the world. The renowned magazine’s this year’s list has included Balen along with other rising leaders in health, climate, business, sports, the arts, who are engineering new solutions to society’s most pressing problems. His remarkable achievements in just one year have set a new benchmark for good governance and urban development. His untiring dedication, visionary leadership, and focus on infrastructure and public services seem to be gradually transforming the Kathmandu cityscape. His first priority, among others, was to solve the problem of pedestrian pavement encroachment and haphazard parking of two and four wheelers in the main city areas.

Balen has to and will have to drive his agenda without support from the political parties and their leaders who, at all levels, have close relationships with the business communities, which has made Kathmandu’s streets a mess. Balen's actions to bring the unmanaged and politically pampered business people under the ambit of law have put him directly in conflict with the business-politics nexus. It is an open secret that the politicians would not want to lose their source of money by going along with Balen’s agenda. The on-going tussle between his office and New Road business community is nothing but the ineffective actions of the previous party-affiliated mayors and their business connections “Traders in New Road area protest after KMC bans vehicle parking” (THT, Jan.25, Page 2).

Balen's strength is the public support he enjoys. Sustaining this support will be a big challenge. For this, he has to speed up execution of his agenda of maintaining clean Kathmandu, clean up the city of politically supported unruly business community; improve the city's muddy and bumpy roads and provide basic services among others. His actions need to be visible and transparent. However, he needs to put forward explicit alternatives before taking any actions on his agenda for its smooth implementation rather than facing any unnecessary scuffles.

Rai Biren Bangdel

Maharjgunj

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