Democracy For Nepal: RNA To Deliver Mail

Sunday, January 29, 2006

RNA To Deliver Mail

The rumor mills in the diaspora have been working over time, the word is out: soon the RNA will be delivering mail in Nepal. The brave sons and daughters of Nepal who fought both the world wars in the distant corners of the planet and won numerous Victoria Crosses fighting and dying across the world and today guard from the Sultan of Brunei to the warlords in Africa have proven no less adept at their assignments at home.

After the RNA stepped out of its barracks, there are few state responsibilities it has not taken upon itself. They fought where the police had fled, like in their barracks. They searched homes that had never felt any state presence prior, not received any visitors from the state including those who go around asking for votes. They dug roads. The blocked roads when safety asked for it. They visited rooms of editors and FM stations, lest the media not feel its presence.

For every such act of valor, the king doled out awards, mostly cash awards in the form of fattened budgets, enhanced perks, and expensive cars, or recognitions like the royal medals, namely the Gorkha Dakshin Bahu and the like.

Then the state treasury ran out of money, the RNA ran out of missions, and the royal palace ran out of medals and excuses.

One fine morning a royal advisor came up with the idea.

"Your Majesty, considering we now only issue stamps with your cute face on them, and the RNA has not visited as many homes recently as it used to, and it is important we make our presence felt, especially since the enhanced rural activities of the seven parties after the sinister 12 point agreement, I hereby recommend we mobilize the army on a war footing. Let's deliver mail!"

The king promptly awarded the advisor one of the last remaining medals, and issued orders to the effect.

Rumor has it the RNA is to capture the postal service in a midnight raid, take over, and then start delivering mail. The postal service may still keep its background workers, but all those who actually delivered mail will be put on paid leave until further notice.

Keeping safety in mind, villages will be marked as sensitive, very sensitive, and super sensitive.

Mail is not to be delivered in the super sensitive villages. People from those villages will be required to walk over to the district headquarters to pick up their mail. Since there will be no way of informing who received mail and who did not, villagers will just have to follow their hunch, and make the best guesses they can. And if the villagers not show up, and the mail for any particular village exceed one ton, the entire bulk is to be dropped onto the village by helicopter at or around midnight in some surprise visit.

Villages categorized as very sensitive will receive mail once every two months, and the delivery will be made by a battalion, and not by a lone army person. These are tough times.

A small army unit will deliver mail in the sensitive villages once a month. They will be given the equipment to be able to call in additional help any time.

An ordinance is to be passed. Noone may inquire about lost mail.

"My attention has been brought to something called email," Pyar Jung is said to have opined at one secret meeting of the top generals. "We will take care of that too during the second stage. We have to extend our security umbrella over all kinds of mails, for that is the royal desire."

"We ran out of things to do," Pyar Jung added. "I mean, we excelled at everything we tried, pretty much."

Letters addressed to the top 200 politicians, human rights activists, journalists and student leaders are to be considered disappeared, a secret circular states. They are to be considered so unholy they are not even to be read, not even discarded. They are to be simply ignored.

For these new services, the RNA is to present a budget to the government. The budget is expected to be passed without discussion. At that point the RNA will be taking half the state budget, since more than half will mean the palace will be getting less than half, and that has been thought to be unbecoming and anti-national.

With this takeover the RNA will have pretty much encroached upon the entire state apparatus. Then, it is rumored, it will be keenly eyeing the various segments and industries in the private sector. There might be reverse privatization, if only to inject some RNA efficiency to the private sector of the economy.

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29 January