Govt of Nepal decides to issue a peace bond worth more than five billion rupees. The bond is aimed primarily at NRN.

--News.

Of course, I wondered why the peace bond was being mulled. The bond is not for a lot of money, in fact, given that King Gyanendra and his kins take about a billion a year from national coffer, this amount looks is insignificant for a country. But whatever the reason, the bond is going to be issued anyway, and now, the proposal is being read by the ministers (I bet a lot of us doubt whether the current ministers know how to read, but that is entirely another story).

I remembered that bonds used to be issued in medieval(well, post medieval) Europe for war. Whenever a king felt like going to war, he would tell his citizens, my fellow citizen, finance my war against, say, Syracuse. "Syracuse is a rich state, it has a lot of gold, silver, precious palimpsest of dead sires etc. and my armymen have the strength to overpower the lazy defenders of Syracuse. Finance me, and you get a handsome share of the bounty". Of course, for people it would be two edged sword, you don't finance money, your king would never favor you in future, if he doesn't expel you rightaway in the charge of treason, and if you finance money and in case the enemy wins, not only you lose money but if the enemy is really angry and attacks your morale-less army, they may as well round off all those who financed the war and behead them (you and likes).

So, for NRNs, this is a tough call: they know Gyanendra is winning the war, but they definitely find him odious given his record. So, if they buy the bond, they may get a good return, even in dollars, but their family members back in home may be at risk of being exposed to the rebels, and if the Maoists ever win the war, infinitesimal the probability of that might be, you are out of Nepal for the rest of your life. What do you do? Even the likes of Khagendra Thapa would hesitate to put their money where their mouth is!