Dear Neutraljee, Thanks for nice info on Mr. Damodar Gautam. By putting his name alongside Mr. Lok Man Singh Karki, I wanted to prove that every chief secretary can not be accorded professorship. This you have also proved as you have meticulously mentioned that Mr. Gautam is a through scholar. Buying that point from you, I presume that Damodar Gautam deserves to be a professor of Kathamandu University. However, there is a flip side also. To every deserving scholar, it may not be possible to accord professorship. I am saying so as all these promotional aspects of academia have certain procedural aspects also. Therefore, the main question is what procedure is being employed in Kathmandu University and how it is applied whenever someone is accorded professorship. When there are instances of faculties without Ph.D.s getting professorship in contravention with KU's own promotional policy, it is likely that some one may question the efficacy of the management in promoting someone related to them. Like in those cases when some sychophants were made professor without care of its own norms, it is quite possible that in his case also some leniency might have been observed. Therefore, when KU management is systematically breaching its own regulations and laws, every decision is likely to invite suspicions and criticisms. Therefore, the most important question that is highlighted by sheer nepotism in KU is that KU management can throw the rules and regulations to the winds if they have to promote their relatives, their bootlickers and their other parasitic sychophants. Politics is different from an academia. In politics, everybody is entitled to vie for top job and just because one belong to certain political party, he or she can never be denied an opportunity to present himself/herself for the top job. However, at the same time, it has been consistently heard and noticed that people prefer no leader to unduly promote their offsprings. Hussujee has rightly mentioned that despite the greatest desire, Girija Prasad Koirala could not give election ticket to his daughter Sujata Koirala. This could have been done by senior Koirala under the pressure of his partymen. However,time has shown that whatever may be her weaknesses, Sujata has also been trying to make inroad on her own. This is politics and she has every right to make use of her fundamental rights. Therefore, there is no point in arguing about these examples related to politics. But in academia, same rules never applies. Like the fundamental civil rights that entitle one to contest elections both inside and outside the political parties, there are rights in academia also if one wants to make him/her a faculty member. However, these rights come with some demanding requirements and these requirements entail one to work hard, meet all the necessary preconditions and then qualify oneself to be employed as a faculty member or in other positions. When we talk about KU and how Suresh Raj Sharma and Sitaram Adhikary groomed their daughters and sons, we must be left in no confusion that they used the influences of their offices to remove every hurdle in the path of their progenies' successs. Had these two gentlemen not been there, I have a hunch that it would have been quite impossible for these progenies of Suresh Raj Sharma and Sitaram Adhikary to establish themselves in KU. And this esatblishing of their progenies in KU have come at the price of academic values, ethics and irregularities. So, no body should be in any doubt that both Suresh Raj Sharma and Sitaram Adhikary are guilty of blindly promoting nepotism in KU. Regarding why Suresh Raj Sharma is mandale, I have already given lots of examples that this person is quite dictatorial, against academic freedom, and wants to rule KU exactly in the same manner some Ram Kumar Subba of certain zonal office did in Nepal. I believe that his past hobnobbing with the royal palace, his close promixities with royalists, and mandales have turned him into another mandale. May be friends might have been confused by sheer definition of mandale. Gone are the days when mandales were seen holding Khukhuri at the the gate of TC as epitomized by Kamal Thapa during the 30s. The same old mandale Kamal Thapa has by now metamorphed into a cunning but smooth operator who would not hesitate to massacre the entire protestors. Likewise, there are many such smooth operators who emulate the dictator and mold them into lesser dictators. Therefore, all these people who are in habit of inflicting pains to other mortal fellows would be more suitably described by the word mandale. If you want further proof of why Suresh Raj Sharma is mandale, please visit the following link to read "special editorial" www.changeinku.blogspot.com Down with Nepotism and Despotism in KU.