I am glad that the govt did away with the list of SLC toppers. It was an useless exercise anyway. Most of the toppers came from the usual elite schools based in Kathmandu with tokens from private boarding school outside the valley. It had no purpose except to burnish the resume of the fortunate amongst the most for tunate students, and to let the elite parents from the elite class to differentiate amongsts themselves. In terms of the commendation, I would rank a guy or gal getting > 70% from a village school in Dolkha to a topper from Budhanilkantha, Vanasthali, Galaxy, Little Angeles or any other elite schools in Kathmandu. For the toppers also, it was not a good thing. After brief post-SLC celebrations, there was immense pressure to repeat those academic results - anything short of steller results were considered a failure. I have heard of many toppers having nervous breakdowns in college because they couldn't perform as well. I happen to know few toppers and their records are not much different from those that came in 1st division - 2nd and 3rd divisions is another story. The real story is not what Luna Bhatta is doing now or who Suresh Aacharya is, but the very dismall state of education system in Nepal that 95+ of Nepalese has to endure. Read the following story - http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2006/others/feature/jul/news_feature08.php