Right on Haddock, like you I also do not have a direct insight into Karthaks' mind, but make my inferences based on his writing, both the present one and his past articles too. Given that Karthak is a good writer (sometimes gets a little tedious with his old queens' english) but nevertheless and has witnessed a lot of changes from his begining at Darjeeling at its' heydays and his subsequest settlement in good old KTM. Now this is my analysis. I think part of his bitterness toward the ruling Bahun Chhetri elite stems from the fact that Mr. Karthak comes from a minority caste and doubly so, because he is a Christian too. And as you rightly point out he does try and address the 1000 pound elephant in the room, which is the whole deal with casteism in Nepal. We do still have a highly patriarchial society in Nepal and the ruling class is a Bahun-Chhetri nexus with people of other castes dotting the landscape here and there. The fact that people of these castes make the highest segment of population may have something to do with it. That aside, the question that we have to seriously ask and try to address is that "Is the rampant corruption, mismanagement, general apathy, crime, political disillusionment, social ills etc explained only by the caste angle? And if it is, what are the ways to deal with it?" I do agree that identifying the problem is in effect half of the problem solved, as Mr. Karthak has rightly done. But is caste the only problem. COnsider a Nepali society, as in the Tea Estate, minus the Bahuns and the Chhetris, would that somehow magically remove all the social ills that we have and somehow pull us out of this stagnation and purgatory that we find Nepal in right now? I seriously doubt that analysis. At this point, one must not forget that the minorities also have no love lost for the elites, the "racism" or "casteism" goes both ways and in effect is a two way street. Not to say that the Bahun Chhetris have not taken advantage of their relative social standing for their own benefits and that too at the cost of putting the people of minority in the shadows. But we do need to find a problem around that. A good way might to have social inclusion by the ways of cross caste marriage (that still is unheard of in Nepal, inbreeding is rampant and the genetic pool is not diversifying). We also need to chuck this concept of government as a religious based organaziation, seperation of church and state as they would say in different part of the world, but I would like to say, seperation of "temple and state". And you know what, it is up to the people who are in a position of advantage to do something about it. That is the Bahun and Cheetris themselves have to initiate this idea of inclusion. In any society, I think, it is the responsibility of the majority to take care of the minority and not let the minority feel as second class citizens. Am I making sense or has this become a rambling..............?