Dear all, here is a piece that landed in the junk mail of my hotmail email account. Shishir bhai, who is one of my favorite around when it comes to politics and strategy writes these lines from kathmandu as he happens to be there in regards to his summer project. Cheers! Uhi Rajeev, CT, Amrika July 14: Kathmandu, Nepal Life In Kathmandu: Yesterday evening 7:30 PM, I was returning back home after an evening tour of downtown Kathmandu (New Road and Basantapur), we saw significant numbers of people gathered outside of a small restaurant in Samakhusi, about half a kilometer from where I live. When we queried the crowd, we were told ýsuspected Maoistsý shot a teacher, who taught at a nearby public school. We were there within few minutes of the incident, soon afterwards police arrived. Similarly, last week a police officer was shot dead by the Maoists within a block of where I live. Yet, live doesnýt feel out of ordinary in Kathmandu. People go to business as usual. I guess, there is no alternative to it but itýs amazing how we live without sense of urgency towards the political violence in the country. Over the past decades, the deaths of people have become so ubiquitous that people rarely notice it anymore. In the last decade or so, at least in the past half-a-decade, since I have left Kathmandu, the benefit of insurgency seem to have come in the form or rising business in real estate and consumer products. When I had left Nepal in 1998, it was difficult to find a buyer to purchase land in Kathmandu. The housing market had fallen flat. Now, story is completely different. The rising violence has forced many in the countryside to flee for safety and obviously, in Nepal there is no place safer (!) than Kathmandu. So, almost everyone seems to be building house here. Since there is also demand for rent, the houses are growing taller. In the mean time, because of lack of opportunity in investment, newly opened private banks and financial institutions have found real estate sector a hot area. They have also opened credit markets on consumer goods, so that people now are buying cars, motorbikes and other personal goods such as electronics on installments basis. So, Kathmandu feels much more affluent than it was four or five years ago. It is irony, that all these happened when tens of thousands of people died in the violence over the last few years. The biggest irony possibly is that the Maoists have aided in creating a more prosperous middle class, that now can afford (be that in a credit) more consumer goods than it could otherwise. Because of this (feeling of business as usual, feeling of personal and economic security), I feel, there is less urgency among Kathmanduýs elites to resolve the current political crisis and also because of such circumstances, Maoists have difficulty in mobilizing strong mass movement that they have always planned to carry out in the capital city. Thus, they resort to killing individuals and chosen to terrorize people. Graduate Student Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs University of Wisconsin-Madison