The King and government officials lead lives of luxury while children die for lack of a few rupees' worth of medicine. They drink champagne while children drink water tainted with bacteria and arsenic. Sixty percent of Nepalis lack safe drinking water, and 54% of children are chronically malnourished. The children of the elite go to the US or Europe to school while village children go to work at age 5, never learning even to sign their names. I was fortunate: my father was a mercenary in the British army, so I was able to have a western education. Joining the British or Indian armies for men, and prostitution in India for women, are the only ways out of poverty so dire that most Nepalis would gladly trade places with an American dog or cat. The high-caste, Indo-Aryan Hindu Brahmins and Chhetris dominate commerce, education and the professions, systematically excluding the lower castes, people of Mongolian heritage, and Buddhists. There is now great alarm within the government over conversion of Dalits, or untouchables, to Christianity. Proselytising for Christianity is a crime in Nepal, but the 25% of the population constituted by the Dalits has suffered
horribly at the hands of the officially Hindu government, with an average annual income of $39. Meanwhile the King, who claims to be, and demands to be worshipped as, a god bestows favor upon his cronies.