Nepal, Oct. 5 -- Considerable ink has been spilt (and screen time spent) on Prime Minister Balendra Shah's maiden address to the UN General Assembly late last month. While Shah's delivery itself was rather wooden, there appears to be general consensus that the content of his speech was something to write home about. There have been many dissections of his speech, ranging from the fawning to the somewhat critical, but I have yet to come across any that lambasted the prime minister for making a fool of himself.

Given our young prime minister's somewhat rightist proclivities-as can be gleaned even from his rather sparse public articulations-it was to be expected that comparisons would be made with King Mahendra's speech to the same body in ...