Gen Z leader Raksha Bam has criticised the government over difficulties faced by people travelling home for Dashain in Nepal, saying passengers are being packed into buses beyond their capacity and forced to pay high prices for poor-quality food at highway hotels. She said these problems should not require decades to solve and warned that people are judging the government’s ability to address them.
Concerns over crowded buses and highway food
Bam pointed to two problems affecting Dashain travellers: overcrowding on buses and the cost and quality of food sold at highway hotels. She said passengers are being carried in numbers beyond a bus’s capacity, while those stopping for food are expected to pay high prices for meals she described as poor in quality.
Her criticism focuses on conditions encountered during the journey home, rather than on a single transport or food provider. The concerns she raised relate to basic aspects of travel: having space on a bus and being able to buy food at a reasonable price and of acceptable quality during a long trip.
The problems are particularly visible during Dashain travel, when people head home for the festival. Bam’s remarks put the government under scrutiny over whether it can respond to the difficulties passengers face on the way.
Bam questions the pace of government action
Bam challenged the idea that addressing these problems would take decades. She said resolving them would not have required 30 to 35 years and suggested that action could have been taken within six months.
Her comparison emphasised the gap between the length of time she cited and the shorter period in which she believes improvements could have been made. The remarks frame the travel issues not as challenges that must inevitably persist for years, but as problems she says could have been addressed more quickly.
Bam’s criticism did not identify specific measures taken by the government, or set out a detailed plan for resolving the bus and food concerns. Her central point was that the difficulties are familiar enough to warrant action and that the time needed to fix them should not be measured in decades.
Government capability under public scrutiny
Bam also warned the government that people are measuring its capability. In that warning, she connected the everyday experience of Dashain travellers with a broader judgement about the government’s ability to deliver solutions.
Her comments make the treatment of passengers a test of government performance in the eyes of the public. Overcrowded buses and expensive, poor-quality food were the examples she cited, while her six-month comparison underscored her argument that action could have come sooner.
The remarks add to public criticism over the travel problems people encounter while heading home for Dashain. Bam’s message was that the government should be judged by whether it can address those concerns, and that citizens are already assessing what it is capable of doing.
