More Of SEBS NA Talk
Paramendra Bhagat
December 28, 2003

1. To: SEBS members worldwide. A happy new year to you all. Season's Greetings.
2. I sent out my first e-mail to all of you on September 27. It went out to every e-mail address I could get hold of in the online SEBS Directory.
3. I received several responses, of which the one from Yubaraj Acharya stood out and I put it out in public circulation on October 24. I thank you all for your feedback. There has been an ongoing discussion.
4. SEBS is a wonderful, little organization. We might have elections, but it is not going to be anything divisive. Ever since I have explored the option of possibly running for SEBS NA President, I have met and talked to most of the key people at the organization's helm. Kiran Sitoula's place in Washington DC has been one of my regular stopovers out on the road. I spent the Dashain weekend at Swarthmore, crashing at Yubaraj Acharya's place. I spent a day with Laxman Udas Pandey in Dayton, Ohio. We together went out to an Indian lunch buffet. He doesn't eat much! I have been talking regularly to Sagar Onta in Portland, Oregon, on the phone. I have had a chance to talk to the George Washington of SEBS, Bimal Nepal, on the phone. And to Pramod Aryal. I did not know he was in Tennessee. I thought of him as still in Japan. Time warp syndrome. I know Shyam KC is right there in Maryland. I came this close to seeing him over Dashain. I met Suraj Dahal at Kiran's place when I dropped by to see off Suraj and Mr N P Sharma.
5. At this point, it is my thinking that I will make my final decision on a possible candidacy, one way or the other, on June 4, the election/handover being on July 4. I am quitting trucking at the end of January because I can't keep up with my expanding business from the road anymore. Besides, after anywhere between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, three separate stints lasting about six months each, and 48 states, it is time to bring the "Peace Corps" experience to an end. I will be based out of Indianapolis.
6. I briefly toyed with the idea of working towards a Nepali portal as a possible "excuse" to not do the SEBS thing. But I encountered a healthy, fierce sense of independence from several site owners, and I have shelved that line of thinking altogether.
7. My next step in the SEBS quarter is to call every SEBS member in the US whose phone number I can get hold from the SEBS online Directory, or from other SEBS members. I guess I will be making extensive use of the free nights and weekend minutes on my cellphone plan. And this might take me a few months. But I am on it. The idea is to get to renew friendships, establish new ones, see how SEBS members are doing generally speaking, and to seek their feedback on SEBS as an organization.
8. Talk to you soon.
9. Congratulations to everyone who put in their efforts into the World Bank victory with the Doko Dai project. That success was not overnight. And I believe that work can be a blueprint for a possible BNKS Endowment. The capacity of the private foundations to give is much larger than that of the World Bank. Besides it is particularly encouraging that many SEBS women played leading roles in the project. Otherwise the SEBS leadership has historically been all male, not a good thing.
10. An important thrust of Yubaraj's criticism has been that if the platform is too extensive and ambitious, that might actually hurt the execution aspect of even the modest goals. I see light in that thinking. What I am suggesting is in several layers. One, at the ideas level, let thoughts be expressed unhindered. Then, let there be a platform that has items that are on a priority list. Say, of the things I have mentioned, if I could work on only one thing, that would be the SEBS online office, the revamping of which is key to the rest of the stuff I have proposed. It could still be Rajan Nepal spearheading the efforts, or it could be a new team of SEBS techies.