KATHMANDU, July 17 -- For the past 22 years, Ganesh Ghimire has been part of the Balmiki Campus-first as a student, then a faculty member, and now as campus chief.
Every day, he enters the 68-year-old campus on Exhibition Road, opposite the Kathmandu Fun Park, and his heart breaks. Beyond the beautiful wood-carved doors, where over a thousand students study the Sanskrit language every day, the smell of urine and faeces engulfs the air. A dark corridor opens into a muddy, grassy field that houses three shabby campus buildings-one of which looks like it could crumble any minute. Inside its cracked walls are 50,000 books-forsaken and forgotten.
Ghimire, who has been campus chief for the past two years, says that his hands are tied and he can...