Nepal, April 11 -- For over a decade, Nepali electricity consumers endured long hours of power cuts (or load shedding), sometimes up to 18 hours a day. These outages were the result of electricity supply shortages.

Within two months of taking over as Managing Director of Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) in September 2016, Kulman Ghising announced that load shedding had ended in Kathmandu. A year and a half into his tenure, Ghising declared the end of load shedding across Nepal.

NEA is Nepal's monopoly electric utility that controls generation, transmission and distribution and operates the power system.

Ghising was widely credited for ending load shedding, earning tremendous public support in the process. He was a folk hero, until rec...