Nepal, July 9 -- Hitting the top 10 of anything is generally an event to be celebrated, especially when the unit in question is one's country. But even when nationalism is on overdrive here in Nepal, there is one distinction that scarcely any Nepali can or should feel proud of: our clear and overt reliance on our compatriots working abroad to keep our economy afloat. For, since the year 2008, Nepal has consistently featured among the top 10 countries in terms of the contribution of remittances to the national GDP. This, of course, does not refer to the absolute volume of remittances, since the biggest recipients over the same time period are our neighbours, India and China, in that order, but is still an alarming indicator.

Although neve...