Kathmandu, April 3 -- Ghanshyam Rajkarnikar still has fond memories of the wide pond near his house in Kathmandu. As a child, he played along the edge of Kamal Pokhari, named after the lotus that once grew profusely on it.

The lotus does not grow anymore, the pond has shrunk, and in the past months its water has been drained to make way for commercial development. Wild grass has taken over the dry bed where a fisherman used to take his boat out to catch fish to sell in the market.

"We would ask him to pick us some lotus flowers from the middle of the pond," recalls Rajkarnikar, now 80, and whose family owns Krishna Pauroti Bhandar, one of the oldest bakeries in town.

Ever since Mayor Bidhya Sundar Shakya of Kathmandu Metropolitan City ...