Kathmandu, Feb. 10 -- We called each other 'Kamred' although neither of us were anything close to being communists.

If I phoned him and he was not around, I would ask that he be just told "Kamred had called", and I would get a call back from Bihari Krishna Shrestha as soon as he got home.

It all started way back in 1986. The World Bank had spent more than a decade with three water supply projects in a dozen Nepali cities including Kathmandu, and was poised to launch the Fourth which was to be the notorious Melamchi water supply project for Kathmandu Valley.

But the Bank's major conditionality was that His Majesty's Government of Nepal massively raise its water tariff.

Prime Minister Marich Man Singh was in a fix: not only was any su...