--BY MADAN LAMSAL

Today, everyone wants to become rich overnight. Those in the know are already making hay while the sun shines. They are building their dream mansions, albeit on rivers and riverbanks. But the dumb ones like this scribe are just drooling at the sight of others getting rich. Though I couldn’t make a fortune myself, I have been able to gather a few formulas for getting rich fast as I have rubbed shoulders with a lot of those who have made a lot of money. Here are a few of those formulas!  

The easiest way to make a fortune overnight, besides the name and fame game, without making any investment, is politics. You just need to be good at one thing in this profession – selling dreams! The bigger the dream you can sell, the bigger the position you can land. And the bigger the position you are able to get your hands on, the more money you will earn. That’s why the local goons, after making a little money, will do all it takes to enter politics and make more money by grabbing all the juicy positions for themselves! And why would billionaires virtually kill themselves just to enter politics, if things were otherwise?

If you think politics is not your cup of tea, you can try your hand at trade and make as much money as you want. But for that, as they say, you need to know the tricks of the trade! Otherwise, you will be making the government and the customs officials fatter while your own coffers will always be empty. So, if you want to be a rich trader, import goods like gold, betel nuts or palm oil. And don’t forget to stick the ‘made in Nepal’ tags to them. And do attach labels claiming this and that percent of value addition to such goods and claim government exemptions. And then sell them to India. Selling them to other neighbouring countries is not possible as our close friendship with India doesn’t include a trade route. Similarly, selling them to Europe and America is not possible as the firangis frequently raise the issue of quality.

If trade is not your thing, then enter the real estate business. Don’t worry even if you don’t have a single penny to invest! Begin as an individual broker. Don’t be apprehensive at the term ‘broker’. Just remember that anyone and everyone here is ready to be a broker and pocket hefty commissions from real estate deals as much as possible. That is perhaps why our forefathers used to say ‘if you can, pour the money in the soil; it will grow’. Inaccessible cliffs where not even the Himalayan nettle grows are being sold for hundreds of thousands of rupees per aana and it’s the brokers who are making the most of it.

You might say land-plotting is not appropriate for an agricultural country which imports food stuffs, vegetables and fruits worth Rs 400 billion a year. Look, making money is the ultimate aim. There’s a scarcity of fertilisers, seeds and irrigation to grow vegetables on the farmlands. Almost all of the youth who would work on such farmlands are abroad; more and more youths are ever ready to follow suit. Who will work on them then? Measuring and selling the farmland for hundreds of thousands of rupees per aana is much easier. Sell your land for half a million rupees to go abroad and then buy some similar land for five million rupees after returning home! This is the way. The government earns revenue and the sellers, buyers as well as the middlemen – the brokers – all get paid in cash. Who will go for the difficult option of farming when such easy options are available? You can buy the veggies easily and comfortably with the money you get from selling your land!    

On top of that, you get a chance to make money through the grants, subsidies and concessional loans provided by the government to the agriculture sector. For that, open an agro-based company which exists only in paper tucked away in your briefcase. Make your family members its shareholders. Get a loan from a bank at a low interest rate. You can even claim government grants as well. Put all this money in a cooperative. Both you and your bank will be happy!

If you don’t happen to like agriculture, then there is no other sector safer and more reliable than the share market! You can relax and sit at home and enjoy the rain of rupees! Just a couple of thousands of rupees is enough to enter the market. On top of that if you don’t have a penny in your pocket then banks are ready to invest in the name of margin lending! If you are lucky enough to win IPOs, you can instantly multiply your money!!

When you feel that your investment is sinking, form an ‘investors’ group’ and start frequenting the Securities Board, Nepse, finance ministry and Nepal Rastra Bank while calling for them ‘to keep our investment safe’. If that doesn’t work, start sits-in on the road. The authorities will be more than happy ‘to keep your investments safe’ and will be ready to make a U-turn to do that.

That is precisely why companies these days earn more profits by selling loans or shares rather than goods or services. Otherwise, how would the nearly 30 percent hydropower companies which have reached a situation of bankruptcy still remain powerful in the share market? How would they keep fooling the naïve general investors who don’t know what insider trading is?  

If you think you are not ‘a share market guy’, start a manpower agency and start sending the unemployed youth abroad. This is actually what all our labour ministers and ambassadors have been doing so far! There is a shortage of nurses at the hospitals in the country. But our labour minister plans to ‘export’ 10,000 nurses to Britain alone! Business is business. They say that the current labour minister is himself a businessman. He knows what sells and where!

In case you fail to acquire the licence for a manpower company, go to some other country. So what if there are no business environment or employment opportunities in the country? You can go to Malaysia to become a security guard or to Korea to slaughter chicken! Perhaps you will earn 1-2 lakhs a month. Those who have been there say so. If you cannot do anything else, write a book titled ‘The Formula to Get Rich’. The book will sell like hotcakes! So, get ready to get rich overnight. Any takers?