People say our weather is too comfortable, so we don’t innovate. Fine, maybe gentle climate means we don’t have to fight blizzards or deserts just to survive. But if weather made people lazy, then Singapore, Italy, Japan, and Australia should be sleeping all day too. And they clearly aren’t.
Same people, same DNA, same upbringing but the moment they cross the Kathmandu Airport, suddenly they’re waking up at 5 AM, working double shifts, following rules, hitting targets.
So where did the laziness go? Left behind with the system.
The real question is: Why would anyone take risks here?
If you start something new in Nepal:
- the rules change halfway
- offices slow you down instead of helping
- connections matter more than competence
- success attracts trouble
- failure follows you forever
So smart people do what? They play safe. They go abroad. They chase jobs, contracts, or land not startups or factories.
That’s not laziness. That’s adapting to a broken system.
Our schools don’t teach us to question, they teach us to obey. Our politics doesn’t reward long-term thinking, it rewards survival till the next election. Our economy doesn’t reward building things, it rewards getting close to power.
People don’t respond to climate. They respond to incentives + risk + reward.
If tomorrow Nepal suddenly had:
- strong rule of law
- clean bureaucracy
- startup-friendly regulation
- real bankruptcy protection
- merit-based hiring
- stable policy
You’d see:
- explosion of small enterprises
- engineering startups
- agricultural tech
- hydropower innovation
- solar, EVs, logistics, fintech
Same weather. Very different outcomes.
So when people say “Nepalis lack innovation,” I say: Give them a system that rewards effort instead of connections, and you’ll see how fast that changes. Same weather, completely different mindset.