THE Indian government warmly received the chairman of Nepal’s ruling Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) Rabi Lamichhane in New Delhi last week. He came at the invitation of BJP President Nitin Nabin. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Foreign Minister S Jaishankar met Lamichhane. Some commentators in both India and Nepal found this to be special, unmindful of the fact that New Delhi has a tradition of welcoming chiefs of political parties and former Nepali PMs and according them protocol akin to that of a visiting Head of Government.
When I was based in Kathmandu from 2011 to 2013, besides the incumbent PM, Baburam Bhattarai, other leaders who visited India and enjoyed the highest level of access to the government leadership included Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Nepal and Sushil Koirala, all of whom were not holding government office. On Lamichhane’s heels came Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal.
Nepal’s sub-Himalayan location ties its destiny closely with India. It is therefore important for the two countries to maintain healthy communications. Since Nepal’s PM Balendra Shah is preoccupied with internal issues and there is little prospect of his early visit to India, it was sensible to invite Lamichhane and Shisir Khanal. This is an opportune time to engage Nepal, for there has been a momentous change there, with political power passing into the hands of a young generation, decisively sweeping aside established parties. One of the youngest republics in the world has the youngest Head of Government, who leads a council of ministers with the youngest average age.
The RSP is just two seats short of a two-thirds parliamentary majority, a position that has resulted largely from the charisma of Balendra Shah. His government has a relatively free hand in shaping policy. The RSP and Gen Z, which supports it, believe that, unlike Nepal’s previous political transitions, the recent transformation in Nepal was entirely internal. While this is largely true, India quietly supported the timely electoral process.
On the eve of his departure from Kathmandu, Lamichhane promised to recalibrate Nepal-India relations transparently. When, as a TV anchor, he set a world record by hosting a 62-hour talk show in April 2013, the theme of his broadcast was “Buddha Was Born in Nepal", popular with Nepali nationalists who presumed that Indians wanted to take away this credit from Nepal. Lamichhane’s visit helped the Indian leadership understand the expectations of Nepal’s RSP-led government. Bibek Thoj Thapa, 29, an analyst with the Nepal Institute for International Cooperation and Engagement, says that Gen Z would like to see “India as a partner, not as a big brother, building bilateral relations based on shared responsibility, without being transactional."
While the new government has changed the style of diplomatic conduct, it has reaffirmed the traditional parameters of Nepalese foreign policy, anchored in neutrality, independence and the constitutional principle of non-alignment, with a focus on development diplomacy. The new protocol-based code of conduct for diplomatic interaction does not alter the existing contours of Nepalese policy. While the style has changed, the substance remains unaltered. According to Nepal’s former Ambassador to India, Professor Lok Raj Baral, “there is more continuity than change" in the new government’s foreign policy.
The Nepal government’s policy for the forthcoming fiscal year aspires to achieve 7% average annual real GDP growth, create 1.5 million permanent jobs over five years and produce 30,000 MW of hydropower in the near future. If these were to happen, Nepal would become the most prosperous country in South Asia. Nepal’s present hydropower production is less than 4,000 MW. The three main challenges for the government to reckon with are: internal dissension, sabotage by the old guard and the weight of popular expectations.
The government’s constraints also include a lack of resources and a deficit of experience, leading to clashes with the judiciary, which has stayed many decisions taken by Shah. It includes several contentious issues with India that require resolution, such as the border disputes, the 1950 Treaty revision and the operationalisation of the Pokhara and Bhairahawa airports. India has withheld permission to allow international flights at these airports due to their proximity to an Indian Air Force station.
The new government cannot succeed without active engagement and support from India. On its part, India will have to conduct diplomacy sensitively, without a heavy hand and ensure non-reciprocity as the guiding principle for putting India’s relations with Nepal back on the rails.
To take the India-Nepal relationship forward, it is important to focus on what can be done and avoid being mired in legacy issues. By expanding a 35-square-km resolvable issue into a 370-square-km intractable dispute, the previous KP Sharma Oli-led government has not just hamstrung efforts to resolve the Kalapani controversy but also inserted a permanent thorn in the India-Nepal relationship.
Landlocked Nepal’s economy suffers from high logistics costs. Almost all of its third-country trade passes through designated Indian ports after transhipment at land borders by road or rail. Although China in 2016 allowed access through its east coast ports, this route has not been used by Nepalese exporters because Kolkata and Visakhapatnam are substantially closer than the designated Chinese ports of Tianjin, Shenzhen, Lianyungang or Zhanjiang.
Nepalese goods can be transported in the future via the Ganga river, thereby enabling Nepal to overcome the limitations imposed by its landlocked status. The two prerequisites for this are India’s facilitation of the passage of barges originating in Nepal to the Bay of Bengal and the availability of 24/7 water in the canals linking Nepalese rivers to the Ganga. The most promising of these is the Saptakoshi, the biggest Nepalese river at the shortest distance to the Bay of Bengal.
The other promising areas of India-Nepal cooperation include the completion of the Raxaul-Kathmandu railway, an international airport at Nijgarh, strengthening the Himalayan and Churia Hills ecosystems, education, health, tourism, biotechnology and people-to-people exchanges. This listing seems overambitious and the impediments are many. But if India and Nepal want to build a future together, this might be the way to go.
