In Fact: Why it is time for New Delhi to make Nepal feel ‘India-open’ 

In Fact: Why it is time for New Delhi to make Nepal feel ‘India-open’ 

Context

Nepal’s political leadership has often felt that India uses blockades of essential supplies to discipline the smaller country. With the China-leaning Left Alliance winning Nepal’s elections, India will have to work extra hard to repair the trust deficit.

The History

2002: Neutralising the Maoists

In October 2002, when Shyam Saran, then India’s ambassador to Indonesia, was appointed envoy to Nepal, then National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra told him that his mandate was to bring the monarchy and political parties together to “neutralise the Maoists”. The worry in South Block was a possible “Red Corridor” into India.

Changing of ambassador

This was a little more than a year after the infamous 2001 Narayanhiti Palace massacre in Kathmandu, which left 10 members of the royal family dead and Nepal’s monarchical polity in chaos. Saran was India’s ambassador in Kathmandu for just 22 months before he became foreign secretary, but India’s priorities changed.

Change of Strategies

“What began as a valiant and mostly frustrating attempt to promote accord between the mainstream political parties and King Gyanendra ended with us switching to a strategy of bringing the political parties together with the Maoists to neutralise an autocratic monarchy instead,” Saran wrote in his magisterial 2017 book How India Sees the World: Kautilya to the 21st Century.

Left Alliance of Nepal

When the facts on the ground change, countries and leaders have to change their priorities as well. So, as India now watches with a sense of disquiet that Nepal’s elections, held between November and December, have been won by the “Left Alliance” led by New Delhi’s friend-turned-foe K P Sharma Oli, it must reinvent its strategy — just like Saran did more than a decade ago, to accommodate the Maoists.

Efforts from Nepal

• Oli, during his last visit to India in February 2016 (the only one as the Prime Minister of Nepal) had sought to repair the damage caused in the relationship.
• During that trip, he described the acrimony between India and Nepal since September 2015 as “misunderstandings”, and said that the “main mission” behind his visit to India was to “clear the misunderstanding” and take ties to the same level as in 2014, when Prime Minister NarendraModi had visited Nepal. That “misunderstanding” was not an ordinary one.

Problems with India: The Infamous Blockade

• Nepal was faced with a massive economic and humanitarian crisis from September to December, 2015.
• The reason was the infamous blockade at a crucial crossing on the border with India, which stopped fuel and food supplies to landlocked Nepal.
• The impact scarred the Nepalese

No Efforts from India to resolve the blockade

While Kathmandu blamed India for the blockade, New Delhi sat by quietly, making no efforts to ameliorate the situation, instead citing the law and order situation in border areas which didn’t guarantee safe passage of trucks laden with fuel and essential supplies.

History of Blockades

This blockade brought back memories of another blockade that had occurred in 1989 during Rajiv Gandhi’s term, when a similar negative leverage was used after Nepal’s King Birendra imported anti-aircraft missiles from China. The blockade then had lasted for a year, from March 1989 until April 1990

India against Oli

Later, New Delhi’s hurried intervention in Nepal’s constitutional process, by its support to SushilKoirala against Oli in 2015, and by encouraging Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ to defect and align with the Nepali Congress in 2016, led to Oli’s rise

Oli’s tilt towards China

In the last two years, Kathmandu’s political class, led by Oli and others, used the blockade to rouse anti-India sentiments, playing the China card during political campaigning. With the Left Alliance in power, there will almost certainly be a more pronounced tilt towards Beijing. Both Oli and Prachanda have indicated this in their public statements.

Chinese Part

Roads and Highways

• The Chinese, on their part, have been building a number of highways from the Tibetan side into Nepal
• The Tibet railway has now been extended from Lhasa to Shigatse, and could make its way to Kathmandu

OBOR

While India’s plans are moving at a glacial pace, Kathmandu’s new regime may be tempted to play along to become a part of the Chinese One Belt One Road (OBOR) project

Chinese debt traps

It will be important for India to caution its interlocutors in Nepal to not walk into the debt traps that Sri Lanka, Maldives and even Pakistan have entered while dealing with Beijing.

The Problem

The tendency in India is to regard Nepal’s dependence on India for transit as leverage against it

But any exercise of this leverage only ends up intensifying anti-Indian sentiments… It reinforces the sense of siege that Nepalis feel — ‘India-locked’, as they call it

A Better Approach: India Open

• A better approach would be to offer Nepal “national treatment” on the Indian transport network, allowing them the use of our roads and ports on the same terms as for Indian citizens and companies
• The effort should be to convince Nepal that they are “India-open”, not “India-locked”.” It’s time for Delhi to make Nepal feel “India-open”.