Route 1 Nepal land-locked between two rising economies → foreign policy narrowed to both, not widened to the world → trilateral converts zero-sum contest over Kathmandu into positive-sum

Route 2 India already holds trade, power and transit instruments → constraint is not capacity but sequencing → begin project by project, not by grand framework

functional advantage: largest trading partner + main power market + route to sea → ~45,000 MW viable potential vs 10,000 MW committed over ten years → Nepal already sells power to Bangladesh across Indian grid = trilateral working in practice → Raja Mohan: manage complex interdependence, not compete → functionalist case for shared needs → Lipulekh border trade reopened June 2026, Nepal protests the pass is its own → Himalayan economy still in two separate bilateral tracks

India distrusts BRI and any third presence in Nepal → suspicion dating to Sugauli → China rarely joins what it has not begun → Muni: Kathmandu plays the China card for better terms from Delhi; new government caught between regional and global rivalries

Route 1 India’s own delivery is the first ceiling — 20 MW withheld, transmission limits → begin where politics is thinnest: power, transit, shared water data

Route 2 Chellaney: geography leaves Nepal no substitute for India → Delhi can move first, trilateralism built project by project