ECONOMIC & POLITICAL WEEKLY (editorial)
MAP/Women’s Education & Literacy in Nepal
It is almost three months since the supply of goods from India into Nepal has been choked. A few days after Nepal’s Constituent Assembly approved its new constitution on 20 September 2015, the Madhesis—the Nepalis of the plains—began protests blocking roads and access points from India. Nepal’s constitution, by denying naturalised citizens access to the top positions of the republic, barred many Madhesis whose parents or grandparents came to Nepal from India from these posts. Also, the demarcation of provinces and constituencies has been done to keep the Madhesi population—which is half of Nepal’s total population—divided through administrative boundaries. The present constitution seems to ring-fence the traditional control of the hill upper castes—the Bahun and Chhetri—over the Nepali state. The Madhesi protest in the terai regions bordering India is a direct fallout of the inability of the main political parties of Nepal—the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist), the Nepali Congress and the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)—to address these demands.
What, however, cannot be denied and is a cause of great concern is that there is now ample evidence to suggest that this blockade of Nepal is happening with the complicity of the Government of India. Even the response of the Indian government to the adoption of the new constitution and the manner in which it demanded changes in it indicates a brusque diplomatic demeanour, bordering on arrogance. This is not the first time that India has choked supplies to this impoverished landlocked country. In the late 1980s the Rajiv Gandhi regime, angry about Nepal’s growing relations with China, informally enforced a blockade by allowing trade and transit duties to lapse. It is inconceivable that the Madhesi groups have the stamina to sustain such a massive blockade over so many months without active and direct Indian support, both political as well as from its intelligence agencies.
The result of the ongoing blockade is that a major petroleum and fuel shortage has developed in Nepal which is having a deleterious impact on all parts of the country’s economy. There is now also a substantial dearth of medical supplies, and even books and stationery for education are in short supply. The reconstruction after the April earthquake, already mismanaged by a corrupt and incompetent administration, has come to a standstill. Through this blockade, it seems that India has got Nepal in a chokehold. Will the Nepal government and its main political parties manage to hold out, or will they succumb to the pressure? In this present climate of bullying by India and distrust by Nepal, the answer to this question is difficult to find, but some other things have become clear.
First and foremost, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Nepal policy now lies in tatters. If we assume that Modi was initially pitching for a strong bilateral relation economically beneficial to both countries, his government has destroyed any possibility of that for the next few years. Whether it is a diplomatic and national security misstep, or an effort to teach Nepal a “lesson,” the Madhesi blockade has been a foreign policy disaster. It has alienated Nepal’s political parties as well as public opinion from India and exposed the Madhesi community to further vulnerability from Nepali national chauvinists who have always accused them of being a fifth column for India. From the Indian nationalist perspective, it has pushed Nepal “into the arms of China.” Internationally too, India is being seen as responsible for the blockade of Nepal and few are buying the government’s versions of it being an “internal” matter of Nepal. The point, as most have seen it, is that India has been unable or unwilling to use its wide influence to work towards a solution, rather it is contributing to a crippling of the daily lives of the Nepalis. Having painted itself into a diplomatic and political corner with an all-or-nothing game India may now even be losing some of its leverage with Nepal’s political groups, including the Madhesis.
How can India extricate itself from the hole it has climbed into vis-à-vis Nepal? India has to use its influence with the Madhesi groups to lift the blockade, even as they can continue to (and should) agitate for equal citizenship rights in Nepal. It also needs to rebuild its relations with Nepal’s political parties and state, though we fear that the present political establishment in New Delhi may well have lost the political credibility and diplomatic capital to rebuild ties. In the long term, the most important thing that the Indian state needs to do is to provide an assurance that it will never again use its geographical advantage to bully its Himalayan neighbour. One hopes that the Government of India will eventually show the sagacity and maturity to work towards this. Diplomats and lawyers need to find ways in which Nepal is guaranteed unhindered access to the sea and an uninterrupted flow of its goods.
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