Indian dilemma in Nepal

By Krishna Pradhan

Nepal's Maoists led by Prachanda may make history by becoming the first such movement anywhere in the world to come to power through a free, fair and transparent constitutional parliamentary process. They have won 61 out of the 108 seats declared thus far, and were leading by similar proportions in the new 601-member constitutional legislative assembly of the country. In the 329-member interim parliament, they had some 84 seats after abandoning their decade-long civil war that caused some 13,000 deaths. It will be the end for Nepal's 240-year-old monarchy. The leader of the Maoists may well become the first President of a new Nepalese Republic.

Very few people in Nepal will shed tears for their monarch as he was responsible for degrading the Nayanhati Palace. The killing of the entire family of his brother the late king Birendra, if allegations are true, the present king Gyanendra, was responsible, leading to a national uprising against his regime by empowering the army to shoot on sight and clamping daytime curfew. The disruption stopped the chariot journey of one of the state's most revered guardian deities, Seto Macchindranath. It was regarded as a bad omen and days later; the king's regime unravelled with the new Government pledging to hold an election and for the first time put the kingdom's centuries old institution of monarchy to vote.

The ruling parties of yesteryear, PM Girija Prasad Koirala's Nepali Congress (NC) and the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML), were lagging behind with 32 and 28 seats respectively, their base also eroded due to the emergence of regional parties from the Terai plains. The debutant ethnic parties from the Terai had bagged 24 seats so far, with former UML man Upendra Yadav's Madhesi Janadhikar Forum winning 19 seats and former NC minister Mahanta Thakur's Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party getting five more.

As Maoist chief Prachanda, who won from both Kathmandu and Rolpa, the red district where the Maoists had built their capital during their "people's war", began consultations with his own party leaders and Koirala, the indications were that the former guerrillas would lead the new Government. Though Prachanda was seeking a coalition Government with the former ruling parties, the UML however, announced it would quit the cabinet.

Nepal's Maoists, unlike their Indian counterparts, have shown immense creativity by giving up arms to seize the opportunity provided by institutional democracy to expand the scope of their politics. New Delhi, if it's serious about tackling the Maoist problem, should highlight that achievement by engaging positively with the CPN(M). It might be almost another week before results of the election to Nepal's Constituent Assembly (CA) are officially declared, but the massive lead the CPN(M) has established over outfits such as the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist in over 200 seats for which results are available leaves no scope for doubt as to who would dominate the 601-member CA. It's time New Delhi and Washington welcomed the entry of the Maoists into Nepal's political mainstream. That the US should even now list the CPN(M) as a terrorist outfit is preposterous.

The assumption that Maoists politics is inimical to a republican polity has been belied by the CPN(M)'s comprehensive victory. Anything short of cooperative engagement by India with the Maoists now would reinforce perceptions of India's big brother approach towards Nepal. Prachanda has said that Kathmandu would be equidistant from both India and China. New Delhi should do nothing to force the party to revise the line and gravitate towards Beijing. It should resist the temptation to meddle in Nepal's affairs when the Maoist-led CA starts curtailing the ill-gotten privileges a section of the traditional Indian elite has till now enjoyed.

Such social transformation is essential if democracy has to become functional. India should discourage local political outfits seeking to support the Madhesi (people of Indian origin) movement in Nepal's Terai. The CPN(M) should, on its part, realise that its integration with the anti-monarchy struggle has considerably weakened its agenda of social transformation, vis-à-vis a thoroughly stratified Madhesi society. That has facilitated the consolidation of a homogeneous Madhesi identity. Maoists must rectify that now.

New Delhi is now unexpectedly faced with a political situation in Nepal where ground realities have changed and the party in the dominant position has had an uncomfortable and earlier hostile relationship with India. Traditional allies, Nepali Congress and Communist Party of Nepal, have been reduced to a minority forcing India to immediately start rethinking its Nepal policy. This is not the scenario that foreign policy mandarins had expected or wanted. And they are now finding themselves in a bind.

However, Prachanda told Indian ambassador to Nepal Shiv Shankar Mukherjee that his party will continue to maintain a balanced relationship with India. But mere semantics have not assuaged the deep sense of unease that has crept into a relationship that has always been based on traditional ties.

The only solace for the UPA Government, which expected a politically-balanced government in Nepal, is that all other players, both national and international, have also got it wrong. The US is now in a position where the dominant political party in Nepal is still on its terror list. China, Nepal watchers say, has been cultivating the Communist UML but that is likely to change. Nepal has shown that it is eager to cultivate China, evident from the way the interim Government dealt with the Tibetan protests.

But pitfalls for India are evident. India shares a long and porous border with Nepal and needs a friendly Government in place. There is also the security dimension which includes impact on the Maoist movement in India. The links between Maoists and Indian extremists exists. Maoists may not have maintained ties with Indian counterparts but they have neither severed ties.

On the economic front, the Indian private sector involvement in Nepal had been showing signs of revival, with three Indian companies bagging hydel projects through bidding. However, the Left takeover and changes in policy could be unhelpful for industry.

Maoists have been demanding a renegotiation of the Nepal-India friendship treaty. They have continued, till recently, to indulge in inflammatory rhetoric, including demanding self determination for Kashmir and northeast, much to the alarm of the Indian establishment.

Critics say UPA Government has continued to make the wrong moves in Nepal. "It (the government) has taken wrong steps. The Chinese presence has already increased. There are security implications that the present government has not understood from day one. It is a sad commentary on India's foreign policy.

But clearly the backtracking has already started. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that Maoists have successfully taken part in the democratic process in Nepal, and India would accept the mandate of the people and would work with the party in power. Indian Embassy officials in Kathmandu feel that the Maoists would have to cut down the rhetoric once in power and get down to drafting a Constitution for Nepal. But it is India, which is surrounded by unstable and hostile neighbours, has a large stake in Nepal and will have to ensure that all the leverage it has does not disappear. INAV

Rahul's future still holds the key

By Amulya Ganguli

Rahul Gandhi's disinclination to become a minister took the fizz out of the recent cabinet reshuffle. As a result, the exercise proved to be something like staging Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.

Although an impression was sought to be created by the Congress and the Manmohan Singh government that fresh blood was being infused with the appointments of Jyotiraditya Scindia and Jitin Prasada as ministers of state, the main point of interest continued to remain on Rahul Gandhi's future moves.

The fact that he was offered a ministerial portfolio in the Prime Minister's Office helped to thicken the plot, for it confirmed the belief that the party was moving towards giving him the top job in the government. Since then, the observations of Praful Patel and Arjun Singh have given further credence to this belief.

In this context of a major change at the top, little attention will be paid to how Scindia or Prasada fare in their new assignments. As it is, their induction hasn't done much to raise the average age of the ministers. It has been calculated that this now stands at 59 years, which is low by Indian standards, but doesn't quite suggest that the party and the government are keen on shedding dead wood.

If anything, the appointment of the 71-year-old former chief election commissioner, M.S. Gill, as the sports minister has made a mockery of the idea of encouraging youth. It's not only his age which has made Gill's appointment controversial. It has also been seen as a typical attempt of the political class to undermine institutional autonomy, for future chief election commissioners will remember that it may be worthwhile to keep on the right side of the ruling party for the sake of post-retirement benefits.

While the induction of Scindia and Prasada were long expected, the exclusion of Sachin Pilot was a surprise. Evidently, the party was treading carefully in view of the continuing Gujjar-Meena rivalry in the context of the Gujjar demand for relegation to the scheduled tribe status, which has been rejected by the commission appointed for the purpose.

But even if Pilot was appointed, he would have no more than a minister of state, a position which is increasingly becoming something of a sop unless the person has independent charge of his portfolio. Otherwise, he remains a nonentity as long as there is a minister on top of him.

This is particularly true of Scindia, who may find that he has nothing much to do as a minister under the DMK's A. Raja in the ministry of communications and information technology. Raja himself is a young man, being 44 years old. But the mindset of his party is old and conservative with a whiff of the sleaze factor in view of the presence in it of politicians like M.K. Azhagiri and M.K. Stalin, the two sons of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi.

It would have been better, therefore, if Scindia had independent charge. But the compulsions of coalition politics have ensured that he will have to play second fiddle. Even then, both for him and Prasada, it is a good beginning and their well-wishers will expect them to rise further. The same holds true for Pilot.

For the present, however, the objective of a reshuffle of this nature remains obscured by its tentativeness. It was seemingly carried out to give the impression that the government is acting with a purpose. But it is not clear exactly what this purpose is, except the fact that it is a feeble revving up operation in preparation for an election. Yet, if there have been no major changes, the reason is that the present-day governments are rarely as cohesive, or their leaders as bold as in, say, Indira Gandhi's time.

The lack of cohesion comes not only from the coalitional nature of the arrangement, but also from the presence of rival factions, which, of course, has long been a feature of Congress politics. As a result, the only person who can be said to have been firmly pushed out of favour is Mani Shankar Aiyar, who has always hidden the fact of being lightweight with his volubility.

But Arjun Singh has stayed on, notwithstanding his known antipathy towards the prime minister and despite the earlier conjecture that he will fill the vacant slot in the Mumbai Raj Bhavan after S.M. Krishna moved to Bangalore to take charge of the Congress on the eve of the Karnataka elections. And now that the Supreme Court has given its stamp of approval to the Human Resource Development Minister's policy of reserving 27 per cent seats for the OBCs in the higher educational institutions, Arjun Singh is politically stronger than he was in the last few years.

Arguably, the Congress has some of the brightest young men in today's politics. But either the party doesn't want to give them full rein for fear of offending the seniors. Or they themselves do not seem to know their role, as in the case of Rahul Gandhi, who remains an apprentice in the art of politics in spite of being talked of as the potential prime minister. (IPA)