Vishal Sharma
Nepal has been India’s Achilles heel for long. It has been a staging post for those who have wanted to carry out subversion in India. Such elements have reached Nepal from their country of origin and, thereafter, quietly slipped into India, courtesy soft borders, to create harm. Sometimes they have slipped back without leaving any trace of their trail. It has also been an idyllic retreat for the homegrown petty criminals. Indians who commit crimes in India have often conveniently absconded to the cold climes of Nepal to evade justice.
Nepal’s another identity marker has been of a country in the Himalayan landscape that is innocuously wedged between India and China- a buffer that must forever offer loyalties to India. Its another cause of familiarity has been its predominantly Hindu population. Until recently, it was a Hindu monarchy. No other country has had the distinction of being a Hindu nation on this planet.
Nepal’s multiple identities have defined it in a certain way (and that way has not been particularly charitable) in the minds of those who matter the most, the Indian bureaucracy. Consequently, it has been increasingly seen as a security challenge. Even though Nepal’s infrastructural development’s has been bankrolled by the Indian establishment in a significant measure, most of the big ticket projects that would have pushed the envelope, so to say, on the development front have fallen prey to the apprehensions of the Indian bureaucrats. As a result, Nepal’s growth has faltered. Expectedly, Nepal has also had a fall from being a strategic partner to being put under watch for a potential security irritant.
The trouble has been that India has not handled the Maoist overthrow of the Nepal’s monarchy particularly well. Its opposition to the Maoists, which dated to the times when they were the raging rebels in the woods, continued even when they came close to assuming powers. The failure to nuance its response and align it with the fast changing situation on the ground has meant that India unwittingly ended up picking sides. This has led it to be seen as a benefactor of one and viscerally opposed to other. After it was held as prejudiced, its leverage for some measure of influence in the domestic polity of Nepal was lost forever.
Nepal has reacted to India’s ostrich like approach underpinned more on tactical brilliance and strategic stupidity with a vengeance. It allowed China to step in its backyard. Today China’s economic muscle is reshaping the Nepal’s lurch into the future. The age old buffer is losing its Teflon strength and coalescing into the ever dominating identity of the dragon. This synthesis is some time away, but when it happens, China’s borders will not end on the north-east of Nepal; they will on the north east of India.
It is this fear that has persuaded PM Modi to visit Nepal. And he has been careful in contexualising this visit in the milieu of explicit religiosity and friendliness. He knew that if trade and commerce were made the staple of this visit, he would not be in a position to move this relationship in the direction in which it has to now. In any case, there is a limit to which India can invest in Nepal. No matter what the scale of such an investment, the Chinese can’t simply be outdone.
That is why Modi has played the religious card and offered prayers at the Pahupati temple. Offering obeisance at the Pashpati is not extraordinary. Many Indian leaders in the past have done that on their visits to Nepal. But the nature of the prayers and having it coincide with auspicious time in Hindu religious calendar suggests that he wanted a certain message to resonate in Nepal. That message was that India is a predominantly Hindu country. So is Nepal. And, India and Nepal should forge a special relationship beyond the romance of strategic relations and the high rhetoric of economic interdependence.
In this context, Modi’s act of uniting a Nepalese boy, Jeet Bahadur, with his family at Kathmandu made quite an empathetic photo op with the Nepalese all around. It was again a gesture that was designed to rise above the ordinariness of the two heads of state meeting after a considerable lag. It would not be an understatement to state that Jeet bahadur’s act reduced the Modi’s official meeting with his opposite number to a sideline event. This was indeed a master stroke.
On the economic side, though, Modi’s offerings have looked petty by the international standards. A concessional credit line of 1 billion dollar would not make any dent in the economic landscape of Nepal. Nepal needs much bigger handholding. Infact India missed an opportunity to offer Nepal a much bigger credit line and in the process have it invest in its fledgling power sector. Indian could have even offered its technical expertise in tapping immense water resources in Nepal. A joint effort in the energy sector could have paved the way for India to buy surplus power from Nepal given that India’s energy requirements are huge vis-a-vis its production and, especially, since this mismatch may continue in future as well. Modi could not have foretold it any better when he said that ‘Nepal will remove our darkness in future.’ Given the stakes involved, it is felt that the India should have double down its investment exposure in the power sector of Nepal.
Also, Modi should have made a pitch for allowing Indian businesses to invest in Nepal in a big way. Some of the sectors that could have been identified for the purpose include tourism, healthcare and hospitality. Higher stakes of the Indian financial sector in Nepal would only help deepen the economic interdependence between the two countries.
Furthermore, there is virtually no educational tie up between the two countries. Given the closer religious and geographical affinities, it is imperative that there is more synergy between Nepalese and Indian educational institutions. Nepalese students can even be offered scholarships to study in India. Similarly, Indian students can be sent to study in Nepalese varsities under a similar reciprocal affirmative action. Modi should have made a push for it.
Lastly, for an enduring relationship, it is important that the militaries and the civil bureaucracies of the two countries develop workable and actionable synergies. Military to military contact may already be happening, as Nepal has historically provided willing and extremely able troopers for the Indian Army. But it needs to be scaled up. Besides training Nepalese soldiers in the Indian academies, India need to kit out its soldiers and also equip its army, wherever possible, on its means, as a good will gesture.
Similarly, bureaucracies of the two countries need to be sent to each other’s countries for small specific courses. This will help them understand the constraints and the opportunities in both these countries. Besides, this may instill some sense in them as to how to be strategically wise in situations that may so demand.
India can’t afford to ignore Nepal. It may be a small country. But it is a sovereign country and if it chooses to ignore us, we will rue the day we made this choice.
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