With the kind of politicians Nepal is cursed with, we don’t need an India to wreck this country.
One aspect of the 18-week-long Indian blockade of Nepal that has always baffled us is why New Delhi would want to inflict such harm on a little neighbour, and to a lesser degree, on itself. There are many theories about what ‘India’ really hopes to achieve with this siege, and it is unclear if India knows what India wants. Or maybe, as some have suggested, India cannot say what it really wants.
On the other hand, we are not at all surprised about the rulers in Kathmandu blundering from one mistake to another. Nepalis have never got the government they deserved. In the past 20 years we have been saddled with short-sighted, narrow-minded and greedy rulers. Most politicians since the mid-1990s instead of serving the people, have been self-serving crooks.
In Kathmandu’s corridors of power today it is all about deflecting attention from our own shortcomings to indulge in knee-jerk India-bashing. To be sure, New Delhi has used (some would say incited) the agitation in the plains to justify its blockade so that it can push through its economic and strategic agenda. Such blatant arm-twisting notwithstanding, the communistic UML-Maoist coalition has made matters worse and prolonged the crisis by its own fecklessness. The opposition NC is unmindful of the crisis and is playing politics as usual.
This coalition seems to take vicarious pleasure in playing victim and shifting all the blame on the blockade. Every day, ministers in the Oli administration come up with even more outlandish statements on ending load-shedding or wild promises about harnessing wind power, to mask their own incompetence. They are taking effective steps neither to end the crisis, nor to deal with the shortages and worsening hardships.
Instead of expediting the petroleum purchase deal with China, opening the Kodari border and urgently beginning the upgrade of the Rasuwa highway, all we get is political grandstanding and more rhetoric. Instead of announcing an emergency action plan for incentives to shift to electric public transport or to expedite hydropower projects, we get the same familiar waffling. Rather than immediately announce subsidies for domestic photo-voltaic systems with reverse metering, all we hear are speeches.
The overwhelming impression is of a state machinery and its organs profiting so much from the black market economy in fossil fuels that they want the crisis to last a while longer so they can fill their coffers. Four months into the blockade, we have no plans to fly in medicines and other essentials by air. With blessings from politicians and bureaucrats, NAC, NOC and NEA have their hands deep in the honeypot — the country be damned.
The most callous proof of government incompetence is how oblivious it is to the plight of over 2 million earthquake survivors this winter. Politicians of the NC and the UML have locked horns over the appointment of the CEO of the Reconstruction Authority. They let the bill lapse in parliament, allowed an already appointed CEO to fade into oblivion. The whole country is suffering from the blockade, but the plight of homeless earthquake survivors is doubly perilous. Yet an uncaring state is blissfully unmindful to their predicament.
Sooner or later, as a harsh winter hardens people’s attitudes, the all this flag-waving and nationalism is going to wear thin. Nepalis will point one finger at India, but the other three fingers will point back at our own establishment. The Oli government will be blamed for the failure to resolve the blockade and normalise the supply situation. Which is why the NC and the Madhesi parties want to strike home their advantage, because they know time is not on Oli’s side.
Zooming out from the current crisis, we see the lapses of the past have caught up with us. And we cannot blame India for them. How does a country with the richest hydropower potential in the region suffer such a crippling shortage of electricity? How come a drinking water project for Kathmandu Valley that should have been completed in five years taken 25? Why has foreign investment never taken off despite the gains we made in the early 1990s in attracting them? Why haven’t we been able to hold local elections for village, district and municipal councils for 20 years? Why is the Tarai fast-track moving at a turtle pace? Why is Kathmandu airport in the state it is in? We could go on …
With self-seeking politicians like the ones Nepal has been cursed with, we don’t really need an India to wreck our country.
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