Progress and/or Preservation

Negotiations to end the controversy over a project to build a cable car to the mountaintop shrine of Mukkumlung/Pathibhara in Taplejung have stalled.

The 2.7km project is set to go from Phungling up to a peak sacred to the Yakthung (Limbu) faith and its Mundum culture, as well as to Hindus.

The $22 million investment is from entrepreneur Chandra Dhakal’s IME Group, which says the cable car will promote tourism, create jobs and boost the local economy by enabling more pilgrims to visit. 

A section of the Limbu community is intensely opposed to the project for its impact on the fragile ecology of the 3,800m mountain as well as defiling the cultural and spiritual significance of Mukkumlung. 

The cable car project has polarised opinion not just in Taplejung, where there have been violent scuffles between protesters and police, but the global Nepali public sphere. It has also shown the ineptitude of Nepal’s leaders in failing to balance development with environmental and socio-cultural sensitivities. 

Read also: Letter from Sikles, Kunda Dixit 

The row is just the latest example of the desecration of nature and culture in the name of ‘development’ such as unnecessary airports and roads, ill-conceived viewtowers, expressway alignments, or crushers mining river beds. 

Mukkumlung/Pathibhara also has an ethnic identity dimension that has historically been ignored or suppressed.

Thousands of ancient trees had already been cut along the cable car route before the protests even began. The Initial Environmental Examination (IEE) is shoddy work, similar to the cut-paste job justifying Nijgad airport.

Protests have spread to other parts of eastern Nepal, amidst simmering anger about the failed promise of autonomy through federalism. The cable car protests have flared up from the still-smouldering agitation to rename Kosi Province as Kirat Province.

There is a political dimension, with the government backing the cable car and other hydropower projects on indigenous land. 

Read also: Pathibhara protests

Opposition figures and local politicians have found it expedient to latch on to the agitation. Clashes have erupted frequently between security forces and the ‘No Cable Car’ protesters. In January police fired at activists in Kafle Pati, the site of the base station, critically injuring two. Kosi Province was shut down for days in protest.

Opponents of the project have argued that the benefit of the cable car will mostly go to the investors and their government backers, while local porters, hotels and small businesses along the trail will lose their jobs.

But the Limbu community is itself divided over the cable car project. Phungling Municipality mayor Amir Maden supports it, arguing that it will lift the local economy. Padam Chenji Mabo, the newly-elected vice chair of Kirat Yakthung Chumlung who supports the project, had black soot smeared on him by activists from the Mukkumlung Conservation Joint Struggle Committee.

The controversy must be familiar to Chandra Dhakal, whose company used political clout to go ahead with the  Chandragiri Cable Car in 2016 despite concerns about hasty permits, and turning a government forest into private property.

The IME Group has three other cable car projects across Nepal, and another one is proposed to Kori Peak inside the Annapurna Conservation Area. The National Planning Commission this month gave ‘national priority project’ status to the project despite a Supreme Court interim order to halt it. 

The government has pushed through legislation to blunt strict laws about infrastructure and private sector projects inside protected areas. This threatens to undo decades of progress in conservation that has doubled Nepal’s forest cover to 46% of area in 30 years.

Despite speeches at international climate summits, politicians are allowing cronies to unleash ‘development’. Those like us who raise questions about this trend are labelled ‘anti-development’ or ‘dollar-chasers’. 

Our understanding of development must go beyond cable cars on sacred sites or hotels and hydropower projects in protected areas. Progress does not have to come at the cost of environmental and cultural harm. Is another cable car the priority for Taplejung, or the development of sustainable tourism, organic agriculture and education? Which will do most good?

One model could be the IT Academy in Taplejung that this newspaper wrote about last year which is training and retaining local software engineers to slow brain drain by providing online jobs. Rural Nepal needs more investments in projects like these that offer solutions, not create more problems. 

The government has halted construction of the Pathibhara cable car project for now, and invited activists to resume negotiations. 

That is a positive step, but should have been done even before the project got underway.

Shristi Karki