Till about 200 years ago <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/india-china-rail-race">China and India</a> were the world’s largest economies, and that helped Kathmandu prosper as an entrepôt between the two. We have now come full circle. China and India are ascendant once more, and the two giant neighbours can be the locomotives to pull Nepal along if we play our cards right. That is the message in former Kantipur editor <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/two-takes-on-the-nepal-india-nexus">Sudheer Sharma</a>’s omnibus edition of two books that explore the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/so-far-so-good/nepals-history-through-art">historical</a> and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-geopolitics-of-nepal-s-politics">geopolitical dimensions of Nepal</a>’s relations with China.&nbsp; The two Nepali language books, भिक्षु, व्यापार र बिद्रोह (Monks, Trade and Rebellion) and हिमालपारिको हुरी (Trans-Himalayan Hurricane) follow Sharma’s previous work प्रयोगशाला (Laboratory) which looked mainly at Nepal-India relations and was translated into English as The Nepal Nexus. The first book is predominantly about Kathmandu’s historical links with Lhasa, and by extension <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/beijing-30-zak6iu1w">Beijing</a>. Vajrayana Buddhism played a significant role in bringing the two sides of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/lives-on-the-line-in-the-himalaya">the Himalaya</a> together, allowing social and trade relations to thrive.&nbsp; Princess Bhrikuti, King Narendra Dev and Arniko were prominent historical figures, but thousands of lesser known <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/monks-and-nuns-help-in-rescue-and-relief,2320">monks</a>, traders, and travellers also played their part in cementing Kathmandu-Lhasa ties. These connections were so strong that they endured three wars that the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/beginning-of-the-end-of-the-gorkha-empire">Gorkha Kingdom</a> and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/gift-a-goat-to-tibet-nomads-in-nepal">Tibet</a> fought against each other in which <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/neither-side-lost-both-sides-won">Chinese emperors</a> sent military help to fight off the Nepalis. Although<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-assam-connection-revived"> Nepal’s historic connections</a> with Tibet waned after the Chinese annexation of the plateau in the 1950s, it is on that foundation that present day <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-china-agreements-are-stuck">Nepal-China relations</a> are built.&nbsp; Till today, Nepal is the only country with a consulate in Lhasa, and the only <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/kathmandu-airport-to-cut-flight-hours">international flights</a> from Lhasa are to Kathmandu. But as Sharma notes, even back then, Nepal’s proximity with northern India figured importantly in its<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/home-is-where-the-heart-is-yqkvf5vx"> socio-economic </a>and cultural connections with <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/there-are-muslims-in-tibet-too">Tibet</a>. Nepal was the corridor for the exchange of trade and faith between the Ganga plains and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/it-is-getting-hotter-on-the-roof-of-the-world">the Tibetan plateau</a>. The road between Patna and Potala, Banaras and Beijing passed through <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/bringing-silicon-valley-to-kathmandu-valley">Kathmandu Valley</a>. Sharma traces this socio-political landscape to explain how it went on to shape the country’s modern day relations with the neighbours.&nbsp; There were 2,000 Buddhist monks in Nepal during the reign of Lichhavi king Amshuverma, and Arniko established himself in the court of Kubulai Khan and took eight years to build the massive White Dagoba in Beijing. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-life-and-times-of-arniko">The life and times of Arniko</a>, Sewa Bhattarai While Mahayana Buddhism spread from India, through Nepal to China and beyond, it was <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/crony-communism">Communism</a> that later came from China to Nepal. King Mahendra had great geopolitical savvy and navigated the complicated geopolitics of the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/land-reform-in-cold-war-nepal">Cold War</a> to cultivate relations with both Nehru and Mao, while keeping both at arms length. Mahendra wrested aid to build infrastructure like the Kodari and Prithvi Highways from China, but also from India, the Soviet Union and the United States. In fact Nepal was only the eighth non-Communist country to receive foreign aid during Mao’s China.&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/the-new-equaliser">The new equaliser</a> But when <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/14-years-after-conflict-no-closure-in-nepal">Nepal’s Maoists</a> launched an armed struggle against <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/if-birendra-was-alive-nepal-could-still-be-a-monarchy">the monarchy</a>, China’s official media never called them ‘Maoists’. As far as Beijing was concerned, Mao was dead in his mausoleum. It was only later under <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/what-is-xi-jinping-s-big-surprise">Xi Jinping </a>that China warmed up to Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s ‘Maoist’ label.&nbsp; The first book takes us to the point when the Constituent Assembly <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/from-nepali-press/Ftnp-abolishing,624">abolished Nepal’s monarchy</a> in 2008, and the second book, as the name suggests, looks at how the whirlwind rise of China has buffeted Nepal.&nbsp; Sharma encourages readers to abandon <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/guest-editorial/Prithvi-Narayan-Shah-a-visionary-leader,1102">Prithvi Narayan Shah</a>’s famous metaphor of Nepal being ‘yam between two boulders’ to it being more like a ‘narrow canyon’ between two big <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/why-we-climb-mountains">mountains</a>, emphasising the challenges of maintaining sovereignty amid geopolitical pressures not just between India and China, but increasingly, with the United States. We have to see how the new Sino-US Cold War will evolve under <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/trump-s-second-coming">the second Donald Trump presidency</a>. The <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-great-game-2nd-half">suspension of the MCC</a> this week will be an opening for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/crony-communism">China to push its own BRI infrastructure projects</a> in Nepal. It is not very helpful to see Nepal as being ‘squeezed’ between its giant neighbours, but leverage the country’s geostrategic location by being a connector between India and China. Both neighbours, naturally, have their own interests in Nepal as a buffer state, but both want stability. Kathmandu’s strategy should be to take advantage of the economic growth of its neighbours. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/poor-cash-rich-nepal">Poor cash-rich Nepal</a>, Sonia Awale &nbsp; Both books look at the arrival of Tibetan refugees into Nepal from the late 1950s, and how this resulted in geopolitical push and pull. Although American support for Khampa guerrillas was cut off after Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to Beijing in 1971, US and western support for Tibetans in exile resumed after that.&nbsp; Nepal allowed the<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/mindfulness-about-bhutan-s-refugees"> refugees</a> to stay and work here, but under Chinese pressure Kathmandu adopted stricter measures — including <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=2754">deporting Tibetans entering Nepal</a>. The Tibetan exile community remains one of Beijing’s biggest concerns in Nepal. Successive Kathmandu governments have been pressured to curb ‘anti-Chinese activities’ like celebrating the Dalai Lama’s birthday and other anniversaries.&nbsp; Sharma notes that so far Nepal has deftly balanced its support for refugees while keeping relations with Beijing on an even keel. It is significant that China has been surprisingly understanding of the presence of<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/the-start-of-the-anglo-gorkha-war"> Gorkha soldiers from Nepal</a> in the Indian Army along the disputed border where India and China fought a war in 1962, and after which there have been frequent skirmishes.&nbsp; The two books should be read chronologically so as to track the trajectory of historical Nepal-Tibet ties right up to present-day Nepal-China relations. The most relevant concern for bilateral relations today, as Sharma points out, is <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/how-nepal-can-avert-an-economic-crunch">Nepal’s economic independence</a>, <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=15973">sovereignty</a>, and role in a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/guest-column/nepal-in-the-new-world-order">transformed world order</a>. &nbsp;&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250224140256_38f09c2f6dc3b7c79892cf556976fa9f7b3a2f43fb53bd7a248a6c6af3ba4715.jpg" data-media-id="editor_37" data-image-id="20250224140256_38f09c2f6dc3b7c79892cf556976fa9f7b3a2f43fb53bd7a248a6c6af3ba4715" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Sudheer Sharma 1"> </figure>  &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250224140256_c6eb78b8f59cfda4b3dae582212306fd3ea25b1973d554fdb7579b9d8f345969.jpg" data-media-id="editor_38" data-image-id="20250224140256_c6eb78b8f59cfda4b3dae582212306fd3ea25b1973d554fdb7579b9d8f345969" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Sudheer Sharma 2"> </figure>  &nbsp;

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A past foretold

Thirty years after it abruptly pulled out of the Arun III project, the World Bank appears to have developed cold feet about an even larger project on the river in eastern Nepal. After opposition by civil society in Nepal, Japan and Europe, the Bank’s new president James Wolfensohn <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/20-years-ago-this-week/arun-iii">exited from Arun III</a>. The project’s generation capacity has been doubled to 900MW and it is being development by India’s state-owned SJVN Limited.&nbsp; Whereas in 1995, the opposition to Arun III was mainly from activists, this time it is said to be India’s displeasure with the Bank’s involvement in the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/world-bank-flip-flop-on-upper-arun">1,061MW Upper Arun</a>. Delhi is so sensitive to the issue that sources said it even leaned on Indian-born American President of the World Bank, Ajaya Banga to cancel his trip to Kathmandu for the IDA21 Replenishment Meeting in June. When it gets the green light, Upper Arun will be the most expensive hydroelectric project in Nepal so far with a price tag of $1.6 billion. The semi-storage scheme is located on the transboundary Arun River 15km from the Chinese border after it cuts through the Himalaya between Mt Everest and Kangchenjunga. Beijing is said to have no objections to the project, but India’s silence is said to stem <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/geopolitics-of-nepal-s-rivers">from its strategic interest</a> in not allowing anyone else to build large storage projects on the tributaries of the Ganga in Nepal. India’s SJVN is also currently constructing three large projects downstream, including Arun III and Lower Arun with a total generation capacity of nearly 2,000MW.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241220111240_f6e0fda98407360d7a4456e861481ad811f7a75ce5ab7605158e980615f3fb16.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20241220111240_f6e0fda98407360d7a4456e861481ad811f7a75ce5ab7605158e980615f3fb16" data-rendition-name="original" width="850" height="771" loading="lazy" alt="Upper Arun Map NT"> </figure>  Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) set up Upper Arun Hydro-electric Limited (UAHEL) as a subsidiary and in May signed up the French firm Tractebel for detailed design of the scheme. Experts say the design will have to take into account future climate-induced glacial lake outbursts like the one that swept away the 1,600MW <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/sikkim-flood-is-warning-to-nepal">Chungthang Teesta</a> III in Sikkim last year built at a cost of $1.7 billion.&nbsp; Upper Arun’s financing will be 70% loans and 30% equity. The World Bank had already earmarked $750 million with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) with Japan’s JICA also joining. But UAHEL Managing Director Fanendra Raj Joshi said there was no word either way from the World Bank, which meant there was no financial closure yet. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/right-climate-for-nepal-s-energy-transition">Right climate for Nepal’s energy transition</a>, Ramesh Kumar All this is in stark contrast to the optimism last year after Finance Minister Prakash Mahat returned from an IMF meeting in Morrocco and announced that the World Bank would be the main lender in Upper Arun.&nbsp; In November 2024, Mahat even took a helicopter with World Bank Managing Director Anna Bjerde and ADB Director Ramesh Subramaniam to the Upper Arun site and it looked like the loans were in the bag. It would also be the first large project in Nepal in which both big multilateral lenders would be involved.&nbsp; In April this year, an ‘agreement in principle’ was even reached between Mahat’s successor Barsaman Pun and World Bank Vice President for South Asia Martin Raiser to develop Upper Arun. But the loan meeting planned for June was cancelled. &nbsp; A Finance Ministry official told Nepali Times: “The World Bank told us categorically in November in Washington DC that India was opposed to its involvement in Upper Arun.” &nbsp; When Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal visited Delhi in June, Indian officials reportedly said they were interested in developing Upper Arun and evacuate its power through an extension of the 400kV transmission line it is building. Although Beijing had given the go ahead to the World Bank and ADB involvement in Upper Arun, it may not be as happy about an Indian company so close to its border. As a semi-reservoir project, Upper Arun can generate electricity at full capacity for up to six hours a day even in winter, unlike the schemes downstream which are run-of-the river in which generation depends on water flow.&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/rivers-be-dammed">Rivers be dammed</a>, Pinki Siris Rana&nbsp; India is involved in projects in Nepal’s rivers that will generate a total of 8,000MW when complete. SJVN Limited is also taking over from the Chinese the 769MW Tamor project in the Arun Basin. &nbsp; Says Fanendra Raj Joshi of Upper Arun Hydro-electric Limited: “Nepal can find alternative sources of funding and we will go ahead with this project even if the World Bank decides not to provide the loan.”&nbsp; Joshi and the NEA’s Kulman Ghising (pictured, below) attended a hearing with indigenous communities at the project site in Sankhuwasabha this week. Ghising told the gathering that if the World Bank pulled out Nepal would carry on with Upper Arun through “domestic and diaspora investment with the same financial package as Upper Tama Kosi”. The 546MW <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/when-it-rains-it-pours-ksqprbu3">Upper Tama Kosi was knocked</a> by a massive landslide in September and will not be fully operation at least for a year. &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20241218091240_bfaaadc83881c7551d1dd501447b7a22c10b89104aeea3cab58a100444b016d5.jpg" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="20241218091240_bfaaadc83881c7551d1dd501447b7a22c10b89104aeea3cab58a100444b016d5" data-rendition-name="original" width="800" height="600" loading="lazy" alt="Kulman Ghising"> </figure>  “This is a project that can transform the local economy and Nepal’s economy as well,” Ghising added. “We will go ahead with blended financing from all levels of government.” Despite the lack of financial closure, construction of the project is expected to get underway in 2026 for completion in six years. Construction of a 21km access road from the power house to the dam site along the Kosi Corridor highway is in full swing through difficult terrain.

Upper Arun question mark

The bilateral relationship between India and Bangladesh must be based on a win-win policy, rooted in mutual respect, non-hegemony, and the pursuit of shared prosperity and deeper understanding. 
For India, there have always been only two neighbours: China and Pakistan. The rest of us smaller South Asian countries are geographic entities to be praised, cajoled, reprimanded and even punished as the situation calls for.
Sheikh Hasina's last tenure in power (2009-2024) appears to have been a ‘praise’ period. However, after the student-led people's uprising toppled her regime in August, a powerful section of the Indian media has shifted into the ‘reprimand’ mode, with some even suggesting ‘punishment’. Much of the social media discourse seems to support this.
Oppression of minorities anywhere in the world, including in my own country, must be condemned and speedily resolved. It should never recur. Communal conflict has been an age-old phenomenon in South Asia following the British colonial policy of divide and rule. 
It is a regrettable fact that, after 77 years of the departure of the British, we have still not been able to solve it.
After the regime change in Bangladesh, the Indian media's coverage of events can, in my view, be categorised as follows: 
<ol><li>The events that toppled Sheikh Hasina was the work of Pakistan's ISI, the Islamists in Bangladesh, or pro-Chinese elements all aimed to replace the ‘India-friendly’ government with an ‘unfriendly’ one. There is no mention of the role of common people or of the students, of the killing of ordinary people. What is the source of all these assertions? </li><li>The new government in Dhaka is bent on persecuting Hindus and even committing ‘genocide’. Many of these stories were debunked by fact-checkers, including the BBC. But that did not stop or even slow down the tirade of stories demonising Bangladesh.</li><li>The US involvement was also referred to and linked with the events in Pakistan in toppling Imran Khan. So, the US toppled Sheikh Hasina.</li></ol>
Even three months later, there has been no substantial coverage of the atrocities inflicted on students and civilians. The Sheikh Hasina government even resorted to firing on demonstrators using helicopters.
In a prompt action, the interim government fast-tracked the issuance of visas for journalists. However, Indian journalists who visited Bangladesh focused solely on the attacks on Hindus, ignoring the broader human rights abuses by the Hasina government. 
The Indian media’s coverage of the July-August uprising in Bangladesh was also striking in its one-sidedness.
The Indian media largely ignored the massive student-led people's movement, which saw millions take to the streets of cities across the country. Their focus remained almost exclusively on the sporadic violence against Hindus during the power vacuum in the first week of the transition.
The firing on unarmed demonstrators, resulting in at least 700 deaths by 5 August, was barely covered. This was one of the most barbaric crackdowns in the recent history of South Asia, yet the Indian media gave it little attention. 
In the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEoyTkOZ8xE&amp;t=588s">six interviews I gave</a> to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bDJgVVBDLg">mainstream Indian outlets</a>, there was almost <a href="http://www.telegraphindia.com/world/sheikh-hasina-had-turned-very-dictatorial-mahfuz-anam-on-bangladesh-regime-change/cid/2038904">no mention</a> of the scale of <a href="http://www.theweek.in/theweek/cover/2024/08/07/the-daily-star-journalist-mahfuz-anam-interview-bangladesh-protests-political-crisis.html">the uprising</a> or the civilian deaths, only the vandalism of symbols like Bangabandhu's statue or the burning of government properties.
Even three months later, there has been no substantial coverage of the atrocities inflicted on students and civilians. The Indian media's coverage appears to be driven by the isolated attacks against Hindus of Bangladesh, rather than the people of Bangladesh. India should not see the recent events through the lens of Sheikh Hasina but through the lens of democracy.
In a recent video broadcast by the Indian news portal ThePrint, Meenakshi Lekhi, a BJP leader and lawyer, said, ‘The chief adviser… is seeking to rename the nation [Bangladesh] to be [the] Islamic republic of East Pakistan.’ 
Where did she get that from? Her column was filled with distortions and misinformation. When recounting Sheikh Hasina's rule, she omitted critical facts like the rigging of the 2014, 2018 and 2024 general elections, which were at the core of voters' outrage with her regime.
At The Daily Star, we studied 56 news items appearing in the Indian media between 9 July-20 November. Except for a handful, most could be categorised as ‘views reports’ and not ‘news reports’. They had headlines like: ‘To avoid election Yunus is using the excuse of reforms’, ‘Politics of revenge – 13 including ministers on trial’, ‘Will democracy at all return to Bangladesh?’, ‘China, ISI behind escalation of student-led protests in Bangladesh’, ‘ISI conspiracy to topple Sk. Hasina and established anti-India govt’, among others. 
Some TV news even called it an ‘Islamist takeover’. There were hardly any attempts to take a serious look at the events in Bangladesh.
If we analyse the sourcing of the news, the presentation, the headlines, and the language used in reporting, it becomes clear that it was directed at creating an impression that Hindus were not safe in Bangladesh to generate deep hatred in the Indian population.
The mindset of the Indian media and also that of a section of political leadership is dominated by a fundamental disrespect for our intellectual ability, and Islamophobia.
Indian media coverage clearly implies that we, as a people, are incapable of determining our future. It is the Pakistanis, Chinese or the Americans (not to name the Indians, which they do not of course mention) that must tell us what to do. 
This mindset is insulting to a nation that has fought against Pakistani cultural, economic and military oppression, and that has defeated them in an armed struggle with Indian help. 
It is insulting to a people who have dismantled dictatorships and who have now toppled what appeared to be an invincible regime of Sheikh Hasina. This mindset shows the disdain of the Indian media towards Bangladeshis. One political leader even compared us with termites.
The Indian media has a total misunderstanding of the deep roots of Islam in Muslim Bangladeshi psyche. People going to mosques, wearing Islamic headgear, keeping beards, using Islamic salutations, or referring to the Quran as a part of daily life are portrayed as extremists and terrorists.
If the revival and strengthening of Hindu religious practices, building more temples, enshrining Hindu cultural traits, and becoming more practising Hindus are part of the present-day Indian ethos, then why should we, the Bangladeshis, becoming more Muslim make us extremists? 
If mass-based groups like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, and the RSS can propagate the Hindu religion, and if a political party like the BJP, whose aim is to establish Hindutva in India, can get elected three times, then why does the reappearance of Islamic groups make us a ‘fundamentalist’ country?
The Indian media and leadership must dig deep into the cultural and religious heritage of Muslim Bengal, and try to embrace us as we are, rather than define us as they would like us to be. 
We must accept what the Indian people decide is the India they want. Just as India must accept what the people of Bangladesh decide we are. 
That is the only way a durable Bangladesh-India relationship can be built. The lesson for India is that regime-based relationships must be replaced by people-based relationships. 
For that to happen, we must understand each other better, with sincerity and respect.
Mahfuz Anam is the editor and publisher of The Daily Star. Reprinted with permission.

How the media shapes Bangladesh-India ties

This year, Sri Lanka entered a power purchase deal with Adani Green Energy Ltd. In terms of the agreement, the country will purchase electricity from the company over 20 years. The Adani Green Energy project received cabinet clearance from the previous government to produce 484MW of wind power in two facilities the company would build in Mannar and Pooneryn and invest more than US$442 million in its projected life span of 20 years.
Adani Green Energy would be paid $0.0826 per kWh of power produced. The deal was relentlessly pushed, defended and ultimately signed by the previous Sri Lankan government. The mandatory tender process was not followed indicating inbuilt and rampant corruption and vested interests at the time.
The project is now under litigation in the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka over the violation of fundamental rights. The main issues raised by the petitioners deal with environmental concerns surrounding the project and the woeful lack of transparency in the awarding process that led to the granting of the deal to Adani.
The petitioners also argue that the agreed upon per unit cost is a significant loss to the country and ideally this rate should be set at $0.005 kWh. The deal, its approval and the final granting process were mired in controversy even before litigation. 
In 2022, the then Chairman of the Ceylon Electricity Board, M M C Ferdinando told the parliamentary panel, the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE), that the deal was offered based on a request from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to then Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. 
Ferdinando later retracted his statement and resigned from his post under pressure from the then government. In May 2023, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ali Sabry observed flippantly in an interview with The Hindu that Adani projects in Sri Lanka were a ‘government-to-government kind of a project’. He noted that it was the Indian government that selected the Adani group for infrastructure development projects including the Sri Lankan wind power project. 
Reading between the lines, Sabry’s public observations indicated a clear backdoor and informal Indian state involvement in the project. Despite the notoriety that Adani companies had already acquired across the world, Sabry had the nerve to say that his government was “very very confident” that the Adani Group’s companies had considerable capital.
Adani actually saw a the $140 billion drop in share values after the publication of a negative report by US research company Hindenburg accusing the company’s top leader Gautam Adani of getting away with the ‘largest con in corporate history’. 
Another investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project also documented serious malpractices by Adani companies. All this is in addition to The Guardian and Financial Times also reporting on Adani family’s surreptitious investments in the company’s shares.
It is against this background that the flamboyant and utterly inexperienced former Sri Lankan Minister of Energy attempted to convert the agreement with Adani Green Energy Limited in August 2023 into a formal government-to-government deal. 
In reality no such formal state to state level agreement existed between India and Sri Lanka. It is therefore hardly surprising that the Adani power deal has ended up in litigation in the Sri Lankan Supreme Court. The new Sri Lankan government needs to carefully and comprehensively revisit the power deal.
Malpractices evident in the local awarding process needs to be considered as well as the role of local power brokers who made it happen and evident corruption that enveloped the entire project needs to be investigated. 
The project also needs to be evaluated in light of the global evidence against the Adani Group. In October, the Kenyan High Court suspended a $736 million agreement between the state-owned Kenya Electrical Transmission Company and Adani Energy Solutions to build and operate power facilities, including transmission lines.
In a lawsuit, the Law Society of Kenya argued that the deal was ‘a constitutional sham and tainted with secrecy’. It also argued that the Kenyan state entity and Adani Energy Solutions did not carry out mandatory public participation focused on the project properly, which is a requirement under Kenya’s Public Private Partnerships Act. These conditions sound alarmingly similar to the Sri Lankan case.
In 2023, accusations were made in India’s Gujarat State against Adani Power Mundra Limited that it had charged an excess of INR 39,000,000,000 over a period of five years under two power purchase agreements. An opposition politician in the state noted the case was a “textbook case of corruption, money laundering, loot of public money and above all, the classic case of cronyism that the Prime Minister and his government represent.” 
The issue here was that the rate at which coal for power production that was purchased by Adani Power Mundra was significantly higher than market rates at which coal was being traded in Indonesia, the source of the purchase. This meant that the state-owned Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited, a Gujarati state entity in the energy sector had to pay much more for the overall electricity supply. Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited has now written to Adani Power Mundra Limited asking that the excess amount charged be repaid. 
As a presidential candidate, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake assured that if he won, the National People’s Power would cancel the Adani energy project because it posed a threat to Sri Lanka’s energy sector sovereignty. 
The controls placed by Adani Power on its power supply to Bangladesh is a classic example of Bangladesh’s energy sovereignty being utterly compromised at a very crucial time in the country’s history. In real terms, Adani Power has slashed its supplies to Bangladesh by about 60% due to unpaid bills exceeding $800 million. Sri Lanka could also find itself in a similar situation if it compromises its power supply and energy sovereignty by going ahead with the Adani project.
In October President Dissanayake informed the Supreme Court that it would reconsider the approval given by the previous regime to the Adani Group projects. The government must now expect considerable pressure from vested parties, in this case both the Adani Group and the Indian government, more generally. But it is essential to be mindful that we are not dealing with a project in an Indian state.
We cannot be endlessly languishing in the depths of poverty simply because of the corruption of our own leaders of the recent and not-too-recent past, and business magnates of the region. The Adani case is a good starting point to roll back mega corruption and illegality in the country.
Sasanka Perera is the founding professor of the South Asia University's Department of Sociology. This commentary was first published <a href="https://island.lk/adanis-power-in-sri-lanka/">The Island Online</a>.

Adani in Sri Lanka

In June 2020, <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/border-row-dont-read-too-much-into-chinas-statements/articleshow/76056332.cms">incursions</a> by Chinese Army into the fraught borderlands of India’s Ladakh region triggered <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/what-was-india-china-military-clash-2020-about-2024-10-25/">bloody clashes</a> that killed 20 Indian soldiers, plunged bilateral relations to their lowest point in decades, and led to a prolonged military standoff. 
In November, China and India have reached a <a href="https://www.scmp.com/opinion/asia-opinion/article/3284373/how-china-and-india-can-build-border-truce-normalise-ties">truce</a>, though many in India would prefer to hold their applause. Since the 2020 violence, bilateral relations have remained frozen, and India wants China to take steps to restore the status quo ante at the border. China’s unprovoked encroachments across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh are to blame for disturbing the peace in the first place.
To show it meant business, India <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-23/china-and-india-bury-the-hatchet-for-now">slowed down</a> approvals of Chinese investments; tightened visa approvals for Chinese nationals, and canceled direct flights between the two countries. India toughened its stance on Chinese territorial claims in the Pacific, and made pointed political gestures that were bound to displease China, like <a href="https://m.economictimes.com/news/india/china-lodges-protest-with-india-over-pm-modis-response-to-taiwan-president-lais-greetings-on-his-poll-victory/articleshow/110765182.cms">responding</a> warmly to the Taiwanese president’s congratulatory message after Modi’s re-election. (There was also talk of Taiwan allowing Indian workers.)
While the recent truce suggests that China has finally gotten the message, it is difficult to shake the impression that India was the more anxious of the two parties to reach an agreement. In fact, India’s economic establishment appears largely convinced that, far from pursuing a strategy of decoupling, or at least ‘de-risking’, vis-à-vis China, India should be using Chinese capital to fill its own investment gaps.
Given that bilateral trade has <a href="https://www.ptinews.com/story/business/China-largest-trading-partner-of-India-in-FY24-with-USD-118-4-bn%3B-US-second-with-USD-118-3-bn/1497275">reached</a> its highest-ever levels despite the political tensions, it comes as no surprise that India’s business community has reportedly been <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-10-24/how-india-ceos-convinced-modi-to-push-for-better-china-ties-at-brics">pressing</a> the government to conclude an agreement that would facilitate economic engagement. In July, the government’s chief economic adviser <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-not-rethinking-issue-allowing-chinese-investment-trade-minister-says-2024-07-30/">openly advocated</a> a strategy that would increase Chinese investments in India and deepen Indian integration into Chinese supply chains.
There were indications over the last few months that an agreement to end the Ladakh standoff was forthcoming. And a deal did soon emerge, allowing both China and India to resume patrols along the frontier.
But significant areas of concern remain. As the political commentator Brahma Chellaney observed, when Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping met at the BRICS Summit in Kazan after the truce was announced, their respective ministries produced very different statements. Whereas India described the accord as a step toward a ‘multipolar Asia and a multipolar world’, China referred only to a ‘multipolar world’. The implication was subtle but clear: Asia belongs to China.
More broadly, China’s actions along the LAC have signaled a clear desire to keep India off balance by taking steps to shift the border in ways more favourable to its own interests. This mirrors China’s assertive approach to advancing its territorial ambitions elsewhere along its shared border with India, and in the South China Sea.
It is worth remembering how the last standoff between India and China, focused on the Doklam plateau in Bhutan, ended. India does not claim Doklam, but it does support Bhutan’s claim, which China disputes. Moreover, a major Indian highway runs below the plateau, connecting India’s northeastern states to the rest of the country. So, when China deployed troops to build a Chinese highway in Doklam, India sent troops to stop the project.
In that case, the two sides took just a few months to reach an agreement, which looked much like the recent Ladakh deal. Since then, however, the Chinese outflanked India by building a road elsewhere on the Doklam plateau to achieve the same result. The PLA now overlooks a vital Indian highway.
China’s conduct follows a clear pattern: create new facts on the ground, deploy forces to positions from which they can intimidate (and, potentially, attack) India, and wear India down with protracted diplomacy. In the meantime, encourage India to increase its dependence on Chinese imports and dangle the investment carrot before Indian business leaders.
Yet the promised economic benefits of the two sides’ recent rapprochement are unlikely to materialise. The Chinese have not lifted a finger to address India’s huge bilateral trade deficit which soared to $101 billion in 2022, from $70 billion in 2021 – or to lower the barriers Indian companies face when trying to access the Chinese market.
Moreover, all indications point to Chinese investment in low-value-added industries, rather than sectors involving technology transfer, even as Chinese companies pursue acquisitions in sensitive sectors in India. There are also massive opportunity costs: greater economic integration with China would surely make India less attractive to global companies seeking to reduce their exposure to the People’s Republic.
Add to that China’s long track record of exporting its way out of economic trouble and weaponising other countries’ economic vulnerabilities, and it seems clear that India should proceed with caution. Until China credibly demonstrates its good intentions, the truce in Ladakh warrants little celebration. © <a href="http://www.project-syndicate.org">Project Syndicate</a>

CHINDIA

Project Syndicate: Being especially vulnerable to climate change, the Global South is open to receiving financial, technical, and other forms of support from wherever they can get it. Are America and its allies squandering an opportunity here?
Ian Bremmer: At this point, developing economies are open to climate finance support from any quarter. With simultaneous major geopolitical conflicts, inflationary pressures, and pivotal elections happening this year, America and its allies view climate partnerships with emerging markets as a lower priority. The EU’s top priority is Ukraine, and the US has been consumed with the Gaza conflict.
The Global South will therefore strengthen ties with China and Middle Eastern countries, as we’ve seen happening since the last United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai (COP28). Diversifying partnerships makes sense for these governments, since wealthy countries have made it clear they won’t significantly ramp up support anytime soon. Although <a href="https://cop29.az/en/news/letter-to-parties-and-constituencies#:~:text=The%20COP29%20Presidency's%20top%20negotiating,priorities%20of%20developing%20country%20Parties." target="_blank">climate finance</a> will be a major topic at COP29 in Azerbaijan, the $1 trillion target will go unmet, leading to frustration and even more collaboration with non-traditional partners.
The donor pool is becoming a contentious topic in UN climate negotiations, because countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, and China are not currently classified as ‘<a href="https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wesp/wesp_current/2014wesp_country_classification.pdf" target="_blank">developed economies</a>’. The United States and some EU governments are pushing to expand this list to achieve more ambitious goals, but it won’t happen. Many emerging markets support the current list because they don’t want to antagonise China, which firmly opposes being a donor and criticises developed markets for not delivering on climate finance.
Do strategic and ‘national-security’ considerations surrounding climate policy and green technologies ensure a zero-sum dynamic?
This collaboration has historically set global policy expectations, laying the groundwork for milestones like the Paris climate agreement, COP26 in Glasgow and COP28 in Dubai. The outcome of the US election will be crucial, but under a Democratic administration, robust climate cooperation could continue, particularly with the right climate envoys.
During the first three years of <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/joseph-biden-jr">Joe Biden</a>’s presidency, US Climate Envoy <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/john-kerry">John Kerry</a> and his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, demonstrated that meaningful <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00692-7" target="_blank">progress</a> can still be made despite broader tensions. After the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/08/05/1115878668/china-taiwan-pelosi-climate-military#:~:text=BEIJING%20%E2%80%94%20China%20declared%20Friday%20it,Nancy%20Pelosi's%20visit%20to%20Taiwan." target="_blank">suspension</a> of climate talks following US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022, Kerry and Xie’s teams were among the first to resume discussions in 2023.
Even then, separating climate issues from US-China tensions will pose a challenge. Chinese officials have stressed that climate collaboration requires “overall stable relations”.
What about under a second Trump presidency? How much damage could he do to the net-zero transition, both in the US and globally?
Donald Trump is obviously no fan of climate policies, but he supports US industry. His administration would cut Inflation Reducation Act spending, and could do so significantly with full Republican support. These cuts would then ripple through the economy. But the US would still pursue aggressive industrial policies, challenging economic trade partners. A Trump administration would favour oil and gas, but its impact would be limited.&nbsp;
On the international front, you could expect a US withdrawal from UN climate talks altogether, which could derail progress at COP30 and significantly reduce funding for developing economies. This could weaken new climate commitments from all governments by 2025, eventually pushing global temperatures higher than currently projected.
And following the strong performance by far-right parties in the European Parliament elections, should we expect Europe’s ambitions under the 2020 EU Green Deal to be scaled back?&nbsp;
The EU has temporarily peaked in its adoption of environmental policies. Looking ahead, the bloc will largely focus on implementing existing regulations. Key among these is the <a href="https://finance.ec.europa.eu/capital-markets-union-and-financial-markets/company-reporting-and-auditing/company-reporting/corporate-sustainability-reporting_en" target="_blank">Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive</a>, which will require companies to ramp up disclosures starting next year, with France already <a href="https://www.novata.com/resources/blog/csrd-unpacked-enforcement-compliance-and-penalties/#:~:text=France%20is%20the%20only%20country,not%20publishing%20the%20sustainability%20report." target="_blank">imposing</a> strict penalties for noncompliance. 
&nbsp;
Similarly, the <a href="https://green-business.ec.europa.eu/deforestation-regulation-implementation_en#:~:text=It%20will%20start%20to%20apply,Deforestation%20Free%20Products%20(EUDR)." target="_blank">EU Deforestation Regulation</a> will take effect this December, and countries around the world are already preparing for it. Seven key commodities will be barred from the EU market if their sourcing involves any kind of deforestation, legal or illegal.
Meanwhile, the recently adopted <a href="https://www.esginvestor.net/eu-approves-nature-restoration-law/#:~:text=EU%20member%20states%20have%20approved,targets%20in%20the%20bloc's%20history." target="_blank">Nature Restoration Law</a> – the EU’s flagship biodiversity legislation – requires that member states create action plans and set targets to increase their conservation and restoration efforts. The enforcement of these policies will lead to “<a href="https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Nature_Positive_Guidelines_for_the_Transition_in_Cities_2024.pdf" target="_blank">transition risks</a>.” Multinational corporations and governments that fail to comply with sustainability-related regulations will face legal action.
Another elephant in the room is India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set highly ambitious decarbonisation targets reaching <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-59125143" target="_blank">net-zero by 2070</a>, but India has also been hoovering up Russian hydrocarbons at a discount and <a href="https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Indias-Coal-Consumption-and-Emissions-Hit-Record-Highs-in-Q1.html" target="_blank">increasing</a> its consumption of coal.&nbsp;
Actually, India’s net-zero target by 2070 is perceived by many as <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/indias-net-zero-emissions-target-by-2070-little-too-long-term-hardeep-singh-puri/article67398684.ece" target="_blank">insufficiently ambitious</a>. But India faces a tough balancing act between long-term decarbonisation and immediate economic priorities. It still relies on coal for domestic security and is being cautious about phasing it out until renewable-energy capacity and alternative revenue sources for coal-producing regions are well established.
Energy-storage limitations, fluctuating LNG prices, and other challenges have prompted a shift toward a combination of LNG and green hydrogen for industry, and a mix of solar and nuclear power for residential areas.
Owing to capital shortages, grid instability, minimal storage solutions, and reliance on emerging technologies, India <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/renewables/india-may-miss-2030-renewable-energy-targets-as-up-punjab-haryana-lag-say-experts/articleshow/90964081.cms?from=mdr" target="_blank">will not meet</a> its 2030 targets of 500 gigawatts of non-fossil fuel power capacity and a 45% reduction in carbon intensity from 2005 levels. It is, however, expected to build its clean-energy supply chains by 2030 (leveraging a second-mover advantage), and this should help to accelerate its energy transition.
EVs are one bright spot. India has implemented <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/india-says-high-tariffs-evs-protect-chinese-imports-2024-06-14/" target="_blank">tariffs</a> to protect its budding domestic EV sector, and earlier this year it introduced a new <a href="https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2014858#:~:text=The%20Union%20Government%20has%20approved,by%20reputed%20global%20EV%20manufacturers." target="_blank">policy</a> to encourage EV manufacturing. This could attract investments worth billions of dollars from companies like Tesla or various Japanese firms.
In the past, you’ve proposed new bodies such as a World Carbon Organisation. Where does your thinking stand today in a world increasingly dominated by zero-sum strategic considerations?
Multilateral institutions will continue to face challenges, but they remain essential in an increasingly fragmented world. Their value lies in reaching global consensus and driving coordinated action, as seen with the Paris agreement’s impact on countries, companies, and communities. In that case, there was a clear ‘before and after’.
Yes, progress has been too slow, but to be fair, expectations for these negotiations are often too high, setting them up for failure. International fora should be seen as what they are: annual stocktaking exercises that help the world assess its current position and decide on necessary course corrections.
Unilateral initiatives, such as the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and the Deforestation Regulation, face just as much, if not more, pushback. This highlights the need to improve multilateral systems – by creating new structures or overhauling existing ones – rather than abandoning them. Doing so is ultimately in everyone’s interest. <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/">© Project Syndicate</a>
Ian Bremmer is a political scientist and founder of Eurasia Group, a geopolitical risk advisory firm, and GZERO Media.

Climate security and geopolitics

The five permanent members of the Security Council (the United States, China, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom) reign supreme, each wielding a veto over whatever the other 192 members might want. That is why Israel, owing to US support, can <a href="https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/israel-ignores-un-cease-fire-resolution-to-keep-pummeling-gaza">blithely ignore countless UN resolutions</a>, and why Syria, owing to Russian and Chinese support,<a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2017/04/555292"> handily escaped sanctions</a> for its use of chemical weapons. Owing to the disproportionate power they wield, the Permanent Five share an old, decidedly British sense of empire. The authors of two recent books on empire, Lawrence James and Nandini Das, offer no thoughts on how the UN might, or indeed should, be reformed, would agree. In The Lion and the Dragon, James, a prolific historian of the UK’s role in world affairs, follows Britain’s relations with China from the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/06/20/hk.history.01/">nineteenth-century Opium War </a>until the return of Hong Kong and today’s tensions over Taiwan. And in Courting India, Das, a professor at the University of Oxford, concentrates on the very beginnings of the British Empire and its covetous reach into what was then the Mughal Empire in India. What this history shows is that empire is still very much with us. Though Americans, proud of throwing off the rule of King George III, tend to bristle at the idea, their own military, technological, and commercial power is as imperial and pervasive as Britain’s territorial dominance ever was. As James notes, we can thank the post-World War II Pax Americana for the mostly stable international relations that prevailed during the aptly named Cold War with the Soviets and their own empire. Read more: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/two-new-books-on-conflict-and-conservation">Two new books on conflict and conservation</a>, Kunda Dixit A perennial question, especially during periods of geopolitical upheaval, is not just how empires emerge, but how they fade. Though Britain and France still indulge their memories of empire, they have long since accepted being ‘middle powers’ at best. Ever since the Suez crisis of 1956, when the threat of US sanctions forced Britain, France, and Israel to withdraw from Egypt’s Suez Canal, Britain has supinely followed America’s lead in international relations. (UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s refusal to send troops to Vietnam in the 1960s is the exception that proves the rule.) At the same time, France has sought comfort in the collective embrace of what became the European Union. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is on a hopeless <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/what-does-defending-europe-mean">quest to reverse the collapse of the Soviet Union</a> and recreate the empire of Peter the Great. And China already sees itself, with some justification, as wielding global influence to rival that of the American empire. China’s pursuit of superpower status is born of not just current economic and political realities, but also its deep-seated resentment over the ‘century of humiliation’ (1839-1949) that it suffered at the hands of European (and Japanese) imperial powers. Of course, similar sentiments also animate Putin’s revanchism, as well as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dismissiveness of diplomatic overtures from post-Brexit Britain. In William Faulkner’s oft-quoted words, ‘The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.’ <h2>Passage To India</h2> The trite answer to the question of why empires fall is that they become victims of their own success, growing too large, too corrupt, too exhausted to fend off energetic newcomers. As the Arab philosopher and historian Ibn Khaldun argued in the 14th century, empires are like living organisms: they grow, mature, and die. As Das’s wonderfully researched book shows, the Mughal Empire was almost mature when the British arrived in the 1600s. Its Muslim rulers, with their roots in Central Asia, are fascinating figures. Emperor Jahangir, a generous patron of the arts, was addicted to opium and wine, whereas his wife, Nur Jahan, wielded significant political influence. The emperor’s son, Shah Jahan, was a ‘king of the world’, whose love for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, is permanently commemorated in the Taj Mahal. Mughal India was both a place of immense wealth and a bastion of religious tolerance (unlike Europe, with its centuries-long Inquisition against Muslims, Jews, and heretics). Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/the-smallpox-virus-in-british-india">The smallpox virus in British India</a>, Tom Robertson By contrast, the British Empire was barely in its infancy when its clash with Mughal India began. In Courting India, Das paints a vivid picture of the experiences – mostly endured, rather than enjoyed – of King James’s ambassador, Thomas Roe, at the Mughal court. But more than that, she also offers a rich description of Jacobean England as it was emerging from the first Elizabethan age and jostling for power with Portugal, Spain, France, and Holland. Roe’s own journals are a major primary source, but so, too, are the cultural interpreters of the period, from William Shakespeare to the poet John Donne (a friend of Roe). Theirs was an England full of energy, seeking its fortune in the Americas and the Indies. However, it was nowhere close to as sophisticated as courtiers like Roe seemed to believe. Indeed, Roe was almost a caricature of the Englishman abroad. He refused to learn any language that might have helped his mission (be it Farsi or Turkish), and he insisted that he and his staff wear English wool and silk, even through the Indian summer. While he eventually came to admire the pragmatic tolerance of Mughal society, he remained convinced of England and Protestant Christianity’s superiority. Never would he have allowed himself to ‘go native’. Roe was answerable not only to King James but also to his financial backer, the East India Company, which had been granted its charter by Elizabeth I in 1600. This meant he was constantly tussling with the miserly company for money (its traders were always jealous), as well as struggling to quell, or at least make excuses for, the riotous behavior of English sailors. Read also:<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/buried-in-history"> Buried in history</a>, Lisa Choegyal <h2>Century of Humiliation </h2> Two centuries later, the East India Company, as it appears in James’s book, would still be clinging to the same assumptions that Roe had held. The superiority and integrity of Christian Britain went unquestioned, and still stood in stark contrast to “Asian greed and despotism.” The biggest change, in the meantime, had been the collapse of the Mughal Empire. Mughal India, the wealthiest place in the world at the end of the 17th century, was steadily enfeebled by internal dissent and Persian and Afghan invasions. In 1857, the East India Company formally dissolved the empire, setting the stage for <a href="https://www.royal.uk/encyclopedia/victoria-r-1837-1901">Queen Victoria</a> to establish the “British Raj” and direct rule over the Indian subcontinent the following year.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20240815120836_d96f9f442c51b3abd7717e340c856b87423a5f6d5a9e97422ffa7deec482aac2.jpg" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="20240815120836_d96f9f442c51b3abd7717e340c856b87423a5f6d5a9e97422ffa7deec482aac2" data-rendition-name="original" width="842" height="596" loading="lazy" alt="The Mughal Empire's Treaty of Allahabad by Benjamin West NT"><figcaption>A painting by Benjamin West of the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II conveying the Treaty of Allahabad to Robert Clive in August 1765 after the Battle of Buxar that gave the Company the right to collect taxes -- marking the beginning of British India rule.</figcaption></figure>  To paraphrase Ibn Khaldun, 19th Britain was no longer an infant with imperial ambitions; it was now an adult with all the energy and ruthlessness needed to extend its reach around the world. As such, the British lion had no misgivings about disgracing the Chinese dragon. Looking back on this period, it is easy to see why Chinese President Xi Jinping is so determined to expunge the century of humiliation from the national memory. That century began in 1839 with the First Opium War. When China tried to block imports of East India Company opium from Bengal, Britain responded with all its (industrialised) military might. By 1842, British warships and soldiers had crushed all opposition and compelled China’s Qing emperor to sign the Nanjing Treaty. That opened China to international trade and ensured that British citizens in ‘treaty ports’ would be subject to British, not Chinese, law. Another consequence of the war was that Britain took possession of Hong Kong, which it would hold until 1997. Whereas Das describes India principally through Roe’s eyes, James is keen to present a balance between British actions and Chinese reactions. In doing so, he stresses that China was not reacting only to British imperialism. After all, this was a time when ‘a spirit of predatory imperialism … pervaded the foreign ministries of Russia, France, Germany and China’s near-neighbour, the newly industrialized Japan’. Seized by their own commercial ambitions, all four ‘regarded China as a land mass to be partitioned and shared out in the same way as contemporary Africa’. But these other imperial projects hardly give Britain a pass. In arguing that ‘Britain was reluctantly sucked into the complex geopolitics of great-power empire building in the Far East’, James simply is not convincing. Britain, the world’s leading naval power and the home of the Industrial Revolution, was already adept at the game of geopolitics and quite prepared to protect its interests in China, not least because that would also protect its interests in India. By the 18th century, the Qing Dynasty had expanded from its Manchu roots and established an empire extending from Mongolia and Tibet to the Pacific. But by the 19th century, it was too exhausted to withstand the pressure not only from the other imperial powers but also from its own people. The century of humiliation always refers to foreign interventions, but equally important were domestic embarrassments such as the 1850-64 Taiping Rebellion – in which some 30 million people died – and the 1899-1901 Boxer Rebellion. The dynasty’s ‘Mandate of Heaven’ was clearly slipping from its grasp. It finally came to an end in 1912, when the Western-educated Sun Yat-sen, following a brief revolution, established the ‘Republic of China’. <h2>Remember Thucydides</h2> Today, that title applies only to the island of Taiwan, whereas Xi presides over the ‘People’s Republic of China’, which was established in 1949 with the victory of Mao Zedong’s Communist Party over Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces. Since the 1970s, most countries – including both rival Chinas – have embraced the fiction that the ROC and the PRC refer to a single country. But there is a constant fear that Taiwan could formally declare its independence and destroy the fiction, thus provoking an invasion from the mainland. If President Joe Biden is to be believed, the US would then come to Taiwan’s rescue and the South China Sea would witness a Sino-American war with far-reaching regional and global consequences. Given his focus on Britain and China, James understandably devotes only a handful of his final paragraphs to US analysts’ ‘bleak’ prognosis of a future war over Taiwan. Moreover, throughout the preceding chapters, he deals deftly with other instances when conflict erupted between rival regional powers. These include the Sino-Japanese war of 1894, which led to Japanese occupation of Taiwan, the Russo-Japanese war of 1904, Japan’s bloody expansionism in the 1930s, and Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, which brought America into World War II. The big risk today is that China and America could end up at war as much by accident as by design. Graham Allison of Harvard University has famously warned of the ‘Thucydides trap’, an allusion to the Peloponnesian War, in which Sparta, the incumbent hegemon, was ‘destined for war’ with the rising power, Athens. It is tempting to dismiss Allison’s argument as alarmism. But over the past 500 years, there have been 16 instances of an incumbent power facing off with a rising power, and war was avoided in only four of them, the most famous being America’s rise to replace Britain as the leading world power in the early twentieth century. Notably, James recalls that China was ‘stunned’ by <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-32810887">Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union</a>. The message pushed by Chinese state-controlled media was that the UK had surrendered to ‘a losing mindset’. Clearly, the current Chinese leadership has no intention of showing weakness. The good news is that political and military leaders on both sides of the Pacific are aware of the risks. As Xi said in 2015, on his first state visit to America, “There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world. But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves.” The bad news, however, is that all countries are prone to ‘miscalculation’. <h2>Tick-Tock</h2> Almost a half-century ago, John Bagot Glubb, a British general who commanded the Jordanian army from 1939 until 1956, published a book entitled The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival. His thesis was essentially the same as Ibn Khaldun’s, only with the added claim that almost all empires rise and fall over a period of roughly 250 years. Putting aside the obvious flaws in Glubb’s arithmetic (the Ottoman Empire certainly did not ‘end’ in 1570), the core idea should not be dismissed. After all, historians now give the Qing Dynasty a lifespan of 267 years, and the Mughal Empire of Das’s book began to lose territory after only two centuries. A pessimist might say today’s China began with Communist victory in 1949, and that America’s quasi-imperial power began 201 years ago with the Monroe Doctrine. Time may not be on the side of those who place their trust in America to protect democracy and ‘liberal Western values’. John Andrews, a former editor and foreign correspondent for The Economist, is the author of The World in Conflict: Understanding the World’s Troublespots. © Project Syndicate  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20240817040832_cfc464995c06ecb51810752401d179a4b4da0c9be7a21219b8b2f0845e1f1920.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="20240817040832_cfc464995c06ecb51810752401d179a4b4da0c9be7a21219b8b2f0845e1f1920" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="The evolution of empire book cover page NT"></figure>   <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20240817040832_f993521a48e8f6baa1ccc7fd4428cb0f19ae2b39a5ae76a9fb062a9af0675c36.jpg" data-media-id="editor_11" data-image-id="20240817040832_f993521a48e8f6baa1ccc7fd4428cb0f19ae2b39a5ae76a9fb062a9af0675c36" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="The evolution of empire book cover page NT"></figure>

The Evolution of Empire

Earlier in August, after Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India following her violent suppression of a people’s movement, in Nepal pundits asked: ‘Is Nepal Next?”&nbsp;
The national narrative here focused on similar public discontent with leaders who have overstayed, disregarding public welfare while being neck-deep in corruption. They pointed out that the present NC-UML coalition government was ‘India-aligned’, just as Sheikh Hasina was.
Nepal’s cybersphere also shared Indian mainstream media’s magnified reports of attacks on Hindu targets in Dhaka, leaving out the fact that most were attacked for being close to the Hasina and her Awami League.&nbsp;
Some Nepali media also unquestioningly reported that Nepal’s border security was on ‘heightened alert’ for a ‘mass influx’ of Hindu refugees, forgetting that Nepal and Bangladesh do not even have a contiguous border.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/peacemongers-at-india-pakistan-border">Peacemongers at India-Pakistan border</a>, Beena Sarwar
Regional upheavals have a long history of impacting Nepali politics. After Pakistan’s Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed by the military in 1979, student protests erupted in Kathmandu and quickly turned into mass rallies against the partyless Panchayat system. King Birendra finally agreed to hold a referendum on the absolute monarchy.
When street protests in Sri Lanka forced out the Rajapaksa government and the economy went into freefall in 2022, Nepali commentators again asked: ‘Is Nepal Next?’ Nepal’s macroeconomic position was in a much sounder footing, but editors needed catchy headlines.
Bangladesh’s unrest was initially triggered by students protesting the quota for government jobs, and commentators here immediately drew parallels with constitutionally-guaranteed reservations for women as well as ethnic and caste minorities – even though in Bangladesh the anger was over the increased job quota for Awami League cadre.&nbsp;
If all this was not convoluted enough, add geopolitics to the mix. India and China are now in overt competition for influence in the Subcontinent, a region New Delhi regards as being in its sphere of influence. While Sri Lanka and the Maldives are strategic because of their location astride Indian Ocean maritime routes, Nepal, Bangladesh and to a certain extent Bhutan, are important buffers.&nbsp;
India was fully backing the secular Awami League despite Sheikh Hasina’s &nbsp;growing authoritarianism and her close trade and economic ties with China.&nbsp;
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/selfies-on-the-prime-minister-s-bed">Selfies on the prime minister’s bed</a>, Guna Raj Luitel
In July, Hasina returned to Dhaka earlier than scheduled during a state visit to Beijing after being unable to secure a $5 billion loan from China. New Delhi had also leaned on Hasina to cancel China’s involvement in the Teesta contract, and award it to India.&nbsp;
In Sri Lanka, Chinese ‘debt trap diplomacy’ is said to have contributed to its economic collapse, pushing President Ranil Wickremesinghe closer to India and the West to cultivate support for its IMF bailout in June. Defence and maritime cooperation has followed hot on the heels of these deals.&nbsp;
The China’s Exim Bank did sign a $4.2 billion debt restructuring agreement with Sri Lanka in June, showing that Wickremesinghe is deftly trying to balance geopolitical ties.
In the Maldives, relations with New Delhi soured and broke into full-scale war on cybersphere after Mohamed Muizzu won elections earlier this year. But Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar’s was in Malé this week to ‘rectify’ Muizzu’s pro-Beijing tilt.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/retrofitting-saarc">Retrofitting SAARC</a>, Shristi Karki
In Nepal, China has made no secret of its wish to seek unity among myriad Communist factions, while India and the West have worked behind the scenes to wreck that plan. The latest coalition switch in July was a manifestation of this geopolitical jostling.&nbsp;
India’s new Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri made a courtesy visit to Kathmandu this week where officials were careful not to raise contentious issues like Kalapani, the Eminent Person’s Group report, new air routes, or to lift restrictions on buying surplus hydroelectricity from plants with Chinese involvement. Misri was formerly India’s ambassador in Beijing.
Interestingly, the Chinese who never openly commented publicly on Nepal’s internal affairs are now much more vocal, while the Indians who used to be very outspoken have taken a hands-off approach ever since the 2015 Blockade.&nbsp;
The latest example of this new Chinese mood is Ambassador Chen Song’s X posts with crude criticism last month of a Nepali journalist’s report on the Pokhara airport loan, or using undiplomatic language about the unsuccessful search for the twin buses that fell into the Trisuli, killing 59.&nbsp;
Still, the recent regime change in Dhaka is a warning to Nepal’s leaders not to take electoral mandate for granted, and to demonstrate results from better governance in the run-up to the next elections in 2027, or risk losing out to populist parties.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-s-love-triangle-with-china-and-india-impacts-investment">Nepal’s China-India love-triangle impacts investment</a>, Ramesh Kumar

Shristi Karki

The geopolitics of Nepal’s politics…

When two nearby cyclones rotate around each other, merging into a larger and more dangerous storm, meteorologists call it the Fujiwhara effect.
Is something like this developing in Northeast Asia?
Recent decades have seen an increase in what analysts call ‘transnational conflicts’ – that is, conflicts with local, regional and international dimensions. Ukraine is one example, Taiwan is another. It is difficult to address these multi-level conflicts, since responses are needed at all three levels.
Read more: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/ukraines-lessons-for-sandwiched-nations-like-nepal">Ukraine's lesson for sandwiched nations like Nepal</a>, Bhaskar Koirala
Recently, transnational conflicts in different parts of the world have started to merge together. Responding to these emergent global conflict complexes will be a still more daunting challenge.
East Asia has a raft of unresolved conflicts, left over from the postwar settlement of 1945. &nbsp;The legacy of the Korean war fuels continuing tensions and fears of war. The unresolved dispute over the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-taiwan-war-us-no-allies-2024-7">status of Taiwan </a>leads to dangerous military activity around the island. The territorial and maritime disputes in the East and South China Seas involve clashing nationalisms but also broader strategic concerns over supply lines and resources.
Events in these hotspots were always calibrated against the state of relations between the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/40-years-after-the-sino-us-thaw">US and China</a>, China and Japan, Japan and North Korea. But it is only recently that they have become connected with conflicts in Europe.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 rang warning bells in policy circles in East Asia. Policy-makers feared that President Xi might be emboldened to act against Taiwan following Putin’s lead.&nbsp;
The Ukraine conflict came closer with North Korea’s decision to supply the Russian Federation with weapons, and closer still when President Putin concluded a defence pact with Kim Jong-Un in June 2024. The Russian Federation and North Korea pledged to provide mutual assistance should either be attacked. Kim Jong Un offered “full support and solidarity to the Russian government, army and people in carrying out the special military operation in Ukraine” (CBS News, 19 June 2024).&nbsp;
Meanwhile, on the Korean peninsula, Kim Jong Un warned his people to prepare for war, and ordered the army to undertake <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/China-s-drills-appear-to-be-rehearsal-for-Taiwan-invasion-U.S.-admiral">‘actual war drills’</a>, while proposing to change the constitution to refer to ‘completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the R.O.K. and annexing it as a part of the territory of our ​republic in case a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula.’
At the same time, the West has not yet learned the lesson that NATO expansion is dangerous, and NATO is preparing to expand its activities into the Indo-Pacific region and north east Asia. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nato-japan-south-korea-australia-new-zealand-6c3d9aa6fccc1253ca99ee140073f95c">NATO is developing links with South Korea and Japan</a> and invited them to attend its last two summits.
Staff talks between NATO and the Japanese Self Defence Force have identified areas of cooperation in responding to security challenges, cybersecurity and military planning. A NATO office was to have been opened in Tokyo, though France objected to this plan. &nbsp;
NATO sees its involvement in the area as a necessary response to the challenges to the ‘rules-based order’ coming from China, North Korea and Russia. The NATO summit of July 2023 declared that “The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values.’ The NATO Secretary General followed this up by saying that security is now globalised and security crises in one part of the world reverberate in another.
In April, before attending the NATO Summit for the first time as a South Korean leader, President Yoon condemned any ‘attempt to change the status quo by force’ in the Taiwan Strait, and promised that South Korea would cooperate with the international community to prevent such an outcome. The Japanese strategic community also believes that Japan would be drawn in, under this contingency. The Korean and Taiwan and Japan-China conflicts are thus potentially interlinked.
China and North Korea see the collaboration between NATO and Japan and Korea as a US-led effort to bring NATO into the region. In North Korea’s case, it is seen as part of a US strategy to overthrow Kim’s regime. In China’s case, NATO expansion is seen as a "grave challenge" to global peace and stability. "Despite all the chaos and conflict already inflicted, NATO is spreading its tentacles to the Asia-Pacific region with an express aim of containing China."
The US is deliberately emphasising the interconnections between the European and Indo-Pacific theatres as part of its strategy of building alliances with democratic partners. "We are also growing the connective tissue between US alliances in the Indo-Pacific and in Europe…allies in the Indo- Pacific are staunch supporters of Ukraine, while allies in Europe are helping the United States support peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," notes National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
NATO has addressed the possibility that it might become involved in conflict in the Taiwan Strait, specifically in the situation where US territory and forces came under attack, which would trigger Article 5.
China also objects to the participation of NATO members’ naval units in Freedom of Navigation operations in the Taiwan Straits.
How can the risks of transnational conflicts coming together into global conflict complexes be defused? Second-track dialogue meetings can convene interlocutors from different arenas and bring them together to discuss all aspects of a situation.&nbsp;
But though dialogue efforts are vital, they cannot bear the weight of conflict prevention alone. Restraint, trust-building and moderation on the part of political leaders is also needed. So is a climate of domestic political discussion that replaces security fears and nationalism with mutual understanding and an appreciation of our common humanity.
This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished from <a href="https://toda.org/global-outlook/2024/turbulent-currents-merging-storms-northeast-asia-outlook-june-july-2024.html">the original</a> with their permission.
Hugh Miall is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Kent, and Chair of the Conflict Research Society, the main professional association for peace and conflict researchers in the UK. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Toda Peace Institute.

Turbulent Currents, Merging Storms

Two days before Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal flew to New Delhi for Narendra Modi’s hat trick oath-taking this month, his coalition government abruptly recalled Shankar P Sharma, Nepal’s ambassador to India.
Dahal’s government on 6 June also called back ambassadors to the US and UK, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Malaysia, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, and Israel.&nbsp;
The fact that Nepal’s ambassadors are made to play musical chairs every time there is regime change in Kathmandu is proof enough that international diplomacy is just an extension of 'bhagbanda' power sharing. The recalled ambassadors were nominees of the Nepali Congress (NC) when it was in a coalition with the Maoist Centre.
The Maoists switched partners and are now in government with the UML, so five of the eight new ambassadors are UML appointees. None of the eight are career diplomats. Since there are not enough ministerial portfolios, heads of agencies and plum posts in the bureaucracy to reward party loyalists, ambassadorships are coveted gigs. Some are even ‘pre-paid ambassador’ appointments auctioned to the highest bidders.&nbsp;
But all is not lost. One of the eight was Sushil Pyakurel, former head of the National Human Rights Commission and recipient of the 2010 Gwangju Prize for Human Rights. He &nbsp;refused to accept ambassadorship to South Korea from the UML quota.
In a scathing press note turning down the appointment, Pyakurel exposed the corrosive politicisation of Nepal’s diplomatic service, and how it has undermined our national interest and reputation in the global arena.
Pyakurel heard of his appointment through the media, and questioned the whole selection process and criteria.&nbsp;
He wrote: ‘I am astounded by the government's practice of not discussing the background, capability, interest and diplomatic skills of a person as well as the political, economic, and social status of the respective country before assigning them the responsibility of representing the nation.’
Pyakurel’s decision set off a tsunami of criticism in Nepal’s cybersphere of past and present government practice of political parties scrambling for plum embassies.
Compared to accomplished past envoys like Bhim Bahadur Pande, Bhekh Bahadur Thapa or Kedar Bhakta Mathema who had access to the highest echelons of governments of their host countries, Nepal’s foreign service has been blighted by embarrassing ambassadors over the years.
Swarnim Wagle took to social media to pledge that his Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) would stop bad practices of the past. But even he seemed unsure his own party would do things differently.&nbsp;
Wagle wrote: ‘Let’s hope the ambassadors, permanent representatives or special envoys recommended by the RSP possess excellent qualifications, character and moral values reflecting the party’s criteria,’ Let's hope.&nbsp;
Ambassadors should be suitable for the countries they are appointed to, preferably speaking the language and being familiar with their governance culture. It should be reserved for those with high integrity and who can literally be Nepal’s ‘brand ambassadors’. Alas, ours have not been the sharpest tools in the shed.
The last time we counted, Nepal has had 28 prime ministers in 26 years. With a few notable exceptions, ambassadors appointed by a previous regime tend to be replaced with sidekicks, cronies, relatives, or business partners, usually in a foreign labour recruitment company.&nbsp;
In previous years, Nepal was reliant on development assistance and our ambassadors needed to be good fundraisers. Now, as the country graduates to lower-middle income status, the purpose of economic diplomacy is shifting to labour, trade, tourism, and liaising with international lending agencies.
Since remittances are the backbone of Nepal’s economy and make up an equivalent of 25% of the GDP, the role of ambassadors is to explore destinations where there are higher-paying jobs, to ensure labour rights safeguards, and to help Nepalis in trouble.&nbsp;
Nepal’s embassies abroad have promoted the country as a destination, but tourism income makes up less than 5% of Nepal’s foreign currency income every year.
As our investigation shows, Nepalis are increasingly headed to Europe where there is a labour shortage. Because Schengen is difficult to get into, Nepalis are being taken by recruiters to peripheral countries like Bosnia-Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Malta and Cyprus where working conditions and pay are less than they are promised.
Portugal, Romania and Croatia alone now have nearly 100,000 Nepali workers, yet Nepal does not have an embassy in any of these countries to protect workers in case of abuse, exploitation or fraud.
With the rise of India and China, the choice of ambassadors to these two countries are even more critical than before. Yet, we see ad hoc appointees to New Delhi and Beijing who lack stature, contacts and diplomatic skills to navigate the geopolitics of the two darbars.
Why are we not surprised by the choice of new ambassadors by this government? What can we expect when a businessman with ties to a manpower company is the Labour Minister, and a person investigated for allegedly scamming cooperatives is the Home Minister?
Sonia Awale

Pre-paid Excellencies

Frustrated with revolving door <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-geopolitics-of-nepal-s-politics">politics</a> with the same <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/tried-tested-and-failed">tired, tested and failed </a>leaders, Nepal’s cybersphere is harking back to the good old days when we had strongmen rulers like <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/jung-bahadur-s-destitute-descendants">Jang Bahadur Rana </a>or <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/king-mahendra-didn-t-pay-hunting-bill-in-us">King Mahendra</a>. The<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/inside-story-of-nepal-s-rana-dynasty"> century-long Rana oligarchy</a> ended 74 years ago this week, and the Shah kings airbrushed <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-insect-that-changed-nepal-s-history">Nepal’s history</a> to downplay their achievements and glorify their own dynasty. After <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/if-birendra-was-alive-nepal-could-still-be-a-monarchy">the monarchy</a> was abolished in 2008, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/the-role-of-rituals-in-royalty">the Shah kings</a> were similarly vilified. But Nepali society is mature enough to realise that the truth is not all black and white. Jang Bahadur may have usurped power in a ruthless coup, but he was a geopolitical strategist way ahead of his time. Whatever you may say about King Mahendra’s efforts in quashing <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/is-democracy-too-expensive-for-nepal">democracy</a> and pushing a unitary state, he defended <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/guest-editorial/nepal-should-recognise-palestinian-sovereignty">Nepal’s sovereignty</a> and projected its international image right through the sensitive Cold War period. Jang Bahadur in England is a new Nepali language book by journalist Gajendra Budhathoki about the visit in 1850 by Nepal’s prime minister to England and France, the first by a South Asian potentate. He met Queen Victoria and by all accounts was able to establish Nepal’s presence on the world stage. Historians have long mulled why a devout Hindu like Jang Bahadur would want to break the taboo and cross the Black Waters. Budhathoki recounts the incident upon his arrival at Southampton on 2 May 1850, when British customs officials tried to check the belongings of the Nepali entourage. Furious, Jang Bahadur threatened to sail right back to France if they opened any of the bags. Jang had three main reasons for his trip. Essentially he was on a spy mission to assess <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/a-forgotten-gurkha-rebellion-e8z403ab">British military</a> might to decide if it was worthwhile for Nepal to try to militarily take back territory ceded to British India in the Sugauli Treaty of 1816. So, Jang asked his perplexed hosts to show him cannon factories, artillery and naval yards. He even visited Woolwich Arsenal (now the Royal Arsenal) not once, but three times.&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/looking-back-at-the-1923-nepal-britain-treaty">Looking back at the 1923 Nepal-Britain Treaty</a>, Santa Gaha Magar Suitably impressed, Jang decided to be Britain’s BFF, and even rode down to Lucknow with 3,200 Nepali troops to rescue the British from the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. As a reward, the British gave back the Tarai districts of Banke, Bardia, Kailali, and Kanchanpur (Naya Muluk). This close relationship continued with Jang’s descendants right till the time the British left India in 1947. Jang Bahadur was also fed up with the Governor General Lord Dalhousie in Calcutta who tended to bully Nepal, and wanted to build direct contacts with his bosses in London. The British told him Dalhousie was their man in India, and Jang should deal with him. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/the-way-we-were">Jang’s visit to France</a> does not get as much attention in the book, but he was also trying to gauge France’s strength and to see if its military was more powerful than Britain’s. At that time, France was Britain’s main rival and was trying to make inroads in India. At the Louvre, Jang Bahadur was drawn to exhibits reflecting French military prowess. Later, when he met Louis Napoleon III, he asked if he could see a parade of 900,000 troops to assess France’s military might.&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/nepal-france-ties-in-photos">Nepal-France ties in photos</a>, Reeti KC Freshly returned from <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/a-long-way-to-europe">Europe</a>, an emboldened Jang Bahadur Rana led Nepal in a war against Tibet in 1855 which ended with the Treaty of Thapathali a year later. This was the third time Nepal and Tibet had fought, the first time being soon after <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/guest-editorial/Prithvi-Narayan-Shah-a-visionary-leader,1102">Prithvi Narayan Shah</a> in 1788.&nbsp; The Qing Dynasty came to the rescue of Tibet, and while both sides claimed victory, the Sino-Nepalese War ended essentially as a stalemate with the Treaty of Betrawati.&nbsp; All of this is detailed in Axel Michaels’ book, Nepal: A History from the Earliest Times to the Present which is a recent English translation of his German Kultur und Geschichte Nepals published in 2018.&nbsp; Michaels is a Professor of Classical Indology and Religious Studies at Heidelberg University, and writes that Nepal mattered little to China. Proof of this is that while both Nepal and Tibet agreed to accept the suzerainty of the Qing emperor following the war, Nepal managed to retain its autonomy but Beijing asserted its control over <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/business/himalaya-to-lhasa">Lhasa</a>. And despite a clause in the treaty which stated, ‘if a foreign power attacks Nepal, China shall support Nepal’, China never did so during the1814–16 war with the East India Company.&nbsp; This practice has continued to this day. Aside from token petroleum shipments, Beijing did not help out Nepal during the Indian Blockade of 2015. Even though Nepali leaders have tried to play India off against China, the two do not find Nepal important enough to fight over and prefer to leave it as a buffer state between them.&nbsp; In that sense, Britain also did not press home its victory after 1816 and left Nepal alone. The malarial jungles to the south, rugged Himalayan terrain and the lack of marketable products (except soldiers) may have persuaded the traders at the East Indian Company that it was not worth the effort. There is a lesson from history here for Nepal: the country must look out for itself, and this requires deft diplomacy to understand what our giant neighbours really want and leverage it for our gain. This may require strategies like the ones made by Jang Bahadur and King Mahendra after all. Michaels is not a fan of either the Rana or the Shah dynasties. He says that although the Rana era is characterised as ‘a century of tyranny’, the description holds true for the Shah period as well.&nbsp; Michaels does not mince his words about Gurkha recruitment into the British and Indian Armies (another legacy of the Sugauli Treaty). He calls the mercenaries ‘cheap labour’ and Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘represents a continuation of the King-Brahmin alliance’. In fact, he goes at length to discuss how the Khas-Arya used ‘Hindu state’ to homogenise a country that couldn’t have been more diverse. But democracy has not served Nepal well either. Corruption, impunity and lack of transparency are rife. And so, Michaels asks if Nepal is a failed state. No it is not, but it is a fragile state. He leaves us with these parting words: ‘If Nepal succeeds in continuing down this road, preserving its ethnic and cultural diversity, leaving the ethnic populations with a certain degree of autonomy, while at the same time integrating them into political decision-making processes, and if it manages the reforms needed for land-ownership, labour, education, infrastructure, then the country can become a model for unity in diversity, even in the age of leveling globalisation.’&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250222070248_a32db0a1e39c4a3a5158af81bbcf927aeb96524bcbc6b41086a223685642b367.jpg" data-media-id="editor_17" data-image-id="20250222070248_a32db0a1e39c4a3a5158af81bbcf927aeb96524bcbc6b41086a223685642b367" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Jang Bahadur in England "> </figure>  &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250222070252_e2fa5309f10d36f963243c24ea06d7d354d3dfaf24c7ef283d70369fbeabd02e.jpg" data-media-id="editor_18" data-image-id="20250222070252_e2fa5309f10d36f963243c24ea06d7d354d3dfaf24c7ef283d70369fbeabd02e" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Nepal Book"> </figure>  &nbsp;

Nepal is not a failed state, but it is a fragile one

Throughout human history, civilisations have been named after the rivers along which they flourished: Indus Valley, Nile, Tigris-Euphrates. Many of these cultures later collapsed, partly because they could not manage their water needs properly. Three recent books about Himalayan rivers look at their history and geography, and how they nourished civilisations downstream. The rivers gave birth to the world’s major religions, their waters and the mountains from which they sprang were revered. Mythology and geology converge in High Asia. Mt Kailash is holy to the Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Bon faiths as the centre of the world and the abode of the gods. Indeed, from its vicinity emerge Asia’s great rivers: the Indus and Sutlej, Ganga and the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) and Karnali (Mapcha Tsangpo).&nbsp; Legend has it that Kathmandu Valley was once a primordial lake drained by Manjushree who cut a mountain with his flaming sword. There is scientific evidence that the paleo lake was indeed emptied in stages starting 40,000 years ago after a tsunami unleashed by a major earthquake epicentred in Langtang. The Bon faith describes the Tibetan Plateau being pushed up from a roiling primeval sea, confirming current evidence about the orogenesis of the Himalaya. In local lore, supernatural lha (animal deities) and lu (serpents, naga) moved from sea to land, just as the theory of evolution explains the emergence of early amphibians and land creatures. In <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Rivers-of-the-Asian-Highlands-From-Deep-Time-to-the-Climate-Crisis/Gamble-Tan-Xu-Beavis-Maurer-Pittock-Powers-Wasson/p/book/9781032490595?srsltid=AfmBOopjkpgcN1_7t1jTI_Z1_27yRthBTbdHA15OWcE9Ge3S409jhUX3">Rivers of the Asian Highlands: From Deep Time to the Climate Crisis</a>, Himalayan historian <a href="https://scholars.latrobe.edu.au/rgamble">Ruth Gamble</a> and co-authors begin by tracing the genesis of the Himalaya, citing evidence that the Tibetan Plateau pre-dated the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates 50 million years ago. Asia’s main rivers co-emerged with the mountains, their waters cutting canyons through rocks as they were uplifted. The gigantic pileup acted as a moisture trap for the proto-monsoon, the rain and ice sculpting peaks as they rose. But so strong were tectonic forces that the uplift outpaced erosion on the Tibetan Plateau. These dynamic processes are still at work, but in many places across High Asia there is a new factor at play: modern infrastructure (like haphazard road-building in Nepal) is increasing erosion faster than the uplift rate.&nbsp; ‘This is an example of human action overcoming tectonics,’ write the authors in Rivers of the Asian Highlands, in which the chapters look at Himalayan rivers from a planetary scale, their socio-cultural histories, to present-day engineering to regulate them. An ongoing dam-building spree and anthropogenic climate breakdown combine to bring about the most rapid change the Himalaya and their rivers have seen for millions of years. One example is the Medog Hydropower Station being built on the Yarlung Tsangpo at a bend on the Brahmaputra before it enters India. The river drops 2,000m within a 50km stretch, the gradient allowing it to generate 60,000MW — the biggest single hydroelectric plant in the world. Gamble and the authors of Rivers of the Asian Highlands highlight the Gravitational Potential Energy (GPE) of the Himalaya that allows falling water to be converted into electricity. But GPE also unleashes landslides, rockfalls, avalanches, Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) and Landslide Lake Outburst Floods (LLOFs), the risks posed by them magnified by climate change and seismicity. <blockquote>The Asian Highlands’ abundance of Gravitational Potential Energy (GPE) can support the region’s energy transition, but it needs to be produced in much less hazardous and less environmentally and socially impactful ways. The best means of doing this is through off-river, pumped-storage hydropower stations that back up solar and wind energy generators. Smaller projects such as this would also involve less risky tunneling and displacement.</blockquote> Rivers of the Asian Highlands: From Deep Time to the Climate Crisis by Ruth Gamble, et al. There is geological evidence that megafloods on Himalayan rivers are more responsible than mass wasting in weathering down the mountains. One big LLOF, for example, could ‘move 1,000 times more sediment than would otherwise be transported over millions of years’. Permafrost melting in the Tibetan Plateau and inside moraines caused recent back-to-back GLOFs in Chamoli in the Indian Himalaya, Melamchi in Nepal, and the South Lhonak in Sikkim — all deadly disasters that together destroyed billions of dollars worth of infrastructure downstream. Rivers of the Asian Highlands travels from deep time to the present climate crisis, taking readers through neatly divided chapters titled Mountain Rivers, Climatic Rivers, Frozen Rivers, Living Rivers, Human Rivers, Territorializing Rivers, Agricultural and Pastoral Rivers, even NGOs and Rivers.&nbsp; Although the book’s title is about the ‘Asian highlands’, it <a href="https://www.himalmag.com/comment/eastern-himalaya-cradle-ethnogenesis">focuses mainly on the Dri Chu (Yangtse)</a> and Yarlung Tso (Brahmaputra). Readers looking for references to Nepal’s rivers will be disappointed, although there is quite a bit about Bhutan. This is surprising because 70% of the annual flow in the Ganga is from tributaries in Nepal, some of them rivers like Karnali, Arun or Bhote Kosi that traverse the Tibetan rimlands. As demand for water and energy grows in the large and increasingly affluent population of north India, and climate breakdown melts Himalayan glaciers, storing monsoon runoff on reservoirs in Nepal is going to be the geopolitical issue of the next decades.&nbsp; The chapter on NGOs and Rivers also fails to cite the work of Nepal’s civil society groups like the Alliance for Energy that built international solidarity in 1995 against the Arun III project on a river that starts in Tibet and flows into Nepal. Ultimately, the World Bank pulled out of the project and the Nepal government invested in smaller decentralised plants. Today, a cascade of power plants are being built by Indian companies on the Arun which do not seem to have taken into account the <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads2659">2023 Sikkim GLOF</a> that swept away the $1 billion dollar Teesta III and destroyed other infrastructure. The World Bank itself is back with the Upper Arun project located directly below expanding glacial lakes in Tibet.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250222020256_f2b33e60e6b386308bdf59b58b59e116e90e2e4466a06200faf76fd851f53505.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20250222020256_f2b33e60e6b386308bdf59b58b59e116e90e2e4466a06200faf76fd851f53505" data-rendition-name="original" width="5712" height="3213" loading="lazy" alt="Teesta"> <figcaption>The Super Trisuli project in Nepal has ruined the most scenic and ecologically sensitive part of the river to generate just 100MW of power. Photo: KUNDA DIXIT</figcaption> </figure>  Despite geographical gaps, Rivers of the Asian Highlands reads like an encyclopedia of Himalayan rivers. The authors look at them not in isolation but as interconnected systems which need a multidisciplinary approach to study the geological, religio-cultural, infrastructure, climate and ecosystem services aspects of catchments.&nbsp; Mt Kailash (Kang Rinpoche) is a case in point. It is fascinating to think that it was part of a mountain range even before the collision of the continents that formed the Himalaya, and was probably buried in ice 3km thick till 15,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025022203020_23c02ec4671f5c3c561fa6b450c1f209720a25794e067b9bb5db0f4649b1b6dc.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="2025022203020_23c02ec4671f5c3c561fa6b450c1f209720a25794e067b9bb5db0f4649b1b6dc" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Mt Kailash"> <figcaption>Mt Kailash. Photo: NABIN BARAL</figcaption> </figure>  Lake Mansarovar and Mt Kailash are also the subject of the new Nepali language book छालबाटो (Road by the Waves) by environmental journalist <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-and-china-to-study-trans-himalayan-railway">Ramesh Bhushal</a> in which he walked, rafted and drove from the source of the Karnali in Tibet, right through 500km of western Nepal, and on to India <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/dancing-with-the-river">where the river meets the Ganga</a>. In his entourage is activist, <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/Comment/rivers-fighting-back,993">Megh Ale</a>, who is on a campaign to stop dams and infrastructure on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/dams-and-dreams-a-journey-down-the-karnali">Nepal’s longest and only free-flowing river</a>. The book profiles his lonely upstream struggle to conserve the country’s rivers. “We worship rivers, but we don’t love them,” laments Ale. Bhushal’s book is as much about the landscape of this transboundary river as it is about the people he meets along the way, and their relationship with <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/climate-denial-in-the-himalaya">a river that most regard as a curse </a>keeping them poor because they believe it flows out of Rakshas Tal (Lagngar Tso) in Tibet, regarded as a lake of demons, unlike the sacred Mansarovar nearby. The expedition is out to prove that the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/a-karnali-portrait">Karnali River</a> actually starts in the mountains 50km southwest of the Mansarovar (Mapamyu Tso) at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ9Za5QDkvY">Peacock Falls (Mapchu Khambap)</a>. The Indus is called Sengge (Lion), Sutlej is Langchen (elephant) and the Brahmaputra is Tamchok (horse), all starting within 60km of Mansarovar but flowing out in different directions. <blockquote>“I have visited hundreds of rivers around the world, but for some reason I have never seen a river as beautiful as the Karnali. One day I would like to visit its source.”</blockquote> River conservation activist Megh Ale quoted in छालबाटो by Ramesh Bhusal. But all this reverence for the mountains and rivers may not be enough to save the region from the impact of climate breakdown. Heat stress in the Subcontinent will coincide with a shortage of water in the coming decades.&nbsp; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/opinion/himalayas-mountains-dams.html">Sunil Amrith</a> in his 2019 book, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-monsoon-and-nature-s-arithmetic">Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s History</a> takes a broader look at how geotectonics, geopolitics, colonialism and nationalism have determined the relations between human beings and rivers. The Himalayan water cycle starts from monsoon moisture that precipitates with orographic uplift along the mountains, atmospheric rivers unleash cloudbursts, ground water emerges from springs that join up to flow down to rivers and the ocean. The Third Pole is the biggest repository of fresh water stored as ice after the polar regions. But it is a hotspot both because of the climate crisis and geopolitical tensions, which impacts on river basin cooperation, early warning data sharing, and ultimately in mitigation of greenhouse gas emission and planning for new risks faced by infrastructure. After independence, India adopted the colonial extraction model for rivers. Inaugurating the Bhakra-Nangal Dam in 1953, Jawaharlal Nehru called it “a temple of &nbsp;modern India … worthy of worship’. Gamble also alludes to this in her book about the European attitude about rivers as a resource to be ‘enclosed, extracted, scrutinised, commodified’. <a href="https://dialogue.earth/en/water/review-unrully-waters/" target="_blank">Amrith</a> profiles the work of Sir Arthur Cotton who was building canals linking rivers in British India at about the same time his contemporaries like botanist <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/republic-of-nepal-s-animal-kingdom" target="_blank">Joseph Dalton-Hooker </a>were exploring the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/saving-kangchenjunga" target="_blank">Teesta and other rivers</a> in the Himalaya to catalogue new plant species. India's current National River Linking Project that would join 37 rivers with 9,000km of canals builds on Cotton’s early work. <blockquote>If there is one consistent lesson in Unruly Waters, it is that water management never has been, and can never be, a purely technical or a scientific question; neither can it be addressed on a purely national scale … the battle continues to understand the monsoons and mountain rivers that shape Asia.</blockquote> Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s History by Sunil Amrith And in Nepal, hydropower has become the holy grail as the government unveiled an Energy Development Roadmap to generate 28,500MW by 2035 at a cumulative cost of nearly $50billion. This means no river in Nepal will be left free-flowing. The Trisuli along the Prithvi Highway is being dammed for only 100MW of power, destroying the most scenic part of a river that has rapids famous internationally for white water rafters. Even before it was completed, the dam site suffered Rs200 million in damage in last September’s flood.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025022203020_d9610a11bccb593d32bf4d214479caa17dfbdd6cdfe5e8c38fdcb8eb752fc0ec.jpg" data-media-id="editor_18" data-image-id="2025022203020_d9610a11bccb593d32bf4d214479caa17dfbdd6cdfe5e8c38fdcb8eb752fc0ec" data-rendition-name="original" width="4032" height="2268" loading="lazy" alt="Trisuli"> <figcaption>Boulders and sediment 80m deep were brought down by the Teesta after a GLOF destroyed the $1 billion Teesta III plant in Sikkim in 2023. Photo: KUNDA DIXIT</figcaption> </figure>  In Sikkim, there is strong <a href="https://india.mongabay.com/2025/02/political-stir-follows-expert-panels-approval-to-rebuild-teesta-dam-in-sikkim/">local opposition to rebuild Teesta III</a> but investors are looking at the huge economic windfall from the river as it drops from 5,000m below Kangchenjunga to 300m within 80km — one of the highest Gravitational Potential Energy of any river in the world. Besides Nepal and Bhutan, the ‘watersheds’ of the Himalaya are turning into ‘powersheds’ as India and China compete for hydro-hegemony. India is said to be planning to dam the Brahmaputra to offset the disruption caused by China’s Medog Dam upstream (see map, below).&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025022203024_37c60bd2a45a32cd23928c900615b6c7045b2e0265050c4761c3749361181999.png" data-media-id="editor_20" data-image-id="2025022203024_37c60bd2a45a32cd23928c900615b6c7045b2e0265050c4761c3749361181999" data-rendition-name="original" width="1918" height="668" loading="lazy" alt="Himalayan rivers map"> </figure>  The thread running through all three books is the need to recognise the ecosystem services that the inhabitants of High Asia provide by protecting our rivers. Not all rivers need to be monetised, conserving rivers and the cultures they retain protects a nation’s natural wealth into the future as the humans of High Asia try to survive climate breakdown. The highlands will be under even more pressure in the coming decades as people in the plains migrate en masse to higher latitudes or higher altitudes to escape deadly heat and ocean expansion.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025022203028_524a74bf65111db3826bfd246576329c45cd4bd0a48b15024b6a520582bbf05a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_21" data-image-id="2025022203028_524a74bf65111db3826bfd246576329c45cd4bd0a48b15024b6a520582bbf05a" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="River of Asian Highlands cover"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025022203028_20c17a9b92b11c8bb33df5f2fc2781498464288533c310ccd61e1245e709d99c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_22" data-image-id="2025022203028_20c17a9b92b11c8bb33df5f2fc2781498464288533c310ccd61e1245e709d99c" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Unruly waters cover"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250222030212_649cc2ba02e806da2b128fccaf5de2e5c830e10646ba0b43d56da39f65a70f9f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_23" data-image-id="20250222030212_649cc2ba02e806da2b128fccaf5de2e5c830e10646ba0b43d56da39f65a70f9f" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Chaalbato cover"> </figure>

Saving what is left of Himalayan rivers

The grant paralysed Nepali politics, and nearly brought down a government. After acrimonious wrangling, Parliament three years ago this week ratified the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/putting-the-mcc-in-context">$500 million US project</a> for roads and transmission lines.
Just as the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/mcc-ball-in-nepal-s-court">Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)</a> started awarding contracts this week for sections of transmission lines, substations, and highways, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/trump-s-second-coming">Donald Trump </a>suddenly pulled the plug.
The Finance Ministry said it had received an email last week from Washington that payments for contracts were ‘suspended’ by Trump’s executive order. It is not clear if the stay is only for 90 days, and the MCC has asked for a waiver for Nepal and other countries.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/trump-shock-wave-hits-nepal">Trump shock wave hits Nepal</a>, Sudiksha Tuladhar&nbsp;
“This is a temporary suspension, we believe it will eventually work out as it is supposed to,” says former National Planning Commission Chair Biswo Nath Poudel. “If not, the Americans will lose credibility around the world.”
In January, the MCC approved an additional $50 million to cover increased costs, and Nepal is chipping in its own $197 million.
“We will take loans to complete the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/a-millennium-challenge">transmission lines</a> if we have to, and Nepal is now capable of operationalising projects of that value,” Poudel told us.&nbsp;
The MCC was caught up in the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/sino-american-rift-impacts-climate-action">Sino-US competition</a> for dominance in the region. It was Washington’s response to Beijing’s <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/bri-enters-the-tenth-year">Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)</a>. Abandoning MCC will leave Nepal open for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/china-lobbying-against-mcc">China to step in</a> with its own infrastructure.&nbsp;
“I don't see the Chinese replacing the US in terms of dollar-to-dollar aid in Nepal, including on the MCC, which is also an export-to-India-oriented project,” says Amish Mulmi, author of All Roads Lead North. “But, yes, China can use the aid and investment vacuum left by the US to assist Nepal.”
The debate about whether Nepal should accept <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/power-politics-delays-mcc-in-nepal">the MCC polarised politics</a>, even splitting leaders within parties. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/inoculation-against-misinformation">Conspiracy theories and disinformation</a> spread like <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/wildfire-season-starts-early-in-nepal">wildfire in Nepal</a>’s cybersphere, alleging that the MCC was a ploy to base US missiles in Nepal aimed at China. The Chinese added fuel to the fire, trying to stop ratification.&nbsp;
Not surprisingly, the suspension of MCC contracts this week was greeted with the same trolling that filled <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/no-comment">social media </a>during the MCC debate and after ratification in 2022. This time, the posts have an additional ‘we told you America was not a reliable partner’ refrain.
One self-described influencer posted on X: ‘The MCC has only been suspended, it should be entirely cancelled…(it) is an absolute military trap.’
Finance Ministry officials last week assured that the MCC would not be affected by <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/how-usaid-cut-affects-nepal">the freeze on USAID supported programs </a>worldwide, including Nepal.&nbsp;
On Wednesday at Mar-a-Lago, Trump singled out Nepal, and said USAID’s $20 million to support <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/feudal-federalism">federalism</a> and $19 million for <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/conversation-with-mr-conservation">conservation</a> was a “fraud”. Other US-supported government programs worth $131 million to improve healthcare, education, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/back-to-the-land-in-the-cities">agriculture </a>and inclusion are halted.&nbsp;
In 2022, USAID and Nepal signed a five-year Development Objective Agreement worth $659 million for climate adaptation, environment protection, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/nail-salon-workers-say-proper-ventilation-can-protect-their-reproductive-health">gender and reproductive rights</a>. That is also now in limbo.
Slashing all this assistance has impacted over 300 consultancies and non-profits in Nepal, and threatens to undermine past successes in maternal and child health, <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-goal-is-empowerment-and-independence-of-women">women’s empowerment</a>, free press and rural development. &nbsp;
Says Mulmi: “What the US withdrawal on MCC will do is further erode US credibility inside Nepal, particularly since it was such a politically charged subject. It will also signal a change in its stance on China in South Asia, as the MCC was a direct challenge to the BRI and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-s-love-triangle-with-china-and-india-impacts-investment">Chinese investments</a> in infrastructure.”
If there is one lesson from all this, it is that<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/missing-links-in-nepal-s-mcc-debate"> foreign assistance is rarely a free lunch</a> and often comes with strings attached. Nepal should look out for itself and be self-reliant, after all <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/is-free-health-care-possible-in-nepal">basic health care </a>and environmental protection are responsibilities of the Nepali state, not of donors.&nbsp;
This means investing in infrastructure and development to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/multimedia/staying-home-to-create-jobs">create jobs at home</a>, actually spending budget outlays for capital expenditure, and making optimum use of domestic resources such as<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/pump-water-store-energy"> hydropower</a>.
Says Bishwo Nath Poudel: “The MCC was never anti-China. In fact, India and China are our most important neighbours. What is really important for us is to leverage their growth to pull us along.” &nbsp;

The Great Game, 2nd Half

At a time when there is growing concern about the carbon footprint of global aviation, countries like <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/tourism-aviation-and-carbon" target="_blank">Nepal that depend on tourism</a> have started to think about how to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/business/carbon-neutral-yeti" target="_blank">reduce their emissions</a>. Not much can be done about the use of aviation fuel except to make engines and aircraft more fuel-efficient, or to switch to sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). But these technologies have their limits, so airlines have started concentrating on the non-flying ground activities and switching them to renewable energy. Reducing congestion at airports like Kathmandu which require planes to hold for long periods in the air to land, or in the taxiway to take off, would reduce fuel burn. Ramp buses, towing tractors, crew transport and hangar equipment, for example can be battery operated, or switched to solar energy. With the runway and taxiway upgrades at Kathmandu airport which will be completed by 1 April is expected to reduce congestion, some domestic airlines in Nepal have started using electric buses and ground transport to reduce emissions. Since 100% of Nepal’s grid electricity is hydropower or solar energy, it also means a reduction in the country’s petroleum import bill. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), aviation accounts for up to 4% of global warming, and CO₂ emissions from civilian aircraft worldwide more than doubled between 1990 and 2020. The airline industry also emits other greenhouse gases like methane, nitrous oxide and NOx. Military aircraft are not included in these figures and are even more polluting. Other ways to reduce aviation emissions is to shorten flight paths with new GPS-based technologies, and invest in carbon offsets outside the aviation sector. IATA and ICAO members have agreed to achieve net zero by 2050. In Nepal, where domestic aviation plays a major role in connectivity, efforts toward <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/business/yeti-airlines-reduces-carondoxide-footprint,4171" target="_blank">greener alternatives have gained momentum</a> in the past few years. <a href="https://www.buddhaair.com/" target="_blank">Buddha Air</a>, Nepal’s leading domestic airline, has taken a significant step toward sustainable aviation by introducing electric Ground Power Units (e-GPUs), reducing reliance on diesel-powered systems.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025022307020_37dd1d20ffeaec3a976de96dfcb71e7db29a7bd60fdf2647781bbe4bd95d8c1d.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="2025022307020_37dd1d20ffeaec3a976de96dfcb71e7db29a7bd60fdf2647781bbe4bd95d8c1d" data-rendition-name="original" width="1991" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Buddha Air NT"> </figure>  GPUs provide electrical power to aircraft while they are parked at the airport before the engines start, to run primary aircraft functions such as lighting, avionics, air conditioning, hydraulics, and pneumatics after engines are shut down. Traditionally, diesel-powered GPUs have been the standard in Nepal, but they come with major challenges, including air and noise pollution, high fuel costs, and logistical difficulties. “When an aircraft is on the ground, the system providing power is the Ground Power Unit,” explains Diwakar Shrestha, GSE In-Charge of Buddha Air. After landing, once both engines are shut down, the aircraft still needs power, and the GPU supplies it. “Traditionally, our GPUs were powered by diesel and at Kathmandu airport alone they consumed 18,000 litres of diesel monthly.” The transition from diesel to electric GPUs is a milestone in Nepal’s aviation sustainability efforts. Shrestha highlights the challenges faced during the shift, stating, “When we initiated discussions to eliminate diesel dependency, it was a big challenge”. The team had to undertake a complete transition from diesel to electricity. “But by gathering resources, and utilising Nepali technologies and local expertise, we successfully implemented the electric GPU system.” Kaushal Bhandari, Station Manager of Buddha Air in Biratnagar notes, “Diesel-powered GPUs used to generate excessive noise, hindering communication among staff. Now, our operations have become much more efficient, free from noise pollution and diesel smoke.” The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) has played a central role in expanding this technology across the country. Subhash Jha, Airport Chief at Biratnagar states, “When Buddha Air proposed phasing out diesel GPUs, CAAN took the initiative to support this transition by providing a dedicated transformer for electric GPUs, enabling the implementation of this technology at seven domestic airports in Nepal.” Seven airports in Nepal already use electric GPUs, and there are plans for expansion to other airports, as well as converting other ground-handling equipment to battery power. Video of Buddha Air electric GPU <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_EHdeG6Cmw" target="_blank">here</a>.

geopolitics