Bettering ties with Nepal

Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla’s two-day visit to Nepal last week signals a significant improvement in India’s relations with Nepal. In addition to meeting Nepal’s top leaders and officials, when he is said to have discussed a range of bilateral issues including the boundary dispute as well as trade, transit, connectivity, infrastructure, energy and agriculture, Shringla handed over essential medicines, ventilators, test kits and PPE material as part of India’s support for Nepal’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. Bilateral relations have frayed significantly in recent years, especially over the past year with Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli stirring anti-India Nepali nationalism to deflect attention away from his poor governance and failure to tackle the pandemic and the economic crisis. Among other things, he accused India of encroaching into Nepali territory and even got a constitutional amendment passed that showed Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh and Kalapani as part of Nepal. As Oli’s political credibility declined in Nepal, his needling of India rose. He has been cosying up to China in recent years.

Understandably, it led to a perception in India that he was raising territorial claims on India at China’s behest. Nepali opposition politicians have been drawing attention to China’s encroachment of Nepali territory in Humla district. Politicians in the ruling Nepali Communist Party too are opposed to his excessive tilt to China. India-Nepal relations became so frayed that the two sides had suspended high-level interactions. Visits by the Indian Army chief Gen M M Naravane and RAW chief Samant Goel to Kathmandu, which preceded Shringla’s visit, seem to have set in motion normalisation of relations. In a speech at a think-tank in Kathmandu, Shringla underscored the “intrinsic and symbiotic” bond between the two countries. India’s development and modernisation depends on that of Nepal and vice versa, he pointed out. Whether New Delhi’s outreach will translate into Nepal taking concrete steps to correct its excessive tilt to China remains to be seen.

To wrest back its position of Nepal’s primary partner, India will have to put in sustained diplomatic effort. Success in this regard will not come quickly given the enormous influence China wields over Nepal. The Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqi has been mediating in the ongoing political crisis in Nepal and Oli and his rival Pushpa Kamal Dahal seems to be heeding only her words - so complete is China’s control over the ruling party. Chinese Defence Minister Gen Wei Fenghe visited Nepal, close on the heels of Shringla’s visit. Beijing’s unprecedented political interference in Nepal is accompanied by strengthening economic and defence co-operation. Can India match that?