While Nepal’s calendar enters the eighties on Saturday 13 April, this is a good time to pause and think about what might lie ahead for Nepal and the world in Gregorian year 2081.
The world is too late to limit the global average temperature to 1.5°C. By 2081, ocean expansion and heat stress will lead to mass migration to higher latitudes and altitudes. Multi-disasters, conflicts and food shortages will stalk the planet.
At the present rate of birth rate declines, China’s population will have shrunk to 850 million. By 2081, there will only be half as many Koreans as there are today. Nepal’s population pyramid will have inverted by then, and total inhabitants will decline to 22 million.
The outmigration of Nepalis from the mountains to the plains will likely start reversing in the next few decades. The Gulf states will be too hot to work in. Half the remaining Himalayan glaciers will have melted off, reducing the dry season flow of our rivers.&nbsp;
These are changes we know are coming, so we might as well prepare for them. Alas, the world is still in business as usual mode. Most politicians do not recognise the urgency of the crisis, and are haggling over who gets to sit in the best chair on the tilting deck of the Titanic.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/year-of-reckoning">Year of reckoning</a>, Editorial
India, China, US
Meanwhile, 2081 BS will see elections in the two biggest democracies, India and the United States, that will have a bearing on the region and the world. Proximity means Nepal will be impacted more immediately by the outcome in India, where a third term as Prime Minister for Narendra Modi seems to be a foregone conclusion in marathon elections from 19 April to 1 June.
Nepal is already feeling the spillover of India’s election fever as shown by Hindu-Muslim riots in Sunsari last week, and the anti-secular pro-monarchist rally in Kathmandu on Tuesday.&nbsp;
Under the Hindu-supremacist BJP since 2014, India has slid into dangerous authoritarianism, intolerance and systematic persecution of minorities. There is now not even a modicum of decency as opposition leaders are thrown into jail on trumped up charges, and their vilification amplified by a pliant mass media.
The West looks away as the BJP tightens control and squelches the media and democratic values, since India’s 8% growth is important for trade. New Delhi is even excused for breaking sanctions against Russia. India’s economic engine will pull Nepal along, but its politics could tear the intricate ethnic fabric of our society.&nbsp;
Over on the other side of the planet, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are readying for a second face-off. Much like in Nepal, US politics also seems to be populated by tired old men reluctant to let go.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/the-f-word-9yauh6kl">The F word</a>, Editorial
Much like how photographs from Vietnam swayed domestic public opinion against the war, the daily bombardment of images of children maimed and killed in Gaza has turned US public opinion against Biden. His administration parachutes food into Gaza, while shipping more bombs to Israel.
The war may prolong Benjamin Netanyahu’s hold on power in Israel, but it may cost Biden a second presidential term. Trump will be no better on Palestinian independence, and his threat to pull out of NATO is already ringing alarm bells in Europe.&nbsp;
Trump is campaigning on an anti-immigrant platform, and exaggerating the threat on the Mexican border. He wants immigrants only from ‘nice’ countries, and not from ‘shitholes’ like Nepal.
America’s domestic polarisation, Trump’s rejection of multilateralism, Biden’s unpopularity on the world stage because of Gaza, and panic in Europe over losing the American security umbrella to confront Putin’s Russia has geopolitically weakened the West. This means that for Nepal, the looming presence of next door India and China will be felt even more than before.
It was the West that traditionally pushed for human rights, transitional justice, democracy and the free press in Nepal. Now, we have to contend with two giant neighbours who do not believe in those concepts, and have in fact undermined them within their own societies.&nbsp;
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/at-home-and-abroad">At home and abroad</a>, Editorial
Here and now
Back in Nepal, the government has selected more than 400 Nepalis to work in Israel as caregivers. Nepalis continue to enlist in the Russian Army even as the Labour Ministry prepares to lift the ban on work permits in Russia.
The new UML-Maoist-led coalition has reaffirmed the transient nature of Nepali politics. Political allies become rivals overnight, and the RSP on whom many Nepalis had pinned their hopes is behaving like the mainstream parties it once vowed to hold to account.&nbsp;
Public disillusionment with Nepal’s party politics has emboldened populist and nationalist forces that are set on dismantling the 2015 secular, federal republic constitution.
Such political disarray will not help us in Nepal face the challenges wrought by the climate crisis in the decades ahead.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/nepal-s-corruption-carousel">Nepal’s corruption carousel</a>, Editorial

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New year, same difference

Nowhere is Nepal’s delicate balancing act between its giant neighbours India and China as evident as it is in this tourism capital.&nbsp; The <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/pokhara-s-china-connection">Chinese have cultivated a special relationship with Pokhara</a> ever since they built the 200km Prithvi Highway connecting it to Kathmandu in 1974, right up to the inauguration of Pokhara International Airport last year. India has not been far behind: it financed the 181km Siddhartha Highway connecting Pokhara to Bhairawa in 1971, and a dam that raised the level of Phewa Lake. There are strategic reasons for India and China to eye Pokhara. Most <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/recruitment-of-nepalis-into-indian-army-paused">Gorkha soldiers in the Indian Army are sourced from these mountains</a>, and there is an Indian military pension centre here.&nbsp; For China, it is important to keep an eye on refugee centres here with thousands who fled Tibet after the Chinese annexation. Both India and China have an interest in who governs Nepal, and have followed (often meddled) with political developments in Kathmandu. A Nepali Congress-Maoist coalition that was seen by many to be India-leaning was <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/catapulting-to-singha-darbar">suddenly replaced on Monday with a Communist-led coalition</a> more amicable to China.&nbsp; However, it is Pokhara that is on the main geostrategic fault line between India and China, where the rivalry is openly played out. Pokhara’s mayor Dhana Raj Acharya is from the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Socialist and has earned the moniker ‘Chinese mayor’ for pushing direct flights to Pokhara from Chinese cities, and activities like the Dragon Boat Festival on Phewa Lake, the China International Crosscountry Championship, and a full-scale celebration of Chinese New Year last month.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20240309010324_1a033dbd507869e172cfe184d622391defeaf39a1af0a4a4e1c6b60bd5d1a675.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20240309010324_1a033dbd507869e172cfe184d622391defeaf39a1af0a4a4e1c6b60bd5d1a675" data-rendition-name="original" width="3500" height="2333" loading="lazy" alt="Pokhara epicentre of Sino-Indian rivalry in Nepal"> <figcaption>Pokhara Mayor Dhana Raj Acharya with Chinese Ambassador Chen Song. Photo: DHANA RAJ ACHARYA/FACEBOOK</figcaption> </figure>  The Indians have been looking at this flurry of Chinese activity with some concern, and have organised their own events.&nbsp; The first international flight at Pokhara's new airport was a Sichuan Airlines jet from Chengdu in June flying in the Dragon Boat Festival crew. India has been dragging its feet on allowing direct flights between Pokhara and Indian cities because the airport was built by the Chinese. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/pokhara-s-desperation-and-hope">Pokhara's desperation and hope</a>, Kanak Mani Dixit To make its point, the Indian Embassy organised a Yoga Day function on the same day as the inaugural Chinese flight. It was not a coincidence that both the Chinese and Indian ambassadors to Nepal were in Pokhara on the same day.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20240309010324_d07a2bdaa9fdff8dd3d9e585673b83f642e3bbf03dfc45d5b7bbec0d6cfbd55d.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20240309010324_d07a2bdaa9fdff8dd3d9e585673b83f642e3bbf03dfc45d5b7bbec0d6cfbd55d" data-rendition-name="original" width="1840" height="1292" loading="lazy" alt="Pokhara epicentre of Sino-Indian rivalry in Nepal"> <figcaption>A Sichuan Airlines Airbus 319 was the first international flight to the new Chinese-built Pokhara airport in June last year. Photo: XINHUA. It landed on the same day that the Indian Embassy organised Yoga Day at the nearby Pokhara Stadium (below).</figcaption> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20240309010328_ac491e7363d9a7ee6ff46ff926bcb29b0cc08aba0687d9c6d3d4bb5afa09318e.jpg" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20240309010328_ac491e7363d9a7ee6ff46ff926bcb29b0cc08aba0687d9c6d3d4bb5afa09318e" data-rendition-name="original" width="2250" height="1501" loading="lazy" alt="Pokhara epicentre of Sino-Indian rivalry in Nepal"> <figcaption>Photo: DHANA RAJ ACHARYA/FACEBOOK</figcaption> </figure>  &nbsp;On another recent visit to Pokhara, Indian Ambassador Naveen Srivastava made a pointed reference to the fact that Pokhara was connected to the Indian border (by the Indian built road in 1971) before it was linked to Kathmandu (by the Chinese-built road in 1974). He added that although Indian visitors liked to drive to Pokhara, they were facing difficulties because of the poor state of the Prithvi Highway.&nbsp; “I don’t know who is repairing that highway,” Ambassador Srivastava continued, referring obliquely to Chinese contractors, “but India has set a record in highway construction. Next time, also remember Indian companies.” Srivastava made no mention of India’s reluctance to allow flights to Pokhara, adding that most Indian visitors came by road anyway. Chinese Ambassador Chen Song also appeared concerned about the slow progress on the expansion of the Prithvi Highway, and drove along a part of it during a recent visit, posting drone footage of the upgrading work on social media. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/begnas-going-the-way-of-phewa">Begnas going the way of Phewa</a>, Durga Rana Magar While in Pokhara, Ambassador Song also publicly criticised the Indian policy of not importing electricity from Nepali hydropower plants built by the Chinese. And to drive that point home, two Chinese Air Force Y-20 transport aircraft landed at Pokhara airport in November with 50 tonnes of relief for Jajarkot earthquake survivors.&nbsp; New Delhi insisted that the India-Nepal Bilateral Consultative Group on Security Issues be held in Pokhara in October.&nbsp; “The great game between India and China is being played out in Nepal, and Pokhara is where it is most visible,” explains geopolitics expert Indra Adhikari.&nbsp; She adds, “India is concerned about an increase in Chinese activity around Pokhara, and competition between Nepal’s neighbours is heating up.”&nbsp; India’s main sensitivity appears to be over the fact that Kaski and neighbouring districts of central Nepal are major recruitment centres for the Gorkha regiments of the Indian Army. The Gorkha Pension Camp was opened as far back as 1955 in Pokhara, and in 1987 it established a school for the children of Gorkha soldiers in its military.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024031106034_a5c5037ae3a76c0443eca037a02d822494de1f60649e6f42466936fb3e632ddd.jpg" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="2024031106034_a5c5037ae3a76c0443eca037a02d822494de1f60649e6f42466936fb3e632ddd" data-rendition-name="original" width="900" height="551" loading="lazy" alt="Pokhara geopolitics"> <figcaption>Indian Ambassador Navin Srivastav with mayor Acharya.</figcaption> </figure>  Similarly, China’s touchiness concerns the presence of British Gurkha veterans and their families living in Hong Kong, and Tibetans in four refugee camps in and around Pokhara.&nbsp; Pokhara was also the staging post for American and Indian military support for Khampa guerrillas who were fighting the Chinese Army in Tibet till they were disarmed or driven out in 1976. Explains analyst Ananda Raj Mulmi: “Beijing does not want Pokhara to once more become a base for anti-Chinese activities.” After opening the China-Nepal border at Korala in Mustang, the Chinese are keen to make Pokhara a trading hub in central Nepal.&nbsp; “The Chinese had a long term time horizon to link the Prithvi Highway to Korala, and wanted to extend the road from Pokhara to Jomsom but King Mahendra did not approve, so they just built it up to Baglung,” adds Mulmi.&nbsp; Pokhara’s sister city relations with eight Chinese cities is a source of soft power, and means there are frequent cultural exchanges. Pokhara is a household word in China because of the popular television serial Deng Feng Lai which was filmed on location here, and the main characters took a paragliding flight. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/chinese-tourist-influx-to-nepal-in-2020-nqr538k3">Chinese visitors used to be the mainstay of Pokhara’s tourism till Covid</a>.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024031106034_ff7c3ce0f0e3b2e83849bcdf35942892b9fb7e4f110ce6032920fd3e4ccd8094.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="2024031106034_ff7c3ce0f0e3b2e83849bcdf35942892b9fb7e4f110ce6032920fd3e4ccd8094" data-rendition-name="original" width="976" height="665" loading="lazy" alt="Pokhara geopolitics"> </figure>  More than a year after the inauguration of Pokhara Airport, there are no regular international flights. India may be preventing flights to its cities, but it is Nepal’s failure that it has not been able to attract airlines to connect Pokhara to Chinese destinations.&nbsp; “This is because we went ahead and built an expensive airport without factoring in geopolitical sensitivities,” says foreign policy expert Krishna KC. “We have to convince the Indians that it is also in their interest to allow flights.”&nbsp; Chinese Ambassador Song announced at Pokhara Airport’s inauguration that it was a BRI project even though it predated the concept, and this ticked India off even more. Nepal’s unclear flip-flopping over the issue aggravated both sides, diplomatic sources say.&nbsp; Even so, most people here blame India for being petty-minded about not allowing new air routes making Pokhara operations feasible, as well as permitting connections to Indian cities.&nbsp; Professor of geostrategic studies Bhim Nath Baral says it is natural for both powerful countries to be concerned that Pokhara will be used against its national interest.&nbsp; “But it is up to Nepal to deploy diplomatic skills to understand and reassure both sides,” he adds. “That can only come with a mature and self-confident foreign policy.”

Pokhara epicentre of Sino-Indian rivalry

Twenty-eight years after the Maoist party launched an armed struggle to overhaul Nepal’s centralised state, remove exploitation, exclusion and usher in an era of justice and equality, the former Maoist supremo is prime minister for the third time with a former arch enemy as his main coalition partner. It has been 18 years since the Comprehensive Peace Accord that promised a new political order and transitional justice. &nbsp;
Even former Maoist guerrillas now admit their sacrifice and pain were in vain. Most Nepalis agree. The main outcome of the war and death of 17,000 Nepalis and trauma of countless others was the federal, secular, republican Constitution of 2015.&nbsp;
Now, that very Constitution which came about after much bloodshed is being challenged by retrogressive forces that want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Using populism, whipped up pseudo-nationalism and a weaponised social web, they are bent on dismantling devolution and democracy even before it has been allowed to fully function. Instead of throwing out rotten leaders, they want to replace the barrel.&nbsp;
There have been similar hankerings for strongman rule in world history that have inevitably led to disaster. What feeds demagogic rhetoric is the chronic failure of representative democracy to produce accountable government to deliver development and betterment. The antidote to a malfunctioning democracy is to fix its shortcomings.&nbsp;
Young Nepalis are expressing their discontent with protest votes for populist parties. Monarchists sense the time is ripe to take advantage of popular frustration, and are starting the new year with nationwide rallies to call for the restoration of a Hindu kingdom and scrapping federalism.
India’s general election in 2024 and the ruling BJP’s Hindutva agenda is infecting Nepali politics. Besides everything else we import from India, we are also importing its communal intolerance. &nbsp;
Nepal’s political system need not be remodelled every time there is regime change in New Delhi.
<h2>Modifying India</h2>
After the defeat of the Indian Congress in state elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, a third term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems a foregone conclusion. His cult of personality took 10 years to build, and despite policy blunders that cost people their savings (demonetisation) and lives (Covid closedowns) he is more popular than ever. The BJP with its allies now control 16 of India’s 29 states, reversing the grand Indian tradition of incumbents losing elections.
The BJP’s systemic targeting of minorities and almost complete control of media messaging galvanised support in the Cow Belt. But Modi is also reaping political dividend from an economy galloping at 7.6% a year. Impressive new infrastructure projects and moon landings gave Indians justifiable pride in 2023 in their country’s achievements.
Why then does the BJP have to still rely on toxic communalism, bigotry, and violence against India’s minority religions? This is especially inscrutable given that there are millions of Indians working in the Gulf.&nbsp;
Domestically, India is now sliced along a north-south ideological axis. Populist authoritarianism in India exploits opposition disarray, as elsewhere. One reason for its setbacks in state elections was that the Congress was over-confident, and rejected alliances with regional parties.&nbsp;
India is a Subcontinent, not just a country and is the most populous in the world. It is also the world’s biggest arms importer, and a weakened West thinks it needs India to confront China. An enemy of an enemy is a friend, so criticism of Modi is muted.
India’s strong gravitational tug impacts all neighbouring countries. A stronger Modi may not necessarily be bad for Nepal, since he may be less inclined to flex his muscles and play the Hindutva card. Or maybe he still will. We will see in 2024.
<h2>Trumping America</h2>
The world’s two most established democracies drifting towards authoritarianism does not bode well for the rest of the world. A second Trump term in 2024 will have consequences for the global order as well as the planet.
America’s support for human rights, democracy and press freedom around the world sound hollow given a domestic political mess of its own making. Even under Biden, America’s standing in 2023 was tarnished by his carte blanche support for Israel’s war machine in Gaza where nearly 21,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children.&nbsp;
With its military and economic might the US still has a global reach. It also has a crucial voice in reducing climate risk.&nbsp;
America’s obsession with a rising China and its Indo-Pacific strategy complicates Nepal’s precarious geopolitical balancing act between its two giant neighbours. The yam has a third boulder to contend with.
<h2>World wars</h2>
Israel’s atrocities in Gaza have overshadowed other world wars in Ukraine, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria. Because Nepalis are now spread out across the world, they tend to get caught up in almost every conflict.&nbsp;
Ten Nepalis were killed by Hamas on 7 October, and one is still believed to be held hostage. At least 7 Nepali soldiers in the Russian Army have been killed in Ukraine. Four are prisoners of war in Ukraine, and there are some Nepalis also fighting for the Ukrainians.
Despite immigration restrictions, the Nepal government is not able to stop its nationals from going to work in dangerous places. The only medium-term solution to this is to launch a bold campaign to boost investment and provide meaningful employment in Nepal itself.&nbsp;
This is what Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s address to the nation this week on the first anniversary of assuming office should have announced. Instead, we got more platitude and excuses for another lost year.

Year of reckoning

For Nepalis, the year 2023 was marked by one scandal after another at home, while Nepalis found themselves in the middle of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepalis-in-the-russian-army-want-to-quit">active conflict zones</a> across the world both unintentionally and of their own volition.&nbsp;
The year began with Pushpa Kamal Dahal being Prime Minister for the third time with a promise of better governance. Even the opposition UML gave him a vote of confidence. The new <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/for-whom-the-bell-tolls">RSP party’s Rabi Lamichhane</a> was in and out of the Cabinet, and finally decided to stay in the opposition.
Dahal's preoccupation during 2023 was to hold his fragile coalition together, despite having the Nepali Congress (NC) as an ideologically opposite partner. His government was rocked by a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-year-of-scandals">slew of corruption scandals </a>that led to the arrests of several senior officials across party lines, but the big fish eventually got away.&nbsp;
Nearly 800 Nepalis were promised entry into the US as fake Bhutanese refugees by government officials and traffickers. Property surrounding the Prime Minister’s residence was parcelled off to private buyers by the real estate mafia. Gold smuggling continues unabated at Kathmandu airport, and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/crime-and-or-punishment-in-nepal">none of the kingpins ever get caught</a>.&nbsp;
Malaysian conglomerate <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/axiata-may-find-breaking-up-hard-to-do">Axiata exited Nepal</a> after selling its majority stake in Ncell to a Singapore-based Nepali-origin businessman, which experts say would not have been possible without the involvement of top bureaucrats, regulators and politicians.
Despite the finance minister assuring us that the economy is “on the mend”, it <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/nepals-golden-age">stagnated some more</a> in 2023. Revenue collection was lower than projected, exports are at a record low, and 90,000 workers and students left Nepal in December alone. The government has been slow to promote electric transport even as petroleum import continues to soar.&nbsp;
In March, Dahal’s coalition government introduced the transitional justice amendment bill in the House. But <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/nepal-tj-bill-protects-perpetrators-shortchanges-survivors">conflict survivors, victims and human rights groups said it ignored their concerns</a>, the Supreme Court’s directive and flouted international law on war crimes.&nbsp;
The earthquake in western Nepal on 3 November left 153 dead and two months later survivors are living in tents in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/below-zero-at-ground-zero">sub-zero temperatures</a>. The disaster also exposed Nepal’s demographic shift: most fatalities were women from the poorest families since the men have migrated out.&nbsp;
Migration, as Nepali Times has highlighted in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/50-diaspora-diaries-in-nepali-times">50 instalments of its Diaspora Diaries</a>, is now the central reality of Nepal. A majority of families have members who have left to work, study, or settle abroad, and Nepal’s economy is propped up by the money they send home. The search for jobs has also led Nepalis to some of the world’s most dangerous regions.&nbsp;
There are said to be at least 700 Nepalis in the Russian Army, families have not heard from many of them, and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/from-frying-pan-into-fire-for-nepalis-in-russian-army">7 have been killed on the Ukraine front</a>. Nepali human traffickers have been supplying mercenaries to Russia by flying them to Moscow on tourist visas. Four Nepalis have been captured by the Ukrainian military. &nbsp;
The Hamas attack on 7 October killed 10 Nepalis who had gone to Israel under the government’s Learn and Earn program, while <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/hamas-releases-thais-but-where-is-bipin">Nepali student Bipin Joshi</a>, who was taken hostage, is believed to remain in captivity. Israel’s ongoing brutal bombardment of Gaza has led to the deaths of nearly 21,000 Palestinians, with the US helping Israel to block a UN ceasefire. &nbsp;
<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/borderlines/burmese-of-nepali-descent-flee-to-thailand">Burmese of Nepali descent</a> have taken refuge in Thailand because of suppression by the military junta which staged a coup in Burma in 2021. Nepalis trafficked by a Chinese organised crime syndicate to work in call centres in Burma also need to be rescued. &nbsp;
UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited Nepal ahead of COP28 in Dubai to draw attention to the climate crisis and the Himalaya, but the summit <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/unabated-greenwashing-at-cop28">failed to commit </a>to an immediate phase-out of fossil fuels. Nepal’s pledges at COP28 do not correspond to its lack of progress in switching to renewable energy, saving remaining forests and controlling air pollution.&nbsp;

Shristi Karki

More of the same in 2024?

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s visit to China comes as the season here in Beijing begins to shift from the summer to autumn.&nbsp;
As the Prime Minister alights from his aircraft at the Beijing Capital International Airport being greeted by still balmy conditions, he may very well wonder why his flight could not have touched down at the other (newer) colossal international airport in Beijing, Daxing International, designed by the award winning British architectural firm Zaha Hadid Architects.
That facility is not just a piece of art but is the world’s largest single-building airport occupying more than 7.5 million sq feet of ground space. Although by land-area, Daxing International is still significantly smaller than King Fahd International or even Denver International or Washington Dulles, the way in which the airport evokes, in combination, a sense of power, networks and a futuristic vision is inescapable.&nbsp;
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/fixing-the-broken-parts-in-nepal-china-ties">Fixing the broken parts in Nepal-China ties</a>, Kanak Mani Dixit
This is not surprising at all because the People’s Republic of China is probably at this juncture of history the example par excellence of a Eurasian power vigorously straddling the super continent in almost every sense of the word: political, economic, cultural and certainly in respect to hard infrastructure systems.&nbsp;
It is also no surprise that it is exactly due to this position China currently occupies as a preeminent Eurasian power that it is bumping up with such great and increasing friction against not just the United States but <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/latest/political-geography-of-india-nepal-china-ties">other leading powers in the system such as India</a> and so on.&nbsp;
The state of progressively intense upheavals that is consequently being generated within the international system is something that smaller powers such as Nepal will find almost impossible to circumvent let alone easily maneuver around.&nbsp;
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-now-has-to-balance-not-just-india-and-china-but-also-the-west">Nepal now has to balance not just India nad China, but also the West</a>, Bhairaja Panday
It is within this broad lay of the land that Dahal's September sojourn to China must be viewed and analysed. Sino-Nepal relations do not exist in a vacuum, they are part of larger (and ever shifting) structural, geopolitical forces at play that can potentially pull Nepal against gravitational force into spaces not easily comprehensible, much less simple to navigate.&nbsp;
This comes back to the question as to what is the natural direction of Nepal’s foreign policy, where does the gravity of Nepal’s foreign policy lie, because it is against this question too that better inferences and assessments of the prime minister’s China visit can be brought to bear.&nbsp;
At any given point in history, the state of Sino-Nepal relations will be dictated as well by the overall <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/40-years-after-the-sino-us-thaw">nature and tenor of Sino-US</a>, Sino-Indian as well as Sino-Russian relations and different combinations of those bilateral relationships.&nbsp;
Nepal’s relationship with India and then the United States exerts a profound impact on its foreign policy towards China, and this is exponentially the case in contemporary times as larger and larger diaspora communities in those countries become more entrenched and organised, giving rise to push and pull factors that reverberate back into the corridors of power in Kathmandu.&nbsp;
It must not be forgotten as well that the Maoist party Prime Minister Dahal's visit to China takes place at a time in Nepal's history when its governmental and administrative apparatus is perhaps the most fragile and fungible they have ever been, and therefore prone to being malleable in general or definitely within certain distinct pockets.&nbsp;
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/geopolitical-tectonics">Geopolitical tectonics</a>, Editorial
There are certain strong domestic lobbies in favour of China within Nepal’s political ecosystem, but it is hard to establish the extent to which these have the ability to triumph in forging real diplomatic success in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/sino-nepal-ties-in-the-post-afghan-era">Sino-Nepal relations</a>.&nbsp;
Surely in terms of big-ticket items in the bilateral relationship such as expansion of BRI and an elevated position for China in harvesting the green energy market in Nepal, it appears that Nepal’s position is currently circumscribed to a large extent by structural factors and that Kathmandu would need to approach cooperation with China with greater creativity encompassing an international approach.&nbsp;
For example, harnessing <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/geopolitics-of-nepal-s-rivers">Nepal’s substantial hydropower potential</a> is a key objective of policy makers in the country but due to the divergent and fragmented geopolitical environment Nepal faces externally, it becomes challenging for any one of the great powers alone to plan and actually execute large scale infrastructure projects without inciting adverse pushback.&nbsp;
So would it be feasible for Kathmandu to think along the lines of gradually proposing and nurturing international consortia (by including within a single basket China, India and the United States, for instance) to address the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/balance-of-power">development of hydropower in Nepal</a> or other large scale infrastructure initiatives?&nbsp;
It is unlikely that such an approach can be made to happen, but it is certainly worth the effort by the prime minister to explore during his high-level engagements with leaders in China. Sticking to a strictly bilateral approach on this visit to China will be a safe bet for the Prime Minister Dahal and will not ruffle any feathers.
But if one can think out of the box as a means to inject more momentum from Nepal towards much needed regional economic growth, then why not at least try?
Bhaskar Koirala is an independent analyst with Peking University. Views here are the author's own.

Nepal's Maoist leader visits China

At the annual Nepal Power Summit in Kathmandu on 18-19 April, officials called on India to allow Nepal to export power at real-time prices, not just in the day-ahead market. Also discussed was a need for more flexible guidelines on market access for Nepal’s electricity to India which currently buys power on a project-to-project basis, pointedly boycotting those built by Chinese investment or contractors. India’s interest in regulating Nepal’s rivers is not new, but with the Himalaya becoming a geopolitical and climate hotspot, its strategic interest in regulating river flow has grown.&nbsp; Climate models show that the hydrology of Himalayan rivers will change dramatically in the coming decades, with peak water in the 2030s, and low flow levels in the dry season thereafter. With 70% of the annual discharge on the Ganga flowing down from rivers in Nepal, 75% of it in the four monsoon months, storage projects in the mountains will be ever more important. Because of this, New Delhi would like pliant politicians in place in Kathmandu that will not obstruct its plans to ensure future water supply, and given current geopolitical tensions, this also means keeping the Chinese out.&nbsp; Ever since Sher Bahadur Deuba became prime minister for the fifth time in 2021, he has fast-tracked a slew of projects in which Indian companies are involved, including the West Seti reservoir project that has languished for 20 years mainly because of Indian objections to Australian and Chinese investment. Most recently, Indian National Hydroelectricity Power Corporation (NHPC) Limited is in talks to be awarded the 480MW Phukot Karnali Hydroelectric Project in Kalikot jointly with Nepal’s state-owned Vidyut Utpadan Company Limited with a share ratio of 51% to 49%. The project will likely be launched during Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s state visit to India in May. India’s NHPC has already been granted licenses for West Seti and Seti River-6 projects, and is also eyeing another 1,902MW megaproject on the Karnali.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2023050603050_10fc6c82b0d995c39b388d8d8628365ea5e2299a1f4d474e2c2d5b7f01d37d83.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2023050603050_10fc6c82b0d995c39b388d8d8628365ea5e2299a1f4d474e2c2d5b7f01d37d83" data-rendition-name="original" width="3776" height="2424" loading="lazy" alt="West Seti"> <figcaption>Sushil Bhatta of Investment Board Nepal and Abhay Kumar Singh of India's NHPC, after signing an agreement to develop the 760MW West Seti and 460MW Seti River 6 projects in 2022.</figcaption> </figure>  In fact, across Nepal, Indian companies are building hydropower projects which will add a combined total of 4,000MW to the grid, three of which were rushed through only in the past year. Three more Indian projects are in the pipeline.&nbsp; Why the sudden renewed Indian interest in Nepal’s rivers? And what is the hurry? The answer lies in the need to plan for the decades ahead when water is going to be an even scarcer commodity in the Indo-Gangetic plains than it is now because of climate change, increased industrial, agricultural and household consumption. Energy analysts say that although India’s interest seems to be in renewable energy from hydropower to fulfil its decarbonisation commitments, exports of power from Nepal is only projected at $800 million in the next three years, which will only be a tiny percentage of the 1,600 billion kWh that India generated in the last fiscal year.&nbsp; And although power demand is expected to rise with rising incomes, industrialisation and increasingly intense summer heat waves in the plains, India’s long-term interest is in reservoir projects to store monsoon water in Nepal’s rivers to reduce monsoon flood risk and keep rivers flowing in the dry season. And New Delhi has not tried to hide its distaste for any Chinese involvement in these projects.&nbsp; Hydropower Investment and Development Company Nepal (HIDCL) in which the government is a majority shareholder informed the Investment Board Nepal in February that it was withdrawing from the export-oriented 762MW Tamor Hydropower project.&nbsp; CEO Arjun Kumar Gautam is upfront about why: “We cannot sell electricity generated with Chinese involvement in the Indian market.” Tamor was one of the two projects agreed upon during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Nepal in October 2019. Soon after, Investment Board Nepal (IBN) signed up China Construction to build the project after completing a feasibility study. The HIDCL now wants to null the agreement with the Chinese contractor and bring in a new contractor more amenable to the Indians. Meanwhile, India’s state-owned <a href="https://sjvn.nic.in/">Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam</a>, which is involved in a cascade of projects on the adjoining Arun River to generate a total of 2,000MW, is said to be aggressively lobbying top Nepali officials to also build Tamor. Besides the 900MW Arun 3, Satluj was awarded the Lower Arun by the K P Oli-led government in 2021 without competitive bidding. Then in May 2022, the Sher Bahadur Deuba-led government suddenly awarded Arun 4 to Satluj (with a 51% share) during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Lumbini.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230506020556_4f38ffb96de37f17c662684914f0b65ab41adaaf98183a073273e88621de480b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20230506020556_4f38ffb96de37f17c662684914f0b65ab41adaaf98183a073273e88621de480b" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="666" loading="lazy" alt="Arun 4 agreement"> <figcaption>Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba look on as Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam's Nanda Lal Sharma and the NEA's Kulman Ghising exchange MoUs in May 2022 in Lumbini to build the 409MW Arun 4. Photo: RATNA SHRESTHA/RSS</figcaption> </figure>  But even though Satluj is said to be also interested in the 1,061MW Upper Arun, Kulman Ghising of the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) says it is building the project. "Upper Arun is our first priority, we are planning to start the construction of the access road," Ghising told us. Arun and Tamor are both in eastern Nepal (see map), but India is also interested in rivers in western Nepal because of the proximity of its main load centres as well as to augment the dry season flow of Nepal’s rivers that flow into the Ganga.&nbsp; There was some hue and cry last year after the Deuba-led government abruptly handed over the 750MW West Seti Dam and Seti River-6 projects to two Indian state-owned companies without competition or transparency. Experts pointed out that Nepal’s Public-Private Partnership and Investment Act 2075 states that there should be competitive bidding.&nbsp; The Seti saga is three decades long. After successive partnerships with Australian, Chinese and private Indian companies fell through, India’s state-owned NHPC finally took the lead. Since the terms of the deal are opaque, many experts question how beneficial the $1.6 billion project that involves building a high dam in the Doti district will be for Nepal.&nbsp; Indian state-owned companies appear to move faster than private Indian companies interested in river projects in Nepal. The GMR Group (Gandhi Mallikarjun Rao) obtained a permit to build the 900 MW Upper Karnali and a Project Development Agreement (PDA) was signed with the IBN in 2014 with plans to start construction in two years after securing funding. The government's latest decision to extend the deadline for the GMR by two years is being challenged in Nepal’s Supreme Court.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2023050603054_0b5cc52ed5ece09ac54bf7fd42d663e156bd8a721203fecad4470d449722bfd9.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="2023050603054_0b5cc52ed5ece09ac54bf7fd42d663e156bd8a721203fecad4470d449722bfd9" data-rendition-name="original" width="1083" height="834" loading="lazy" alt="Indian investment in hydropower in Nepal"> </figure>  Geopolitical games The export-oriented 456MW Upper Tamakosi project finally started production in June 2021 after much delay. But because a part of the Upper Tamkosi was built by the Sino Hydro of China, India refused to buy power from the project during the monsoon surplus last year – even though it was built with NEA investment.&nbsp; One international lender told Nepali Times: “Obtaining an Indian nod before building any big hydropower project in Nepal has now become a must.” Indian pressure manifests itself in its refusal to buy only 364MW of electricity which was recently increased to 452MW. This is the sum total of generation capacity with no direct Chinese involvement. Nepal also cannot sell its power to China as there are no trans-Himalayan transmission lines, and exporting to Bangladesh would need an Indian approval system without giving a free and open market to Nepali electricity, while also rejecting any Chinese involvement. India’s international electricity trade procedure issued in February 2021 prohibits the import of electricity from projects invested in third countries that do not have a bilateral agreement for cooperation in the energy sector. The fact that India does not have an energy cooperation agreement with China has therefore become an excuse, not just to blacklist projects in Nepal with Chinese investment, but even Chinese contractors. India has even stopped the supply of explosives for projects like the Tanahu and Upper Trisuli-1 Schemes being built by Chinese contractors.&nbsp; "Even though there is nothing in writing, India does not want any involvement of the Chinese in any capacity in Nepal's hydropower projects, they even have details of which country is the contractor and where are the machines being used from," explains Ganesh Karki of the Independent Power Producers Association Nepal (IPPAN). India first allowed imports of electricity only from the 24 MW Trisuli and 15 MW Devighat projects, both built by the Indian in the 1960s. But after Deuba signed an agreement on energy cooperation between the two countries in 2022, NEA was allowed to 364MW.&nbsp; Even so, Nepal must renew this export provision every year, which is a bureaucratic hassle. What this essentially means is that if Indian companies do not get licenses for new plants in Nepal, they may not renew the power-selling contract either. Nepali officials have been trying to convince the Indian side that it is in their own best interest if Nepal has a surplus in the coming years. Based on projections of generation capacity, NEA has sent a proposal to New Delhi to export an additional 600MW.&nbsp; The installed capacity of hydropower projects in Nepal has reached 2,400MW and is expected to cross 3,000MW after the completion of more projects this monsoon. Projects with a combined capacity of 3,200MW are under construction and will be completed in the next three years. On the demand side, the average domestic consumption at present is about 1,600MW and is expected to increase only to 2,000MW next year.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2023050603054_1ba6d252b58558d3d1263b0f76e3abbfc1c9dd3c019f8d9d47bd8aa415651e3f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="2023050603054_1ba6d252b58558d3d1263b0f76e3abbfc1c9dd3c019f8d9d47bd8aa415651e3f" data-rendition-name="original" width="1171" height="834" loading="lazy" alt="Hydropower generation in Nepal"> </figure>  &nbsp; <div class="embed-block"><div class="flourish-embed flourish-chart" data-src="visualisation/13536204"><script src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/embed.js"></script></div></div> &nbsp; <div class="embed-block"><div class="flourish-embed flourish-chart" data-src="visualisation/13535503"><script src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/embed.js"></script></div></div> There are critics who say Nepal should not be exporting power to India at all since it will not make a big dent in the trade deficit, and the $85.8 million it earned last year is negligible compared to the $8.33 billion Nepal earned in remittances.&nbsp; They say the priority should be on increasing electricity consumption in cooking, transportation and industry. At present, 70% of Nepal’s energy is from biomass and only 5% is from electricity.&nbsp; Since most of the electricity in Nepal is from run-of-river schemes in which generation depends on the flow of water in rivers, Nepal will have to continue to import power from India during the peak winter months for the next three years. In the monsoon, though, generation is double of demand, but the Indian quota, inadequate transmission and low domestic demand mean much of this clean electricity is wasted.&nbsp; Dinesh Kumar Ghimire at the Energy Ministry says Nepal is looking to sign a 25-year export agreement with India. "We are preparing a draft for the agreement. If both sides are on board with it, there may be an agreement during the Prime Minister's visit to India.” Edging out China While India is awarded one hydropower project after another in Nepal, China is being edged out. Both Phukot Karnali and Tamor hydropower projects were supposed to be implemented under Beijing’s Belt Road Initiative (BRI) scheme.&nbsp; Last month, Sichuan Wangping Energy Science and Technology gave up its license to build the 235MW Humla Karnali-1 and 335MW Humla Karnali-2 in partnership with a Nepali company. The survey permit for these projects has now been granted to Ruru Hydropower, a Nepali company. The 1,200MW Budi Gandaki reservoir project has been caught in a geopolitical tangle between India and Nepal for the past six years. In May 2017, the Pushpa Kamal Dahal government handed over the project to China’s Gezhouba Group without competition. A few months later in October, the Deuba-led government reversed the decision and said Nepal would build it. Fast forward a year later and the Oli-led government gave Budi Gandaki back to Gezhouba, only for the Deuba-led coalition government in March 2022 to reverse the decision again. Exasperated, the then-Chinese ambassador Hou Yanqi said abandoned diplomatic niceties and said publicly that it was wrong for Nepal to change its decision every time a government changed. Says Ganesh Karki of IPPAN: “We have to conclude that because of India’s stance, it is difficult to get Chinese investment in Nepal’s hydropower. The top political leadership should lobby with India to remove this obstacle.” The hydro of hydropower&nbsp; Nepal’s former energy secretary Dwarika Nath Dhungel is convinced India considers water a strategic commodity, and its emphasis on electricity export hides its real intention to secure water supply in the coming decades.&nbsp; “We in Nepal, on the other hand, have no idea about this, and there is no clarity about our own water and energy policy. In fact, our policymakers are not working in the national interest at all,” he adds. Studies have shown that water scarcity in the Indo-Gangetic plains will increase as Himalayan glaciers dry up, and the groundwater level falls due to over-extraction. And in the monsoon, there is too much water, so the world’s most densely populated region is hit by destructive floods. &nbsp; Building storage dams in Nepal is a win-win-win for India, reducing flood risk, augmenting dry season flow of Nepali rivers that flow across the border, and generating electricity. Nepal will get some export income, but will not benefit much from irrigation since it only has a narrow strip of land in the Tarai, and large tracts of its fertile mountain valleys will be inundated by future reservoirs. “Nepal’s export of a few thousand megawatts will not mean much for India's huge power system with a capacity of around 400,000MW,” adds Dhungel. “What India is fixated on is our water. And that is why it does not want any third parties involved, especially not China.” Former secretary at the Ministry of Energy Anup Kumar Upadhyay on the other hand is all for more Indian investment in Nepal’s hydropower, and does not think there is any ulterior motive. He argues that the model in which Nepal is allowing Indian companies to build projects is beneficial to Nepal in the long term. At present, Indian companies that have received permission to build hydropower plants have agreed to provide about 22% of electricity to the Nepal government for free. And after 25 years, these projects will be fully owned by Nepal. Says Upadhyay: "Whatever projects we are giving to India now, India does not even have the benefit of regular water flow from them, so there is no reason to be suspicious that India has a grand design to control our rivers." Indeed, there are many in Nepal, even those critical of Indian behaviour, who say Nepal cannot choose its neighbours and it might as well keep India happy by ensuring that the river agreements are fair to Nepal as well.

Geopolitics of Nepal’s rivers

The <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/himal-media-mela-2022-726cqsd6">Himal Media Mela</a> 2023 sponsored by Ncell, opened on the World Press Freedom on 3 May in Kathmandu with practitioners from Nepal and the region examining journalism and how it can be meaningful and survive. “Press freedom is not just for journalists, it is a right of every citizen. We journalists have to safeguarded it,” said co-publisher of Himalmedia Kunda Dixit in his opening remarks. The theme of this year’s two-day Himal Media Media is ‘trust and introspection’ at a time when media has undergone a massive transformation in the recent years.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230503120548_357accde61295e6a0914d0e23d94d8e7718160d4effa0ff69d68a222a08ee4b3.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20230503120548_357accde61295e6a0914d0e23d94d8e7718160d4effa0ff69d68a222a08ee4b3" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1366" loading="lazy" alt="Himal Media Mela 2023"> <figcaption>Himalmedia co-publisher Kunda Dixit giving his opening remarks. Photos: Gopen Rai and Suman Nepali</figcaption> </figure>  Legacy media and new portals alike are now vying for both readership and revenue with TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. And now with the use of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/media-melee-in-the-age-of-ai">AI in the newsrooms</a>, there is a real question about the relevance of traditional journalism. On the other hand, with the proliferation of mis- and disinformation, the public's trust in mainstream media is eroding rapidly. The pressure to be the quickest to disseminate news without fact-checking information hasn’t helped matters.&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/news/media-as-the-custodian-of-people">Media as the custodian of the people</a>, Shristi Karki Added Dixit: “Nepal has entered a new decade, but we have more or less the same leaders, the same disputes, the same reactive media content that we have seen over the past two decades. Besides trying to find a new role for media in the age of AI, Nepal’s traditional press also needs to turn the gaze on itself.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230503120544_c6cde8ff92cbbc50ff69aa71e5b53bd68997f497c5077a1e3401231a9bccab4e.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20230503120544_c6cde8ff92cbbc50ff69aa71e5b53bd68997f497c5077a1e3401231a9bccab4e" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1366" loading="lazy" alt="Himal Media Mela 2023"> <figcaption>Keynote speaker Siddharth Varadarajan, Founding Editor of The Wire.</figcaption> </figure>  Keynote speaker Siddhartha Varadarajan, the Founding Editor of The Wire said the media is under great threats and challenges even as there is a greater consciousness of human rights and democracy across the world. “Historically when democracy has come under strain and perished, it has because of the collapse of open, free democratic media,” said Varadarajan, giving next-door India’s example. “In Nepal, media freedom is seen as something sacrosanct. It is powerful that Nepal is a meeting place for Southasia when other countries are happy to close their borders to ideas.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230503120544_1fc71ce0f69a74e5a161d20971370e9f84ee3e46ed15adb132cdc5815b71330a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20230503120544_1fc71ce0f69a74e5a161d20971370e9f84ee3e46ed15adb132cdc5815b71330a" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1366" loading="lazy" alt="Himal Media Mela 2023"> </figure>  But just as social media and digital platforms have made it easier for the dissemination of news and content to reach more audience, technology has also allowed the government and censurers to further restrict and control media like the use of a spyware Pegasus for the surveillance of journalists. Reporters and publication houses are also being increasingly harassed with defamation, sedition and criminal charges. Worse, they are threatened with physical harm. Many journalists in the region have in fact lost their lives for their critical voice. Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/paradigm-shift-in-nepali-media">Paradigm shift in Nepali media</a>, Shristi Karki But perhaps the biggest change for mainstream media today is to sustain itself. Journalism today has an even more important role in safeguarding democracy and press freedom against populist demagogues but media companies are at their financially weakest. And a f<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-new-news-age">inancially weak media is not politically independent</a>.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230503120544_372ba75c18c86065d1602425214026342bac2d4929359dd5f4a7df8c6b9a77b1.jpg" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="20230503120544_372ba75c18c86065d1602425214026342bac2d4929359dd5f4a7df8c6b9a77b1" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1366" loading="lazy" alt="Himal Media Mela 2023"> </figure>  "The less media rely on government favours, large companies and sponsors, and more on your subscription, donation and contribution from your readers, viewers and the civic society, the more it will be sustainable and credible,” added Varadarajan who set up The Wire to be a non-profit digital platform. He also warned media and civil society in Nepal not to be complacent. “Don’t take Nepal’s openness for granted, guard it and protect it,” he said.&nbsp; Media and coverage of evolving geopolitics In the first panel of the day, speakers Sudheer Sharma of Kantipur and Kanak Mani Dixit of Himalmedia delved into increasing interest of India, China and now the United States in Nepal as the battle for regional dominance intensifies.  <figure> <img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230503120544/90033c822b9a057369e821f5c28cd7ab216da08b6225af1f0c9d0a937074b802.jpg" alt="" /> <figcaption>First panel of the day, Media and coverage of evolving geopolitics. </figcaption> </figure>  This has further heightened the importance of how Nepali media balances its coverage with India-Sino and US-Sino relations arguably at its most fragile. “In Delhi, Nepal and our media is seen as pro-China whereas when I was in Beijing, I could see that the Chinese thought we have been Americanised following the ratification of the MCC,” said Sharma who is the editor of the largest daily in Nepal, Kantipur.&nbsp; He added: "But at a time when there are more challenges due to the increased geopolitical tension which needs to be tackled with zeal and alertness, the ability of our organisation and leadership seems to have dininished." Sharma also stressed that Nepali media’s coverage of geopolitics focused too much on political diplomacy and not much on economic diplomacy even as Nepal tries to export its hydropower surplus to India.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230503120544_58fc10d372333add459796f274b8b12f2437f8832d286193aa498259f9c92d44.jpg" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="20230503120544_58fc10d372333add459796f274b8b12f2437f8832d286193aa498259f9c92d44" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1366" loading="lazy" alt="Himal Media Mela 2023"> <figcaption>Speaker Sudheer Sharma, editor of Kantipur.</figcaption> </figure>  The installed capacity of hydropower projects in Nepal is expected to cross 3,000MW this monsoon and another 3,200MW will be added to the grid in the next three years. With domestic consumption at just 1,600MW, the only other alternative is to export surplus, except India doesn’t buy power from projects with Chinese investment or contractors. In fact, India is edging China out of Nepal’s river projects as water becomes a strategic commodity. “Media is raising these issues to an extent but that discourse is never really brought to the light because of politics and our parties,” said Kanak Mani Dixit, co-publisher of Himalmedia. “Nepal is the oldest nation-state in South Asia, but Nepali politicians have often put Nepal’s geopolitics on the line for their interests.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230503120544_b0793aa82c9936af1b4dc2dcc10b38a503af060f319fa13f9f7f0b7d2b3e4336.jpg" data-media-id="editor_11" data-image-id="20230503120544_b0793aa82c9936af1b4dc2dcc10b38a503af060f319fa13f9f7f0b7d2b3e4336" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1366" loading="lazy" alt="Himal Media Mela 2023"> <figcaption>Speaker Kanak Mani Dixit, co-publisher of Himalmedia.</figcaption> </figure>  Ahead of the 2024 elections in India, speakers also warned of politicised use of Hindutva in Nepal and that Nepali media needs to be alert so as not to let the pincer of Hindutva enter our politics and society. “Nepal is too diverse a society to be defined by one form of Hindutva or the other but we have groups who wish these sentiments to flourish in Nepal but it is up to the media to take this up,” remarked Dixit. He added: "Nepal is a meeting place for South Asia and has to remain an open space for itself and for the region. And the media has to realise this soft power of Nepal." Data Journalism Data is crucial for good journalism. Paper trails and data mining have led to some of the biggest money laundering exposes. Data supported journalism has led to constructive discourse in a longer term. "In any developing or developed economy, availability of data, its quality and depth help citizens as well as policymakers to form democratic decisions. Data allows better discourse, it is critical when forming unbiased and objective judgement in any issue" said guest speaker Govindraj Ethiraj of IndiaSpend and BOOM FactCheck as he presented various case studies to prove the point.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230503120544_319b0473f2a9d48dcb88a78a8e6aae2f179046880baeecc45ff8d7146fb527ca.jpg" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="20230503120544_319b0473f2a9d48dcb88a78a8e6aae2f179046880baeecc45ff8d7146fb527ca" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1366" loading="lazy" alt="Himal Media Mela 2023"> <figcaption>Govindraj Ethiraj of IndiaSpend during his session on data journalism.</figcaption> </figure>  IndiaSpend found out that 12PM at noon has the best air quality in India for a walk, mornings were the worst much like in Kathmandu. They also found that odd-even vehicle rule did not actually help reduce air pollution in Delhi. Ethiraj also briefed the audience about an on-going project to measure methane emission in India, which they found out was among the biggest polluters in India with the country being the fourth biggest emitter. But oftentimes, it is hard to access data, either because they are withheld or because it is very time consuming to crunch all the numbers and clean them up. Other times, there is simply no data.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2023050313050_ed561208530ccbdf6b979738adc90851da17cad7b4ccfd692deab0f6b2e19c8b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_13" data-image-id="2023050313050_ed561208530ccbdf6b979738adc90851da17cad7b4ccfd692deab0f6b2e19c8b" data-rendition-name="original" width="2048" height="1366" loading="lazy" alt="Himal Media Mela 2023"> </figure>  “There will be data gaps especially on critical matters but let us ask for better quality data, more data but equally use the data that is already there in your hand to build high quality journalism which is really critical in this time and day. And project that data in a way people can make sense of it,” added Ethiraj. Given the importance of data in storytelling, there is often a question of whether the story comes first or data. Said Ethiraj: "Truth is, they go together. As much data, as many stories. This aids us in making unbiased opinions and objectives, presents a clearer picture, and empower people with better understanding."

Nepal should be open for South Asia

Nepal’s Transitional Justice and the West’s recalibration

<div class="embed-block"><a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/issue/133">							<img width="762" height="261" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150236/63fe11c39c7e80680e0da4f5jpeg.jpg" alt=""></a>
											Issue #133 21-27 February 2003</div>
The obsession of our leaders with Singapore is unmatched. Every prime minister we have had in the 30 years (some of them serial prime ministers) has promised to turn Nepal into a Singapore one too many times. Why not just build a Nepal that is just and fair for everyone?
Many readers are going through a withdrawal syndrome after the Ass formally stepped down, including the author his-self. This week we revisit one of the earlier <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=4308#.Y_guAy8w1KM">‘Under My Hat’ columns</a> which takes a dig at our Singaporean aspirations.&nbsp;
Excerpts from <a href="https://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/nepalitimes/pdf/Nepali_Times_133.pdf">issue #133 21-27 February 2003</a> 20 years ago this week:
If, one day, we want to become filthy rich like the Singaporeans, it is pretty clear that we must institute stiff fines for all major and minor misdemeanours and also turn ourselves into a penal colony.
But let’s be realistic: do our army, navy and air force have the capacity to instill fines on every non-flushing Nepali? Sadly, the answer is an unequivocal “no”. So, unlike Singapore, which penalises offenders with fines, we must use positive enforcement by rewarding those who do things right. In Nepal, instead of taking money away from those who litter, we must give money to those who don’t.
Cash prize of Rs 2,000 for the lone pedestrian who actually used the overhead walkway at Bhotahity in the last fiscal year. To be presented at a public felicitation ceremony chaired by the Mayor of Kathmandu or the MP of Kathmandu, whoever is elected first.
The Honest Cop Award in Cash or Kind for the pre-embarkation security check personnel at Tribhuvan Intercontinental Ballistic Airport who doesn’t ask you to open your wallet during the mandatory body search and contribute generously to the Free Lunch Fund for Kathmandu’s Finest.
The columnist who adheres to the highest standards of personal hygiene by not grooming his nostrils in full view of the rest of his staff during the course of writing the above column. This award carries with it a permanent residence certificate for Singapore. Terima Kasi.
From archive material of Nepali Times of the past 20 years, site search: <a href="http://www.nepalitimes.com/" target="_blank">www.nepalitimes.com</a>

Singha Darbar, not Singapore

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150236/63fe11b39c7e80680e0da4f1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="880"/><figcaption>Richard Solomon playing with Chinese table tennis champion Zhuang Zedong.</figcaption></figure>On June 19, 1972, a Boeing 707 belonging to the United States Presidential fleet, touched down at Peking Airport at 7:30 pm on what a New York Times report referred to as ‘a warm bright evening’.The flight had departed Andrews Air Force Base two days earlier in choppy weather with stops in Hawaii and the US Military base in Guam and touched down in Shanghai briefly where a Chinese pilot was picked up, presumably for navigational and security purposes.After all, this was still during the early phases of the thaw in Sino-US relations on the heels of the historic visit of President Richard Nixon to China in February 1972. Significant distrust was still in the process of being worked out.The Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China Ji Pengfei was on hand to receive the US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger on this day. This would be Kissinger’s fourth visit to Beijing in less than a year: his secret visit to Beijing via Pakistan took place in July 1971, followed by an officially scheduled visit in October of that year, then accompanying Richard Nixon during the President’s historic visit in February 1972.Emerging from the aircraft that evening at Peking airport behind Kissinger was a 35-year-old National Security Council (NSC) staffer by the name of Richard H Solomon. In the annals of history of this critical period of diplomacy between the United States and China, which continues to shape events even of the 21st century, the memory of individuals like Ambassador Solomon sadly appears to recede into a distant background.Richard Solomon died in 2017 at the age of 79. He was a central figure in a dramatis personae that helped end more than two decades of almost absolute diplomatic estrangement between China and the United States.In the current politically charged environment, especially in the aftermath of Covid-19, it is easy to forget just how important that breakthrough in US-China relations was, and continues to be for the subsequent evolution of global history. In less than 20 years after Nixon’s groundbreaking visit to China, the Cold War effectively ended leaving the United States as the sole superpower.This was largely due to a US strategic posture that balanced China against the former Soviet Union. Solomon noted in a 2011 interview that the “shared security threat” is what welded the two very unlikely societies together.China’s engagement with the United States in the early 1970s, set in motion processes that would lead to China’s integration into the global economic order, and subsequently lead to unprecedented economic growth and the lifting of hundreds of millions of people from poverty.It is actually testament to the past contribution of less well-know people such as Richard Solomon that many observers today are able to make the argument that the US-China relationship will be the most significant one of the 21st century.What makes a person like Richard Solomon especially appealing in the broad sweep of the history of Sino-US relations (and diplomacy more generally) is that he was a scholar-practitioner par excellence, the likes of which are becoming increasingly rare today.Moreover, his contributions are overlooked and left unacknowledged vis a vis people like Kissinger and Nixon. He was appointed to the US National Security Council in the fall of 1971 as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow.At age 34, he arrived at the White House and ‘immediately got heavily drawn into the whole process of normalizing <a href="https://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Solomon,%20Richard%20A.toc.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.adst.org/OH%2520TOCs/Solomon,%2520Richard%2520A.toc.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1676628565693000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2RaA48JvVogqtGGcUnLf77">US relations with China</a>’. Prior to this appointment, Solomon had already developed extensive credentials as an authority on China.He was a student at MIT under Lucian Pye, the noted political scientist and China watcher, and had witnessed China become ‘a matter of contemporary public interest’ in the United States due to the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1958 over the Quemoy and Matsu islands and also because of the Sino-Soviet split that had already commenced in 1960. A serendipitous event in June 1961 in the office of his PhD supervisor at MIT, Lucian Pye, appears to have launched Solomon’s career irrevocably in the direction of becoming a China specialist.As the story has it, he and Pye were sitting across the table from one another when the telephone rang. On the line was the famous American economist Walt Whitman Rostow, author of The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Rostow was then running the Policy Planning staff in the Kennedy Administration, and told his former MIT colleague Lucian Pye that ‘intelligence information indicated that the <a href="https://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Solomon,%20Richard%20A.toc.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.adst.org/OH%2520TOCs/Solomon,%2520Richard%2520A.toc.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1676628565693000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2RaA48JvVogqtGGcUnLf77">Chinese were in the midst of a major food crisis</a>, and he wondered if Pye knew anyone who could analyse some of the information that was beginning to emerge on how the Chinese were dealing with this food crisis’.Pye looked across his office table and responded to Rostow: “Well, we have a young man right here who might be right for this project. I’ll get back to you.” This call set off a chain of events in the career of the young PhD student who then went on to study Chinese for the next five years at Yale, Harvard, the Taiwan National University and in Hong Kong.His PhD work differed substantially from existing Sinology of the time which centered on ‘analysis of classical texts and heavily Confucian-oriented’. Solomon’s research was based out of Hong Kong and Taiwan where he did actual empirical interviews with ‘100 Chinese refugees from the mainland of China who represented the three existing generations: the generation who had lived most of their lives under the Qing dynasty that collapsed in 1912; those who had lived during the Warlord period; and the more recent generation who had grown up, at least in part, under the communists’.This could not have been a better way to understand the ‘political culture’ for his PhD, the seemingly ‘simple’ notion that people from different cultures or countries think about and experience politics in radically different way. He was perhaps not so simplistic and way ahead of his times in trying to grapple with what makes Chinese politics and political practice distinct, instead of naively assuming or expecting, as one example, that there would be an automatic correlation between the opening up of its economy and the evolution of liberal western-style democracy in China.Richard Solomon went on to write several important books such as the voluminous 600-page Mao’s Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture in September 1971 just as he started work at the NSC under Kissinger. Solomon’s substantive policy work at the NSC started out with ‘liaising or bridging over to the academic community’, essentially devising possibilities for academic and other such exchanges with China, an experience that led to what Solomon referred to as his first “operational assignment” as Nixon and Kissinger’s ‘representative in the Chinese ping-pong team’s American tour in April of 1972’.Solomon explains that ping-pong diplomacy was one aspect of the ‘signaling’ that was taking place from Mao and Zhou Enlai and from Nixon too as early as 1967 via his Foreign Affairs article (and built upon via secret diplomatic communications that started in 1969 or even earlier) indicating that there was a serious interest for engagement in both the United States and in China.Solomon was placed in an extraordinary position at this time, having been ‘assigned to escort the Chinese ping-pong team around [America] as the “eyes and ears” of the White House’. His primary remit was to understand as best as possible the mood and views of the Chinese ping-pong delegation.According to Adam Bernstein of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/richard-solomon-kissinger-aide-involved-in-ping-pong-diplomacy-with-china-dies-at-79/2017/03/14/a8866d74-ef03-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/richard-solomon-kissinger-aide-involved-in-ping-pong-diplomacy-with-china-dies-at-79/2017/03/14/a8866d74-ef03-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1676628565693000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0LAPCNNtAEODL3QDuWBUh8">The Washington Post</a>, here was an extremely unique personality, ‘a China scholar who assisted in the historic “ping-pong diplomacy” that led to the opening of US-Sino relations in the 1970s, who became an authority on Chinese pressure tactics during negotiations’ with Chinese officials.In 1976, Solomon left the National Security Council to work in academia as head of the political science department RAND Corporation. Solomon himself <a href="https://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Solomon,%20Richard%20A.toc.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.adst.org/OH%2520TOCs/Solomon,%2520Richard%2520A.toc.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1676628565693000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2RaA48JvVogqtGGcUnLf77">described RAND</a> as a ‘FFRDC—a Federally Funded Research and Development Center … that conducted about two-thirds of its work under contract to the Defense Department’.The most important study he carried out during his time at RAND was one that was commissioned by US intelligence agencies that was expressly focused on Chinese political negotiating behaviour. Solomon explained that “that project resulted in a book-length study that was first published on a classified basis within the government and then a decade later was finally made public’.The title of the book is Chinese Political Negotiating Behavior, 1967-1984. As it remained classified for a number of years, we can assume that it served as not only required reading material for important leaders and bureaucrats in successive US administrations, but that it moulded opinion as well.Bhaskar Koirala is an independent analyst associated with Peking University.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150236/63fe11b89c7e80680e0da4f2jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="754"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150236/63fe11bc9c7e80680e0da4f3jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="754"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150236/63fe11c09c7e80680e0da4f4jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="754"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><h2>The Chinese negotiation approach</h2>Richard Solomon’s study is still available on the RAND Corporation website is summarised in the following way:‘An assessment of the patterns and practices in the ways officials of the People's Republic of China (PRC) managed high-level political negotiations with the United States during the normalization phase of relations between the two countries. This study is designed to provide guidance for senior American officials prior to their negotiating encounters with PRC counterparts and to establish control over the documentary record of U.S.-PRC political exchanges between 1967 and 1984. A basic finding of the study is that Chinese officials conduct negotiations in a distinctive, but not unique, manner consisting of a meticulously managed progression of well-defined stages. The approach is influenced by both Western diplomatic practice and the Marxist-Leninist tradition acquired from the Soviet Union, but its most distinctive qualities are based on China's own cultural tradition and political practices.’

geopolitics