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For the head of a Nepali government with nearly two-thirds majority in the federal legislature, and effective control of six of the seven provinces, the sequence of events he set in motion on April 22 were tantamount to a political hara-kiri. The country under an unprecedented medical emergency, PM KP Oli tried to engineer a split in a Madhes-based party, which at the best was a marginal player in national politics. To this effect, the cabinet passed a pair of ordinances in the afternoon, and by the evening the President had even given them her stamp of approval. But the legal change making it easier to split national political parties backfired on the Prime Minister. Instead of the Samajbadi Party splitting and a section of it joining the federal government, as he expected, the legal change brought about the long-delayed merger between the Samajbadi Party and the RJPN, another major force in Tarai-Madhes.  

Oli’s rivals in the ruling party will use the shocking failure of this Machiavellian maneuvering of their co-chairman to question his leadership. The opposition against him had already been building in the Nepal Communist Party, largely after the mending of fences between co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal and senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal. The ordinances would have helped Oli split the NCP and form his own party if he felt his PM’s position and party chairmanship were under threat. 

India played an instrumental role in the midnight merger. It wanted a force that could help challenge ‘pro-China’ Oli’s national premiership, and a strong outfit in Madhes under its control. Without India’s intervention, Oli’s plan to split the Samajbadi Party would probably have succeeded. 
However the merger came about, the unity of the two Madhes-based parties will solidify the Madhesi agenda. “I have been getting calls from Madhesis from every walk of life ever since the merger was announced,” says Tula Narayan Shah, an analyst of Madhesi politics who also had a dormant role in the Samajbadi Party. “They are all jubilant.” Why?

“You see, they see it as a part of the evolution of the Madhesi society from the ‘voter class’ to the ‘leader class’. The Madhesi society has been politicized, and the confidence is rising that they can finally claim leadership roles at the national level,” says Shah. Well and good, but will the merger last to warrant such enthusiasm? Shah says there is no guarantee of continued unity, given the ‘make-and-break’ history of Madhesi parties and their leader-centric politics. But he expects the unity to be intact at least until the next general elections.

Its implications on national politics will be massive. NCP co-chair Dahal, for one, is reportedly euphoric with the merger. If Oli splits the NCP or is reluctant to transfer party leadership, it clears the way for future collaboration between former Maoists, Madhesi parties and the main opposition Nepali Congress, most likely under Dahal’s leadership.   

Any way you look at it, Oli loses. He has made a career out of bold risks. His latest has failed, and he has to live with the consequences. Alas, President Bidya Devi Bhandari, who has already done great harm to her office by acting as the PMO’s rubberstamp, may not be able to come to his rescue this time.

We already have a glimpse of the post-corona world order. When the pandemic subsides, the Americans could double down on China. Trump is sure to sharpen his anti-Sinic slurs in the lead up to the presidential elections, whenever they take place. Republicans are also trying to paint Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for the president, as soft on China. As the bipartisan anti-China bias solidifies in the US capital, Biden will be forced into a more confrontational approach to Beijing. Then there are the Russians, who are again expected to meddle in the US elections. Whoever wins, the US-Russia relations will continue to be rocky.

At the same time, the India-US partnership under the Indo-Pacific Strategy will get progressively better, with a clear geopolitical ramification for Nepal. India and the US will increasingly work in concert to buttress the ‘democratic camp’ in Nepal, and China will try to help the communist government in Kathmandu to resist this pressure. And China could do so with Russia’s help. Were it not for the corona pandemic, Russian President Vladimir Putin could have come to Nepal this year. The Cold War-era bunkers in the Russian Embassy in Kathmandu await a new round of China-Russia tête-à-tête.

There is a remarkable coherence between the foreign policy outlooks of Moscow and Beijing, considering their troubled borders and centuries-old enmity. At the moment, the two regional behemoths reckon they have no option but to together push back against the new American designs in Eurasia. They are thus ready to bury the old hatchet. RT, the state-controlled Russian television, is these days dominated by discussions where participants heap praises on China for standing up to ‘American imperialism’ and for coming to the medical help of the likes of Italy and Spain, while the US, the supposed friend of these European countries, had nothing to offer.

The Chinese press has likewise been busy chastising Washington for its supposed failure to save the lives of its own people even while it pushes ‘criminal’, corona-enabling sanctions against Iran and Venezuela. And there are only good words for Russia in the Chinese press. China’s recent military maneuvers in the South China Sea, meanwhile, shows that it is intent on preserving its primacy in the neighborhood, corona or no corona.

When I asked an old China hand in Nepal how the corona crisis would change Nepali geopolitics, pat came his reply: “There is now a clear case for closing the open Nepal-India border. The corona pandemic has clarified that the open border is a danger to our sovereignty.” Such voices will get stronger in the days ahead, and they will find plenty of ears in the Oli government.

Many think the prospect of Russia and China working together to secure their geopolitical interests in South Asia is fanciful. But as the Americans get more and more assertive here, it is only natural for the two to pool their resources to fight against this ‘American hegemony’. In the long run, the curse of geography forces Russia and China apart. But for the time being the calculations of individual strongmen like Xi and Putin will prevail. 

On the first day of Nepal lockdown, I rushed to get some books for the long furlough that lay ahead. All stores I visited were closed. The only other option was to reread some books I liked. I picked up Robert D. Kaplan’s The Revenge of Geography. I had already read it twice, the second time around two years ago. Yet I found it as intriguing and entertaining the third time.

The premise of the book is simple enough. Rebutting the assertion of The New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman that the world is getting ‘flatter’ thanks to the dispersal of technology and ease of travel, Kaplan argues that the salience of geography remains strong as ever. Yes, the world is more interconnected today than it ever was; yet it is far from a ‘global village’. Instead, the virtual shrinkage of geography has resulted in a more claustrophobic world, making conflicts more likely. It would thus be foolish to write off the salience of geography and culture.

The importance of the map is easily manifest for Nepal, jammed as it is between India and China. Its flat border with India makes the import of Indian culture easy while the barrier of the highest mountains in the world places a severe limit on how close it can get to China. No amount of advancement in technology or ease of travel can erase this hard fact.

Nepal has relations with countries around the world. Yet, when in 2015 it drafted its constitution, the national life was brought to a standstill because a single country had opposed the new national charter. Nepal subsequently tried to diversify its trade options. But India will continue to dictate its foreign trade considering the costlier option of trading via China. Again, Nepal cannot easily overcome its geography.

Yet Kaplan is not deterministic. He convincingly argues in the book that even though geography cannot be overlooked, individual actors can help mitigate the limitations it imposes. India today would have been a different place without Mahatma Gandhi, just like the world map would have been different without Adolph Hitler. During the blockade, KP Oli stood firm against the blackmailing of the regional hegemon and eventually forced New Delhi to relax the blockade.

Early in the 20^th century, Rana Prime Minister Chandra Shumsher secured Nepal’s independent status. Had he not appeased the British and agreed to send Nepalis to fight on their behalf in the First World War, the 1923 treaty recognizing Nepal’s sovereignty would not have been sighed. In that case, Nepal would today have been a part of India, a fate that befell former princely states in British India.

Long before that, Nepal’s founding father Prithvi Narayan Shah advised a careful balance between India and China. He understood that Nepal’s precarious geography did not allow the country to make a decisive tilt towards any of its two giant neighbors. Yet Shah also didn’t stop his expansion drive in the fear of its neighbors.

The importance of geography is undeniable. But so is the role of individual actors. Often, more than the constraints imposed by geography it is the fatalism of its rulers that dooms a country.

Top Nepali government officials, including the deputy prime minister and the foreign minister, are unhappy with India. They have a problem with India’s ‘underhand approach’ in dealing with India-based Nepali migrant workers now headed for Nepal. When India is under an official lockdown, and all long-distance travel has been forbidden, why is it allowing thousands of Nepali migrants to travel to the Indo-Nepal border? This reminds many Nepali officials of the refugee crisis back in the 1990s, when India gave a safe passage into Nepal to 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese nationals.

Yet there is a fundamental difference in the Bhutanese refugee crisis and what is happening right now. India undoubtedly played a dubious role in the refugee crisis. Given its vast sway over the Bhutanese government, it could have put pressure on Thimpu to stop ethnic violence against the Nepali-speaking Lhotshampas and to adjust them peacefully. It didn’t. Right now, it is the case of Nepali citizens wanting to come back to their country, which they have every right to do. It is also hard to accuse the Indian government of bad intent when India is itself struggling to stop the massive movements of people inside its own borders.

The traditionally checkered relations between India and Nepal, and especially the 2015-16 blockade, makes Nepalis deeply mistrust New Delhi. As Kathmandu has of late enhanced its ties with Beijing, the government in Nepal has also been rather bold in its anti-India proclamations. Yet, at its root, what the recent problem between India and Nepal highlights is the depth in their relations, which may have both positive as well as negative consequences.

India is very familiar to most Nepalis, which makes them think they understand the country: its strengths, its weaknesses, and its compulsions. We may not all like the Indians, but familiarity builds a level of trust. It is hard for us to similarly view the Chinese whose ways of life can seem alien. Incidents like the supply of substandard anti-corona kits further tarnishes China’s image here. Could the Chinese government have ensured only the best kits were sent to Nepal? Perhaps.

I don’t think China had a malicious intent, though. More likely, there was a gap in communication between the two sides, something that has long been a salient feature of Nepal-China relations. The Nepali side says it wants something, the Chinese think the Nepalis are asking for something else, and the outcome is a disaster. Only in few years have there been real efforts to understand the Chinese—and trust is not something you can build overnight.  

When the corona pandemic is over, there is likely to be considerable global backlash against China for its mishandling of the Wuhan crisis. This backlash will often border on xenophobia. Both the governments of Nepal and China have to be mindful that this xenophobia is kept in check. Nothing right now is more important than opening up more lines of communication between the two countries, and to minimize disinformation. Nepal-China ties can never be comparable to Nepal-India ties. But there is no reason we cannot better understand China.

With the head of the government out of the picture because of his poor health, the lapses we see in the country’s response to the snowballing Covid-19 crisis were perhaps to be expected. But they were not inevitable. The convalescing Prime Minister KP Oli would have done his country a world of good had he temporarily transferred executive powers to someone else. He didn’t. This resulted in chaos down the chain of command. Deputy Prime Minister Ishwar Pokhrel was tasked with leading the government coronavirus response. But most of his instructions seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Not that other top government officials have exactly covered themselves in glory either.

In a shocking development, the corona test kits and protective equipment imported from China are reportedly of questionable quality. But this isn’t China’s fault necessarily. It was Nepal that ordered these untested kits; China simply delivered them. The only logical way Nepalis make sense of this is to assume that at least some people made a lot of illegal money in this transaction. There also seems to be zero coordination between the three tiers of the government in dealing with the impending coronavirus epidemic. Money is being doled out right and left, with zero accountability. 

Then there are the Nepali citizens who have been prevented from entering their homeland. Under international law, the country cannot bar its own citizens from coming. But short of reliable quarantine facilities and testing kits, the state also fears its incoming citizens might carry the dreaded coronavirus. To be fair, any government would have had a tough time managing movement through the open border during a crisis like this. Yet the amount of confusion and helplessness on display was unwarranted. Again, there does not seem to be a clear chain of command running from the center down to the grassroots.  

Countries around the world have struggled with the corona epidemic, even those who were supposedly well equipped to deal with it. But one unmistakable lesson is that the most effective response involves close cooperation between different tiers of government and active participation of the private sector. There is also someone in charge of the whole process. Establishing a clear chain of command and constantly communicating the government intent and plans is thus vital. People here are already dying from undiagnosed illnesses. Daily essentials are in short supply. Thousands of Nepalis untested for corona are lined up at the border, ready to enter. Time is of essence.   

We will eventually overcome the novel coronavirus pandemic. But Nepal will never overcome its geopolitics. The Covid-19 pandemic will cause untold pain and hardship here. Yet as soon as it’s over, or even before it, geopolitics will make a resounding comeback. Even during a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic, Nepal was careful not to antagonize either of its two big neighbors, by asking each for nearly equal help in dealing with the virus. But the goal was always to import trained men and vital material from China, which has already significantly controlled the spread of virus within its borders. 
 
US President Donald Trump has thrown down the geopolitical gauntlet through his repeated reference to the ‘China virus’. Beijing has doubled down in response, accusing American bombers of dropping the coronavirus into its territory. The Middle Kingdom was quick to reach out to the rest of the world, including Nepal, asking them not to use Trump’s ‘xenophobic’ virus labeling. Even though China may have bungled its first response to the outbreak and let the virus spread, it has since offered every kind of help to other countries deal with the corona crisis. Beijing had also asked Kathmandu what it needed.  
 
Meanwhile, the MCC compact is stuck in the Nepali parliament, and with the election of Maoist hardliner Agni Sapkota as the new speaker, it is not sure to pass. No, it is not Chinese pressure holding up the compact. But China surely does not like the idea of the Americans spreading their influence in South Asia. It loathes the rapprochement between India and the US and New Delhi’s increasing willingness to partner with the Americans to minimize Chinese influence in the region. As Yun Sun points out in War on the Rocks, “The consensus in China seems to be that India wants and needs to rely on the United States to balance China’s growing regional dominance.”
 
Nepal will thus be forced into increasingly harder choices. If the current communist regime is seen as continuing to cozy up to Beijing, and resisting the Indo-Pacific Strategy, the search for the regime’s alternative will intensify. Again, the calculation in New Delhi is that it can challenge Beijing’s designs on South Asia only with American help. So much the better if Washington also promotes the idea of India as the undisputed leader of South Asia. 
 
Despite the corona videoconference, there is no real possibility of SAARC’s revival. Modi remains steadfast on his anti-Muslim Hindutwa agenda. When the threat of importing corona from Pakistan into India is over, he would like to have nothing to do with Islamabad. This will push Pakistan closer to China, with the inevitable consequence of further bolstering Indo-US ties. Pakistan will then have no need for SAARC and by extension no need to accept India’s leadership of the region. The undermining of SAARC will further erode the bargaining power of its relatively smaller countries like Nepal. 
 
The corona scare has pushed China and the US further apart. Even if a Democrat wins the US presidential election, it is hard to see this bilateral relation improve much. The reverberations of this tussle will be felt around the world, including in Nepal, a geopolitical outpost the Americans have closely monitored since the 1950s. 
 
 
 

Since the federal government enforced the weeklong national lockdown starting March 24, it has been consistently urging people to stay home. This makes sense. Around the world, the only corona-control method that seems to work is social distancing: the fewer the number of people you come in contact with, the lesser the chances of you catching the dreaded virus. Yet when the lockdown was announced, many people also asked a simple question: Can everyone afford to lock themselves in their homes? 
 
What about the daily wage earners who struggle to make their ends meet if they don’t work for a day? Or those with disabilities and the elderly living alone, who are running out of rations? The National Human Rights Commission on March 26 urged the government to look after the needs of these vulnerable groups during the lockdown. Undoubtedly, this should be the top government priority. But the problem extends beyond those vulnerable groups. People in general are confused about the terms of the lockdown. The government says they can easily buy daily necessities. But most shops supplying these essentials are now shut, as are the grocery stores. 
 
The shopkeepers say they are hesitant to stay open as they don’t have the protective gear to keep themselves safe. To make matters worse, the police are forcefully closing many retail shops in the mistaken belief that they are required to do so, in a clear case of communication gap. Green vegetables are in short supply. Even when they are available, the prices are high. As the country is in the lockdown for the long haul, it is important to get these seemingly small things right. 
 
After the initial panic, people have been cooperative in helping enforce the lockdown, despite constant rumors of shortages of daily essentials. But their patience will be tested the longer the shutdown continues. People are just not used to staying cooped up in their homes for long. To keep their frustration in check, a clear and honest messaging is vital. Regular press conferences will help: If the government is working in public interest, let people know about it. 
 
The formula is simple: Tell the truth and keep us informed. If the government bungles this duty at a time of national emergency, it will quickly lose public support, to potentially disastrous consequences.  
 

These are tough times. The sheer level of uncertainty over the novel coronavirus can make your head spin. What do you do? You would like to trust the government that there are no active corona cases in Nepal. But then you think about the paucity of tests here and come to the inevitable conclusion that there must be at least a few undetected cases. This thought makes you a touch panicky. If, tomorrow, a few cases suddenly crop up, won’t there be an absolute pandemonium in the market? In that case, won’t daily necessities like LP gas, edibles and even soaps to wash your hands quickly disappear from shop-shelves?

Better to hoard these essentials when you can still get them relatively easily. You have a family to look after, don’t you? Why take chances then? But if everybody started thinking along these lines, one thing is certain: most of the stocks of these essentials will go to their highest bidders while those of lesser means will have to make do with the little morsels left behind. The tendency to hoard during a crisis, while natural, is also selfish. 

Even today, besides the now indispensable facemasks and sanitizers, there does not seem to be an acute shortage of any other daily necessity. Although there was an initial panic when the virus first started spreading around the world, it quickly subsided. People can see that most things they need are easily available. India has vowed to continue with its exports to Nepal, and all our major border points are still open. Even if some private petrol pumps have hung up ‘No petrol’ signs, you can easily get some fuel at one of the government-run pumps. 

Do everything to keep you and your family safe from the dreaded virus. But there as yet is no need to panic about your next meal. Perhaps if people see the government folks are out there monitoring for artificial shortages, and punishing those responsible, they will be assured more. A crisis of this magnitude can be tackled only if the government, the businesses, the citizens, the civil society, the media—all act as responsible social actors.