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No previous ‘world war’ or ‘pandemic’ had threatened humanity as much as the current Covid-19 crisis. Even the Second World War, the mother of all wars, wasn’t exactly a global affair. Fighting on behalf of Britain, around 24,000 Nepalis were killed, wounded or missing in action, according to Prem Uprety. The war also marked the watershed when western goods and ideas started filtering into Nepal along with the returning Lahures. Yet in that time and age of limited communication and Nepal’s policy of ‘splendid isolation’, a war that otherwise claimed 70-85 million folks was hardly a matter of common concern for dirt-poor Nepalis. Not so during the current Covid-19 crisis that has affected nearly everyone here. 

A Namibian is as affected by the pandemic as is a Norwegian or a Nepali, and the suffering is imminently relatable. Rich and poor follow the same safety protocol: social distancing, masks, hand sanitizers. I was recently talking to a Nepali friend of mine in Japan and he says rather than obsessing over his family’s health, he is more worried about his economic status, just like most Japanese. Remarkably, this corporate man’s concerns in Tokyo have come to reflect those of a rikshaw-puller in Kathmandu. They also fit perfectly with a recent Pew survey suggesting the Americans worry more about Covid-19’s economic fallouts than they do about its health upshots. 

The irrationality around the virus is also universal. Turn on CNN and you may see a report on how North Carolinians are being ‘highly irresponsible’ in openly flouting social distancing and mask norms, when exactly the same is happening in Nepal. Before long, globalization stood for opening of borders and minds, symbolized by free flows of goods and ideas. Yet for the Covid generation, it is as much about free flow of paranoia and disinformation. 

When Donald Trump pushes his scientists to take short cuts to a vaccine, we realize the faulty jabs could create universal misery. We are hooked to American general election as another Trump triumph could spell a disaster for the globe. We also worry about the resurgence of the virus in well-stocked Europe and wonder how we will ever control it here with our scant resources. And the rates of anxiety and depression have gone through the roof, again right around the globe. 

Recent surveys in China and the US suggest people there are etching to travel in 2021, come what may. Even in Nepal both domestic and international flights are up and running already. Frankly, I too can’t wait to dust off my travel shoes.  

But the next time I travel abroad—whenever that might be—I can be damned sure the people of the place I visit, however privileged, will have faced exactly the same plight that I did, for months on end. This might make me a little more empathetic. It will also make my jaunts a little less exotic. For now, I really understand that our outward differences aside, people the world over are on the same choppy waters. Moreover, the oarsmen we are relying on to see us safely ashore are singularly selfish and incompetent.    

Both the countries were monarchies within living memory. They are both landlocked and have similar population sizes. They are also SAARC member states. That is where the similarities between Nepal and Afghanistan end. Or do they? 

India and China are heavily invested in intra-Afghan peace talks taking place in Qatar’s Doha for the mainstreaming of the Taliban. India has never trusted the Taliban, which it sees as a proxy of the Pakistani army and holds responsible for terror attacks on its soil. India finds the prospect of Taliban’s return to power in Kabul troubling but in that case it has no option but to engage with the once-dreaded enemy.

That is because India’s continued aloofness could drive the future Afghan government, with Taliban representation, closer to Pakistan, which brokered the Doha talks. India could then have to live with the nightmare of a hostile Afghan-Pak-China strategic alliance next door. China has promised heavy investments in Afghan infrastructure—including on roads to Taliban-held areas—if the mujahideen abandon violence. Such help, China hopes, will prevent the radicalization of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang on Afghan border. 

The Americans, for their part, are keen to pull most of their troops out of Afghanistan after 19 bruising years of fighting, during which they lost 3,500 soldiers and $975 billion (and counting). Yet the US would like to continue to have a toehold in this old hotspot of global geopolitical intrigue. Besides the Indian and Chinese interests, Afghanistan is also never far from the Russian radar. 

The new, multi-pronged geopolitical (if less intense) tussles we now see in Nepal have long been the norm in Afghanistan. The Islamic state formally joined SAARC in 2007 at the insistence of India, the two countries having long suffered from terrorism emanating from Pakistan. Afghan foreign minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta left no doubt that the goal of his country’s SAARC entry was to “seek help from the SAARC member countries to join counterterrorism circles.” Including Afghanistan in SAARC, then led by India’s favorite Hamid Karzai, was also a way for India to balance China’s growing role as Pakistan’s enabler in the regional body.

The Afghans say their land will help South Asia connect with Central Asia. This is fanciful as Afghanistan will remain restive for years if not decades. ‘The Heart of Asia’ is also where China’s BRI ambitions hit a roadblock. 

Nepal joined the BRI to diversify its external links to Central Asia and beyond. Yet that will be difficult amid Afghanistan’s never-ending sectarian violence, coupled with rising tensions between India on one hand, and Pakistan and China, on the other. China wants Afghanistan to be a part of the CPEC that passes through the disputed Kashmiri territories, which is party why India and China are now close to a war. 

There is also no prospect of a revival of regional cooperation under SAARC. With this larger goal shelved, the story in all small South Asian states is now pretty much the same: that of intense India-China rivalry, with the Americans increasingly aligning with the Indians to checkmate China. This is as true of Afghanistan today as it is of Nepal and Sri Lanka.

SAARC’s dismal failure also underscores the continued relevance of national borders—the new India-China standoff only accentuating their importance. The big takeaway for Nepal is that, its BRI link to Central Asia sundered by the rugged Afghan mountains, it will continue to have to rely predominantly on its neighbors. As in Afghanistan abutting Iran and Pakistan, so in Nepal flanked by India and China.

Shaking with rage, a BJP-affiliated TV anchor openly challenges the writ of the (non-BJP) government of his host state. Modi puts Jammu and Kashmir under a lockdown for over a year. But there is not a squeak about the plight of the Kashmiris in mainstream Indian media, even as Indian Muslims are being systematically persecuted. The number of daily Covid-19 deaths in India is now highest in the world, and yet misogynistic plots spun around the death three months ago of a popular Bollywood actor continue to dominate daily headlines.

In Nepal, the voice of Nepali Congress, the main opposition, is supposedly at its weakest in the country’s democratic history. By the same standards, the voice of its Indian counterpart, the Indian National Congress, is non-existent. This is partly because of the INC’s leadership crisis. Partly, it’s a result of the BJP controlling the mainstream Indian media and virtually shutting the INC out of it. 

Given its unmatched political sway across the country and steady silencing of opposition voices, perhaps it won’t be wrong to call India under Modi a one-party state. And just as Trump’s approval ratings remain unshakable among his hard-right supporters, Modi can do no wrong for his Hindu adherents. Whether or not Nepal returns to being a Hindu state, the nominally secular India is now all but one. 

I have warned in this space about the creeping dangers China poses to Nepal. But a supposedly democratic BJP-led India confronts us with similar challenges. What we have traditionally admired about India—its vibrant democracy supported by a raucously independent press, its long tradition of religious tolerance, its syncretic culture—are applicable no more. What we have instead in India is a pro-Hindu government intent on hanging to power by shutting out its political opposition, demonizing religious minorities, and displaying blatant jingoism. 

What moral right does New Delhi then have to ask Kathmandu to maintain a safe distance from Beijing? The way anti-China fervor in India has picked up after the emergence of disastrous economic numbers for the country has been intriguing. Initially, Modi did not want to pick a fight with a more powerful adversary. But then evidence began to emerge of the decimation of the Indian economy under Modi’s watch and his government’s abject failure to contain the Covid-19 crisis. Anti-China posturing then became the only tool to keep his public opinion intact—with the prolonged investigation into the death of Sushant Singh Rajput, much fanned by Modi-worshipping media houses, offering another useful distraction for the public.

Indians cannot expect such excesses of their government to go unnoticed in the neighborhood. There has been a steady slide of South Asian countries towards China—that authoritarian, one-party state that has become a scapegoat for most big dysfunctional democracies. But forget China for a bit. The problem is that India’s democratic neighbors no longer believe India under Modi believes in democracy, in or outside the country. (Nepalis certainly have not forgotten the inhumane 2015-16 blockade.) 

India’s secular fabric has been torn asunder. Its public debate has coarsened and picked up xenophobic overtones. It seems to have no clear strategy on Covid-control. Its economy has been hemorrhaging ever since the suicidal 2016 demonetization. It treats its neighbors with utter disdain. Seriously, what is there to like or emulate about Modi’s India?    

How much does half-a-kilo of Amul butter cost? One recent morning, this writer ventured to a local shop to fetch a packet. The MRP printed on the cover was Rs 235 (in Indian currency, which comes to Rs 376 in Nepali rupees). After ‘discount’, he ended up paying Rs 660 in his own currency. But why such a huge mark-up? Transport costs have rocketed during the pandemic, replied the muscular shopkeeper behind a blue mask, and it is unrealistic of shoppers to pay old prices for goods that have to travel some distance. Moreover, India’s inflation rate is inching towards seven percent, against the government target of under-four. 

The economic numbers out of India are scary. In the second quarter of 2020, the Indian economy shrank by an unprecedented 23.9 percent, easily faring the worst among mid- to large-size world economies. In the same period, Japan’s economy shrank by 9.9 percent while the US economy was down 9.1 percent. Oh, and the Chinese economy continued to grow, if at a modest 3.2 percent. Widespread layoffs loom in India and it could be years before the Indian economy regains current losses. 

Reliant on India for nearly 60 percent of both its imports and exports, and for the absorption of hundreds of thousands of its youths, this is a shocking development for Nepal. Given this overreliance, Nepal imports most trends of India’s macroeconomic indicators, and none of them looks good. The Indian rupee has rallied a bit against the dollar following the Indian central bank’s latest intervention. Yet the Indian rupee is expected to further lose its value to the dollar as the country struggles against the pandemic. As the Nepali rupee is pegged to the Indian currency, its value too will decline, making imports dearer still. 

As the fifth largest economy in the world tanks, the Indian government wants to divert public attention. It has now banned another 188 Chinese apps, including the uproariously popular PUBG. India’s anti-China pitch has gone up a notch too, following yet another skirmish with the PLA in Ladakh. Presiding over such shocking economic numbers, PM Narendra Modi cannot be seen as weak against China, not the least because of the latter’s ever-increasing strategic proximity with Pakistan. Nepal faces a double-whammy. To emerge from its economic abyss, Nepal will need all sorts of trade concessions from India, which is itself in a fiscal mess. Nor will the Modi government be all that enthusiastic to help Nepal and its ‘pro-China’ government.

Oli and co. are perhaps banking on their excellent relations with Beijing. (After all, China is the only major economy that is growing right now.) Yet China can do only so much for Nepal. The only two border crossings between the two countries are half-operational, and most of the Chinese goods are still coming to Nepal via Kolkata. Making matters worse, the Oli government seems incapable of balancing India and China, which was the case even when India-China relations were far better. Nepal makes precious little of its own. Foreign goods here may not be that scarce in the coming days. But they may have few buyers. Now I think of it, isn’t Amul butter a little bitter?

The Munshi Khana, the precursor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had a narrow remit during the Ranarchy. It handled a few correspondences with British India, Tibet and China. But its primary duty was to closely watch the activities of the British resident in Kathmandu, and to keep him in good humor. Rana rulers knew their days were numbered without British support. 

The Munshi Khana morphed into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1951, a year after the advent of democracy. Hemmed in between a rampaging communist China and a newly independent and insecure India, Nepal suddenly felt the need to widen its diplomatic outreach beyond its two immediate neighbors. The new rulers of Nepal realized that a rapid expansion of foreign relations was perhaps the only sure way to preserve the country’s long sovereign existence: The Nepali mission in London was upgraded to an embassy, and diplomatic relations established with the US (1947) and France (1949) in quick succession. This outreach gained further momentum in the 1950s.   

The country now seems headed in the opposite direction. The government of KP Sharma Oli is acting like it needs no other foreign friend besides China. Paradoxically, its stated foreign policy mantra is diversification. Now we hear the government is reviewing the country’s foreign policy. 

This is nothing new. Sher Bahadur Deuba, Oli’s immediate predecessor as prime minister, had formed a task force under Shreedhar Khatri for the same purpose. The task force submitted its report after nine grueling months of study. No one knows what happened to the report. This suggests such revisions are no more than PR exercises. 

As things stand, the best of policies will be worthless if Nepal cannot change the growing perception that it is turning into a Chinese client state. A central question of our new foreign policy, if we are serious about its revision, must be: how do we import China’s growth model without also importing its ideology? And how do we assure an insecure India that is increasingly paranoid about Chinese designs in South Asia of Nepal’s good faith? 

The same calculations factored into Nepal’s outreach to the western world in the late 1940s and 1950s. Yet the Oli regime seems to have completely missed history’s lesson. Nepal sought closer ties with the US, not because it was enamored with American capitalist worldview. It did so to keep our two neighbors honest. But the ruling Nepal Communist Party wants to minimize Nepal’s engagement with the US—while it continues to strengthen ties with China’s CCP.   

The Americans aren’t going away. The more they feel constrained in Nepal, the more they will rely on India to pursue their interests here, be it under the rubric of IPS or Quad. Surely, it’s in Nepal’s interest to deal with the US directly than through India. (Remember the 2015-16 blockade and the helpless Nepali pleas to the Americans to stop seeing us through Indian lens?)

If Nepal does not want to be dragged into a military or strategic alliance, as the Oli government keeps telling us—and with regional organizations like SAARC and BIMSTEC barely functioning—there is no alternative to enhancing Nepal’s bilateral ties. This means fostering closer relations not just with the US, but also with other big- and medium-size powers around the globe.  

The United Nations came into being after the horrors of the two world wars. The formation of this global institution, it was hoped, would nip the emergent inter-state problems in the bud, without letting them bloom to unmanageable proportions as happened during the two world wars. Realizing the common threats to humanity posed by nuclear weapons, deadly viruses, and changing climates, countries would cooperate. And why wouldn’t they when no country could tackle these problems on its own, and it was in everyone’s interest to cooperate? Yet global politics is proving to be far trickier.

There is now a mad rush to develop Covid-19 vaccines, with governments, and the pharma companies they back, competing to be the first to roll one out. The Russian vaccine is already in the market, even though its safety and efficacy are doubtful. The Americans, the Indians, the Chinese, the British—they are all in the race. The fear is that if the Americans successfully test a vaccine, they may be reluctant to send it to China, and vice versa. The Indians don’t trust the Chinese; the Russians don’t trust the Americans; the Americans don’t trust anyone else with the vaccine. This vicious circle of mistrust has given rise to a ‘vaccine nationalism’. 

Some competition is desirable: Who knows whose vaccine will work? Yet this is also a dangerous race. The Russians claim their concoction works just fine. But given its doubtful development process, what if it gives those inoculated with it a false sense of security? Alternately, let us assume China is the first country to come up with a vaccine that works for sure. In that case, can it deny the vaccine to the Americans? Or at least look to profit from it handsomely?  

If one American dies from a China-made jab—even as it successfully inoculates hundreds of thousands of other folks—this act of ‘bio terrorism’ may soon snowball into a full-blown diplomatic war. Top American infectious disease official Anthony Fauci has already cast doubts on the vaccines being developed in Russia and China. Yet the US will have no option but to import them if they are seen as working elsewhere. 

In the middle of a pandemic, the US has just dusted off an old plan to strengthen its nuclear arsenal, even as it has withdrawn from the World Health Organization. Top carbon-emitting countries in the world are bitterly divided over climate change. All major powers now hold sizable reservoirs of deadly bacteria and virus that they can unleash on their enemies. The corona crisis is one more evidence that on the face of grave global threats, national leaders tend to turn inwards and to use the crisis to their advantage. After all, what do they get by invoking our common humanity?

The Russians have offered Nepal their new discovery. Do we take it? Or do we wait for the ‘more reliable’ American and British ones? And when a successful vaccine is discovered, somewhere, how much can Nepal pay for it, and how quickly can it be imported? Won’t big economic powers want to inoculate all their citizens first before exporting the vaccine? This is not idle speculation. There is no guarantee that the vaccines some big-pocket philanthropists are helping mass produce will actually work. If they don’t, the first few batches of the good vaccine that eventually emerges will go to the highest bidders. Poor places like Nepal will pay for the wait with many lost lives and livelihoods.

Joe Biden’s pick of Kamala Devi Harris, a Black and Indian American, with a mother from India and father from Jamaica, as his running mate has generated some hype in India. Biden leads President Donald Trump by a margin in nearly all the polls for the US presidential election in November. Harris could soon be the US vice-president, and perhaps even the president one day. If the Biden ticket wins, what does a Harris vice-presidency mean for India? Not much, apparently. 

Harris does not speak much about her Indian origins, choosing to highlight her African American background instead. Biden chose Harris as his running mate largely because of her dedicated involvement in the #BlackLivesMatter campaign: the African Americans, who make up roughly 13 percent of the US electorate, could be casting the decisive vote in November. Going by what has appeared in the Indian press, the Indians don’t expect much from Harris, even as they are sure she will ease visa restrictions for Bangalore and Hyderabad techies who dream of Silicon Valley. Human rights are her forte and she could be more willing to take a principled stand on, say, Kashmir. But, then, she will also speak up on Tibet and Xinjiang.

Yet the broad contours of America’s Asian policy are likely to remain intact, whosoever comes to power in November. US-China ties will remain frosty and probably get a lot worse. There is now a bipartisan support in Washington DC for a tougher line on China. This naturally translates into strengthening ties with India to check China’s spreading ‘authoritarianism’ in South Asia. The White House could, once in a while, fire off a statement or two on the human rights situation in Kashmir, or over lack of protection for religious minorities in India. But on the whole, the two countries will work more closely. 

For they want to thwart a common enemy. So where does Nepal fit into this picture? China’s hold on Nepal will increase under any future communist dispensation in Kathmandu. In fact, even if Nepali Congress comes to power, it will have a hard time resisting Chinese charms. There is strong consensus in favor of closer ties with China, both in the ruling NCP and the opposition NC. By the same calculus, Kathmandu will be under pressure to maintain a safe distance from the US-India nexus. 

The NCP government espouses diversification, and yet it is not interested in looking beyond China. Tomorrow, if India takes offense and acts rashly in response, so much the better for the NCP’s electoral prospects. But what if the US wades in to protect Indian interests? Well, they will cross that river when they get to it. In sum: PM Oli and his China-leaning comrades will not resist the temptation to antagonize India at every opportune moment, even if the country may have to pay for it. 

Right now, Modi finds his hands full with Covid-19 but the health crisis will eventually abate. Then what? India has realized it alone cannot keep China out of its immediate neighborhood. Four years ago, I wrote about how the US-India ties would get stronger during Trump’s presidency. As of now, the relations are destined to get closer still under any future US government, Republican or Democrat. The US-China tussle will continue to be the defining feature of the first half of the 21st century. In this larger battle, small countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka could be collateral damage. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the architect of India’s ‘neighborhood first’ policy, doesn’t have many friends in the region. Moreover, enamored with big powers like the US and China, the Indian media give small states in the subcontinent scant attention. Even the little attention it gets is invariably negative. Take the latest coverage of Sri Lanka’s parliamentary elections. With an overwhelming majority for the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the party of the Rajapakshas, a foregone conclusion, the fear was that the island country would slide further into China’s orbit. That is not the least of India’s worries. 

India-Bangladesh ties took a nosedive when Modi brought the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019. The legislation bars the path to citizenship for new Muslim migrants in India. As most of these migrants originate in Bangladesh, the CAA’s goal was clear enough. As if to rub it in, the BJP also accused Bangladesh of systematically torturing its Hindu minority. Bangla Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, otherwise a staunch Indian ally, subsequently came under immense domestic pressure to distance herself from New Delhi and to inch closer to Beijing. 

There is also a growing unease in Bhutan over its tight embrace by India and New Delhi’s attempts to keep it from directly dealing with China. This was partly the reason behind the 2017 Doklam crisis, and behind China’s latest claim to a new territory in Bhutan. China wants to settle its borders with Bhutan through land swaps, which India vehemently opposes. Bhutan’s outreach to China isn’t hard to understand either: If India is gaining immense economic advantages of trading with China, why can’t Bhutan?

India’s relations with Pakistan have never been worse. With the Maldives, things are a little better after the election of India-friendly Ibrahim Mohamed Solih as president in 2018. Yet it’s wistful thinking to believe the Maldives, with Mandarin-speaking tourists as its economic lifeline, will suddenly agree to distance itself from China. 

Nor would it be an exaggeration to say Nepal-India relations have hit rock-bottom. All official talks between the two have been put off, indefinitely. The influence of the Chinese in Kathmandu has increased alarmingly. So where did Modi go wrong in the neighborhood?

During his six years in office Modi seems to have cared about little else other than consolidating his Hindu vote bank. This was the calculation behind the repeated military strikes against Pakistan, the promulgation of a new map of Jammu and Kashmir—which included the Nepali territory of Kalapani—the amendment of the citizenship act, and his latest inauguration of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. As Arundhati Roy pointed out in her recent piece for The Wire, Modi timed his Ayodhya visit with the first anniversary of India stripping of J&K of its statehood. 

Besides using South Asian forums to isolate Pakistan, the neighborhood has never been Modi’s priority. China is being hounded by the world for bungling its initial Covid-19 response. And yet it continues to tighten its grip on South Asia. It is curious that smaller democracies in the region seem to trust authoritarian China more than they trust democratic India. Attributing this to China’s ‘checkbook diplomacy’, or to the old mistrust of India, the traditional hegemon, would be a cop-out. Nor will it do much to resurrect India’s flagging image.