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The constitution confers on all Nepalis over 18 years of age the right to vote in any one electoral constituency in the country. Yet around four million of them were denied a vote in the last electoral cycle in 2017. Electoral laws required that you be present in person if you wanted to vote. As this option was often unavailable for migrants, they were, in a way, disenfranchised. This is why the Supreme Court order to the government to arrange for Nepali migrants abroad to vote in elec­tions in Nepal is timely. For a remittance-dependent country, it was criminal to deny those living and working abroad, Nepal’s lifeblood, their inalienable right to adult franchise.

But while the apex court decision is laudable, it will not be easy to implement. The first thing that the Election Commission must do is find out exactly how many Nepali citizens are living abroad. With Nepalis now scattered all over the world, this will be challenging. In that case, perhaps a start can be made by making voting arrangements for those who show an active inter­est in exercising their franchise. But even this is easier said. How does the commission find out if they have already renounced their Nepali citizenships, in which case they can’t vote?

There are many other technical and logistical hur­dles. But if it was impossible, 110 countries would not be doing it. There is a growing realization that in a world that is getting more and more integrated thanks to the rapid growth of information technology and eas­ier travel, it is both immoral and impractical to deny the legitimate citizens of a particular country their fun­damental right to vote.

As the Nepali government is now under legal obliga­tion to act likewise, and as it is a complicated issue, it may not be a bad idea to constitute a team of experts to suggest feasible ways. Thankfully, the next round of elections are not scheduled for years. The focus over the next few years should thus be on allowing maxi­mum number of Nepalis abroad to vote rather than piloting the idea among select communities. There is enough time.  

 That the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sec­toral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) has been unable to come up with a governing charter in over two decades of its existence is no coincidence. The member coun­tries—initially Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand, which were later joined by Bhutan and Nepal—seemingly wanted to build a vibrant economic bridge between South Asia and Southeast Asia, two of the fastest growing regions in the world. But for most of its existence BIMSTEC was badly neglected.

Then there was SAARC. As things stand, SAARC is the least integrated region in the world, with inter-country trade within SAARC accounting for less than six percent of the total foreign trade of the eight-member states. The concept of South Asian Free Trade Area, though much discussed, could never be implemented, as India and Pakistan continued to lock horns over even seemingly inconsequential issues. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at some point seems to have concluded that it is futile to expect a more connected South Asia via SAARC, so long as Pakistan is a part of it.

And so the moribund BIMSTEC was revived in 2014, the year it held its third heads-of-state summit, and the year its secretariat was finally established in Dhaka. If SAARC could not unite South Asia, perhaps a forum like BIMSTEC, minus Pakistan, and minus SAARC’s ‘unanimous decision’ provision, was better placed to enhance regional trade and connectivity. But this is a gamble.

As the fourth BIMSTEC summit ends in Kathmandu, the seven-member states have agreed to enhance trade through land and water ways, to collectively fight ter­rorism, to draft the long-delayed charter, to establish a regional fund and to boost customs cooperation. The charter, when ready, will add clarity about BIMSTEC’s purpose. More than that, if the forum can for instance facilitate the extension of India-Myanmar-Thailand highway all the way to Nepal, it could herald a sea of change in Nepal’s development. But will the securi­ty-minded India be ready to open up its territories for such an undertaking? What will greater anti-terrorism cooperation entail? And what happens to SAARC now? Even though India is uncommitted, other countries in South Asia still set great store by SAARC. The fourth summit brought some clarity on BIMSTEC and on regional cooperation. But perhaps not enough.

 The first reservation of a Nepali skeptic of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sec­toral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is that, technically, Nepal should not even be a part of it as the country is not on the Bay of Bengal. Of course, as Constantino Xavier points out, this reading overlooks Nepal’s centuries-old trade and cultural ties with other BIMSTEC countries like India, Bangladesh, Thailand and Myanmar before the British colonized the Indian subcontinent.

The other concern is that India is promoting the seven-member BIMSTEC to somehow undercut the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the eight-member regional grouping which, unlike BIMSTEC, includes Pakistan, India’s arch-enemy. In this reckoning, Nepal should be wary of support­ing BIMSTEC whose achievements are underwhelm­ing, even when compared to the perennially-subpar SAARC. Also, while SAARC brings together eight coun­tries of South Asia, a natural construct, BIMSTEC incon­gruously embraces five South Asian and two Southeast Asian countries.

Whether the skeptics are right or not, Nepal ought to be careful. First, is there a tangible way Nepal can benefit from BIMSTEC? The Nepali parliament recent­ly passed an anti-terrorism bill as a part of its com­mitment to BIMSTEC. This will entail greater security cooperation with BIMSTEC countries, primarily with India. Have the implications of new security commit­ments to India been properly weighed?

It would also be wonderful if Nepal could leverage the BIMSTEC forum to gain direct land access to Ban­gladesh and Myanmar via India. But will India, which has been rather paranoid about the security threats it faces from its neighbors, be ready to offer Nepal such an unhindered passage to these countries, or to the Indian Ocean? And has Nepal calculated the cost of iso­lating Pakistan and making the SAARC forum defunct?

There has been little of substance from Nepal gov­ernment on how it can use BIMSTEC to deal with vital issues like climate change or cross-border power trade. The fourth BIMSTEC summit in Kathmandu is sched­uled to issue a ‘BIMSTEC charter’. But what problems of Nepal will the charter help address again remain murky. In principle, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Nepal spreading its global footprint in its quest for greater prosperity. But at what cost? Without such cool-headed calculation, we are afraid that Nepal’s cur­rent approach to BIMSTEC is a shot in the dark

Dila Pun of Bheri municipality in Jajarkot dis­trict of western Nepal is not amused. She used to pay Rs 16 in land and property tax annually. But as a part of the municipality’s consolidated property tax she is now having to fork out Rs 1,900 for the same piece of real estate. “There has been no change in public services. The local hospital does not have medicines for even common fever and yet the government is burdening us with back-break­ing taxes,” she complained with APEX.

Pun’s grievance with local taxes reverberates right across the country. In Tilottama municipality of Rupandehi district, also in western Nepal, the local level units of Nepali Congress have formed ward-level ‘struggle committees’ against the ‘arbi­trary imposition’ of new taxes. With everything from mom-and-pop shops to cattle being taxed under the new regime, people’s frustration with elected officials, and with the new federal setup—which has rightly or wrongly come to be associated with higher taxes—is growing.

In the absence of proper guidelines, such taxes at lower levels of government can often be arbitrary and punitive. There is also a risk of duplication in taxes among the three tiers of government. The National Natural Resources and Fiscal Commission, a constitu­tional body, was supposed to sort out these issues. Yet nearly three years after the promulgation of the new constitution, this ‘facilitator’ between the three tiers of government is yet to get its full shape.

This in turn is indicative of lack of political com­mitment to implement the seven-province, 753-local body federal formula. Even though the constitution has clearly delineated Nepal as a federal republic, there is still reluctance to devolve power and resourc­es away from Kathmandu. This is reflected in the fact that over 70 percent of all taxes collected in the coun­try is going into the coffers of the federal government. On the other hand, neither the local units nor the federal government have been able to offer a credi­ble rationale—for instance guaranteed social security (See here)—for increased local taxes. This is not so much a sign of the failure of federalism as it is of the mindset of our top politicians who are yet to internalize that the old unitary setup has been aban­doned—for a reason. The latest tussle over taxation is likely to a harbinger of much bigger disputes between different government tiers.