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Directly, Nepal may stand to benefit little economically from the victory of Joe Biden, the US President-Elect. But a reassurance from him that multilateralism, globalization, and liberal trade policies are the fundamentals of our time and will thus be protected will have far-reaching consequences in the shaping of Nepal’s economy.

In more concrete terms, countries like Nepal need strong multilateral organizations that provide financial and technical support for economic development, especially to those at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid. There will be both direct and indirect benefits as multilateralism and globalization will be stronger in the Biden era. More specifically, America’s role in international development will be reshaped as Biden will try to restore his country’s international image by helping developing countries come out of poverty, if only to better protect liberal values and democracy.

Nepal has been hesitant to approve the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact due to its connection with the US Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS), even though the MCC was thought of much before the IPS emerged as an idea. I believe, under Biden, American foreign policy will be more in favor of supporting other countries’ economic growth in good faith than by forcing them to choose between extremes. This new narrative emerging from Washington will help Nepal approve MCC projects that have direct impact on Nepal’s long-term development. With the MCC’s parliamentary approval, Nepal will not only have access to US$ 500 million for critical infrastructure development but also cement the foundation for cross-border electricity trade with India. If the winter session of the parliament makes a headway on the MCC, projects under it will be completed by the time Biden completes his first stint at the Oval Office.

Another area Nepal will benefit in is mitigating the risk of climate change and its impact in agriculture in hilly and mountain regions. Globally, environmentally-vulnerable countries like Nepal will benefit from better international cooperation on climate change as Biden has vowed to implement the Paris climate accord. Having a global leadership working to achieve climate change targets will help Nepal be more effective in safeguarding its own interests in climate change. Nepal suffers high economic cost of climate vulnerabilities and extremes. An estimated direct cost of these impacts is equivalent to 1.5 to two percent of current GDP, rising to five or more percent in more extreme years.

Trade will be another area where Nepal can benefit from the trade-friendly American leadership. The US is third biggest export destination for Nepal after India and the EU. Similarly, the US is the fifth most attractive markets for 12 key goods and services with potential from Nepal, as identified in the Nepal Trade Integration Strategy (NTIS). With Biden, the international trade will be reshaped with more access to American markets for Nepal. Biden’s liberal trade policies will be highly beneficial—if Nepal also works sincerely to optimize its market conditions.

Above all, young Nepalis aspiring to pursue higher education will have greater access to world-class academic institutions as they will get more financial support. Biden as president will certainly increase the size of the pie of the research and development fund. Modern Nepal has benefitted immensely from the American education system with more people being trained in these institutions. That is critical for Nepal, which has been unable to establish even a single quality academic institution.

A fairer and orderly global system with a moderate and centrist leadership is in everyone’s interest. But the challenge is to create opportunities for everyone in a more democratic set up. Although democracy gives us more choices and more ways to work and live, it is also vulnerable to populists and authoritarians. The only way to protect democracy is through economic development that creates opportunities for each citizen to have a diploma. The Biden era could help Nepal in this crucial aspect as well.

Ordinary Nepalis are recoiling with disappointment and disillusionment as the ruling Nepal Communist Party plunges into another public power struggle.

This should come as no surprise. After all, Nepal’s political evolution is still far from complete. Recent developments are merely part of that evolutionary process.

The Maoist uprising unseated the monarchy, shook up the social order a bit, and ushered in a new constitution. But it failed to fundamentally break the socio-economic nexus centered on Kathmandu. In the years since, Nepal has sunk into an election-only democracy, with weak supporting institutions. Federalism and decentralization remain token ideas. Central power has become even more central and even more powerful.

The next phase of Nepal’s revolution is right on track and draws closer. This article discusses the three ingredients that will fuse to enable that evolution. Whether that revolution—or evolution—will occur by design or accident, I leave for you to determine.

Discrediting the system

The striking feature of the feud within the ruling party is not that there is a feud. Rather, it is that the feud has been so public.

Politicians around the world squabble all the time. Senior Nepali politicians are reasonably experienced. They can manage their press, messages, and public persona. Yet every element about this ongoing feud within the ruling party is publicly relayed with all its details, as if it were some national TV drama. Surely, much of it can be conducted behind closed doors with the curtains drawn.

Turning the row within the ruling party, and other similar events, into public spectacles is both intentional and strategic. It is part of a broader pattern that undermines public confidence and adds to the disillusionment with government. The disillusionment is not just with specific individuals or a party but with the entire system. As ordinary citizens, our response to such events is to sigh, throw up our hands, resign to defeat, and say in frustration, “They are all the same, nothing will change.”

The next phase of Nepal’s revolution isn’t going to be fought with guns and bullets. It will be fought on public perception. Disillusionment with the system will be the weapon.

Financing the revolution

No revolution can progress without money. Nepal’s previous uprisings were financed by forced domestic contributions—in effect, extortions from individuals, households, and businesses.

The next phase relies on siphoning from the State. Nepal’s overall fiscal position is strong, with ample space to increase borrowing significantly. As a post-conflict young democracy with a large need for infrastructure investment and adequate repayment capacity, Nepal is attractive to development-focused lenders.

Nepal has taken advantage of its position and developed a large pipeline of State-led capital-intensive projects. International development financing has responded to meet those requirements. Leakage from these capital-intensive projects, along with the sale of concession rights, is now helping build the war-chest for the next phase of Nepal’s revolution.

This may in part explain why there is much tussle to get access to the State machinery—the ones who control it control the fiscal hose.

Appeal of leadership

Many Nepalis wistfully long for able leadership that can overcome the shortcomings our current political leaders appear to exhibit. Alternative political parties have emerged in part to address the public demand for able political leadership. Their appeal isn’t any distinctive ideology or governance model—it is simply that they offer to lead better and more honestly than everyone else.

With a new constitution now in place, most Nepalis have convinced themselves that the problem of governance is not institutional but entirely about leadership. Longing for able leadership without adequate institutional safeguards against the erosion of democratic rights is often a prelude to soft dictatorship. Nepal lacks those institutional safeguards; nor are there any real efforts to build them.

In due course, a strong leader will emerge in Nepal, promising all the things that we perceive as missing—national pride, economic growth, stability, employment. And why not? If a leader offers all that, would you not take them, even if it threatens a few democratic values?     

Disillusioned by the system and enamored by a leader who promises, we will be led into the next phase of Nepal’s unfinished political revolution—a journey that will have been financed by the generosity of taxpayers from around the world.

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Dance, Lalla, with nothing on but air.

Sing, Lalla, wearing the sky.

Look at this glowing day!

What clothes could be so beautiful, or more sacred?

Thus danced the rare female yogi, Lalla of Kashmir.

Imagine a 14^th century Indian woman becoming a wandering ascetic, much less going around naked and dancing in freezing mountains and orthodox villages! But with mystics, 'ordinary' or 'normal' is not the way—at least in the sense that we so-called ordinary or normal people understand it.

To Lalla, all outer fabrications bore no meaning—including the fabric that you clad around your body. Deeply delved in self-realization, everything of the outside world was just out-worldly for her. They were good to do away with. She was following the advice of her teacher when she sang:

My Master gave me just one rule:

Forget the outside, get to the inside of things.

I, Lalla, took that teaching to heart.

From that day, I’ve danced naked.

Lalla practiced Shaiva Tantra that flourished in the sacred valleys of Kashmir around the turn of the second millennium. She is one of the few mystics to have attained enlightenment in a female body. For the yogi she was, all customs and costumes were but unnecessary details: they had no utility on her path to liberation. So she leaves the social norms behind. She sheds her clothes to wear the sky—just like the Shiva, or digambara (a Sanskrit term meaning sky-clad)—and rejoices in her true inner self.

Lalla expresses the state of her deep realization through proverbs or short poems. She speaks in the local Kashmiri dialect, which had descended from corrupted Sanskrit and Prakrit languages. The Kashmiris have passed on the poems from generation to generation, together with the mystical stories surrounding her. She has quite an influence on the history and culture of the place, inasmuch as to inspire a saying: Kashmiris know of either Allah or Lalla. For common Kashmiris, she is Lal Ded (mother Lalla) or Lal Dyad (grandmother Lalla); for Hindus and yogis, she is Lallesvari or Lalla Yogini; and for Muslims, she is Lalla Arifa.

When the Sufi branch of Islam was entering the valley of Kashmir, her poems came to unify both Shaiva and Sufi thoughts. We also see a hint of Buddhism in her poems when she talks of emptiness. It was a time when Shaiva tantra drew from Mahayana Buddhist concept of śunyatā, or emptiness, which was already around for about a thousand years.

Perhaps what makes Lalla a rarity among woman mystics is that her path was not of bhakti (devotion), but of tantra yoga. She could cross the six astral centers of the body by taming the prana (life-force), and reach the highest state of realization that all yogis aspire to reach—the state of Shiva. In that state, she sings:

Crossing the six forests, came the Moon oozing,

The Prakriti was burnt out with the Prana

With the fire of Love, I roasted my heart,

And found Shiva!

It’s not unusual for old ideas, even the ones you once seriously considered, to completely escape your mind. I was recently reminded of one such forgotten idea: Nepal-India-China trilateralism. The occasion was an AIDIA webinar in which I was invited to speak along with other guests from the three countries. The first question that crossed my mind when I got the invite: why now? This pie-in-the-sky dream is clearly not being realized soon. 

But then turning Nepal into a ‘vibrant economic bridge’ between the two Asian giants has been a stated foreign policy goal of the Oli government. India, mindful of China’s already considerable sway in Nepal, has shown no interest in it. Now in light of escalating border tensions between India and China—and Nepal’s own border skirmishes with India—the trilateral idea appears doomed. One suggestion offered in the webinar, by Indian and Chinese speakers alike, concerned the pursuit of trailaterism through track II and track III mechanisms. Build a consensus on it at an intellectual level before kicking it up for consideration at the political level, they suggested. 

An interesting idea, I thought. But, again, what is the point when those making the final decision simply don’t want to hear of it, especially in India? Instead, Nepal can look to improve its ties with the two neighbors separately, and if it can gain their confidence in due course, maybe then pursue the trilateral idea.  

Separately, the Chinese seem perturbed by India’s growing strategic proximity with the US and its implications for South Asia. They don’t understand why Nepal, a great friend of China, cannot follow Sri Lanka’s example and dismiss the MCC compact out of hand. Why is the ruling Nepal Communist Party, with excellent brotherly ties with its Chinese counterpart, hesitating to do the right thing? They also link the paucity of progress in BRI projects in Nepal to American interference, this time via the MCC. 

The burgeoning US-India strategic links also put the Chinese in a bind. They wanted to work with India under the BRI framework to keep the Americans from making mischief in South Asia. But the prospect of such extensive India-China cooperation in the region is getting bleaker. The India-China rivalry in Nepal may hence get an added edge in the days ahead. 

The Chinese attitude to the Oli government seems to be hardening too. Besides the long delay in BRI projects and Nepal’s hesitance to drop the MCC compact, their suspicions of Kathmandu have been heightened by the recent Nepal visits of RAW chief Samant Goel and Indian army chief M.M. Naravane, especially the latter, who insinuated China as the origin of Nepal’s claims over Kalapani. What is cooking in Kathmandu, they would like to know? 

The Chinese had for some time been trying to persuade the Indians of the mutual benefits of connecting the big markets of North India and West China. Nepal said it would be more than happy to act as a bridge between them. Made perfect economic sense, too. But as the recent Indian boycott of Chinese goods in India—and the Indian Premier League’s cancellation of its 440-crore-rupee-a-year contract with Chinese mobile giant VIVO—suggests, nationalism trumps economic calculations any day. If only the Indians and the Nepalis understood the ice-cold Chinese logic of pursuing development and poverty-alleviation at all costs.