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Riverine issues and concerns are inextricable aspects of Nepal-India relations that stir up fervor and sentiments in both countries. With the onset of monsoon each year through June to September and the ensuing flood-related damages, governments at both local and federal levels are faced with the perennial challenge of responding to long-standing knotty issues. Major rivers like the Koshi, Gandaki, Karnali and Mahakali and tributaries experience annual flooding, affecting both countries. With more than 6,000 rivers and rivulets from Nepal flowing into India, the transboundary flood impacts are complex, significant, and on the rise. 

Yet, what remains underexplored is the critical role that communities living in the transboundary river basins in both countries can play, as in the case of Mahakali basin on flood preparedness, mitigation, and response. Better outcomes in river and flood management can be achieved by proper coordination among water-related institutions and bringing local people into the mix. When local riverine communities are given increased access to and control over water resources, their resilience to natural hazards can improve.

The 2017-18 floods claimed 183 lives and affected 16,196 families in Nepal with a loss of Rs 60 million. Corresponding damages in India included loss of 1,808 lives and an estimated Rs. 957 billion ($13 billion) in damages according to data presented in the Rajya Sabha. The World Resources Institute (WRI)’s Aqueduct Global Flood Analyzer (2015) reports that on an average, 97,500 and 100 million population are affected every year in Nepal and India due to riverine floods, a majority of them women. Earlier floods like the one in Mahakali (2013) flood swept away 12 government offices, 156 private houses, embankments, a covered hall, and a playground in Nepal. Approximately, 42,800 Nepali (7,572 households) were affected by the Koshi floods in Sunsari District on 18 August 2008, in addition to an estimated 11,000 Indian nationals (2,328 homes), according to the government of Nepal. Rehabilitation and compensation from these events have been pending in both the countries to date.

The Mahakali river basin (also called Sharda in India) provides a unique example of how community-led actions make a difference in relaying flood-warning information between the upper and lower riparian neighbors. Communities living along the two sides of the river have strong cultural and socio-economic ties that have helped in easy and timely flow of flood-related information. During the 2013 Mahakali floods, the communities on the Indian side relayed vital and timely information about the opening of the Dauliganga dam following a heavy rainfall that saved many lives on the Nepali side. 

Learning from these examples, a transboundary early flood warning taskforce has been formed to share flood-related information between upstream and downstream communities in the Mahakali basin through apps like Whatsapp and Facebook messaging. Community-level simulation exercises between Nepal and India have been held since 2018.

In both the countries, community engagement in citizen science activities like monitoring river pollution levels has started, which is expected to mobilize riverine communities on both the sides to generate data and build evidence vital to inform local policies.

Likewise, civil society organizations are playing vital roles in transboundary water cooperation by engaging communities and local governments from both the countries. To this end, institutions like the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and the Indo Nepal Joint Action Forum (INJAF) convene regular Mahakali Sambad (River dialogues) between communities of Nepal and India, and local political bodies and local governments representatives (CDO from Nepal and District Magistrate from India) are invited to discuss ways to minimize transboundary flood impacts, among other cross-border issues. This equity approach uses local people’s participation and their opinions as cornerstones in effective flood management.

A successful policy outcome of such citizen action is the Dhangadi Declaration (March 2018)—a six-points commitment secured at the sub-national level in Nepal that provides a potential segue into transboundary and basin level commitments for inclusive water governance initiatives in the region. 

When tensions between the two countries are high due to the Kalapani, Lipulekh, Limpiadhura disputes, collaboration among the riverine communities of the two countries must be given continuity. Such community and CSOs-led initiatives will demonstrate the scope for more South-South Cooperation (SSC) among riparian countries in South Asia to collectively address shared waters issues, including natural hazards like floods and droughts in these basins. 

Subedi and Singh work for the Transboundary Rivers of South Asia (TROSA) Program, Oxfam. Views are personal

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?    

A few days ago, I was walking in my neighborhood when I saw an elderly woman I knew coming down the road. She was walking in an upright posture, without the help of a crutch or a stick. Her face was bright and she had a smile on her face. “You’re looking good!” I said to her. She smiled, obviously pleased.

About two years ago, I’d seen the same elderly lady, with one palm on the wall to support her frail gait. We’d gotten into a conversation. “Yestai ho, janay bela ma yestai huncha!” (‘When we’re about to die, we get frail’). I suggested she take mungrelo (nigella sativa) seeds, which help with joint health. She embraced my advice with enthusiasm. She told me she bought a bottle of the seeds, roasted them, and put them by her bedside. She popped them whenever she felt the urge to snack during the day, and ate them with her morning tea. Unlike my elderly relatives who will try an ayurvedic remedy for a few days before jumping to antibiotics and Big Pharma and surgery, this lady seemed to have no other option. Slowly I saw her get better as the months progressed. Then I saw her cured. 

This case pleases me a lot because it was the progression of Ayurvedic healing as it was meant to unfold, at its own slow time and pace. No need for joint replacements, surgeries that cost 12 lakhs, elderly people laid up in hospital with invasive surgical interventions. This old lady become fit and healthy through the simple remedy of some tiny seeds.

We have a healing tradition in South Asia that goes back thousands of years. Yet we have been taught to ignore, ridicule and dismiss it as a body of knowledge without value or scientific proof. On Twitter, the scorn against “Besarays”—people who advocate the theory that turmeric helps ward off the coronavirus—is vituperative. Where are the clinical trials, people will demand? They are seemingly blind to the evidence that the Besar Belt (including Asia and Africa) has very few coronavirus deaths. They also ignore existing scientific studies on healing properties of turmeric, including its anti-inflammatory and blood-thinning properties.

Anti-Besaray people then go on to demand Remdesivir, a drug made by a company known for its extraordinary inflated prices, including a liver drug that costs over $74,000 for a course. This is an extraordinary denial of healthcare to the masses by elites whose rip-off goes beyond ordinary fraud or swindle. We need new words to describe this kind of commercial transaction with genocidal intent, one that our current vocabulary lacks. Yet this is precisely the company the WHO is promoting, at the expense of local, easily available remedies that are already saving lives in the Third World.

I shared my mungrelo story with my great aunt. She, obviously, knows a lot more about Ayurveda than I do. She was born half a century before me. Like all modern people with pride in knowledge gleaned from the web, I assumed I was the only one to “discover” the healing properties of this seed. She demolished my ignorance in short order. “I raised my children with Ayurvedic remedies, but during my grandchildren’s time, we forgot about those. We went to the doctors and kept using antibiotics. They were constantly sick and we raised them with difficulty,” she said.

She’d used this remedy on her own children: the mother put a few jwano (ajwain) and mungrelo seeds in her mouth and chewed it, spit this mixture at the tip of the linen sari, filtered two drops of the juice, then mixed that in breastmilk and fed it to the two- month-old. Only a few of the powerful seeds are needed! The same ajwain and nigella sativa can be ground into paste, then applied to infant’s head to stop a cold. She’d put it on her nephew after a vaidya told her about it, and he’d been cured. Now imagine the money we could save from hospitalizing infants if this remedy was followed everywhere in the “poor” (but knowledge-rich) Third World. We wouldn’t need to spend lakhs on hospitalizing infants, pumping them full of antibiotics, and in general exposing a fragile infant to the possibility of an latrogenic death.

But for a modern doctor, this remedy will bring shivers because saliva contains bacteria, which must be instantly killed! Preferably with bleach. Never mind if the mother’s saliva is a key ingredient in introducing healing macrophages into the infant body. “Nowadays you can use a handkerchief,” my great aunt said. “I don’t know, maybe there was something healing about a mother’s sari.” I have no doubt there was something healing about a mother’s sari: her biome, the body, is teeming with a rich jungle of microflora and fauna which help an infant fight off disease, and what better way to introduce it into the infant than through her sari’s sapko!

Creating a microbe-free environment can be lethal, as no benefic bacteria can survive in the desert. High coronavirus death rates in the West may be caused by this overkill with hygiene.

We need to return to our roots—through the mouth and eating, through traditional food, and through the herbs we have always known and which have cured our ancestors and ensured our own existence.

How do you assess a country’s political situation between elections? It’s probably through the media, the social media included. Nepal at this time is in the perfect in-between-the-elections phase to study politics outside the elections.

The last set of elections was held almost three years ago. The context was interesting.

Nepal entered the elections after more than a decade of transition politics marred by non-democratic politicking, power struggles, and brinkmanship.

The conflict and the transition era did two fundamental damages to Nepali politics. It normalized a state of non-performance for the polity in the name of the delicate situation. It even made acceptable what should have been considered a mockery of common sense—the voting for the post of prime minister was conducted inconclusively 17 times.

Such a ridiculous disregard for the imminent social and political problems was normalized, and almost established as the only thing that politics was supposed to be engaged in.

One other thing this transition politics did that is detrimental to the basic concept of constitutionalism and democracy, was the hijacking of authority by the top leaders in the name of High Level Political Mechanism. This became a means of consolidating power at the top, undemocratically, in all the parties. The fundamental feudal character of Nepali political parties became indomitable.

This kind of an ad-hoc arrangement stopped all avenues of growth for second-rung leaders in all major parties. As a result, the leaders of the next generation like Gagan Thapa and Yogesh Bhattarai, who should by now have been among the ones leading their parties, are still being treated like kids.

With a tedious decade-long limbo named transition politics over, Nepal had entered the elections with this permanent damage to democracy.

But Nepal’s public has been both wise and patient in treating the politicians. The armed struggle had scared the established urban elites enough without directly impacting their lives. In Kathmandu, it was considered like something happening not just in a remote area, but also in a remote era. The Kathmandu urban elite knows and believes that most of Nepal still lives two centuries behind, and it’s the main secret of their privileges. They get disproportionate access to resources meant for the whole country because of this.

The blockade happened in their living rooms, however. And it had a more lasting impact than the decade-long Maoist armed struggle or the political anarchy of more than a decade that followed.

So, when Nepal went into the elections, Modi was the villain, and Oli was the savior. But political stability was the driving force that consolidated people’s choice.

An overwhelming majority of almost two-thirds is wasted. There is almost no scope of a miraculous face saving now, with more than half the tenure of this government gone by in cruel skullduggery and careless comical theatrics.

The covid crisis has exposed to the general public that accepting non-democratic, incompetent manipulators as the country’s leaders costs us jobs, wealth, and lives too.

But what do representative voices in the social media indicate? People have no hope from our politicians. And the politicians do not shy from putting the blame back on the people.

Will there be a fundamental shift in the nature of our mainstream political parties in three years before the next elections? There is nothing to suggest such a miracle is coming.

People have been wise, in general, in the elections. They know they can’t trust politicians to be truly honest and non-corrupt, but in the larger scheme of things, they have been running the affairs of the state even amid this chaos.

But it’s probably time to read between the lines and question the fundamentals of the system that our politics has evolved into. The nexus of the feudal power structure within the parties and the country’s criminal gangs has been exposed beyond doubt in front of the people.

Should they not look for an alternative now?