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Two things happened in January. First, the United Kingdom left the European Union. Second, the coronavirus took grip of the world. Both these things have high­lighted how racist and insular the world still is.Brexit divided the UK, with Scot­land and Wales voting to stay in the EU and the majority (oddly with the exception of London, the capital) voting to leave. The sit­uation in Northern Ireland is far more complicated and outside of my ability to analyze. Needless to say both the citizens of Northern and Eire (Southern Ireland, which remains in Europe) and the newly formed coalition Stormont Execu­tive in Northern Island are waiting to see what the transition period (from 1 February till 31 December 2020) brings. Meantime, even here in Kathmandu there has been dis­agreement between expats on the Brexit deal.

What has surprised many, me included, is how anyone living voluntarily in a country which is not their own, and not being a naturalized citizen of that coun­try, can support the division of a continent and the loss of freedom of movement (people and goods). We thought, perhaps naively, that if you are living in another country by choice— that is not being an economic migrant or having been trafficked—you are more open to inclusion and less open to racism and everything associated with it.

Oddly, in very recent years, we have also seen the world turn to egotistic, sexist and wealthy men. We have been dazzled, it would appear, by their supposed charisma and loud talk. Some of us thought, wrongly it seems, that sense and sensibility prevailed in the world. Is it the strength of social media where the loud and brash hold center court that is beguiling us? Someone said that through Hollywood we have confused real life with the screen. They questioned who would watch a film about the good guys—the Angela Merkels and Justin Trudeaus of this world. Much more entertaining are the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. Rich bad boys with a ten­dency to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. And, more worryingly, get away with it.

On 27 January was the 75th Anni­versary of the Liberation of Aus­chwitz (the German Nazi concentra­tion and extermination camp). We should reflect how a whole nation was mesmerized by one charismatic man to participate in or simply ignore the killing of over six million people. Here we see both the power of the alluring, compelling, captivat­ing and powerful speaker and how the nasty worm that is xenophobia can take hold of the masses. Have we forgotten that the reason behind the EU was the ending of wars between neighbors and unification of Euro­pean countries economically and politically to secure peace?

And how does China and the coro­navirus fit into all this? While I fully agree with the drastic steps to take this virus under control, would air­lines be so fast (two weeks) to cancel flights in and out of ‘ground zero’ if that country was, say Switzerland or France? Are decisions being made tinged with bigotry and bloody mindedness? We hear of Chinese origin people being shunned in pub­lic, regardless of whether or not they have recently been to China. We are hear of how hundreds of people are stranded on cruise ships (with coro­navirus onboard) as countries shut their ports. And yet, China has huge financial and political weight. Will some countries be faced with little choice but to continue accepting Chinese tourists and goods through their borders? Even through a pan­demic? Are some countries taking this too lightly while others appear over-cautious?

There are no answers here in this column but only more unasked questions. I leave you to reflect and come up with your own conclusions

Western science is lauded as the ultimate arbiter of knowledge. When it comes to climate change, they are often quoted as the experts, with people from all fields urging the irrational: “Listen to the science!”
The only problem: scientists are limited in their imagination and cannot see beyond the 1.5 degree threshold. Much like Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat,” they imagine the planet to be flat, warming at an even rate all over like a nice tortilla, from mountains to Himalayan glaciers, from Antarctica to the Gulf.
But the world is not shaped like a tortilla. It has immense geographical, environmental, social, political and policy variations, even a few kilometers apart.
In some parts of India, peak summer temperatures already reach 50 degree centigrade. This is unsustainable for human habitation. Some of this heating is caused by global climate change, but other reasons for warming and drought are local deforestation, extraction of water without rain recharge, and industrial application of chemical fertilizers which turn soil into fine dust. Cities and tenements built without planning for greenery exacerbate the urban heat effect. All are catalysts for heating.
A policy decision can create a thriving, water rich, forest dense community living sustainably while another can be a desert only a few minutes drive away. I visited one such community in Nepal in 2009. A village of Khadgas, poor but still educated, were tending a community forest from which they harvested herbs for essential oils. They had plumes of water from groundwater to grow corn. Their lives were on the upswing with one
liter of essential oil bringing in Rs 30,000 in income. The next community of Chidimars, a Dalit community which made a living off trapping birds, were living in an desertified environment—they’d been encouraged to put in a tubewell by a development agency, had stopped building traditional gadda to store rainwater, and had cut all their trees to build a schoolhouse. The community was on the edge of migrating due to desertification caused by bad policy and
environmental distress.
How poor communities build up resilience to survive the global as well as local warming effects will depend heavily upon local policy decisions. In Nepal, local governance structures like ward offices and village development committees have been
annihilated by the Loktantric regime. In my own neighborhood in Handigaon, I have been hard pressed to find an elected representative who could address my concerns about huge numbers of motorcycles driving through a historic area. I would like to stop this onslaught. But who do I turn to? There is no clear
local representative.
This lack of local governance means special stress and vulnerability for poor communities, who are often at the mercy of outside actors. Often current policy decisions, made ad hoc and on the spot, are driven by external Kathmandu-based NGO actors who might be more motivated in showing a progress report to a donor agency rather than in addressing the community’s concerns. Tubewells and now solar pumps that pump up riverwater, which are unsustainable in the long run, are being introduced (to much applause) at the expense of long-term sustainable water harvesting and irrigation systems. As the traditional methods fall apart, and the people have no way to maintain expensive polythene pipe systems, a rural community can plummet into drought and distress.
This sort of development-triggered distress is never accounted for in M and E reports, a genre of writing which documents glowing successes. “Is this policy sustainable in the long run?” is not a question asked of development practitioners. Grant burn rates (throw money at people who can use it up fast), flashy new technology, hot button themes, progress reports and deliverables drive policies, rather than long-term environmental stewardship.
Fossil fuel needs to be phased out, as do plastics. But central to people’s survival in the climate heating era will be local governance. A strong network of local governance existed in Nepal in the past. This is quickly being eradicated as crony communism takes hold. If we don’t address this, this will be a threat to the very existence of local communities.

Making sense of China is never easy. The obsequious domestic media in China churns out little news of value. At best, you have partial, often-biased informa­tion trickling out through the western media. So what is it? Has the Chinese state been able to mount an unprecedented campaign against coronavirus that any other country would struggle to match? Or has the top-down communist model badly botched the initial coronavirus response, trying to keep it hush-hush until it got out of hand? It’s hard to find a definite answer either way.Likewise, did the Chinese put pressure on Nepal govern­ment not to evacuate its students in Wuhan, or were our government officials more concerned about Chinese goodwill than the health of its citizens? The governments of Pakistan and Cambodia, in a show of unstinting trust in the Chinese government, refused to repatriate their students from Wuhan. In Nepal’s case, whatever the government was plan­ning, public pressure forced its hand, and it is now bringing back Nepali students.

While individuals are the ends in themselves in democ­racies, in autocracies individual liberties are often tram­pled with to serve the greater national cause. The liber­al-minded folks in Nepal are worried about China and its influence in a democratic Nepal. A respected aca­demic with some experience in dealing with Chinese offi­cials recently asked this author whether deadly viruses like SARS and coronavirus were originating in China because the Chinese scientists were experimenting with biological weapons.

Given China’s characteristic opacity, a question naturally arises: How much do we know China? Will we have to pay dearly if we embrace the Chinese without understanding their true nature? Yet this also assumes that we know democracies like the US and India better. But do we? Does the micromanagement India has overseen in Nepal over the past two decades inspire any more confidence in the ‘largest democracy in the world’? Or the way the Americans have relentlessly pursued their geopolitical interests in Nepal since the 1950s make us trust ‘the strongest democracy in the world’ any more?

China is neither good nor bad on the international stage. It is only pursuing its interests, just like any other country. As Constantino Xavier of Bookings India likes to say, “Thank you, China!” He thanks China for waking India up from its “colonial slumber” and making it realize that it just cannot boss around small countries in the neighborhood—while idly sitting on its bilateral projects—when these countries now have the Chinese option.

We cannot change our neighbors. Nepal will continue to have to deal with the one-party state for the foreseeable future and there is no option to increasing our engagement with China to decrease the over-dependence on India. Again, the choice will not always be easy. But as the Bangla­deshi ambassador Mashfee Binte Shams hinted to us in an interview this week, what Nepal should do is develop more self-confidence in dealing with varied external actors, not pick and choose between external powers. Who knows when we will need whom!

It’s wonderful that Nepal is bringing back its students from Wuhan. That is its right, and also the right thing to do. We are not, and don’t want to be, China’s Pakistan or Cambodia.

 I am not here to talk about divorce between a husband and a wife or between part­ners, but our divorce with ourselves. Divorce means the end of association. It involves parting away and distancing from people and situations. We may or may not have done that with our partners, but most of us do that with ourselves most of the time. Once a saint went to meet a disciple. The disciple’s daughter said her father was out at the cobbler’s to mend shoes. But the saint could hear the sound of a bell ringing and smell the aro­ma of incense sticks. After a while the disciple came out of a room and said, "My daughter lied to you, I was doing puja."

The saint said, “No, your daughter said the right thing. You were not in the house when I came.”

Actually, inside the puja room, the father’s mind had wandered off and he was thinking about going to the cobbler’s to get his shoes mended. His body was there and his hands were ringing the bell. But his mind was not there. Both the daugh­ter and the saint could read his mind from distance. His mind and body were not together. So, the disciple was not fully there.

This is the story for most of us most of the time. Our body is at one place, it is doing one thing, and the mind is someplace else. They are sep­arated and disjointed. They are divorced.

Why are we not in unity with ourselves? Why are we fragmented? Where is the harmony? Perhaps we have never thought about it.

When things fall in place and when they sync, we call it harmony. But our mind and body are not in harmony. We all talk about coherence and integrity in life. As body and mind together constitute our life, they must have a coher­ent relationship. But that is not the case, and we are not aware of it.

If body is the vehicle, mind is the driver. For the drive to be smooth and safe, the driv­er needs to know about the vehicle and be in tune with it when driving. If the driver does one thing and the vehi­cle another, then an accident is bound to happen.

If we equate the act of driving with the act of liv­ing, then the lack of concord between the vehicle and the driver—the body and the mind—is sure to put us in trouble. This trouble comes either in the form of bodily or mental suffering.

The Indian yogic science is the science of living in harmony. The practice of physical postures of yoga is about bringing the mind and body together. In the Chinese tradition, there are centuries-old practices of tai chi and qigong to establish that harmony.

These elaborate practices may require some time to learn. We can start by bring­ing our minds to the thing our body is doing, and converse­ly telling our bodies to go with what the mind is doing. When we start aligning our thoughts and actions thus, we start on the path of living with ease.