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 In order to revitalize the Nepali Congress and help it regain its position as a lead­ing political force, some vital steps are necessary.

The party doesn’t need many policy reforms. Unwavering faith in democracy, protection of the citizens’ fundamental rights, the rule of law, support for plural­ism, an independent judiciary, a free press, periodic elections, a parliamentary system—these are still the NC’s main policies. The party has embraced the new dynamics of proportional representation. Because ‘demo­cratic socialism’ is highly prone to misinterpretation by commu­nist parties, Congress needs to establish a separate identify for itself as a proponent of a welfare economic system.

The NC has always been led by someone who respects the pub­lic mandate. Between 1950 and 1982, the party was led by BP Koirala. After that, for a decade, it was led collectively by Ganesh Man Singh, Krishna Prasad Bhat­tarai and Girija Prasad Koirala. From 1990 on, it was led primar­ily by Girija Prasad Koirala until his demise in 2010.

Girija Prasad Koirala had firm faith in the rank and file, who act as the link between the party and the people. It was because he was continuously in touch with the rank and file that he was able to prevail over other senior leaders. At present, the party leadership lacks vitality. A successful leader has to have, at a minimum, four traits—the ability to listen to others, test their ideas, analyze the ideas in context and express one’s views clearly to the public.

The party leadership has been weakened because of its inabil­ity to establish itself among the general people. These leaders will get yet another chance to correct their mistakes in the next general convention. How the party will make use of this opportunity is a matter of curi­osity and concern. In a polity like ours, some influence of heredity is undeniable. But now that the country is a republic, the salience of heredity is bound to erode.

Even today, Congress is not organizationally weak. The party charter provides a good enough roadmap. But an apathetic lead­ership has rendered the center passive. Various departments haven’t been set up. Responsibil­ities haven’t been properly dele­gated. Because party leaders are mobilizing their supporters and well-wishers mostly from their own homes, the party office is in decline.

Until the party corrects this tendency, it cannot function well. Daily attendance of the party president and central committee members at the party office can help break factional­ism. Not going to the party office and running factions from home breeds a culture of sycophancy. Such a trend must be discour­aged. It not only places factions above the party but, worse, saps the morale of cadres.

Daily attendance of party president and central committee members at party office can help break factionalism

BP himself was a cerebral leader. He had expressed the need to establish think tanks during the time of the 1980 ref­erendum. But the current Con­gress leadership doesn’t realize think tanks are needed, whether the party is in government or in opposition. When necessary, they invite experts and form opinions on an ad hoc basis. Think tanks of a permanent nature are the need of the hour. They help identify and cor­rect shortcomings in the party, inspire leaders through inde­pendent views and formulate short- and long-term strategies.

Since 1990, because of the continual exercise of demo­cratic freedoms, a sizeable mid­dle class has evolved across the length and breadth of the coun­try. Easy access to a passport has allowed half the population to visit foreign countries and become familiar with global trends. Moreover, the IT revo­lution has brought news from around the world to individual households. Now, Nepali citi­zens are, to varying degrees, familiar with national and global happenings. So they expect the government to deliver. And they have penalized the NC for its fail­ure to deliver despite multiple opportunities. The party’s next general convention is looking for a leadership that can deliver on numerous fronts—political, eco­nomic, social and cultural. But that’s only possible if the party can break free from the chains of hierarchy.

Traditional parties, including Congress, haven’t been able to attract the youth. In fact, the NC leadership doesn’t even know what the new genera­tion wants. Congress leaders, including yours truly, are IT illiterate. Without familiarity with Information Technology, it’s impossible to connect with the new generation.

The country is at a crossroads between hope and cynicism. A political party should be able to inspire hope. It’s the leadership that orients a party in a partic­ular direction. The NC should

 be able to profess commitment to good governance, quality healthcare and edu­cation, fiscal discipline, capital formation, greater investment, development and job creation. It should convey that only the NC can protect freedoms.

The state has been restructured for the first time. NC has to take ownership of the constitution and demonstrate a clear determination to implement it honestly

Radheshyam Adhikari is an NC lawmaker in the federal upper house

Nepal is not a small country. There are 167 countries in the world that are smaller than Nepal in size. Nepal is bigger than Austria, Switzerland, South Korea and Israel, to name a few. You don’t normally read of these countries being referred to as small by either foreigners or their natives. Comparably, they are smaller than many big countries but their international standing is no less.

Nepal is small because it perceives itself as such. The small-country-syndrome is engrained in our collective psyche and we are made to feel hopeless and helpless all the time. It’s a little country that is always intim­idated by big powers that sur­round it. It’s a country that never got over its own perceived sense of smallness and always feels it is at the mercy of its big neighbors— and everybody else.

Now this country that perceives itself as small and weak finds itself being courted by its neighbors and the reigning superpower, and it has absolutely no idea how to respond to their overtures. It now finds itself “in the vortex of world conflicts” but doesn’t know how to stand up for its interests—at least in the past, our rulers knew whose side we need­ed to choose to remain and be acknowledged as being an inde­pendent country.

These days we don’t even know what constitutes our national interests and how to go about defending those. The undem­ocratic-by-today’s-standards Rana regime knew that it had to ally itself with the British if we were to remain independent. The Ranas rejected both the German and Japanese overtures and allied Nepal with the power that guaran­teed and respected Nepal’s sover­eignty—of course in exchange for its able-bodied fighting men and continuation and enrichment of the oligarchy.

In the era of colonization and hot wars we managed to main­tain our sovereignty and indepen­dence because our rulers made the best choices in the worst of scenarios. The last ruler who stood tall without any emotion­al baggage was King Mahendra. But we have demonized him so much that any positive men­tion of him or praising of his for­eign policy is ridiculed by the brainwashed liberals as following “Mahendrian nationalism.”

The “sponsored” national nar­rative that views King Mahendra as a villain—favorite of our liberal elites and mainstream press—has made us fear that if we stand up for our interests, one of our neigh­bors is going to get angry, and we being the smallest, weakest and poorest one have no option but to please all, all the time. As a result, diplomacy for us is nothing more than appeasing everyone. But if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one, and only make yourself more miserable.

The ‘small, powerless, weak’ country syndrome has debilitated us and it’s our own doing. Our diplomacy is driven by irratio­nal fears, and the foreigners are taking advantage of not our real weaknesses but our perceived ones. We have failed to ask the most important question: What’s the worst that can happen if we make our real priorities clear and align or not align with one of the three—India, China or the US?

An embargo maybe: Diplomacy then means having good relations with the other so that there are no energy and food shortages. No development aid: If one cuts down or stops development aid, then maintain good relations with the other two so that we keep getting the money, and ask for market access. No tourists: have the other two send us more tour­ists and have more direct flights. We being on some evil countries’ list and international embargo: be in more than friendlier terms with the enemy of your enemy.

The worst of all scenarios is the likelihood of a proxy war and per­petual chaos and political insta­bility instigated by the disgrun­tled power (s). But that can only happen if it finds leaders that are willing to be used. If our leaders are united on national interests then no power can destabilize us. Diplomacy then can be used to develop the country with the help of whoever provides us more and helps keep the disgruntled at bay, thereby averting any proxy war, in exchange of our loyalty.

Therefore, we—insecure little in the middle—first need to imagine what’s the worst that can befall us if we make our choices clear—and whether or not the friend(s) we choose help(s) us feel empowered and grow stronger.

Let’s not continue with the pol­icy of stunting our growth—unless we want to be the circus dwarf who makes the whole world laugh at him with his antics.

 Less than three weeks after Puspha Kamal Dahal ‘Pra­chanda’ warned that a ‘new Maoist force could emerge with devastating consequences for the country if the peace process was not honestly implemented,’ Kathmandu Valley was rocked by the explosion of an improvised bomb that took the life of one person and injured two others. The explosion brought back trag­ic and painful memories of the 10-year-long civil war. Many see a connection between the two (more on this a little later).The attack on Ncell, a large and symbolic foreign direct invest­ment in the telecom sector, also comes several weeks before the Investment Summit aimed at attracting more foreign investors. The attack sends wrong messages on so many levels. It harms the country’s attempt to tell the world that Nepal has begun a new chap­ter and is open for business. More damagingly, it indicates another cycle of political or even state fail­ure—underscoring Nepal’s fragili­ty, whatever politicians say about a strong government.

The Maoists of all stripes have identical positions on transitional justice

Even before the Netra Bikram Chand Biplab-led Maoists took responsibility, it was an open secret. It had all the telltale signs of a strategy right out of the Maoist playbook. But that knowl­edge raises more questions than it answers.

Why now? What is the trigger? Why target Ncell in particular, even though there have been oth­er instances of attack against Indi­an investments?

The question of timing goes to the heart of Prachanda’s state­ment on Venezuela last month. The ensuing spat between him and the prime minister saw a hardening of stance of former and current Maoists. It all boils down to how the government plans to handle the transitional justice issue, the pressure from the inter­national community and the fear of Prachanda and the current and former Maoists.

Whatever their differences, all Maoists of all stripes, including Baburam Bhattarai and Biplab, have identical positions on transi­tional justice: None of them wants to be labeled as a perpetrator of grave rights violations and face punishment, even though such a punishment may only be symbol­ic—a road the prime minister and his team appear inclined to take. While the government is report­edly planning to set up a special court to deal with all war-era cas­es and mete out symbolic punish­ments, Prachanda wants all such cases withdrawn and symbolic justice meted out to a select few the former Maoists are willing to give up as a sacrifice.

Complicated between comrades

The relationship between Pra­chanda, Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa Badal, Biplab and Mohan Baidya, the Maoist ideologue and mentor, is com­plex. Clearly Baidya and Biplab are unhappy with Prachanda and Badal. But to suggest that their relationship is one of pure hos­tility would be naïve. On the sur­face, Badal has cracked down on Biplab’s factions by arresting key leaders with deliberate publicity. But he has also quietly released them using a low profile govern­ment talks team led by Parlia­mentarian Som Prasad Pandey. In recent days, the new Maoists have broken off contact with the talk team.

One wonders why a former Maoist commander and current Home Minister—who used the state crackdown as a recruitment tool during his rebellion days—would allow his former comrade to use the same playbook. Those who argue Badal does not realize he is repeating the mistake of for­mer Home Minister Khum Baha­dur Khadka do not fully appre­ciate the advantage of having an armed faction on the outside for the Maoist half of the NCP. The merger between CPN-UML and the Maoists was one of conve­nience. If the Maoist half prevails, they are likely to come out with a larger faction than they went in with. Perhaps that is why they have asked the Election Commis­sion not to give their former party name and symbol to anyone.

This raises the question: Are Prachanda and his team keep­ing Biplab-led faction outside the big NCP tent for a particular pur­pose? While it is difficult to rule out these sequences of events as purely coincidental, one hopes our leaders, both ruling and in the opposition, including the armed factions, would not subject the country to another vicious cycle of violence and instability.

The winds of a new cold war between the US and China have started blowing even in Kath­mandu. The latest example of it is the forewarning by an American official about Chinese investment in Nepal and the counter-remark by the Chinese Ambassador in Kathmandu. On Monday, Joseph Felter, US Dep­uty Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia, had remarked that Chinese investments should be transparent, that they should serve Nepal’s interests and that Nepal should avoid falling into a debt trap. Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqi countered Felter’s remarks the following day, saying that the US was propagating false and irresponsible information. Although western diplomats had been whispering about the growing collaboration between Nepal and China, we hadn’t yet heard the kind of official expression Felter made this week. Now that the Americans have legitimized the China-targeted Indo-Pacific Strategy, they have started talking freely.

It was also from Felter that we heard for the first time that the American grant of $500 million to Nepal under the Millennium Chal­lenge Corporation (MCC) is part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy. It’s been quite a while since the Nepal Army has been conducting a joint military exercise named Balance Nail with the US Indo-Pacific Com­mand. Regardless of how we inter­pret the Indo-Pacific Strategy, it seems the US has started viewing, placing and dealing with Nepal under this scheme.

Such American intimation was also reflected during the bilateral meeting between Foreign Minis­ter Pradeep Gyawali and his US counterpart in Washington DC in December. The statement issued by the US State Department soon after hinted that “Nepal’s central role in a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pa­cific” had been a topic of discussion in the meeting.

 The Indo-Pacific Strategy hasn’t yet assumed the shape of a military alliance like NATO or a regional organization like SAARC

The Indo-Pacific Strategy hasn’t yet assumed the shape of a mili­tary alliance like NATO or a regional organization like SAARC. So it’s not clear how much a country needs to cooperate to be considered a part of the strategy. In fact, this strategy seems to have been advanced in a clever manner to serve long-term interests. A country doesn’t need to announce that it is a part of it, but now it seems the partnerships America strikes will mostly be under this strategy.

The strategy is similar to the Chi­nese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in that China has started placing all its partnerships under the BRI umbrella. But the difference is that China has begun giving the BRI a definite shape. And member coun­tries have to sign on to it and take part in its summits. For instance, President Bidya Bhandari is going to Beijing in April to participate in the second BRI summit.

By contrast, the US hasn’t given an organizational shape to the Indo-Pa­cific Strategy. But the BRI and the Indo-Pacific Strategy have emerged as weapons with which America and China are competing for world dom­ination in the 21st century.

As Foreign Minister Gyawali was conversing with US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, the US Sen­ate was finalizing a bill that has significance for Nepal as well. US President Donald Trump signed the bill into law a few days later. That law, called the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (ARIA), is the one that directs the Indo-Pacific Strategy.

ARIA defines the Indo-Pacific as the region that houses half the world’s population, has the most vibrant economy and poses a chal­lenge to American security strat­egy. It says the US-dominated world order is being challenged in differ­ent ways by China, North Korea and terrorist outfits like ISIS. The US goal is to overcome all such challenges and maintain its world domination.

Although ARIA’s purported goals are to enhance American security and financial interests and spread its values, its core concern is a ris­ing China. Growing US interest in Nepal—which shares a border with China’s Achilles heel Tibet and which has a direct stake in Tibetan issues—is therefore natural.

Nepal is mentioned twice in ARIA. Under the heading ‘Promoting US Security Interests in the Indo-Pa­cific Region’, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are labelled ‘Democratic partners’ with which the US is going to increase collaboration. (India has been called a ‘defense partner’ and given distinct importance.) As Chinese investment in Nepal’s infrastructure grows, the US is also showing an eagerness to follow suit. That donors are finally channeling investment away from seminars and toward infrastructure is good for Nepal, even though they might be doing it to compete with each other.

The second time Nepal is men­tioned in ARIA is under the head­ing ‘Promoting democracy in the Indo-Pacific Region’, which says the US is going to provide aid of over $210 million a year between 2019 and 2023 in order to ‘bring democ­racy to China’ and ‘protect Tibetan tradition, culture, environment, etc.’ It says this amount is going to be invested in NGOs working with the ‘Tibetan community’ in Tibet and ‘other Tibetan communities’ in Nepal and India. That it says ‘Tibetan communities’ instead of ‘Tibetan refugees’ raises questions as to who the definition covers and how the policy will be implemented in Nepal. Managing Chinese responses to it might well be another source of a headache.

In December, US President Trump also signed a separate law concern­ing Tibet. The Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act has a provision of denying a US visa to Chinese officials who deny American citizens a visa to visit Tibet. Considering all these recent happenings, it seems the US wants to revive the Tibet issue from a new angle. How will that affect Nepal? Will Nepal be made ‘a listen­ing post’ to keep an eye on Tibet? Or will it be made ‘a launching pad’? We need to think about it before it’s too late.

The foundation of ARIA is the National Security Strategy that Trump made public in December 2017. The strategy considers China a military rival and suggests ways to counter Chinese economic aggres­sion. In the cold war between the US and China, countries like Nepal have little role to play except being a spec­tator. The third actor in this rivalry among the two giants is India, which has its own expectations. Nepal has to collaborate with all three of these powerhouses; it also has to dodge their military objectives. Until recently, all we needed to under­stand was India. But now China and America have become active geopo­litical players in Nepal. If Nepal can skillfully handle the new dynamics in diplomacy, it presents an oppor­tunity. Else, it spells disaster.

As Professor Shreedhar Kha­tri said recently, Nepal needs to learn how to deal with great powers. We can neither escape from India, nor stop the arrival of China and America. We have no choice but to learn to maintain parallel relations with them.