Tamang says it took him altogether five days to get the citizenship of his son. “I had to take out a loan of Rs 10,000, which is all spent now. It does not matter who assumes power, we, the poor citizens, have to suffer,” he laments.

Taldhunga’s Mohan Prasad Timilsina crossed four dis­tricts and spent Rs 9,000 for his son’s citizenship. “To get to the headquarters, one needs to walk through the dense Mahabharat forest,” he says. “I am old and cannot walk on treacherous paths. That is why I took a detour via Mak­wanpur, Dhading, Kathmandu and Bhaktapur districts to get to Dhulikhel.”

He cannot understand why people have to face such hardships to get a piece of paper. Dandapari resi­dents complain that all local office-bearers live in far-off district headquarters.

Khanikhola rural municipal­ity chairman Krishna Baha­dur Khulal says locals have no option but to travel to the headquarters as there are no banking facilities for effective functioning of local bodies close by.

Mahabharat rural munici­pality chairman Kanchaman Jimba rues how the central government has shown no interest in the operation of the area administration office. (A few years ago, the home min­istry had set up an area admin­istration office in Ghartichap VDC to serve a dozen VDCs in the vicinity.) “The local government can only provide land for the concerned offices. It is the central and provincial governments that should pro­vide physical infrastructure and staff,” Jimba adds.

Chief District Officer Krishna Bahadur Raut assures that he is working on it.

The two Eminent Persons Groups (EPGs) set up to review past India-Nepal treaties had come up with a final draft of their joint report on July 4. After this, the report was to be presented first to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then to his Nepali counterpart KP Sharma Oli. But Modi is apparently too busy and he has thus far not given the joint EPG team the time to meet.

When Nepal had raised the prospect of submitting the report during the Indian prime minister’s recent visit to Kathmandu for the BIMSTEC summit, India had reportedly declined as it would not discuss ‘bilateral issues at the side­lines of the multilateral forum’. But then India and Nepal did discuss a host of bilateral issues at the sidelines, including cross-border railways. But, according to Bhekh Bahadur Thapa, the coordinator of the Nepali EPG, there is an alter­native explanation behind Modi’s reluctance.

“When we talk of revis­ing past Indo-Nepal trea­ties we are talking about extremely sensitive issues,” he told APEX. “Since the joint report will be made public immediately after it is presented to the respective prime ministers, perhaps the political leaderships in the two countries are taking their time to closely study the recommendations away from the prying eyes.”

He also cautions against “wild speculations on such a deli­cate issue”. His remark comes in the wake of some comments in the media that the EPG process has been a failure as India is supposedly not interested in heeding its recommenda­tions. Along with revisions in the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship, for instance in the clause providing for ‘recip­rocal treatment’ of citizens of one country in the other, the EPG report also recommends a level of border management. Some analysts suspect India is not ready for these changes.

Thapa says both the Indian and Nepali political leaderships have invested a lot in the EPG process and it would be pre­mature to suggest that the process has been a failure. Also, he clarifies, the EPG members decided against submitting the report at the sidelines of BIMSTEC summit as that would have “undermined the importance of the EPG process.”

Whatever the EPG members may say, the longer the submission of the report is delayed the stronger will be the perception that the whole process has somehow been futile as India is simply not interested.

 The fourth heads-of-state summit of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) in Kathmandu on August 30 and 31 brings together seven countries, five from South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lan­ka) and two from Southeast Asia (Myanmar and Thailand). BIMSTEC, formed in 1997 in Bangkok, had been moribund for much of its existence, with the last summit held in Naypy­idaw, Myanmar in March 2014. Late­ly, however, the forum has gotten a new lease on life thanks to India’s renewed interest.

India, by far the largest country both economically and militarily in BIMSTEC, has tried to promote the forum in lieu of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooper­ation (SAARC), the eight-country grouping which includes Afghani­stan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka as members. The reason for the switch is the growing realization in New Delhi that the India-Pakistan rivalry will never allow for meaning­ful regional cooperation from within the SAARC framework.

All the major decisions in SAARC have to be taken by consensus. Because India and Pakistan sel­dom accept each other’s propos­als, there has been little headway made in terms of bringing South Asia closer economically. India refused to take part in the 19th SAARC summit that had been scheduled for Islam­abad in 2016, saying that there would be no engagement with Pakistan unless the latter stopped providing safe haven to terrorists. India now seems intent on pushing regional initiatives like BIMSTEC that do not include Pakistan.

But while Pakistan could arguably have done more to rein in anti-India terrorism that originates on its soil, India’s overall role within SAARC has also been dubious. When SAARC was founded under the initiative of Ban­gladesh and Nepal, India suspected smaller countries in the region were trying to “gang up” against New Del­hi. Hence, India has never been keen on SAARC. Perennial India-Pakistan tensions only made the situation worse.

Yet there continues to be con­siderable goodwill for SAARC in its smaller member states like Nepal. Traditionally, Nepal has seen SAARC as a forum where it could stand as an equal with India, the “big brother” next door. There is also a feeling that India, the undisputed fulcrum of South Asia, could have done more to promote regional cooperation in South Asia (despite Pakistan’s less-than-helpful attitude). This is why many analysts in Kathmandu are suspicious of India’s intent behind its backing of BIMSTEC.

Most don’t expect anything sub­stantial to come out of the fourth BIMSTEC summit Nepal is hosting. After all, BIMSTEC has not managed to draft a guiding charter in over two decades of existence. Interestingly, the Nepal government has already started chalking up successes on the bilateral front with India, like rail and road connectivity projects, as prospective BIMSTEC success stories. This means Nepal will allow India to place many of these bilateral projects under BIMSTEC, just like it has allowed China to club most of its bilateral projects with Nepal under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The China factor is vital. During the last SAARC summit in Kathman­du in 2014, Nepal, with Pakistan’s support, had proposed that China be included as a full SAARC member state, a development that India did not appreciate. Traditionally, India has seen South Asia as its backyard and has not been ready to let in a third party. There was a perception in New Delhi that Beijing was look­ing to spread its footprints in South Asia via SAARC. This is another rea­son Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted to revive BIMSTEC, which, unlike SAARC, has a distinct anti-China whiff.

With this background, Nepal’s foreign policy of late has been rather curious. New Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli seems to believe that if he has both India and China on board he does not need the rest of the international community. So as Sino-India ties have warmed, Oli has relentlessly pushed the idea of Nepal-India-China trilateral coop­eration. Before, the Indians did not even want to hear of it. Now they are more sympathetic.

Nepal will hence look to derive maximum benefit from China’s BRI, while also not desisting from using multilateral forums like BIMSTEC to enhance ties with India. This may not be wise. India and China have never cooperated for a third coun­try’s benefit in South Asia, and it would be naïve to think they will do so for Nepal. But Oli is determined to give it a go.

Just as joining the BRI helped Oli curry the favor with the Chinese, he seems to believe that follow­ing India’s lead on BIMSTEC will help him cement ties with the Indian establishment. With both India and China on his side, he will also feel he has enough inter­national support to serve out his five-year term. (Nepali governments have often been toppled early due to India-China geopolitical tussles.)

The big question that is being asked in Kathmandu is whether India is ready to overcome its security sen­sitivities and allow Nepali trucks and trains to use its territory to directly connect with Bangladesh and Myan­mar. If not, BIMSTEC will prove to be no more than a geopolitical chess­board for bigger powers, and one which has little room for smaller players in the region like Nepal. The Diplomat

Altogether 186 Nepali sportsters are representing the country in 29 different sports at the ongoing Asian Games in Indonesia. While many national records
have been broken, Nepal has won only a paltry silver thus far. This is not to undermine the heroic achievement of the Nepali paragliders who bagged the country’s second silver, ever, at the Asiad. (Nepal’s only other silver medal came in Bangkok 1998, when Sabita Rajbhandari came second in taekwondo.). There is much room for improvement.

A quick question: How many sports do Nepalis play professionally? Cricket, football, taekwondo, karate, boxing, athletics… maybe a few more. But an astounding 207 sports associations are registered with the National Sports Council. Around 45 of them are for karate only. The council’s official website lists an association related to ice-hockey, even though there are no active ice-hockey players in Nepal.

Then there is the Nepal Zurkhaneh Sports Association which handles Iranian wrestling (again, zero players). There is also a Footvolley association and another equally obscure one for ‘Sepak takraw’ (an Indonesian sport). Moreover, the phone numbers of their ‘officials’ are mostly unavailable on the website, although this is a mandatory requirement. Even the few numbers that are listed are either switched off or unreachable.

“There is a curling association here. Do they even know what curling is? Where is the infrastructure to practice curling?” asks Dipesh Ghaley, a sports promoter and executive president of the Himalayan Outdoor Festival Pvt Ltd. (Curling is a European sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice towards a target area.)

“Sports is related to the youth and youth means strength. This is why political parties create these fake associations to enlist youths,” Ghaley says. He feels Nepali sports will progress only when these fake associations are shut and professional, non-political sportspersons are appointed to oversee the ones.

Among the better-established organizations are the Nepal Amateur Athletics Association, the Cricket Association of Nepal, the Nepal Badminton Association, the Nepal Boxing Association, the All Nepal Football Association and the Nepal Lawn Tennis Association. All these deal with sports that have a good number of players. “The rest are there to swindle the state and create holiday opportunities for the so called officials and their families,” says a veteran sports photojournalist on the condition of anonymity because he does not want the associations to bar him from taking photos. “There is a big racket in Nepali sports, a racket that enjoys government protection.”

The photojournalist says many responsible government officials are not even aware of how many sports are played in the country or how many of the (real or fake) associations are in existence. “These associations are nothing but cartels for paid vacations for those in power and sometimes even for human traffickers,” he adds.
According to the Sports Development Department under the Ministry of Sports, the sports associations need to be affiliated with international federations of respective sports and have to meet certain criteria to be eligible for registration with the council. They need to provide regular training to the players and conduct periodic tournaments and other related programs nationwide. These provisions are being openly flouted.

Yet the department claims it is doing all it can. “We have recently cancelled the registrations of 25 associations which failed to meet our requirements,” says Kul Bahadur Thapa, the department chief. “We have also issued warnings to more associations and will be strictly monitoring their activities in the coming days.”

With Nepal having won just 24 medals in the seven decades of its participation at the Asiad, the country’s record at the Olympics is predictably much worse. Nepal’s only Olympic medal, a bronze, came by the way of Bidhan Lama at Seoul 1988. (But since taekwondo was only an exhibition game at the event, the bronze was not recognized.) Otherwise, in the 13 editions of the Summer Olympics Nepal has taken part in, there has not been a single medal. What is worse is that Nepali athletes have not won a single match at the Olympics, with the sole exception of Bishnu Bahadur Singh who triumphed in a boxing bout in Seoul 1988.

As former professional boxer Kiran Thapa puts it, things are unlikely to improve unless the perverted incentives of those running Nepali sports change. Right now, the first criterion to be eligible to run these associations is to be a card-carrying member of a political party. The same rule applies for selection of coaches. “Seldom is merit alone enough,” he rues. (See Expert view below)

Right now the state of Nepali sports is as pathetic as the premises of the Dashrath Stadium, with its overflowing toilets and moss-encrusted rooms, that many of the sports associations, both real and fake, call home.

Keep politics away from sports

 I am one of the only two Inter­national Boxing Association three-star certified coaches in Nepal and yet I have not got­ten an opportunity to coach the national boxing team. This is because there is so much bureaucracy, nepotism and favoritism in Nepali boxing. This is in fact the problem with all the sports played in Nepal. You should either be affiliated to political parties or be loyal to the people running the different sports associations. Seldom is merit alone enough.

Even after being selected as the national coach for the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, I could not go because of the politics in the Nepal Box­ing Association. I have been training boxers for almost two decades. I have been with the AFP for 15 years and produced professional players who have represented the country abroad. But Nepal never does win medals in international box­ing because we lack profession­alism and infrastructure.

The goal should be to win medals, not just to come back with ‘experience’ or to break national records. Boxing is one of the oldest sports in Nepal and yet we don’t win. I have produced professional boxers even from a private fit­ness club. So you can do it. In order to produce athletes who can win at the international level, we should keep politics away from sports and focus on getting the best coaches for all the sports.

A gold medalist or an excel­lent player might not be the best coach. I think all the asso­ciations and the National Sports Council need to understand that. Get trainers who actual­ly know how to train athletes instead of giving coaching opportunities to retired players you like. I believe our sports infrastructure is also sub-par and there is no proper coach­ing-learning mechanism. It’s all ad hoc now.

(The author is former professional boxer and current head coach of the Armed Police Force Boxing Team)