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The Ministry of Culture, Tour­ism and Civil Aviation has awarded the Tenzing-Hil­lary prize to Captain Siddhartha Gurung, a high-attitude rescue pilot with Simrik Air. The award carries a cash prize of Rs 50,000. Gurung was honored for his courageous acts of rescuing stranded moun­taineers and saving their lives. Minster of Water Supply and San­itation, Bina Magar, herself a moun­taineer, handed a certificate of appreciation and the cash prize to Gurung on the occasion of the 11th International Mount Everest Day on May 29. The day marks the first suc­cessful ascent of Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgey Sherpa in 1953. Also awarded on the occasion was Kami Rita Sherpa, who has successfully scaled Everest 22 times, and Lhak­pa Sherpa, who has successfully ascended to the top of the high­est mountain nine times, a record among women mountaineers.

Gurung was involved in the rescue operation of two Taiwan­ese tourists who had gone miss­ing for more than 45 days in the Langtang region in the district of Rasuwa last year. While one of them was rescued alive, another was found dead.

Simrik Air was also involved in an international rescue operation earlier this month when a 45-year-old Bulgarian mountain­eer Boyan Petrov went missing for about 10 days while scaling Mt Sisapang in Tibet, the autonomous region of China.

Simrik Air, in recent years, has been carrying out high-altitude rescue operations for mountain­eers and trekkers who lose their way. It also transports patients from the remotest corners of the country. “We’re still in the devel­opment phase of rescue missions,” says Gurung, who has been flying since 1994. “At present, most of our competitors hire foreign per­sonnel for rescue missions, who are not available all through the year. We are training local people and working on making our rescue available throughout the year.” Gurung credits the Switzer­land-based Air Zermatt for begin­ning the high altitude air-rescue missions in Nepal in 2009 and for training Nepali manpower.

Besides Gurung, the compa­ny employs a number of rescue pilots, namely Surendra Paudel, Bibek Khadka and Ananda Tha­pa. Even in areas where landing a helicopter is hard, Simrik Air car­ries out a longline rescue, which involves the rescuer being attached to the bottom of a rope flown to the rescue site.

The odds of the thorny Budhi Gandaki hydro project, with an estimated cost of Rs 270 billion, being awarded to the China Gezhouba Group Corporation have gone up. The budget speech presented by Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada this week does not mention the modality under which the project is to be undertaken. It only mentions that the project will be carried forward after giving compensation payments. Nor was the phrase ‘competitive process’ included in the federal government’s Policies and Programs unveiled on May 25 in the run-up to the budget presen­tation. This likely implies that the project will be given to the Chinese company.

This despite the fact that the white paper issued by the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation on May 8 had stated that a bidding process for the project would be initiated in the upcoming fiscal year.

Tug of war

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and his comrade-in-arms Pushpa Kamal Dahal have repeatedly declared that the Budhi Gandaki project would be handed to none other than the Gezhouba Group. The budget speech seems to be intended to make good on the prime minis­ter’s declaration, while going against the spirit of the Energy Ministry’s white paper.

Former Energy Minister Janardan Sharma had signed an agreement to hand the project to the Gezhouba Group without going through a competitive bidding process—the very next day that the government he was a part of was ousted and he was serving in a caretaker status. Shar­ma’s act was roundly criticized, for his term had already ended and his decision violated the Public Procurement Act. Following this, a joint meeting of the Agriculture and Water Resources Committee and the Public Accounts Committee of the then Legislature-Parliament directed the government to scrap the decision to award the contract to the Chinese company.

The previous Sher Bahadur Deuba-led government had then announced that the Budhi Gandaki project would be constructed with domestic investment. A taskforce under the coordination of Swarnim Wagle, the then vice-chairman of the National Planning Commission, had submitted a report to the government outlining a plan to carry out the project. Based on the report, the then Council of Ministers had decided ‘to undertake the Budhi Gandaki hydro project with domestic investment’.

The Energy Ministry’s white paper was in line with that government decision. But the recent budget speech, by omitting the word ‘com­petition’, has fueled speculation that Finance Minister Khatiwada has colluded with Prime Minister Oli to overturn the previous govern­ment’s decision and award the contract to the Chinese Company.

And what of West Seti?

What is more surprising is that the budget speech states that the West Seti hydro power project would be undertaken with domestic investment, although this is a project that has been deemed unviable even by the China Three Gorges Corporation, a global construction behemoth.

After Three Gorges wrote a letter to the Investment Board of Nepal implying that it intends to back off from the project, the IBN had formed a committee under Mahen­dra Man Gurung, a Secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister, to look into the matter. Although the committee has submitted its report, the IBN is yet to make a formal deci­sion. But Khatiwada, by preempting the IBN’s decision, announced in the budget speech that the West Seti project will be undertaken with domestic investment.

Upendra Yadav was the chief instigator of the 2007 Mad­hes Movement, which was instrumental in enshrining ‘federalism’ in the interim constitution. The interim charter in turn was the basis for the constitution of the federal republican Nepal issued in 2015. This architect of the 2007 Madhes Movement is now joining the central government in Kathmandu after a seven-year hiatus. With the formal inclusion of his party Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum Nepal (16 seats), the ruling coalition has 190 seats in the 275-member federal parliament. Importantly, it now has a two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution.

The Yadav-led SSFN decided to join the Oli government after inking a two-point deal, which stipulates that the constitution will be amended based on ‘mutual agreement’. Such an amendment will incorporate the demands raised by political movements of recent times, says the deal. Interestingly, as per the deal, the proposed amendments would be reflected in the government’s annual Policies and Programs, even though there was no possibility of that: the two-point deal came only a day ahead of the May 29 budget presentation.

This is not the only reason to doubt the feasibility of the chief demand of the 2015 protests in Madhes: revision of provincial boundaries in the constitution so that the entire Tarai belt comes under two Madhes-only provinces. It is nigh impossible to imagine the Nepal Communist Party agreeing to such demarcations, even though it now has the requisite strength to amend the constitution any way it likes. The vast majority of NCP leaders are viscerally opposed to separating Tarai from Pahad, and so is a high proportion of the party’s electorate. So what kind of amendments can we realistically expect?

SSFN will most certainly ask for more tax-collection and spending rights for provinces. The SSFN-led government in Province 2 has long chaffed at the centralization of revenue-collection and revenue-mobilization powers in Kathmandu. SSFN will also pitch for an easier citizenship provision for those born to Nepali mothers and foreign fathers, another pressing issue for its core constituents in the Tarai belt.

In the bigger picture, with the inclusion of SSFN, the Oli government now seems unassailable, with total control over the federal government as well as all the seven provincial governments.

The May 17 merger between the CPN-UML and the CPN (Mao­ist Center) is undoubtedly a momentous occasion in Nepali polit­ical history. The communist behe­moth that is the combined Nepal Communist Party now commands a near two-thirds majority in the federal parliament, and heads six of the seven provincial governments. Never before has a political party of any stripe so completely dominated national polity. Nor in the democrat­ic history of Nepal has there been a prime minister as strong as KP Sharma Oli. The left unity, which had been in the works for the past six months, has generated a lot of hope. Barring a political earthquake, the left gov­ernment will serve out its five-year term, which is again something that has never happened before. Econ­omists have repeatedly blamed the political instability of the post-1990 political set-up as a major hurdle to the country’s development and to the economic empowerment of its people. The hope now is that prosperity will follow a stable polity.

Yet there are grave fears over the left unity. The biggest of them is that the ruling party, in its seemingly single-minded focus on develop­ment and prosperity, could curtail democratic freedoms and intimi­date opposing voices, perhaps to build a ‘communist utopia’ in due course. Presently, the only other country to have an elected commu­nist government, Cambodia, is only nominally democratic. Its prime minister, Hun Sen, has continuously been in office for 33 years, making him the longest-serving prime min­ister in world history.

Single-party corporatism

Asked why the two big commu­nist parties in Nepal came together, political commentator Krishna Kha­nal bluntly replies, “To maintain a stranglehold on power”. Were that not the case, he asks, “why is the Nepal Communist Party trying to enlist other smaller parties in the government, when it already has a comfortable majority?”

Khanal likens the left merger to trying to establish a “single-party corporatism”. He finds it troubling that the media, which is itself corpo­ratized, is blindly supporting the left unity, when what it should be doing is critically questioning the rationale for the merger.

Nilamber Acharya, another polit­ical analyst, is more sanguine. “The unity will end the unhealthy competition among the political parties to get into govern­ment. Now the only way for the opposition parties to get back to power is by going to the people for a fresh mandate, which is how it should be in a democracy,” he says.

But doesn’t he fear the risks asso­ciated with an all-powerful ruling party and an emasculated oppo­sition? “Look, the opposition, by definition, is in a minority. Its strength depends not on the num­ber of its MPs but on the kinds of issues it raises. The onus is now on the opposition parties to regain public faith by raising pro-people issues,” Acharya says.

Senior Nepali Congress leader Ram Saran Mahat, for his part, fore­sees risks as well as benefits of the left unity. “One hopes that with a strong government, there will now be policy continuity and timely deci­sion-making, both of which were missing during the terms of pre­vious, unstable coalition govern­ments,” Mahat says.

Many plans, zero programs

Yet Mahat also sees some alarming signs. “On the economic front, this government is distribution-orient­ed rather than focused on increas­ing our capital base. Such distri­bution-oriented programs could ultimately bankrupt the country.”

Mahat is also uncomfortable with the centralization of powers in the PMO. “The prime minister should be providing overall vision and leadership, not busy himself with every little operational detail. I suspect the current government has authoritar­ian tendencies.”

Economist Biswo Poudel espies lack of clarity on the priorities of the new party and the government. “The government, for instance, says it will offer loans to industries and hydro projects at subsidized rates. But to get those loans the industries will have to pay hefty bribes, which negates the benefits of the subsi­dized loans.”

And what did Poudel make of the government’s Policies and Pro­grams announced in the run-up to this year’s national budget. “Frank­ly, its garbage. It’s all policies, but no programs. It talks of big dreams but offers little in terms of how to realize them.”

But won’t political stability in itself contribute to the country’s prosperity? “Not necessarily,” Pou­del argues. “If political stability were enough, the 30 years of Panchayat rule would have transformed the country,” he says.

Krishna Khanal also points to the potential for abuse of ‘democratic centrism’, one of the guiding prin­ciples of the new party. “In this system, once the party leadership makes a decision, it is binding upon all party members. Lenin used this princi­ple to sideline Trotsky. In other words, democratic cen­tralism can be used to sideline alternative voices in the party.”

Khanal believes the left unity gov­ernment has achieved precious little in its nearly 100 days in office, and thus has already failed to honor its mandate. Nilamber Acharya dis­agrees. “The biggest achievement of the first 100 days is the left unity itself—for it will have far-reaching impacts on the country. Now that the unification is done and dusted, the government can focus on other important things,” he says.

Biased against Madhes

Ram Saran Mahat also questions the new party’s adoption of demo­cratic centralism. He reckons dem­ocratic centralism is directly against the spirit of the new egalitarian constitution. But while he criticiz­es the government, the Congress leader also vows to play the role of a responsible and effective oppo­sition, “much like we did during the nine months of the Manmohan Adhikari government in 1995, when Nepali Congress helped rein in its populist programs.”

Veteran Madhesi journalist Rajesh Ahiraj questions if the ruling com­munist party can give society a pos­itive direction. “The authoritarian tendencies it has displayed in its short existence could ultimately fuel secessionism in parts of Nepal,” he cautions. Why, for instance, was the chief minister of Province 2 prevent­ed from visiting the US, he asks?

Ahiraj says the new party’s lead­ership is not inclusive; there is not a single Madhesi in its nine-member top brass, “which will only add to the old fear among the Madhesi people that KP Oli and company are somehow anti-Madhes.”

From all these observations it becomes clear that the biggest chal­lenge for the Nepal Communist Par­ty will be to prove that it is commit­ted to democratic values and that it will embrace all Nepalis, irrespec­tive of their color or place of origin.

As Nilamber Acharya says, ulti­mately, the left government will be judged on the basis of its action. “Frankly, I don’t see a danger of authoritarianism lurking in this part of the world. What I fear more is that our rulers have not learned anything from their past mistakes.”