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The quality of air in Pokhara metropolis, long known for its pristine natural beauty, is deteriorating by the day. The major contributors to air pollution in Pokhara are vehicle exhaust, incineration of plastic wastes and wildfire. According to Shankar Prasad Poudel, the information officer of the Department of Environ­ment, smoke rather than dust is the main air-pollutant in Pokhara. Smoke is considered more harmful to human health compared to dust.

“But the level of air pollution we see in Pokhara is still less compared to other urban cen­ters in Nepal like Kathmandu, Lumbini and some cities in Tarai-Madhes,” Poudel said.

According to the govern­ment’s benchmark based on the Environment Protection Rules (1997), ambient air should have no more than 40 g/m³ of particulate mat­ter (PM 2.5). These days the level of PM 2.5 in Pokhara often crosses that level. The level is particularly high (twice as much as recommended) between September-October and December-January peri­ods. Likewise, pollution is also high around March-April, largely due to wildfires.

Addressing the parliament on July 4, Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa deemed the fast-unto-death of Dr Govinda KC, who has long been campaigning for cheap and reliable healthcare for all Nepalis, an “authoritarian ten­dency”. In his view, while some of Dr KC’s demands may have merit, the way he has gone about forcing the government to meet those demands most certainly is not. But the home minister was skating on thin ice. Dr KC was forced into the latest round of fasting, his 15th, after the government tried to fast-track a watered down Medical Education Bill through the parliament. The passage of the bill would have undone virtually all the reforms that Dr KC has been campaigning for in the past five years. The bad intent was evident in the way the government suspended due parliamentary process in the haste to pass the bill. The government had removed from the bill some crucial provisions: ban on opening of new medical colleges in Kathmandu valley, capping at five the number of medical college a university can oversee, provision for all medical colleges to set aside 75 percent of their seats for scholarships, and restriction on licensing of medical colleges that don’t have their own hospitals.

Civil society leaders have predictably slammed the government move. Kedar Bhakta Mathema, the coordinator of the team that had proposed the afore­mentioned reforms, said the government was trying to “deceive people” by saying that the new bill was in keeping with the demands of Dr KC. Former Chief Justice Sushila Karki accused the government of “showing authori­tarian bent” and trying to “promote anomalies” in medical education. The refusal of the government to give Dr KC a proper place to protest, a democratic right of all Nepalis, has also raised concerns.

It is clear that the only reason the proposed medical education reforms have not been enacted is that powerful politicians belonging to the ruling Nepal Communist Party have big stakes in private medical education, and any attempt to strengthen public medical education hurts their business interests. Whether or not one supports Dr KC’s method of protest, it is hard to argue against his end goals. As the con­stitution explicitly states, each and every Nepali has the right to affordable and quality healthcare. To try to deny them this basic right is a criminal offense.

Prime Minister KP Oli has all the right foreign policy ideas. In his two terms as the gov­ernment head, he has made bal­ancing India and China the central plank of Nepal’s post-blockade for­eign policy. In large part this is a personal calculation. Near the end of his political career, and with his health iffy, Oli is deter­mined to leave behind a strong leg­acy: of a Nepali prime minister who not only talked about ‘equidistance’ with the two neighbors, but actually did something about it. With the memory of the blockade fresh on his mind, he embarked on the historic state visit to China in 2016, where he would sign a landmark trade and transit treaty. If this treaty came to fruition, never again would India be able to blockade Nepal. This is why people expected the protocols to make the treaty functional to be signed during Oli’s second state visit to China earlier this month.

It wasn’t meant to be. The 2016 treaty is not mentioned in the 14-point joint statement issued at the end of Oli’s China trip. Some think this owes to the recent thaw in relations between PM Oli and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi. Oli, in this reck­oning, is mak­ing a deliberate attempt to maintain a safe distance from China at India’s promoting, for instance by dilly-dallying on the treaty protocols. Or perhaps things were already out of Oli’s hands.

The Trump effect

Much like Nepal-India relations have recently warmed, so have India-China ties. After the Wuhan Summit in April between Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi, India and China seem intent on working together and mounting a common front in favor of unhindered globalization—which has brought the two countries rich rewards—against a protectionist US. Both Modi and Xi Jinping realize that it is unwise to rely too much on the ever-unpredictable Donald Trump. Some go so far as to argue that India and China have recently even settled their respective spheres of influence in South Asia.

“Such a possibility cannot be ruled out,” says Bhaskar Koirala, the Director of Nepal Institute of International and Strategic Studies. “Why was Nepal excluded from the recent Boao and SCO summits in China? Perhaps this was part of the new Chinese strategy of accommo­dating Indian concerns.”

Nowhere is this change in Indian perception of China more evident than in the Indian media, which in earlier times used to play up the specter of Nepal being gobbled up by China at the slight­est hint of Nepal-China rapprochement. But goaded by the South Block to tone down their anti-China pos­turing, the Indian media were this time largely silent on Oli’s China vis­it; some even wel­comed it.

“Sandwiched between two big countries, it is natu­ral that Nepal should seek to maximize its geography to its own advantage,” wrote The Indian Express in its June 25 editorial. “To that end, it has a tough balancing act to do, and India—no strang­er to tightrope walks itself—should be able to appre­ciate that”. This is an incredible turnaround from their strident blockade-time anti-Oli hysteria.

Border patrol

Other factors too could have delayed the trade and transit pro­tocols. The 14-point joint statement offers some clues, point number 10 in particularly. It says the two sides have agreed to strengthen “coopera­tion between law enforcement agen­cies” and to “negotiate the Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters and Treaty on Extradition”. This is considered vital in order to “strengthen cooperation on the administration of border areas and fight against illegal border crossing and transnational crimes”.

China is clearly worried about opening the sen­sitive region of Tibet without Nepal first giv­ing clear assurance that absolutely no anti-China activities will be permitted in border areas. Hence the emphasis on the extradition of potential Tibetan infiltrators into Nepal. This also suggests that China is not assured that Nepal, at present, can offer such guarantees. But in the view of security analyst Geja Sharma Wagle, as the level of engagement between Nepal and China increas­es, “it is only natural that China is more worried about the security implications of deepened ties.”

The other major agreement signed during Oli’s China visit earlier this month concerns a rail link. Both President Xi and Prime Minister Oli described the MOU on rail connectivity as the “biggest achieve­ment in bilateral history.” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang later informed that in the first phase the Shi­gatze-Key­rung line (that is to be completed by 2020) will be extended to Nepal’s Rasuwagadhi and in the second phase to Kath­mandu. Significantly, the ear­lier proposal of Nepal that the line be extended up to Lumbini on the Indo-Nepal border has been dropped. (The whole project is expected to take around six years.)

But opinion continues to be divid­ed on the rail project. As Raamesh Koirala pointed out in Naya Patrika, a high-speed rail may not be a good idea considering the difficult topog­raphy of border areas and that it is much cheaper to build all-weather roads instead. Things should be clearer in August when a Chinese team completes its feasibility study on the cross-border railway.

Whither Lipulekh?

There were other significant agreements in China this time, most notably on 600 MW Marsyangdi Hydro Project, as well as on set­ting up a $140-million cement factory, energy cooperation, opening of the closed Tatopani bor­der, etc. The trade and transit protocols, the government has assured, will also be signed sometime in July.

Thus while the intent of PM Oli to diversify Nepal’s rela­tions away from India, which necessarily entails closer ties with China, is prin­cipally right, he will have to get the modal­ity of connectivity projects rights. He will also have to increasingly heed China’s security concerns. Moreover, the Nepali prime minister could have a tough job of trying to pro­tect Nepali interests in light of the recently heightened engagement between India and China.

Perhaps the most notable omis­sion in the June 21 Nepal-China joint statement was the issue of Lipulekh, the tri-junction point between Nepal, India and China. In 2015 India and China had agreed to increase trade connectivity through this border point without consulting Nepal. As the editorial in the Indian newspaper hinted, it will indeed be a tough balancing act for Oli in the next few years O

Pokhara : The number of Indian tourists visiting Pokhara to escape the brutal Indian summer and to go to the Muktinath Tem­ple in Mustang has drastically increased. Most of these tourists would have travelled to Nepal via road. Generally, few Western tourists visit Pokhara for trekking purposes in the ‘off-season’ between June and September. Before the 2015 earthquakes, Chinese tourists mostly compensated for the shortfall of the Western visitors.

“But after the earthquakes the number of Chinese tourists visiting Pokhara declined,” says Bikal Tulachan, the chairman of the West­ern Development Region Hotel Association (Pokhara). “But the number of Indian tourists visiting Pokhara for touristic and religious reasons has considerably increased,” he says. Most of them come via bus to visit Muktinath, the common pilgrimage of both Hindu and Buddhist devotees. The trend of Indian tourists visiting Pokhara in their own private vehicles has also increased.

Most hotel rooms in Pokhara are right now occupied by Indians. Of all the tourists who visit Nepal, 30 percent come to Pokhara; and nearly half those travelling to Pokhara are Indians, Tulachan informs. Gita Malankar of Gujarat in India, whom we caught by the Lakeside, says she was lured to Pokhara by its natural beauty. “I had heard that the temperature in Pokhara is mild and that it is filled with natural beauty,” she says. “I found that Pokhara is even more beautiful than I had expected.”

Likewise, Parth Malankar, also of Gujarat, informed he had come to Pokhara with another team of 90 Indians after visiting Pashupati­nath Temple and Manakamana Temple. He says he came to escape the Indian heat which is “brutal this time.” The number of Indian tourists staying at the hotels in Muktinath has also increased, says Suraj Gurung of the Muti­nath-based Grand Hotel. These days, various Indian religious leaders organize sermons at Muktinath’s Ranipauwa, which has added to the place’s popularity among Indian tourists.

Of the 700 beds in 22 hotels of Muktinath, which lies 3,710 meters above sea level, most are occupied by Indian tourists. Besides the Muktinath Temple, the majestic views of Dhau­lagri, Nilgiri and Thorung La mountains are the other main draws of Muktinath.

By Krishna Mani Baral