Submit your Article

Nepal’s recent improvement in the global civil-aviation regulator ICAO’s audit score could be wasted. It would have been the perfect opportunity to lobby with the European Commission to lift the ban on Nepali airlines from European skies. But the country’s entreaties on that score are likely to be scorned. A pair of bills in the federal parliament to split the regulatory and service-providing arms of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) have been cunningly shelved. The commission has repeatedly clarified that European skies will remain closed to Nepali fliers until the split: the overlapping of CAAN’s regulatory and operational duties creates conflict of interest, adding to the risk of accidents.  

Just when the bills were to be put up for a vote in the federal lower house on March 2, Minister for Tourism and Civil Aviation Prem Ale had asked the parliament secretariat to hold them back. He had done so under the pressure of the CAAN top brass (and their political masters) who feared a loss in their clout from the authority’s split. So even as the country’s economy is nearing a point of crisis, one measure that could immediately help revive it was shelved: the European Commission’s ban discourages European tourists from visiting Nepal with its ‘unsafe skies’.  

Nor is this just a question of our economy’s health. So long as CAAN remains intact, even Nepali air passengers will feel unsafe. The interests of a handful of people have been allowed to endanger common lives. Owing to continuous obstruction from the main opposition, the 10th parliamentary session has been prorogued. The two bills are now unlikely to be discussed until the election of a new parliament later this year. 

Both the ministry of tourism as well as CAAN have been keen to highlight the ICAO’s recent favorable ratings of Nepal. But they surely know that the ban will stay until the central issue of the break-up of CAAN is completed. Instead of waiting for international organizations to help Nepal, our politicians need to first show that they can ensure the safety of their own brethren.

Periodic elections give the electorate a chance to choose between candidates who offer a competing set of competencies and ideologies. Or so we would like to believe. But people’s right to make informed choices in the upcoming local polls could be curtailed after the five parties in the ruling coalition fought among themselves to get their candidates on the ballot paper. The brawl was particularly intense in major cities like Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Pokhara and Janakpur. Coalition partners were also fighting tooth and nail over other candidacies. 

But isn’t competition the essence of all elections? Yes and no. It would have been wonderful to see the parties fighting on behalf of competent candidates. What we rather saw was that the argument was not at all over the merits of individual contestants but rather over whether the wife or brother or financier of this or that top political leader should have been picked. These disputes had become so bitter that many in the ruling coalition were in favor of putting off local polls if they could not agree on common candidates.

Even if elections are now a near certainty, those who win important mayorships are likely to be chosen based on their party affiliation rather than competence. Most of the Nepali electorate is still not mature enough to vote for candidates from outside the major parties. So even as we all like to blame the major parties for robbing us of our right to have good mayors and municipal heads, a little introspection might also be warranted.

Of course, people also consider that if they elect, say, an independent mayor, he or she will not be allowed to work freely in the politically-steeped post-election milieu. Yet that is a poor excuse to keep voting for those who time and again disappoint—and this applies to the parties now in the ruling coalition as well as the opposition. If people vote for clean and competent folks irrespective of their political affiliations, the parties in the future will also be bound to select better candidates.

Some disagreement between the Ministry of Finance and the Nepal Rastra Bank, the central bank, is not only expected but also desirable. The bank has a high level of autonomy so that it can craft monetary policies and regulations with minimal political meddling. The exercise of this autonomy can often cause friction with the finance ministry, which works with a different set of priorities. Only with the right balance between the functioning of these two entities can the country’s economy hum along. The goal is not to remove the friction but to use it to come up with carefully-weighed monetary and fiscal measures.

 Finance Minister Janardan Sharma, on the other hand, seems to believe that the central bank’s leadership should be beholden to him and seek his guidance every step of the way. He proposed for the removal of Governor Maha Prasad Adhikari—a proposal that Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba promptly endorsed—on the charge that Adhikari refused to heed him on vital matters and leaked sensitive information to the press. Minister Sharma has furnished no good proof to substantiate his claims. Instead, recent media stories suggest his main gripe with Adhikari was that the latter refused to follow through on some of Sharma’s dubious directives.

 This is the first time Nepal’s sitting central bank governor has been removed for insubordination. A horrible precedent has been set at a time the economy is battling strong headwinds and steady hands at the central bank are desperately wanted. Even PM Deuba seems to have acted out of spite: Adhikari had reportedly blocked one of Deuba’s chief financiers from expatriating his money. This kind of reckless governance at such a sensitive time could cause grievous damage to the economy that is already battered by the prolonged pandemic and ever-widening trade deficit.  

 All evidence suggests it is not Adhikari who should be fired but the finance minister who seems to lack even basic understanding of the economy’s functioning or the limits to his powers. PM Deuba has miscalculated. With the public uproar Adhikari’s untimely sacking has caused, he and his party could have to pay for it in the upcoming elections–—and rightly so.

Given the limited expectations from his visit, the three-day India trip of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was a bit of a mixed bag. Easily the most notable agreement was the one allowing more export of Nepali electricity to India, and potentially even to Bhutan and Bangladesh under the Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN) framework. Save for that, the trip achieved precious little.

PM Deuba’s delegation made much of the fact that the border row had been raised in bilateral talks with Narendra Modi. But then the end result was the same-old commitment to settle the issue through existing bilateral mechanisms. India’s reluctance to include the border issue in the final joint statement (which never came), also suggests that it is in no mood for concession. Nor was there any mention of the pending EPG report that the Indian prime minister has refused to receive.

On Pancheshwar, too, the same old bromides were repeated. There were also moments of controversy. For instance, the Nepali prime minister chose to visit the headquarters of the ruling Indian party while making no effort to reach out to any of the main opposition parties. While many Nepali Congress leaders tend to frown upon the cozy relations of Nepali communists with their Chinese counterparts, this was also unbecoming of the leader of Nepal’s oldest democratic party.

Despite Deuba’s visit, Nepal-India relations are still passing through difficult times, something that has continued since India’s 2015-16 border blockade. So long as India does not show the willingness to listen to Nepal's concerns—on the border, on the ever-widening trade deficit, on the EPG, and on not favoring hydropower built solely with its investment—it is hard to expect Nepal-India ties to improve much.

India has been increasingly concerned about the possibility of Nepal slipping out of its influence and going into the Chinese camp. That is a remote possibility given the deep and multi-faceted Nepal-India ties, whatever the political persuasions of the ruling parties in Kathmandu. Nevertheless, irrespective of the hardening of China’s Nepal stand in recent times, India’s reluctance to help Nepal overcome its pressing problems will continue to make it look north for help.