Nepal's wasted talent
Nepal probably is the most fortunate nation today. Its population statistics would make any planner or policy maker gasp with excitement. Our average age is 24, which means we are one of the youngest countries in the world. Presently, with around 95 percent of our population in working age or yet to enter working age, we have a golden opportunity at hand.
But the sad destiny of our youth and our nation was summarized aptly by champion shooter Jitu Rai back in 2014. Asked by Setopati.com what he thought he would be doing if he hadn't joined the Indian Army, Rai had replied bluntly, "I would either be in the Gulf, or tilling my farm in Sankhuwasabha."
Born in Sankhuwasabha, Jitu Rai had joined the Indian Army in 2006. As a recruit, his instructors noticed his excellent pistol shooting skills and he was selected for the 'Young Blood Championship' of the National Rifles Association of India. Rai proved his merit and rose in the game to become a gold medalist in Asiad, Commonwealth Games and the World Cup. In 2014, he was world no 1 in 10-meter pistol shooting category. What Rai did and what he said suggest that given the opportunity Nepali youths can shine in any field. But the Wikipedia page on Jitu Rai proudly declares him as a naturalized citizen of India, which has also awarded him with a Padma Shree.
"Given an opportunity, a Nepali can do anything," is an oft-spoken phrase of our Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli. But our politicians, and government officials alike, have become champions in missing golden opportunities and covering it all up with such rhetoric. While addressing a group of sports persons and related stakeholders last month, the prime minister was, as always, in a preachy mood.
"Practice is a must to win. You all must practice and practice hard to win," were the overarching themes of the PM's address. But sports history proves that every achievement is hard-earned. And nothing can be a better proof of leadership, management, teamwork, dedication, hard work, as well as strategic clarity and effective utilization of resources in today's world than the medal tally in sports championships. Our sports achievements are a representation of how we have, as a nation, hopelessly mistreated our talents and wasted opportunities for many years. Examples like Jitu Rai are a living testament that the burden of this failure does not rest on individual players.
If we look deeper, we find stories of unparallel dedication among us. In the national women's under-19 football team that played in Dhaka last year, there were six players from a football club in a small town in Syangja district. Three of the girls were from the marginalized communities: two Dalit and one Muslim. Last 20 years of our country are marked with unprecedented political turmoil. As a result, this has also been an era of policy paralysis in different sectors. Despite that, dedicated sons of the soil like the coach of Waling Football club Dilip Thapa have worked tirelessly. He trained young boys and girls, mostly from marginalized communities and poor families, rigorously almost two times a day. Surprisingly, all of his dedication and service is voluntary.
With such an apathy to developing an institutional support for its citizens' growth, no nation can do justice to its resources. This lack of an institutional result-oriented approach to performance is one big reason behind our collective failures in other fields too.
The prime minister, at the same event, announced that players would be supported according to government capacity—the underlying assumption being that sports aren't a priority, and hence resources will be used only after addressing other greater priority areas. But it is time we learn from success stories across the world.
At the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, Great Britain had ranked thirty-sixth in the medal tally, finishing below countries like Algeria, Belgium and Kazakhstan. The British press had named it a 'national scandal', the country's worst-ever result. But the government intervened swiftly. UK Sport, a dedicated agency, was set up and a vast amount of money was sourced from National Lottery revenues. The funds were utilized for a strict 'no comprise' system that invested in best chances of winning medals, and it set up the English Institute of Sports for providing sports scientists to all the national sports teams.
Four games later, in 2016, at the Rio Games, Great Britain stood second in the medal tally, proudly above China. As João Medeiros writes in a beautiful book, Game Changers, "behind every medal was a closely bound triumvirate: a talented athlete, an astute coach and a methodical sports scientist. And theirs was invariably a story of struggle, guesswork, dedication and conflict."
We as a nation have to do a lot to set up a culture of institutionalized support for dedicated champions in every field. The performance of the likes of Jitu Rai shows that if we build mechanisms to invest in young talents, our youth will do what it takes to win. But time is running out, and we are indifferent as a great window of opportunity is speeding toward a permanent closure.
Rihanna, Modi's India, Oli’s Nepal
“What is India's No. 2 foreign policy challenge?” asked Happymon Jacob of Jawaharlal Nehru University in his Feb 3 tweet. “No. 1 is Rihanna.” He was ridiculing the panicky response of the Indian government to the Barbadian singer’s retweet of a CNN story. “Why aren’t we talking about this?! #FarmersProtest” was all that she had written in reaction to the ongoing farmer protests in India. Later, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted her support for Indian farmers. The Indian government reacted as if it was under attack from a malicious foreign force. Its External Affairs Ministry said it was “unfortunate to see vested interest groups trying to enforce their agenda on these protests, and derail them.”
The Indian government didn’t stop there. It urged Bollywood superstars and famous cricketers to publicly denounce all such efforts to “divide India”. You could see this as exemplifying the Indian establishment’s lack of confidence. But that perhaps is not the whole story. Narendra Modi and the BJP came to power on the back of a polarizing religious agenda. Faced with a tanking economy and widespread protests, there was no easy way for Modi to wiggle out except, and once again, by inventing external enemies.
The message: Look, we are under the assault of foreign enemies and if we don’t unite behind our government, at stake will be no less than our sovereignty and national unity. If someone can pull up a conspiracy theory behind how Thunberg and other members of an international left cabal want to destabilize India, it’s a Bharat Ratna-worthy achievement in Modi’s India. Sadly, this whipping up of nationalism against external enemies, largely imagined, works everywhere, from the US, India to Nepal.
In Nepal, bereft of any other agenda, and feeling marginalized by the intelligentsia and other political actors, KP Oli has now cottoned to Hinduism to resurrect his political career. His repeated attempts to get into India’s good books rebuffed, he is now busy needling the Ayodhya-addicted BJP establishment by claiming his country’s ownership of Lord Ram. New Delhi either supports him or it will use the BJP’s own weapon, Hinduism, to further fan anti-India flames in Nepal. For the purpose Oli has amassed a sea of online trolls, again just like Modi. Notably, back in 2017, he had come to power after successfully demonizing India over the blockade.
Especially in today’s techno-space, it has become easy to subvert democracy. While government-sponsored trolls operate unhindered, its critics can be easily blocked and silenced. Indian leadership can’t digest a casual tweet of a foreign celebrity; Chinese leadership has to block any online mention of Tibet; and Nepali leaders expertly tweak the remarks of even remotely famous Indians as a direct attack on the country.
When important national issues are turned into personal wars, often by design, nothing short of complete demolition of the opponents will do. There is no middle ground online. Rihanna is completely innocent or a sworn enemy of India. Nepal will brook no compromise over Kalapani, all of which is indubitably ours. And, by the way, online space is certainly not for civic-minded folks. For their useless intellectualizing, they deserve to be blocked and hosed down.
Sitharaman’s high hopes
Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s first full-time female finance minister, now also has the distinction of becoming the country’s first finance minister to unveil a union budget during the turbulent Covid-19 times. Sitharaman’s budget is thus sui generis in every sense. While listing out the country’s annual incomes and expenditures, she took refuge in the words of Rabindranath Tagore: “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark” (Fireflies, A Collection of Aphorisms).
In 2020, the Indian economy faltered more than other big economies, pushing poor farmers back into the poverty net. During the lockdown, the union government’s Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) provided free food to 800 million people, cooking gas to 80 million families and direct cash to over 400 million people. But that was not enough to protect many from taking their own lives due to the unbearable pain of extreme, pandemic-induced poverty.
Sitharaman’s budget is also the first of the new, challenged-filled decade. Although there are more pressing issues of ensuring food, shelter and healthcare to pandemic-hit Indians, Sitharaman tried to sidestep these priorities by trying to play up the year 2021 as India’s 75th year of Independence, Goa’s 60th years of accession to India—to celebrate which Goa got InRs 300 crores—50th year of the India-Pakistan war. She also said 2021 was the year of Chanrayaan-3 Mission and the Haridwar Maha Kumbha. These landmarks mean little to poor Indians who are looking to survive the covid crisis.
The budget that touches upon the lives of 1.3 billion Indians directly and millions more in the region indirectly is based on six major pillars: i) health and wellbeing, ii) physical and financial capital, and infrastructure, iii) inclusive development for aspirational India, iv) reinvigorating human capital, v) innovation and research and development, and vi) minimum government and maximum governance. All six pillars have been projected as foundations for AtmaNirbhar (Self-reliant) India. As Sitharaman rightly said in her budget speech, this is a continuity of the past. What she didn’t mention is that the same approach has been holding India back for decades.
By citing Thirukkural—Aphoristic teachings on virtue, wealth, and love in Tamil 17th century text—on taxation, Sitharaman has positioned herself as a central BJP figure from the Tamil constituency. She mentioned: “A king/Ruler is the one who creates and acquires wealth, protects and distributes it for common good (Thirukkural 385).” But without the imagined wealth creation, it only indicates Indian people will have to struggle more to meet their basic needs while ruling party leaders keep delivering sanctimonious speeches filled with abstract couplets that do not rhyme with people’s daily challenges.
Some in Nepal have applauded India’s new budget as it marginally increases India’s allocation for Nepal and other neighboring countries. But that is a stunt in regional politics even as the budget disorients the Indian economy. Yes, Nepal may get more from the government of India this year. But a more prosperous India would have more to share with us than what we are getting from union government’s annual allocation.
There are many positive features of Sitharaman’s budget. She has put people’s health and wellbeing as her government’s number one priority, allocated money for affordable housing and elderly population, vowed to further digitize governance and public service delivery, emphasized connectivity, and most importantly, allocated enough for Covid-19 vaccination in the country. These positive aspects will add to Sitharaman’s credentials as a finance minister in these historically difficult times. But she too has been unable to depart from the conventional BJP style of playing up India’s self-imagined reliance, which is in fact impossible in the age of digital connectivity.
A former defense minister of India with a socialist bent, Sitharaman offered tremendous hope for her country. But her hopes and priorities for India already appear misplaced.
Nepal’s flawed hydro strategy
A week ago, news broke that Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), our monopoly state-owned electric utility, had lost its bid to sell electricity in India under a competitive tender.
For decades Nepali planners and development partners have been pushing the idea that Nepal’s fortunes lay in exploiting its abundant hydro power and exporting electricity to India. It was the stuff that dreams are made of, and on which our government had staked its plans to build some 10,000 MW of hydro power plants within the next decade.
The promise of hydro-power exports was so tantalizing that it even made the US Ambassador to Nepal, His Excellency Randy William Berry, famously remark in an op-ed in October 2019, “that is why the MCC [Millennium Challenge Corporation] project focuses on constructing lines that will bring Nepal’s power to the consumers who will pay Nepal good money for it. It is a simple fact of geography and economics that means India.”
The facts of geography and economics do not entirely support a case for hydro-electricity exports from Nepal to India. Nepal’s power is simply too expensive for India’s power market. NEA’s failed bid could be the first indicator of that harsh reality.
The authority’s price offer was approximately 30 percent higher than the winning bid, and that too, while already offering its power at a discount. India’s power prices are expected to decline in the future with increased renewable energy, efficiency introduced by power trading, continued excess capacity in its system and next generation reforms (such as retail deregulation). Nepal’s cost of power, on the other hand, will only increase.
Unless Nepal’s electricity carries with it a whiff of fresh Himalayan air, it is unclear why Bangladesh will travel all the way to Nepal for electricity purchases when cheaper, just as clean electricity is available across the border in India.
The case for Nepali hydro-power exports has always been built on imaginary assumptions. News that NEA had failed in its bid should have at least forced a reconsideration of that view. Instead, nothing of the sort happened.
Nepali energy planners offered no course correction. Stock prices of hydro power in Nepal remained steady. Developers of new hydro power plants continued to remain positive. In fact, the story barely made the news.
Those who believed in the promise of Nepali hydro power exports simply ignored the news. Those who did not believe, simply carried on saying “I told you so.”
Maybe it is important not to overreact to the loss. After all, it was the authority’s first ever bid for electricity export to India. The bid was for a small volume. With time, experience, and larger volumes, perhaps the NEA will be able to break into the Indian electricity market.
But we must assess this loss, no matter how insignificant it may be.
First, Nepal’s electricity strategy needs a stronger scientific and analytical basis. It would be wrong to bet the energy future of an entire nation on perceptions of geography and economics. But it would be tragic to get that bet wrong. Our strategic course must be more calculated, weighing the objectives, risks, and outcomes more carefully.
Second, Nepal’s energy sector needs greater diversity of thought. Though small, its energy sector is complex, operating under resource constraints and geo-political challenges. We need all minds, and the full diversity of resources, to work in tandem. Nepali planners must actively solicit and integrate a diversity of thought in their planning process, while also seeking to harness the full range of new energy technologies.
Third, the fundamentals for Nepal’s power sector have now changed for good. We must begin to plan for an alternative future, where Indian imports are our primary supply source. If Nepalis can receive cheaper electricity from India, why produce it here? After all, we import just about everything now—why not electricity too?
Fourth, if Nepal intends to be meaningfully competitive in Indian power market, it can’t do so by hiding in a cave up in the mountains. It needs a bolder strategy for success, a deeper understanding of Indian power markets, and a willingness to engage. Nepal must establish a trading company in India and demonstrate that it has the courage to compete.
Fifth, competition begins at home. The authority can’t be afraid of competing at home, while believing it can compete abroad. That’s a bit like showing up for the football world cup never having played a match before.
