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Better sense prevailed and the nearly month-long standoff in the federal lower house over the twin ‘extra-judicial killings’ in Sarlahi ended after a deal between the ruling and opposition parties. Earlier, the Nepali Congress and the RJPN, the two opposition parties, had been stalling the house, asking for a parliamentary probe into the police shootings of Kumar Poudel, a leader of the underground Netra Bikram Chand Biplob-led CPN, and Saroj Narayan Singh, an RJPN cadre. Eventually, the opposition parties agreed that there was no point in running a parallel parliamentary probe when the National Human Rights Commission was already investigating the incidents.

Instead, a seven-member cross-party parliamentary panel has been formed under senior NCP leader Subhas Chandra Nembang to ensure that such incidents are not repeated. The panel is to submit its report to the parliament in a month. The resumption of parliamentary proceedings is great news. But it would be a travesty of justice if any attempt is made to quietly bury the twin incidents in Sarlahi. Now the onus is on the NHRC to unearth the truth. According to preliminary investigations by two other rights bodies, the Advocacy Forum Nepal and the Informal Sector Service Center, there is strong evidence to suggest that Poudel was not killed in crossfire, unlike what the police has been claiming.

They noted some peculiar activities in the lead up to Poudel’s death that made them doubt the official government version. The rights bodies found that locals had been barred from walking in the vicinity of the incident site from early in the morning of June 20, the day the CPN leader was supposedly killed. Also, no local they talked to said they had heard a gunshot throughout the day. The local police were also curiously kept in the dark about the whole affair. These are disconcerting findings.

The conclusion of the two rights bodies that there has of late been a disturbing increase in the number of ‘fake encounters’ is not reassuring. It suggests that the federal government is intent on taking the law into its own hands. Whether or not the government wants to sit down for talks with the Biplob outfit, there can be no justification for killing its cadres in cold blood. If it does so, public sympathy for the banned outfit is bound to grow, which will be a troubling development. It will also seriously undercut the legitimacy of perhaps the strongest government in Nepal’s democratic history, an even more worrisome consequence

There is a huge disconnect between the words and deeds of Nepal’s foreign pol­icy establishment. This establish­ment is comprised of civil ser­vants, party officials and security apparatus, each of which has its own institutional interests that often don’t add up to a broader national interest. Their divergent interests are in turn giving trac­tion to confusing signals to both the United States and China that are now locked in a new Cold War. As tensions grow, a flip-flop can easily put Nepal on the receiving end of harsh punitive actions—like the recent blockade.As inhuman and unjust as the Indian blockade was, there should also be a clear reckoning of the role of the national leaders in triggering it. It has now been established that our top leaders offered categorical assurance of retaining a Hindu state in the con­stitution when they were sum­moned to Delhi, a promise on which they reneged. A similar punitive action from Beijing and Washington cannot be ruled out if we continue to ignore their sen­sitivities. Being a small state, we do not have the luxury of big pow­ers and cannot be assured of a second chance.

Both the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Indo Pacific Strategy (IPS) are a reality and the best way to navigate the inherent risks is by transparently engaging with both sides. Nepal’s current approach appears to be one that favors the BRI and distances itself from the IPS. Yet upon closer inspection, even on the BRI, Nepali state remains deeply non-committal—as evidenced by the scaling down of the list of BRI projects from 36 to nine. This approach is unhelp­ful and dangerous as it creates a false impression globally of Kath­mandu leaning toward Beijing—without delivering the benefits of an unequivocal public alignment with the China-led strategy.

Nepal does not need to buy into the exclusionary narrative of this or that strategy. It is nat­ural for Washington or Beijing to want allies to be completely loyal to them, but we do not have to be—so long as we make our principles clear. In fact, during the previous Cold War, Nepal suc­cessfully received development assistance from both blocs. Even today, sections of the East West Highway have both Soviet and American engineering stamps. That speaks volume about how our then non-alignment strategy provided a safe approach to deal­ing with big power rivalry.

That old template may not be completely relevant today, yet it could provide valuable lessons for our renewed diplomatic posture in an evolving global and regional geopolitical context. This new Cold War is both ideological and civilizational—hence the stakes are that much higher. Rather than getting caught up in and defined by events and diplomatic acci­dents, Nepal needs a proactive approach in defining the limits of its engagement within both the BRI and the IPS. This means articulating a clear principle that would define our renewed foreign policy posture. This also means clearly communicating our com­fort levels and our desired depths of engagement with both Beijing and Washington.

Our current response to the BRI and the IPS seems to be a curious case of politicians saying one thing and civil servants doing a completely different thing. By being gung-ho about the BRI early in the post-blockade context, our politicians had raised Beijing’s expectation, which is now being met with frustration over the slow pace of delivery.

On the IPS, Washington is flabbergasted by how our for­eign ministry officials treat this strategy as radioactive (the MCC predates the IPS, and even Amer­icans are giving mixed signals about whether the MCC is a part of the IPS). Yet our military and armed police continue to benefit from elements of the IPS. At the same time, youth wings of the rul­ing party are hosting top leaders of the Venezuelan regime.

Not just Washington, even Bei­jing is wary of the shenanigans of our top political leaders, a wari­ness that is compounded by the civil administration’s lukewarm response. This may personally be a risk-free approach for top bureaucrats and politicians, but it is building up an unacceptable level of risk for the country.

Foreign ministry officials need to articulate a clear roadmap that other actors can adopt and adapt. As tensions escalate, Nepal urgently needs coherence and clarity in dealing with the rival frameworks being promoted by Beijing and Washington O

What does the extraction of the Prime Minister KP Oli’s wisdom tooth have to do with Nepal’s foreign policy? A lot, it turns out. PM Oli chose to get his troublesome tooth yanked out at the time Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was preparing to come to Kathmandu, perhaps to lay the ground for the official visit of his Big Boss. How could PM Oli host such an important guest when he could only mumble, right? No sooner had his gums healed than the prime minister decided time was ripe for a thor­ough check-up and a spell of rest, in what would be a 10-day Singapore package. Meanwhile, fellow co-chairman of the Nepal Communist Party, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, embarked on a ‘family trip’ to Dubai. Both these trips were planned following the three-day Nepal stay of the RAW chief Samant Goel, who had held extensive discussions with both Oli and Dahal. Coincidence? Perhaps. Goel came calling to Nepal when the federal govern­ment was starting its preparations to welcome Xi Jinping: The prime minister had begun taking the inputs of security agen­cies on the logistics of Xi’s movements, the TIA runaway was being spruced up, and the whole airport vicinity beautified.

Now, suddenly, no senior government official is ready to discuss Xi’s visit, even though sources both at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese Embassy say they are doing their best to make Xi’s visit possible—and soon. Some specu­lated that if he came at all, the Chinese president would turn up around Oct 11-12, when he is scheduled to visit Varanasi to meet Narendra Modi, in what is being billed as Wuhan 2.0. But those dates fall in the middle of the Dashain festiv­ities. Government officials are unlikely to be up for such an important assignment when they would prefer to be home with their families.

Xi coming then? That depends largely on Nepal. The country has failed to prioritize the projects it wants China to support under the BRI framework. Why would the Chinese president come if he does not get to sign off on any of the big BRI projects? If Nepal is serious about welcoming him, senior government officials surely know of his penchant for spec­tacle and grandiosity: Xi won’t come to sign a $100m deal.

The foreign ministry seems keen on the visit. But other ministries tasked with finalizing the BRI projects have been rather sluggish. There may still be time though. If some big projects can be mutually agreed upon, the Chinese President need not link his Kathmandu visit with his trip to Varanasi. The globe-trotting Xi can always stop at Kathmandu during any of his foreign tours. But don’t hold your breath.

Dahal has deeply internalized the notion that his path back to power runs through New Delhi. Oli too knows he cannot alienate India if he is to serve out his term as prime minister. A displeased China, by comparison, is not a mortal danger to either. For all the talk of growing Chinese influence in Nepal, it is India still calling the shots

South Asia goes through periodic droughts and floods in the same year. Why hasn’t it occurred to us that this is a paradox? How can a continent reeling from water shortage suddenly be inundated with an overabundance of rain, which leads to annual floods? Often, this phenomena is happening in contiguous areas only a few kilometers apart.

I was consulting for the World Bank between 2008-2010, and I remember the then director of World Bank in Nepal, Susan Goldmark, saying that South Asia would never get out of this drought and flood cycle till it managed its monsoon—storing high volumes of rainwater in the high season, withdrawing during the low season. This bit of common sense came to me as a shock when I first heard it. I think about that moment and wonder if we’ve always taken these “natural calamities” for granted, as acts of god and nature which we cannot change. But as Goldmark pointed out, it may just be an issue of policy and management which will end this cycle.

Our ancestors were brilliant and much more technically savvy than us in harvesting rainwater. The dhungay-dhara technology, a Newari invention, stores water in underground channels and withdraws it year around. It is a marvel whose workings were hidden by those who made it so that enemies could not locate its source and disable the water system when attacking a city. Perhaps it is because of this that the system fell into disuse, because only a few were privy to its workings. There’s a channel to recharge underground reservoirs, and a system to filter the water as it goes down.

Anybody who’s dealt with today’s pumps, electric motors and ozone filters, which frequently go bust and need constant repair and electricity, can’t but admire this technology that operates seamlessly. In the last year, I have invested Rs 80,000 ($800) in an underground pump, Rs 30,000 ($300) in a filter, and Rs 24,000 ($240) in an ozone filter for my kitchen. They all work sporadically and need constant repair. The ozone filter requires a Rs 3,500 filter change every six months. I changed it two months ago and the last few days I haven’t had any water coming out. I have reverted to my older filter with a ceramic candle in order to get a few liters of clean water.

No wonder it’s much easier to go out and buy a plastic canister, which will last for a while and comes with a guarantee of purity and freshness. The gentleman in charge of bringing water to the Kathmandu Valley, Surya Raj Kandel, is now engaged in the bottled water business. Kandel is the Executive Director of Melamchi Water Supply Project, and a majority shareholder at Crystal Aqua Service Private Limited. In any country, this is a flagrant violation of ethics and conflict of interest. In Nepal, nobody blinks, probably because the gentleman in question is part of the ruling party, and his wife is the registered owner.

All throughout the monsoon, as the rain fell incessantly, I could hear the roar of diesel jeeps parking outside my house, full of plastic water tanks. This fossil fueled absurdity makes no sense, especially when clean water fell without pause from the sky.

To imagine a city of 1.3 million (with some estimating that the Lalitpur and Bhaktapur districts have an additional four million residents) will get their water through diesel tankers is not just stupid, but also criminal in the age of climate change. I don’t know if UNFCCC has anything to say about that, but they should put out an advisory to Third World countries like Nepal which have fallen off the sustainability rails regarding the use of fossil fuels to ferry water into cities.

Besides heating the atmosphere and making it unbearable for urban residents, these thousands of tankers spew daily air pollution, affecting our health. We pay a high price for a public utility like water through the added tax of petrol and diesel, all of which ends up in the exchequer of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, the countries which are enslaving our people in the first place.

How did a country with an overabundance of water become dependent on a complex web of fossil fuel, sold by undemocratic authoritative regimes, to get its drinking water? We have to look at neighbor India as a culprit as well—it has aggressively extended its motorcycles, trucks, tankers, and petrol pipelines into Nepal, bringing Modinomics (including a far too jovial relationship with petrol tyrants of Central Asia) into our country. If we are to separate ourselves from this tangled web, let us start with what we’ve always known—our own indigenous technology.

What we need is government policy which mandates rainwater harvesting, and reliable companies that can provide professional service. Unfortunately Nepal government is too busy collecting taxes and fees from migrant workers to think about training them in this essential work. So we continue to limp onwards, a city (and increasingly, a country) flooded by Himalayan rivers and the monsoon which is also captive to the fossil fuel and bottled water lobby.

Nepal government and aid agencies need to scale up technical trainings and regulatory mechanisms for traditional water harvesting and groundwater recharge, which is the only way dense cities like Kathmandu will have water in the future.