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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the architect of India’s ‘neighborhood first’ policy, doesn’t have many friends in the region. Moreover, enamored with big powers like the US and China, the Indian media give small states in the subcontinent scant attention. Even the little attention it gets is invariably negative. Take the latest coverage of Sri Lanka’s parliamentary elections. With an overwhelming majority for the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the party of the Rajapakshas, a foregone conclusion, the fear was that the island country would slide further into China’s orbit. That is not the least of India’s worries. 

India-Bangladesh ties took a nosedive when Modi brought the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019. The legislation bars the path to citizenship for new Muslim migrants in India. As most of these migrants originate in Bangladesh, the CAA’s goal was clear enough. As if to rub it in, the BJP also accused Bangladesh of systematically torturing its Hindu minority. Bangla Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, otherwise a staunch Indian ally, subsequently came under immense domestic pressure to distance herself from New Delhi and to inch closer to Beijing. 

There is also a growing unease in Bhutan over its tight embrace by India and New Delhi’s attempts to keep it from directly dealing with China. This was partly the reason behind the 2017 Doklam crisis, and behind China’s latest claim to a new territory in Bhutan. China wants to settle its borders with Bhutan through land swaps, which India vehemently opposes. Bhutan’s outreach to China isn’t hard to understand either: If India is gaining immense economic advantages of trading with China, why can’t Bhutan?

India’s relations with Pakistan have never been worse. With the Maldives, things are a little better after the election of India-friendly Ibrahim Mohamed Solih as president in 2018. Yet it’s wistful thinking to believe the Maldives, with Mandarin-speaking tourists as its economic lifeline, will suddenly agree to distance itself from China. 

Nor would it be an exaggeration to say Nepal-India relations have hit rock-bottom. All official talks between the two have been put off, indefinitely. The influence of the Chinese in Kathmandu has increased alarmingly. So where did Modi go wrong in the neighborhood?

During his six years in office Modi seems to have cared about little else other than consolidating his Hindu vote bank. This was the calculation behind the repeated military strikes against Pakistan, the promulgation of a new map of Jammu and Kashmir—which included the Nepali territory of Kalapani—the amendment of the citizenship act, and his latest inauguration of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. As Arundhati Roy pointed out in her recent piece for The Wire, Modi timed his Ayodhya visit with the first anniversary of India stripping of J&K of its statehood. 

Besides using South Asian forums to isolate Pakistan, the neighborhood has never been Modi’s priority. China is being hounded by the world for bungling its initial Covid-19 response. And yet it continues to tighten its grip on South Asia. It is curious that smaller democracies in the region seem to trust authoritarian China more than they trust democratic India. Attributing this to China’s ‘checkbook diplomacy’, or to the old mistrust of India, the traditional hegemon, would be a cop-out. Nor will it do much to resurrect India’s flagging image. 

The Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) will soon elect its new senior vice-president (who is president elect by default) through its 54^th general assembly. The private sector’s apex body has been struggling to establish itself as a professional corporate entity due to a perpetual shortage of capable leadership. The leaders the FNCCI has gotten over the past two decades have been more oriented towards pleasing their political masters than in establishing high standards of corporate governance.

Rather than speaking the industry’s voice, the FNCCI is consumed with fulfilling the interests of its leadership. For instance, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), India’s private sector’s umbrella agency, has ‘Industry’s voice for policy change’ as its motto. The FNCCI lacks any such guiding principle. 

The federation has seen little growth in the past three decades since the opening up of the economy and reforms in 1990. Since its establishment in 1966, up until 1990, was the time for the organization’s institutional development. Yet, even after 1990, the FNCCI has had little to show for it. Its past presidents like Mahesh Lal Pradhan, Padma Jyoti, and Binod Chaudhari gave the institution some shape. But recent leaders such as Kush Kumar Joshi, Pashupati Murarka, Suraj Vaidya, and Bhawani Rana have done next to nothing to strengthen the capacity of the private sector and empower domestic investors. 

The FNCCI leadership has instead used the organization to curry favors from those in power. Suraj Vaidya became the coordinator of the Visit Nepal 2020 campaign, no sooner than he had completed his tenure as the FNCCI president. Likewise, Kush Kumar Joshi was able to get the ‘Kathmandu-Hetauda Tunnel Highway’ project immediately after the end of his term. In both cases, there was simply no match between the person’s expertise and the projects they later received.  

The FNCCI could have, over the years, pushed political leaders to adopt the right set of policies that favor industrial development in order to achieve higher growth and to create jobs. Yet the focus of the FNCCI, which has a nationwide network through its district-level units, has been on lobbying for higher margins in foreign trading business of its leadership, thereby eroding the private sector’s credibility. “The FNCCI has failed the country by limiting itself to being a lobby group, while the expectation was that it would contribute to industrial development and economic growth,” shares Pushpa Raj Acharya, former president of the Society of Economic Journalist-Nepal. “The golden opportunity for creative transformation of the private sector has been wasted in the past three decades,” he adds.

The 54^th general assembly was scheduled for March 2020, but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdown. It has now been postponed again, due to internal disagreements within the FNCCI. Whenever the general assembly happens, all those contending for new FNCCI leadership positions have already shown enough evidence of groupism and vested interests. In other words, we cannot expect much from whoever leads it next.   

Raghuram Rajan, an economist and former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, points to three pillars of national development: state, market, and community. He argues that if the market colludes with the state then the community fails, causing people to suffer. This is exactly what is happening in Nepal.

Looks like the private sector will have to wait a long time before it gets capable and visionary leaders. 

As the federal government mulls yet another nationwide lockdown, let us take a moment to reflect on those who have suffered the most from the previous complete or partial lockdowns: not the big business owners, not their employees, or most people who enjoyed their chats and walk during the lockdown.

Those most affected are citizens who were suffering from the vicious consequences of pervasive and structural inequalities even before the lockdown: daily wagers who are the backbone of the national economy, even if their contributions are not officially counted.

Amid repetitive warnings from the World Health Organizations that the fight against this virus is far from over, including strong admonitions that a second waves of infections are probably just few months away, it is worth noting that Nepal has not even reached the peak of the outbreak. The worst is yet to come.

In this increasingly complex scenario, the decision makers have a tough choice: should they keep the economy open, give more respite to ailing workers and enterprises or should they considering enforcing a strict lockdown again? The stakes could not be higher: either let people risk their lives with a disease that is hard to tackle or allow many others to suffer from the lockdown’s economic impact. Perhaps it could be helpful to reformulate this dilemma from a vulnerability perspective.

Should policymakers allow the most vulnerable segments of the population to die from the pandemic? Or should their lives be jeopardized by getting them back to work in order to revive the beleaguered economy?

The way we answer these two questions is important. How many people working in the formal economy will literally lose their jobs if the work and movement restrictions are re-imposed? How many businesses could sacrifice some of their income and yet survive with a different business model that leverages on line, smart work? What can the State do to soften the hard impact on these corporations? How much fiscal space is there for the government in this emergency? Can resources otherwise allocated be diverted to corona-control? What can big donors do in such a situation?

A country like Sweden that took a very liberal approach to the lockdown paid a high price. Singapore, after enforcing a so called “circuit breaker” lockdown, a necessity after haphazardly easing up restrictions, is now back on business despite suffering a high daily per capita infections. The secret to this approach is to impose very strong regulations, expecting the citizens to strictly follow them out of a sense of civic responsibility.

Qatar, quite impacted in terms of number of persons infected in relation to its overall population, imposed draconian rules.

In addition all these countries have the resources and the knowhow of an efficient health system that is capable of dealing with severe outbreaks. Yet the leaders there are aware that even their best hospitals may not cope well in case of severe community outbreaks.  

Can Nepal follow suit and enforce a strong compliance system? Can the government mobilize private hospitals in case infections rise further? Are the private hospitals ready for that?

Many are going to lose something or the other in these circumstances. A progressive and far-sighted government should decide who is going to lose the most: those who are vulnerable and marginalized or the better off, including the roaring middle class?

While the latter deserve special consideration in terms of economic relief in the form of stimulus packages, the former are those at most risk no matter what the government decides.

Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, an NGO partnering with youths to promote social inclusion in Nepal. He can be reached at [email protected]

One of the many unintended consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic is the rekindling of people’s faith in religion. It is no surprise though, as we have witnessed resurgence of religions during times of uncertainty throughout history. Moreover, modernity has not lessened the salience of religion. In fact, it has heightened it. Around the world, more and more people are leaving their ancestral lands and heading to cities in search of better opportunities. In doing so, they leave behind their joint families and strong social ties. Even as they are bereft of their social support, the consumerist and individualistic urban lifestyles heighten their sense of alienation. In these hard times, they can find great solace in invoking god. Yet, the inexorable march of urbanization does not stop. 

Officially, as of 2018, around 80 percent of Nepal’s population was rural, down from nearly 97 percent in 1960. The actual percentage of urban population in Nepal could be even higher when considering the effects of seasonal migration. In India, over 30 percent of its citizens now live in cities. In China, around 60 percent do. This has not been missed by politicians, who would like to cash in on this often alienating experience of modernization and urbanization. 

The BJP in India (80 percent Hindu) has openly and successfully pandered to its fast-urbanizing Hindu population. Political parties in Nepal (over 80 percent Hindu) also can’t ignore their Hindu vote bank. The pro-Hindu RPP Nepal emerged as the fourth biggest party from the second Constituent Assembly elections in 2013, with its greatest support reported in the Kathmandu Valley. Had Kamal Thapa not so badly compromised on his Hindu agenda when in power, a big section of the population could still be backing him. Top leaders of the NCP and the NC know this. 

Donald Trump, a serial philanderer and liar, was elected and sworn in by the Bible in 2016. He understands the continued importance of being pictured as a pious Christian once a while. From India to Indonesia, Brazil to Burma, religious politics are making a comeback. Nepal is now a constitutionally ‘secular’ state. But as the country was declared secular almost overnight, with little debate about what it entailed, most Nepalis still don’t know what to make of it. They also see how the ‘irreligious’ communist government, the strongest democratic government Nepal has ever had, is failing the country. 

Because of this, it may also be the perfect time for the revival of religious politics. For whenever there is a big natural disaster, the number of faithful increases. Apparently, most of the devout, whatever their religion, believe these natural phenomena are the result of people abandoning their faith—and not of god abandoning them. There have been countless tales of how people’s loss of fear in gods had contributed to the 2015 Nepal earthquakes. Now, many well-educated Nepalis are visiting temples to ward off Covid-19. 

These are the same folks who never tire of saying that if there is a referendum on religion, Nepal would be declared a Hindu state by a landslide. Even Karl Marx (‘Religion is the opium of the masses’) acknowledged how religion provided succor to those going through hard times. 

People want to belong and for their lives to be meaningful. But urbanization and modernization are pushing them into a seemingly soulless, anonymous existence. The Covid-19 crisis is exacerbating this trend. Expect religious politics to make a roaring comeback in its aftermath.