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A flag-carrier is generally taken as a means of trans­port that is an iconic representation of a country. The term is perhaps more applicable in shipping, whereby ships actually fly the flag, even though most merchant ships get reg­istered in Panama as a matter of convenience. The hassle-free registration there helps them avoid strict regulations as well as income tax and to hire cheap foreign labor. In airlines, the rules are more stringent. But just being registered does not guarantee an airline the coveted sta­tus. Himalaya Airlines is not Nepal’s flag-carrier even if it is registered here. But flag-carriers are generally treated like pampered child, with the state forced to meet their just and unjust demands alike.

Need for constant backup financ­ing, at the expense of taxpayers, is the usual mode by which they survive even when in red. But even then many countries continue to protect and support failing flag-car­riers. Our flag carrier, known in short as the RA, is no different. It carries an additional uncertainty tag with its tiny fleet that, at times, fails to keep the date.

There was recently an immense interest in the Indian government’s efforts (GoI) to privatize Air India (AI), a behemoth public sector undertaking. It would not be a complete disinvestment as the GoI would still hold 24 percent shares and also seats on its board. But the disinvestment could not happen and many saw it as an aborted take-off. In reality, the situation was more akin to an aircraft left stranded on a parking bay.

Neither domestic nor foreign car­riers showed any interest in taking the “debt laden” undertaking (in spite of some debt reduction). Indi­go and Jet Airways had shown some interest initially but they were not comfortable with various conditions that were attached.

The submission deadline for potential buyers came and went and with the general election next year the BJP government thought it unwise to push it any fur­ther. The disinvestment would have been impossible, as it is, given the short timeframe.

AI has a total of InRs 44.19 thousand-crore of loan, of which Rs 25.8 thousand-crore is for existing and future fleet, while 13.6 thousand-crore is non-con­vertible debentures (NCDs). It is believed that the inability to make profit had hindered collection of debenture redemption at IA, while serious cash flow situation delayed even salaries.

As for RA’s financial health, its cumulative loss stands at Rs 0.100865 thousand-crore. The government has invested 0.294 thousand-crore in it while its mid/short term loan stands at 1.096 thousand-crore (as per the 2017 Auditor General’s report). As we see, beyond their common flag-carrier status, AI and RA are not comparable. The above data clearly shows the contrast in the sheer scale of AI and RA, even though the two suffer from basically the same kind of malaise.

RA is reported to have made a profit of Rs 16.1m. (It is deliberately not expressed in thousand crore, to make it look less dismal.) RA has been unable to optimize the use of its Airbus A320s. The new A330s it is acquiring will also face similar problems, with the European skies still forbidden for Nepali carriers. The prospects of A330s flying to destinations outside Europe are also rumored to be dim.

In general, airlines do not make money as a major portion of their earnings is spent on fuel, staff and essential hardware. The debt arises due to the exorbitant cost of aircraft and years of unprofitable service. Low cost and private carriers have been encroaching on flag-carrier’s traditional domain. If a route is good, someone will fill the gap with cheaper offerings and most travelers end up better off as a result.

It was necessary to prop up flag-carriers when the airline indus­try was just in its infancy. But why should they continue to operate in places where non-flag carriers are now willing to fly cheaply? Flag-carriers are also useful in serv­ing remote regions of a country like ours, but there is no point in maintaining it beyond that. As we all know, there are other murky reasons behind RA’s link to national pride. Call it anything you like, we just want an airline that can fly on its own wings.

The author writes on aviation

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Nepal is important for China because of Tibet. Nepal is gateway to South Asian mar­kets. President Xi will visit Nepal soon. China accorded warm wel­come to Nepali PM KP Oli because it has started to take us seriously. Or so the Nepali media would have us believe.

But is it really so?

China’s Tibet concern

For some strange reason we are in a time warp. The powers that played an active role in creating and supporting the Tibetan rebels in the 1950s and the 1960s did not back then believe China would give up its control of Tibet. Nor do they believe it now. The ragtag band of Khampa rebels did carry out sporadic attacks on the Chi­nese forces using our territory as their base, but planning and other things were done from Dhaka (or the Dacca back then), Washington DC and other places. China knows that Nepal was and is just a pawn in the grand chessboard of world politics and it now knows how to deal with the potentates on its terms. It does not need us to address its security concerns.

To believe that Nepal is import­ant for Tibet’s security is to under­mine the remarkable advances in Chinese defense and intelligence capabilities as well as its global economic reach, and overesti­mate ourselves. And strangely, we keep forgetting that we are not the only country that borders Tibet province. India does too. The Tibetan Government-in-Exile is actually based in India. But Chi­na apologists use Tibet to justify every Chinese action (or inaction) in Nepal.

‘Gateway’ to South Asia

Yes Nepal is a gateway to South Asia. But it is not the only gate­way for China to the Indian and South Asian markets and beyond. Myanmar is in a better position. Myanmar provides China with yet another access to the Indian Ocean and help solve its Malac­ca dilemma. It is where China’s oceanic, strategic and economic interests converge. Unlike Nepal, India doesn’t think of it as fall­ing exclusively under its sphere nor can it match years of Chinese investment and influence there.

The idea of the BCIM (Bangla­desh, China, India and Myan­mar) economic corridor between India and China is nearly two decades old. India sees the BRI (the Belt and Road Initiative) as going against its strategic inter­ests, “however, in the BCIM proj­ect, India is on board” (Can an India-China ‘Reset’ Help BCIM?, The Diplomat, June 9).

Both India and China realize the importance of doing away with the lengthy sea route in their bilateral trade. Therefore, both may settle on the BCIM economic corridor linking Kolkata with Kun­ming via Myanmar. The BCIM pre­dates the BRI and India can claim it too has a say in It. China could develop it independently of the BRI, despite claiming it falls under the BRI these days, and/or delay/give up on its plans to link it with the China-Pakistan Economic Cor­ridor. The BCIM could very well be a turning point in deepening economic cooperation between India and China.

The Keyrung-Kathmandu train, even if it materializes, is not going to be a game changer for years. India will not want to trade with China via Nepal using the infra­structure built under the BRI because it will be interpreted as India supporting the initiative.

China and India do not remotely view Nepal as a trading link; they would otherwise have included Nepal as a branch road in the BCIM and much would have been done in the proposed railway.

President Xi’s visit

China understands Nepal is des­perate to host Xi to establish the government of the day’s national­ist credentials. It also gets that the Oli-led government was elected on anti-India plank and the Chi­nese president’s visit will be seen as endorsing it. China, as a mature power, won’t do it.

There’s also a pattern to presi­dent Xi’s visit to South Asia, minus India and Pakistan. The visits are to the countries that China fears are moving into Japan’s orbit. It knows we are not moving any­where. So let’s be hopeful but not count on a visit to Nepal by President Xi anytime soon. It’s too early for that.

Let’s thank China for the “warm” welcome accorded to PM Oli but let’s not read too much into it. China accords the same level of welcome to all visiting dignitaries.

The constitution is a living doc­ument and, as such, it reflects the public’s spirit and aspira­tions. By no means is it meant to be interpreted as a wish list, but instead as a document which guides the everyday direction of the state, its functions and functionaries. Obvi­ously, if our leaders thought some­thing could not be implemented or handled, it should not have been written in the constitution. Bearing that in mind, constitution­ally, Nepal is a federal republic. After completing three tiers of elections, we are moving forward towards implementing federalism. Oddly, however, when political leaders are asked individually, the majority express some form of disappoint­ment over the federal structure we have recently passed. The very lead­ers who spent years mulling over the content of the Statute and were very much a part of its writing process now show little ownership over the document, and federalism in partic­ular. The uneasy answer of having signed on to the constitution under some ‘external pressures’ looms over the political class.

Perhaps this is why the trends we have been observing when it comes to implementing a federal constitu­tion is dubious at best. There is a real danger that Nepal’s federalism may be limited to name only.

We all know the Constitution of Nepal, although a commendable document, is rather vague on many issues. Some of the concepts, for example the declaration of Nepal as ‘pro-socialist’ country has no legal interpretation. Technically, only politicians can explain its spirit. Similarly, the definition of secu­larism is also beyond the under­standing of legal eyes. Even feder­alism through three tiers, which is explicit, seems to still be politically open for negotiation!

The irony is that for the last decade, the entire focus was on drafting the constitution, but once we got it, it is quickly being for­gotten. Still many elected lawmak­ers (federal, provincial and local) do not understand the letter and spirit of our constitution. Even those who invested in the process of constitution drafting are slowly turning a blind eye when it comes to safeguarding and implementing what’s in there. Constitutional lit­eracy is the need of the hour and neither the state nor the non-gov­ernmental sector seems to be paying much attention.

What’s in store for a state that deliberately undermines the value of the constitution and for a non-governmental sector busy in keeping business going is that there will be a gradual shift to centralized tendencies. Rather than focusing on implementing the constitution in letter and spirit, the government has diverted attention to stability and prosperity. The people are obediently being swept off their feet with promises of an economic revo­lution of sorts, which deep down we know is simply impossible without strengthening constitutionalism and rule of law.

Apart from the discrepancies in constitutional implementation I mentioned in my last column, there are a further two major upcoming constitutional deadlines by when the government must complete drafting new bills and pass them through the federal parliament. The first one is related to fundamental rights. As guided by the constitu­tion, within three years of declaring the constitution, this government must enact several bills related to fundamental rights. That is, by Sep­tember 19, 2018, these bills need to have been passed and they are more than three dozen in number.

The second is that within one year of the first meeting of the federal parliament, the government must enact all bills under the new con­stitution. The first meeting of the federal parliament was held on Feb 5, 2018.

If the government fails to replace the old bills with the new ones by Feb 4, 2019, the old bills will be automatically expelled and a situa­tion of constitutional vacuum will be created. It is already late-June and little to no work has been done on the hundreds of new bills and amendments that will be needed.

The Oli government and the oppo­sition parties are not serious about this potential constitutional crisis. The constitution is new but the mindset of party leaders is old and centralized, and going by the ‘old’ ways, the political class will find it easy to continue to shift and move deadlines to suit their political ends. A simple amendment here and there and this transition will be ongoing for another decade without all of us having even realized its costs. Prosperity surely cannot come in a constitutional vacuum.

Animation/Action

INCREDIBLES 2

CAST: Holly Hunter, Craig T Nelson, Bob Odenkirk, Samuel L Jackson

DIRECTION: Brad Bird

‘The Incredibles’ (2004) remains my favorite Pixar movie. The film’s biggest replay value, for me, is that it shows the day-to-day crime fighting routine of superheroes and also explores the question: “what if superheroes were to raise a family like normal peo­ple?” The film’s writer/director Brad Bird develops this central idea with the loveable husband-wife super­hero duo of Mr. Incredible (voiced by Craig T Nelson) and Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), who need to figure out a way to squeeze in time for their kids while saving the world. Bird’s comic approach was highly successful in bringing out a fun and lighthearted superhero film that took jabs at genre clichés and showed us the personal side of superheroes where they were put down by everyday hassles.

Now after 14 years of its release, many things have changed. The superhero movies have entirely eclipsed the market of mainstream Hollywood cinema. In the wake of ‘Deadpool’ and ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, superhero films have also come-of-age, in the sense that they are not afraid to poke fun at themselves.

So when Pixar green-lit ‘Incred­ibles 2’, Brad Bird was burdened with the same duties that are put on long-awaited sequels: to give fans of the original film a nostalgia trip and at the same time make it relevant for the new audience. After I can happily report that Bird has done an incredible job! He makes this second installment a funny and adventur­ous affair that will find the love of both the fans of the original and audiences who are new to the series.

The film opens on The Incredi­bles—Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl and their three superkids—and their close ally Frozone (Samuel L Jack­son) secretly trying to stop a sophis­ticated bank robber. But their effort causes a lot of collateral damage. This in turn angers the authorities that have already banned superhe­roes. Their point being, superheroes are liable to bring more destruction than protection to their city.

The Incredibles are ordered to stick to their secret identities. But soon, a brother-sister team (Bob Odenkirk, Catherine Keener) pres­ents themselves as guardian angels. They propose a plan to popularize superheroes again and urge the gov­ernment to lift the ban. For this, they choose Elastigirl as the face of their movement, fighting against a face­less and shape shifting supervillain, much to the dislike of Mr. Incredible, who is now left to assume the posi­tion of a homemaker.

The sequel doesn’t let go off the parenthood theme that was at the heart of the first film. Here too, it seems that the film is secretly dis­guised as a children’s film targeted at adults. True, there are enough crowd pleasing action and slapstick set pieces to tickle young audience but the film’s emphasis on good parenting will score high among the adults as well.

Bird remains in the formulaic storytelling territory but spins out new angles on old tropes. Thus in sequences where Mr. Incredible has to be Mr. Mom, Bird adds subtle visual humor and witty remarks to keep the content funny even if we’ve seen these beats before. But the sequel’s actual achievement is its decision to gender flip the story: Elastigirl gets more screen time, donning her daredevil suit and spar­ring against villains.

This is a solid sequel to a classic and much loved film. It is a super­hero movie but nonetheless it cel­ebrates the spirit of family, parent­hood and equality. The film’s enter­tainment factor will quadruple if it’s watched with family members.

Who should watch it?

Just because it’s an animated movie, don’t think it is just for children. As Pixar films go, ‘Incredibles 2’ is cut to satisfy both adults and children. It’s accessible and enjoyable even for those who haven’t watched the first film.