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The idea behind the formation of the Nepal-India Joint Commis­sion in the 1980s was to period­ically review all bilateral issues and projects at the top political level. It was formed after repeated com­plaints from the Nepali side that India-funded projects dragged on for a long time. The bureaucracies of the two countries were expected to resolve long-pending issues based on the commission’s guidelines. “The commission was formed amid concerns in Nepal over India’s ten­dency to hold on to projects but not complete them on time,” says Bhek Bahadur Thapa, a veteran diplomat and Nepal’s former Ambassador to India. More than three decades have passed since the commission was formed in 1987, but only five meet­ings have so far been held—the first in 1987, and then in 1988, 2014, 2016 and the most recent one in 2019. There is a provision of organizing such meetings every two years alter­nately between Nepal and India, but that has not been happening.

The long-delayed fifth meeting of the commission, which took place this week in Kathmandu, reviewed a whole gamut of bilat­eral issues, including trade, transit, investments, defense and security, border management, power, water resources and agriculture. Yet the fifth meeting also ended without detailed discussions on pending bilateral issues. Even though the meetings were scheduled over two days, they were wrapped up in one evening.

“Both sides reviewed the entire gamut of bilateral relations with specific focus on the areas of con­nectivity and economic partner­ship; trade and transit; power and water resources sectors; culture, and education,” says a press release issued at the end of the meeting. The statement says that views were exchanged on the review of the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship and submission of the report of the Emi­nent Persons Group on Nepal-In­dia Relations (EPG-NIR). There was also discussion on inundation in border areas.

On Nepal’s request for additional air entry routes, the meeting con­cluded that discussions are already underway between the civil aviation authorities of the two countries, even though these discussions have thus far been fruitless. Nor could much progress be made on other pending issues.

Similarly, cross-border transport facilitation, education, cultural and youth exchanges, tourism, railways and infrastructure development are other vital issues the commission deals with. It also reviews sub-re­gional, regional and international issues of mutual interest.

Fits and starts

The third meeting of the commis­sion had taken place after a hiatus of 23 years when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014. It was seen as part of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s desire to elevate bilateral relations to a political level. No meeting had taken place after 1988, almost as if the two sides had forgotten the commission even existed.

The third meeting in July 2014 reactivated the commission and underscored its importance in furthering bilateral relations. The fourth meeting of the India-Nepal Joint Commission was held in New Delhi on 27 October 2016, but it yielded no substantial outcome. There was no meeting in 2018 due to the preparations for the Indian general elections. Finally, the fifth meeting of the commission took place this week.

Compared to the previous decades, progress was made on some big development projects during Modi’s first tenure. Energy banking, Janakpur-Jayanagar rail­way, an electronic cargo tracking system for Nepal-bound shipments, an Integrated Check Post, petro­leum pipelines, projects related to post-earthquake reconstruction are some areas that have seen progress.

The two countries also formed the Nepal-India Oversight Mechanism in 2016, with the goal of reviewing progress on bilateral economic and development projects. The meet­ings, six of which have already been held, are co-chaired by Nepal’s for­eign secretary and Indian Ambas­sador to Nepal, to facilitate smooth execution of projects within a spe­cific time frame. Officials say the mechanism has been instrumental in identifying and clearing bottle­necks in bilateral projects.

In his first tenure, Narendra Modi had instructed the Indian bureau­cracy to speed up bilateral projects and conduct periodic reviews. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs also carries out periodic reviews of bilateral projects in Nepal. Partic­ularly after 2014, successive Nepali prime ministers have been insist­ing on the completion of past proj­ects instead of signing new ones, thus putting pressure on the Indian side. The Indian government has also faced criticism at home for not doing enough to check the growing Chinese influence in Nepal. Many in India think their country needs to deliver on the promises it makes to its small neighbors.

Not one-way street

But the Indian side is of the view that Nepal is equally responsible for the delay in bilateral projects. India often complaints that Nepali author­ities are not serious about clearing hurdles in development projects, such as land acquisition. They also blame Nepal’s bureaucratic red-tape. Indian projects in the past (and even now to some extent) have been opposed by various Maoist groups, which have also contributed to the delay. According to former Nepali Ambassador to India, Deep Kumar Upadhyay, between 2014 and 2018 there was maximum effort to com­plete pending projects, to no avail.

Speaking at a recent program, Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali said projects that have been in limbo for two decades or more should be dropped. The Pancheshwar Mul­tipurpose Project tops this list. It was conceived under the Mahakali Treaty between Nepal and India in 1996.

Similarly, issues related to the annual flooding of various parts of southern Nepal due to the infra­structure on the Indian side remain unresolved. Although a joint task­force inspected the inundated areas, there has been no agreement on a way forward. Exporters of Nepali products to India face a myriad of problems on the border, and Nepal’s huge trade imbalance with its south­ern neighbor remains another major issue.

Former Foreign Minister Narayan Kaji Sherstha stresses the need for regular meetings of the Nepal-India Joint Commission in order to set­tle bilateral issues amicably. “The main objective of the commission is to review bilateral issues and to identity priority areas,” says Shres­tha. Former foreign ministers and ambassadors with whom APEX spoke were of the view that although there have been positive talks at the political level, implementation has always been dismal. They think regular meetings are necessary but not sufficient; the two sides should also seriously think about the bot­tlenecks in implementation. Even the agreements reached during pre­vious commission meetings have been shelved.

For example, the third meeting held in Kathmandu in 2014 had reiterated the need for reviewing, adjusting and updating the 1950 Nepal-India Treaty of Peace and Friendship to better reflect current realities. It had directed the foreign secretaries to make necessary rec­ommendations, but it was never executed. Instead a Nepal-India Emi­nent Persons’ Group was formed to recommend ways to review the treaty.

With Modi’s recent re-election as India’s prime minister and S Jais­hankar’s appointment as the foreign minister, it remains to be seen how bilateral projects and issues will move forward. But if the fifth Joint Commission meeting is any guide, we should keep our expectations in check

For Parisa Raut, a resident of Kathmandu in her mid-20s, 22 May 2018 was just a normal day. She was using her Facebook messenger and opened her “Other” inbox that contains filtered messages. To her dismay, she found that it was filled with sexually explicit content from one sender who was also calling her names.

Eight months prior to that, she had gotten a message from someone named Sagar, who reportedly worked in a reputed media house. They had been Facebook friends for two years but this was the first time she had heard from him. She had also never met him before. As time passed, he gained her trust. Seven months after they started talking, he proposed her to be his girlfriend. Raut turned down his proposal, and he said it was okay.

When she saw those insulting messages in her inbox, she immediately thought of Sagar but had no proof it was definitely him. Helpless, she filed a complaint with the Metropolitan Crime Division Teku. The Facebook account through which those messages had been sent was deactivated, and even the police could not find out who it belonged to. Raut then messaged Sagar, asking him to meet her at the World Trade Center in Tripureswor. She asked him to bring his laptop along as she wanted to search it for some tell-tale signs. He agreed. But when Sagar arrived he had not brought his laptop. Furious, she started shouting at him and the police officers who were with her in civilian clothes came forward to intervene. At that point, to her surprise, he confessed to his crime.

According to the Electronic Transactions Act, harassing or degrading a woman in any way can result in up to Rs 100,000 in fines and/or jail-time of up to five years. In this case, too, the offender could have landed in jail for 3-5 years and it would have gone into his police record. This would make it hard for him to go abroad. So he begged Raut for her forgiveness and she did not file a cyber-harassment case. The police urged her to be lenient too as pressing the charge could have potentially ruined his whole life. Instead, he was jailed just for 24 days. “If I had not shown the courage at that time, I would have been unable to prove him guilty or might have been continued to be harassed today,” she says.

Teenagers the target
Cases like Raut’s have been on the rise in Nepal, as per the Metropolitan Crime Division Teku. In the fiscal 2015-2016, 830 people visited the division seeking help on various cybercrimes. In 2016-2017, the number rose to 1,197. By 2018-2019, the number had increased to 1,938. The crime division has not categorized the data to clearly indicate how many of these are related to sexual harassment. But says Senior Superintendent of the division Shahakul Bahadur Thapa, over 70 percent of reported cases are related to online sexual harassment.

Thapa says teenagers are the usual targets of sexual harassers on social media. Another common occurrence is of married people whose spouses are abroad. Those of them in extra-marital relations exchange sexually explicit contents. When there is a misunderstanding, the person who they sent their nude photos or videos to starts blackmailing them. There are usually financial interests involved, says Thapa. “Some sexual harassment cases have ended in suicides,” he adds.

Due to the steadily increasing number of cybercrimes, Nepal Police now has a separate Central Cyber Bureau in Bhotahiti. Bikash Shrestha, its director, says that currently 63 percent of Nepalis access the internet, with the goal of reaching 90 percent soon. “As the number of internet users increases, so will cyber-crimes,” he says. The bureau has thus been established to make the handling of cybercrimes more systematic. Just in the past one month, the bureau has handled 166 cases of cybercrimes, most of them related to online sexual harassment reported by women.

Shrestha attributes the increase in online sexual harassment cases to lack of awareness on social media use and potential consequences of sharing their sexually explicit photos and videos. “People download various apps without knowing how to use them properly, share personal information without being aware of its possible misuse, and click on links sent by people they do not know,” he says.

Forgotten identity
One such case is of Sony Chongebang, a Montessori teacher in Kathmandu. She recently posted her phone number for a job offer on merorojgari.com. After two days, she got a call from an unknown number. The man who called her said that the job posting was in Biratnagar and she would have to travel there with documents for the job, to which she agreed. On August 16, she left for Kanchanbari in Biratnagar.

There, she met the person who was purportedly offering her the job. He said they would have to immediately leave for Rajbiraj for some processing. They took a bus but mid-way in Itahari he stopped the bus and asked her to get down. It was around 10 pm at night and they were all alone. Suddenly, he snatched her mobile and her purse that had Rs 27,500. She was shocked. He physically assaulted her, even trying to choke her at one point. She resisted. After that, he asked her the password of her mobile phone. Helpless, she gave it to him. 

Next day, she was able to reach Kathmandu with the help of a kind truck driver. Upon her arrival she saw that sexually explicit content was being posed via her Facebook account. She does not remember her Facebook password nor does she have any idea how to reclaim her Facebook account. She is scared that her family and friends might think she is the one sharing those content. “I feel so embarrassed,” says a tearful Chongebang.

Uninvestigated, unsolved
Shrestha of the Central Cyber Bureau says that even though they get many online sexual harassment complaints, only a handful of perpetrators are ever nabbed. Of 1,938 cyber-crime cases reported in 2018-2019 with the Metropolitan Crime Division Teku, only 67 were investigated. This is not always the police’s fault. Shrestha says many cases get solved without the police having to do anything when the victims find out that someone they know had been harassing them through a fake social media account and resist from pressing a charge.

That is not the only reason many cases go unsolved. “Usually the harassers create fake social media accounts. To trace who is behind it is difficult as those running Facebook and other social media sites are out of Nepal. They are not liable to give us information about this person. This is also the reason many cases cannot be solved,” says Shrestha. Some victims thus seek police help just to close down their Facebook accounts, others to retrieve some important files.

As the number of social media users grows, Thapa of crime division Teku wishes people were more aware of proper use of social media, online sexual harassment and how to tackle harassers.

How to protect yourself from online sexual harassment

• Don’t click on links sent by strangers
• Be careful while sharing your personal contacts
• Don’t blindly rely on the things you see on the internet
• Don’t share compromising material on messaging apps
• Don’t respond to messages from people you do not personally know on social media
• Be aware of the privacy settings of the social media you use

What to do when you are being sexually harassed online
• Tell someone you trust about what is happening
• Report the offensive content. Most social media sites have this option
• Keep all information as evidence of harassment: take screenshots before the harasser deletes the evidence or before the service provider removes flagged content
• Do not respond to the harasser
• Contact the authorities. Consider visiting the Central Cyber Bureau of Nepal Police in Bhotahiti

 Many women in rural Jhapa, the south-east­ernmost district of Nepal, hide uterine and sex­ual problems, lest they have to face discrimination from their family and society at large. They fear their hus­bands would look for another wife, neighbors would taunt them and people would not eat the food they touch, if they come to know about these illnesses. “My vaginal discharge smells so foul that I sometimes have to change my clothing twice a day. When I told my husband about it, instead of taking me to the hospital, he got another wife. Many women in my village do not talk about their problems fear­ing they would have to share my fate,” says a 30-year-old woman from Gauriganj rural municipality. She is yet to get any treatment.

Another 40-year-old woman of Kachankawal suffers from a similar problem. For several months, she has been getting stomach aches, discharging a foul-smelling fluid from her vagina and having difficulty urinating. And she does not feel like eating because of the pain. But she has not told her family and husband about her problem. She fears that if her family finds out, they might mistreat her and not eat what she cooks. “That would be a matter of huge shame. It’s much better this way. All I have to do is bear this pain,” she says.

These women are not aware that these problems can be cured if treated on time. Yet no organization or local level government body has launched an awareness cam­paign on this.

There are health posts in the village but women fear that others would know about their health problem if they go there. One of them says, “There are many people from the village who visit this health post, and it is certain that we would meet someone from our village there. If one person finds out about our condition, they would tell other people and soon the whole village would know.”

Teenage pregnancy and problems

Generally women are able to give birth when they reach the age of 20. But in the south­ern part of Jhapa, girls usu­ally get married when they are around 16. By the time they are 19, they have a child. Health workers say pregnancy at such a young age can lead to reproductive and other health problems.

Bishnu Bhattarai, an aux­iliary nurse midwife at Kachankawal rural munici­pality, says many men seek employment abroad once they have a baby and women hide their problems because they may not have anyone close to share them with. The problem is so bad that only if we go and ask women personally will some of them talk about their illness,” she says. Bhattarai adds that many rural women have sexual problems.

Health workers in Jhapa claim it’s hard to conclude women from which age group suffers most from these prob­lems. Dr Jaya Kumar Thakur, an obstetrician at the Mechi Zonal Hospital, says, “Some show signs of uterine diseases when they are around 25. Oth­ers reveal it only when they reach 70.”

Urban women get treated

Between 20 and 25 women visit the Mechi Hospital every day seeking treatment for sexual diseases, says Dr Thakur. Most of them are from urban areas. Doctors say that sexual diseases get severe if not treated early. Awareness programs on sex­ual and uterine diseases in rural areas would be useful, he adds.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was spotted with a $12,000 Portofino Automatic at a recent missile launch. The timepiece was ill-fitting on the leader of a country whose average citizen is lucky to earn a tenth of its price in a year. Of the total revenue North Korea collects from its impoverished citizens in taxes, it spends a quarter (perhaps more) on nuclear weapons—and bling for its Supreme Leader.But no amount is enough for the country’s burgeoning WMD program. The United Nations last week came out with an investigative report on how North Korea supports its nuclear weapons program by hacking into and stealing from online accounts of international banks and financial institu­tions—to the tune of some $2 billion already.

The UN is looking into at least 35 cases in 17 countries, excluding Nepal, of North Koreans using cyberattacks to raise money for its nuclear program. According to the Associated Press, South Korea was hardest hit, the victim of 10 North Korean cyberattacks, followed by India with three attacks and Bangladesh and Chile with two each. The 13 countries suffering one attack each were Costa Rica, Gambia, Gua­temala, Kuwait, Liberia, Malaysia, Malta, Nigeria, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, Tunisia and Vietnam.

Even though the UN report does not mention Nepal, in 2017, cyber-attackers from North Korea had hacked into the computers of NIC Asia Bank, from which they siphoned off Rs 40 million. Other North Korean hacking attempts in Nepal have been less successful. But after recent incidents of North Korean cyber attacks around the world, the Nepal Police has now put Nepali BFIs on ‘high alert’.

This is an old game. Nearly isolated from the rest of the world, the North Korean state has to somehow finance itself. This it does by operating illicit businesses (mostly restaurants managed by its proxies) abroad. It also runs shady IT compa­nies in various countries.

Following extensive US pressure, the two IT companies that were being run by North Korean nationals in Kathmandu were shut down early this year. Yet knowledgeable sources say that although the two offices no longer exist officially, they continue to operate clandestinely. Likewise, the NK-op­erated hospital in Damauli, Tanahun was reportedly closed. Yet hospital management says the closure is only temporary. Senior government officials have apparently asked the North Koreans in Nepal to lie low for the moment. Even though the communists running Nepal may ‘feel the pain’ of their North Korean comrades, they know they can ill afford to flout inter­national obligations. But nor do they want to be seen as easily caving in to the demands of the ‘imperialist Americans’.

They thus play a double game. While there used to be explicit promises of protection of North Korean business interests in the country, government authorities have closed their eyes now. No more visas for North Koreans. The old ones are not being renewed either. But that is as far as they will go. Meanwhile, the risks to the country’s businesses and state institutions continue to mount.