You know you've hit rock-bottom when an intelligence
operative in the Indian mission in Kathmandu calls up a member of
Nepal's Constituent Assembly and threatens to have his daughter's
provisional admission in the embassy-run Kendriya Vidyalaya revoked if
he doesn't vote a particular way.
Welcome to the diplomatic brilliance of a rising India, a country which is bedevilled
with intractable political problems in Kashmir, its forested heartland
and the north-east but which doesn't think twice about plunging headlong
into the cesspit of day-to-day politics in a neighbouring nation. The
threatening phone call was made by the Indian embassy official on the
eve of the fourth round of voting in the CA earlier this month between
the Maoist candidate for Prime Minister, Prachanda, and the Nepali
Congress (NC) candidate, Ram Chandra Poudel. Given the prospect of
fence-sitting Madhesi political parties moving over en masse to
the Maoist camp, the Indian effort was aimed at ensuring this didn't
happen and that the stalemate between the two candidates continued.
For the record, Indian officials deny the allegation made by the CA member,
Ram Kumar Sharma, but there is hardly anyone in Nepal who doesn't
believe it is true. Even by the interventionist standards of the past,
the threat marks a new low. Leaving aside the moral and diplomatic
implications raised by this unpleasant episode, the threat of punitive
action against a young girl suggests a wider, even catastrophic, failure
of Indian policy. In the past, India always had the ability to work
behind the scenes with a wide cross-section of players in order to
produce a political outcome that broadly benefited both Nepal and
itself. Today, that is no longer the case. Even when they play their
hands in the open, our men in Kathmandu are unable to ensure a stable
outcome.
Last week, I followed the lead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's special envoy to Nepal, Shyam Saran, who had just been in Kathmandu, and met senior leaders cutting across all major
political trends: from the Maoists, who are the biggest party with 40
per cent of the seats in the CA, the NC, the Unified Marxists-Leninists
and the different Madhesi factions. Even though their views on the
current political crisis varied sharply, virtually all the politicians I
met agreed that Indian interference in the politics of the country had
reached a new high. Many blamed this interference for the failure of
these parties to establish some sort of modus vivendi among themselves.
This failure is costing the country dear. It has delayed not only the
writing of the new constitution but also the completion of the peace
process — the integration of erstwhile combatants of the People's
Liberation Army (PLA) within the official security forces and the
democratisation of the Nepal Army. On paper, these are goals India
officially supports. And the fact that Nepal has come so far on all of
these questions has a lot to do with New Delhi's earlier support and
encouragement, particularly in the struggle against the now-abolished
monarchy. But somewhere along the line, India has lost the plot,
allowing the paranoia and tunnel vision of its security and intelligence
establishment to compromise its long-term strategic interests.
Ever since the confrontation between the Maoist-led government and the Nepal
Army in 2009 led to the resignation of Mr. Prachanda as Prime Minister,
India has been dead-set against the Maoists leading any kind of
coalition government in Kathmandu. Indeed, the officials running India's
Nepal policy made it clear the Maoists should ideally not even be
allowed to join a coalition headed by someone else, that they be
“punished” — a word Indian diplomats in Kathmandu have used with their
counterparts from other countries — for having dared to presume they
could call the shots in the wake of their victory in the April 2008 CA
elections.
During the wasted year of Madhav Kumar Nepal's premiership, which India backed to the hilt, New Delhi hoped the Maoists would either split or come under pressure to accept a
unilateralist reading of the Twelve Point Understanding and the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement — two documents which paved the way for
the constitutional and political transformation of Nepal. Though the
Maoists see themselves as creating a new mainstream, India wants them to
stick to the old mainstream and abandon the hope of restructuring the
Nepali state and its institutions in any fundamental way. This the
Maoists are not prepared to do.
After 12 months of political stagnation, matters slowly started coming to the boil again
since the end of May when a package deal struck to extend the life of
the CA by another year led to the resignation of Mr. Nepal as Prime
Minister. Last year, Indian officials split the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum
of Upendra Yadav in order to ensure that Mr. Nepal had the requisite
numbers to form the government. But efforts to ensure a similar
arrangement again are floundering over deep divisions within the UML. A
rightist faction led by K.P. Oli shares the official Indian antipathy
towards the former insurgents but party leader Jhalanath Khanal believes
only a consensual approach towards the Maoists will allow the CA to
finish its work.
Within the charged political atmosphere, an all-party government led by Mr. Khanal with the
participation of the Maoists and the NC would have been the most
propitious arrangement if the aim is to complete the peace process and
write the constitution by the new deadline of May 2011. Indeed, the
Maoists last month said in writing that they would support Mr. Khanal,
whose party insisted he have not just a simple plurality of CA members
backing him but a two-thirds majority. However, the last minute
defection of Upendra Yadav meant Mr. Khanal's numbers fell short,
leading to Mr. Prachanda and the NC's Mr. Poudel entering the fray.
Whatever New Delhi may say, UML leaders and politicians from virtually every
other party blame Mr. Yadav's sudden change of heart on Indian pressure.
What makes these allegations credible is the extent to which the Indian
embassy in Kathmandu has got involved in micro-managing political
events and even media discourse in the country. Last month, Nepal's
biggest newspaper group, Kantipur, which has been critical of the
Indian position, faced the prospect of suspending publication because
supplies of newsprint were deliberately held up by customs authorities
in Kolkata on instructions from the intelligence agencies. The issue was
resolved only after the newspapers agreed in meetings with Indian
embassy officials to adopt a more “constructive” editorial position.
As matters stand, India does not see the integration of the PLA and
constitution-writing as part of an organic process. For that reason, it
shares the indifferent attitude of Nepal's old mainstream towards the
writing of a new constitution even as it insists the PLA question be
resolved quickly. There are a number of proposals for PLA integration
and army restructuring on the table, including a non-paper by the U.N.
Mission in Nepal. But these cannot be discussed and taken forward in the
absence of a consensual atmosphere.
If the next round of voting in the CA is inconclusive, the Maoists and the NC should
withdraw from the fray and explore the possibility of Mr. Khanal
leading such a government with the participation of all. The Maoists
should realise that 40 per cent is not enough for them to have their way
on all issues and that heading a government for just 9 months should
not become the be all and end all of political strategy. All
constitutions are living documents. If the Maoists win a majority in the
next election, they can always try and improve the constitution. On
their part, the NC and the UML, and the Indian establishment, should
stop looking at the Maoists as an ‘insurgent' outfit just because
several thousand PLA soldiers are still living in UNMIN-supervised
cantonments. These soldiers confer no political advantage to the Maoists
since the “people's war,” once abandoned, cannot be restarted.
Integrating them into a democratised national army would be a win-win
all round. In exchange for the loss of dedicated party cadres —
5,000-8,000 men would never be able to stage a coup or subvert a
lakh-strong force — the Maoists want the national army to be ethnically
inclusive and brought firmly under civilian control. Surely that is
something everyone ought to back wholeheartedly. By working against the
possibility of a new political equilibrium that can accomplish these
goals in Nepal, India is playing a dangerous game that will eventually
boomerang.
source:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/siddharth-varadarajan/article572789.ece?homepage=true
Last edited: 15-Aug-10 02:53 PM
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