Colder Calculations On Covid-19?

Earlier this year, when the Indians were no longer able to bear Nepali accusations of New Delhi having imposed its version of the Pressler Amendment, they let us know that Nepali middlemen were the real culprits.
The amendment mentioned above, under which the United States continued withholding delivery of F-16s Pakistan had already paid for as punishment for Islamabad’s nuclear weapons program, dogged bilateral relations for much of the 1990s. The 9/11 attacks cleared that barrier. India’s refusal to deliver vaccines in Nepal carried worse optics.
China’s glee at the dent in India’s image was subsumed in Beijing’s more considerable glory against the vaccine it continues to be accused of having unleashed for nefarious geostrategic purposes.
With the tables turned on them, it’s the mandarins up north who are irked. Apparently, they didn’t like how our government officials hyped up reports that they were about to purchase four million doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccines. Beijing’s specific grievance was that we publicized the price – $10 per jab – despite our apparent undertaking to say nothing.
A supposedly do-nothing government finally sputtering to life went beyond damage-control mode. It issued a statement denying that any deal had been finalized at all.
While our southern neighbors are understandably giddy – judging from the media coverage – far from subdued chuckles must be emanating from the Americans. Not that Washington sees its vaccine generosity as a tool to break the MCC deadlock. It’s just that Nepalis can’t see how the Americans can’t see that it is.
This development has been described as an ‘awkward snag’ in Nepal-China diplomatic relations – in the words of one Indian newspaper. Still, the Indians – and the Americans – have learned the hard way how perilous it is to issue sweeping generalizations on the Nepal-China relationship.
More broadly, when humanitarian relief matters are caught in prevailing geopolitical cross-currents elsewhere, it is easy to lament over the despoilation of the human spirit. But when it is felt so close to home, all we can expect is for others to sympathize – if they have time to rise above their own problems, that is.
Sure, self-reliance as a virtue is bound to be extolled eternally. As Nepal has been unable to instill that attribute, it hardly comes as any comfort. We may rail all we want against ‘vaccine apartheid’ or create more catchy terminology, but the fact is that human nature hasn’t broadened enough to accommodate our aspirations as world citizens. The gap between the haves and have nots must be bridged as an ideal. In emergencies, idealism becomes little more than idle talk.
What Nepal can resort to is old-fashioned cold calculation. Our two neighbors can’t let us go down without figuring out how to divvy up the debris. Worse, they can’t figure out whether the debris would be an asset or a liability. In that situation, those farther afield can’t afford to turn up the geopolitical heat unless they are pretty sure places like Tibet and Kashmir do not become their problem. Mutual assured destruction may sound a bit crude as a strategy for survival for a nation that has tried almost everything else. But it also sums up our options.
The United Nations Security Council would hardly be expected to issue a presidential or press statement – much less adopt a resolution – affirming how vaccinating every Nepali would help maintain international peace and security. But as Nepalis, we have the freedom to believe so, regardless of who is incensed or amused.

Collective Beclowning For A Cause

A legislature dissolved a second time after its members couldn’t justify its restoration. A Supreme Court constitutional bench locked in a ‘conflict of interest’ row, undermining its credibility in testing the second dissolution order. And now, a newly appointed deputy prime minister making comments perceived to advocate a further dilution of an already fluid Nepali state and then claiming to have been misquoted.
Not to forget that these shenanigans come amid the worst health emergency the country has faced. Nepalis may be forgiven for thinking that state authorities are deliberately beclowning themselves to avoid responsibility for their misguided adventure into a new Nepal. The rats may not be abandoning the sinking ship. But they can no longer pretend to hold their breath long enough to float out of the fiasco.
Having exhausted every political experiment, the people are understandably downhearted. It’s not that we have run out of alternatives to the status quo. No single one commands enough support to bring people onto the streets. For the first time since Matrika Prasad Koirala held that official title in 1950-1951, ‘dictator’ is beginning to acquire some positive connotation in the popular imagination.
The post-2006 political leadership, to be sure, has benefited from this apathy and could continue doing so. But it seems to have lost patience. The inevitability of collapse makes the wait more excruciating.
From the outset, the notion of a ‘new’ Nepal was too nebulous to work. Since it was a collective enterprise pushed by dominant internal political players carefully anointed by geopolitically attuned external stakeholders, the quest could carry particular momentum.
The script, moreover, could change with such great convenience because arbitrariness was camouflaged as compromise. A decade down the line, the new constitution stood on the three pillars that were not part of the agenda of ‘People’s Movement II’.
If anything, the outcome has been dear and dreadful. New taxes have been levied to fund and facilitate additional layers of the federalism-driven political/administrative machinery, with little to show for the people, except percolation of political opportunism.
Secularism is being promoted as affirmative action for a religion that has been the farthest from our roots. Republicanism has spawned neo-royalism with a pomp and splendor beating the ancien regime.
In retrospect, the political class made a shrewd bet. Since the Nepali people went along with each compromise made to uphold the main – albeit tenuous – 12-point compact, they, too, became stakeholders. Ordinarily, corruption may be a bad word, but in context, its institutionalization is what lubricates the state machinery in a resource-strapped economy. Nepotism, too, is part of the manifestation of newness with Nepali characteristics. After all, preserving hard-won gains requires us to make hard choices.
But, alas, the world around us has a logic of its own. When they made investments, each external stakeholder was benign in its intention. When the time has come to claim their return, they have turned bold in their expectations.
The political class is anxious to hasten what is considers an inescapable breakdown. Since no one is prepared to take the fall individually, they seem intent on collective responsibility – evading it, to be precise.