The left-wing coalition formed by the two Communist factions in Nepal this month comes as the end-result of a stunning upset in the country’s parliamentary elections, in which the incumbent Nepali Congress party was cast out of power.
The coalition, formed between the Unified Marxist–Leninist and Maoist Centre factions of the Communist Party of Nepal, took two-thirds of the vote and is set to be at the helm of the landlocked Himalayan nation for the next five years.
Headlines such as “Nepal turning red” and “Nepal a vessel state of China” were soon plastered across the front pages of newspapers in India, as New Delhi began brooding over the prospect of losing its “buffer” zone on its old foe in Beijing.
It’s believed that Khadga Prasad Oli, whose premiership was cut short by cracks within a previous leftist alliance, will head the new government in a dramatic comeback. Never liked by New Delhi, Oli’s brief tenure between 2015 and 2016 was beset by conflicts with New Delhi. In particular, the latter’s curtailing of petroleum and gas supplies, in a punitive blockade, resulted in a cascading humanitarian crisis.
Now analysts fear that Kathmandu, under the resurgent Oli, may add more fuel to New Delhi’s feuds with Beijing, at a time when the Chinese army’s purported militarization of the Doklam Plateau in the summer still rankles with Indians.
Chinese party mouthpieces including The People’s Daily and its sister paper The Global Times have been quick to insist that Beijing does not intend to turn Nepal into a pawn, and urged New Delhi not to view its regional relationships through a hidebound, zero-sum prism.
It would, the papers said, be wise for India to make conciliatory overtures toward Nepal, given the hefty backlash that met New Delhi’s attempts to oust the unpliable Oli in 2015.
“Any sharp-elbow tactics from India will only boomerang and push Nepal further closer to China… And it’s wishful thinking to make Nepal another ‘sentry’ country to fend off China, when our nation’s economic and political clout is more intimately felt in Nepal than ever,” noted a Global Times editorial.
With India-Nepal relations in turmoil, Beijing has revved up a slew of reconstruction projects announced in the wake of the 2015 Nepali quakes.
A new campus for the Nepali National Armed Police Academy was commissioned in July, and a modern airport is being built in the nation’s second largest city, Pokhara, aimed at spurring connectivity and trade, not to mention tourism in the scenic nation. The road connecting Pokhara and Katmandu was also built with Chinese capital.
the amazing thing to me about Nepal’s govt. is the fact that of the billions given to Nepal by the International community after the earthquakes, almost nothing trickled down to help the people affected re-build, .. ?
Thank you friend from Bangladesh.
The choice is clear. Why wallow in poverty when there is every opportunity to improve the life of Nepalese by pivotingtowards China?
Heisenberg White yes..sure..India never allows a neighbor to adopt an independent foreign policy…ìt has to agree to a satellite status. But now it is time for Rogues in Delhi to realize new international realities.
Are you right and Nepal and India old relationship .Both country are inter connected
As if the Communists in China are not CAPTALIST!
THE CHINESE ARE THOROUGHLY CAPITALIST IN EVERY CONCEIVABLE WAY !
In its own way, China is also a Capitalist Communist state. The two notions cannot really coexist and that is why China must make a big fuss about international affairs, to try and distract Chinese people from the corruption inside China.