E-Kantipur

If the Madhesi agenda in the four-point agreement between the Maoists and the Madhesis parties marked an internal landmark , BIPPA agreement with India has come as another defining crossroads in Nepali history. The controversy over BIPPA, like the heat and dust over the earlier move, is an opportunity to think through complex issues whose conclusions will shape Nepal’s destiny for a long time to come.

It has arisen at the cusp of the tussle between various ideas of capitalism worldwide and various conceptions of India on home front. If “Occupy Wall Street” (no longer just graffiti on walls or slogans on t-shirts) has inaugurated a movement globally to rein in predatory capitalism, many ideologues of neoliberal policies (remember Harvard wonder boy Geffrey Sachs of the 1990s on lifting post-Soviet economies through shock therapy of privatisation?) have become champions of equality and compassionate capitalism. Only a few days ago, the European Union (forefather of all kinds of capitalisms) invited China (the flag bearer even today of the extreme form of political Marxism) to invest part of its surplus trillions to save the Euro. The world has turned upside down and downside up. Old definitions hardly describe the unfolding local as well as global realities on multiple fronts. Literal adherence to Books at the expense of historical sense has led to the Talibanisation of beliefs, on the one hand, and depredations of capitalism, on the other. 

Many Nepalis I know have shed tears to hear of BIPPA, which for them marks the end of Nepal as they know it—an independent, sovereign country with its own distinct identity and

its people’s pride. They have said, “twenty years down the line, our children will say, ‘We were once Nepalis but we are all Indians now.’” This apprehension about BIPPA is not confined to Baidya and his extreme leftist and rightist cohorts; nor has it been voiced purely for ulterior motives as a challenge to Premier Bhattarai and his government . 

Fear of unbridled capital flow used to arouse anger among leftists. Fear of Indian capital overrunning Nepal and Nepalis appears even worse. It goes back to Nepal’s founding ideology propounded by King Prithvi himself. In his Divya Upadesh, he warns of “Bideshi Sahu Mahajan.” Of course, he had meant the rise of East India Company, newly installed then as Super Tax Man of many Indian kingdoms on its way to control all of India. But this fear of India’s foreign rulers transformed into the fear of the Indian 

natives themselves in Jung Bahadur, who changed it into the fear of outsiders. Nepal and Nepalis (save for pilgrimage, exile, migrant work and cross-border kinship relations) remained sheltered in native misery imposed by their own privileged rulers but were protected from British colonialism.  Asal Hindustan exacted a heavy toll on the people in the form of illiteracy and misery but they remained free. Nativism became King Mahendra’s slogan for Panchayat with the heaviest dose of anti-India nationalism, pervasive especially among the privileged as well as lumpen Nepali-speaking folks.

So, when supporters of BIPPA speak of Nepal having made similar agreement with five other countries, such as Finland and Mauritius, etc, what they don’t understand is that these others are not India. If they invest in Nepal, they will not bring large number of Fins or Mauritians to run businesses and industries. Nepalis, especially the leftists and the rightists, have always lived in fear of India and Indians overrunning the country and dominating them in their own homes. The fear is both ethnic and geopolitical. It’s not just foreign capital. And certain apprehension is not out of place.

On the other hand, if nothing is done, if India and China, the engines of the future, are not invited to invest now, BIPPA’s opponents need to ask two questions: A) Why should Finland and other distant countries invest in Nepal to the extent that it would revolutionise the infrastructure? B) What will be the shape of India and China a decade or two from now and what will be Nepal like then if it remains in its anti-India nationalist excitement? Won’t common Nepali men become kanchas and bahadurs, as many have already become, and women various kinds of sex industry workers for the guests if they don’t receive education and skill cultivation, health care, income generation opportunities—and if Nepal remains perennially poor?

BIPPA, therefore, presents a serious dilemma. What will be the consequence of large scale Indian capital flow in Nepal? Does Indian capital flow mean a large-scale influx of Indian industrial labor force at the expense of local labor force? For example, when I interviewed in March 2010 the locals, mostly Madhesi Dalits, in Biratnagar’s Tankisinwari, where Surya Nepal had its factory, their major ambition was to get employment at Surya Nepal. They complained that the factory didn’t hire enough local people and that it gave jobs to outsiders. They even asked me if I would put in a word on their behalf to the manager. 

At any rate, BIPPA should be a cautious experiment. It may succeed; it may fail.  In ten years, Nepalis will know for sure. Given the recent experiences in the emerging economies in many parts of the world, foreign investment,

done in a sustainable fashion, has produced miracles. Think of India without Narasimha Rao or Man Mohan Singh. Think of China without Deng or Japan without the Meiji emperor. By signing the agreement, PM Bhattarai has challenged himself and his long-held beliefs. He has challenged the traditional thinking of many Nepalis whose identity has depended on anti-India nationalism.      

But through BIPPA, Bhattarai has also presented a serious test to India’s political establishment. Will India remain bound to its bureaucrats’ dime and penny diplomacy or look for bigger, longer-term stakes? The Indian policy makers need to evaluate why its decades of maximum aid to Nepal has failed to produce positive attitude among Nepalis toward its largest

neighbour with whom they are connected in so many ways that the Chinese can never match for reasons of proximity, culture, language and ideology? Is it Nepal’s centuries of anti-India nationalism to blame or is it India’s own attitude and actions for short-term goals that have fostered anti-India feelings?

BIPPA controversy has forced Nepalis to rethink Nepal’s future afresh and reevaluate its past. Walter Benjamin, the Marxist thinker of the Frankfurt School, said that the past doesn’t live in the past; it is reborn in the future. That future to assess the past is now.  And the only way it can happen is by getting out of staid slogans and received notions. 

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