Wind of political change blowing in Nepal?

Press, 4 January 1978, Page 16

Wind of political change blowing in Nepal?

From the “Economist,” London

One day last month, when it was cool and clear in Katmandu and the Himalayan peaks traced a fine white line along the northern horizon, a couple of hundred young Nepalis gathered in a dusty courtyard for a meeting that was illegal, unusual and, in all probability, somewhat historic. They had come together to hear Lord Avebury, the British Liberal peer and official of Amnesty International, offer a learned disquisition marking Human Rights Day; they left an hour later, under the watchful eyes of security men, fired with apparent enthusiasm to do something about human rights in their outwardly content but politically anaesthetised mountain kingdom. Lord Avebury was not the only visitor -to Katmandu that week. Hundreds of delegates of the Colombo plan converged on Katmandu to squabble about whether to meet annually or bi-annually,

deciding to argue again in Washington next year. Mr Morarji Desai, the Indian Prime Minister, arrived with a high-level delegation to discuss the trade and transit rights that are so important

to his landlocked country. Nepal’s closely controlled press focussed on these two exercises in diplomacy. Lord Avebury’s visit was studiously ignored. His Lordship was careful to stress that he was in Nepal privately and not to launch an Amnesty inquiry. But many opposition politicans — to the extent that they exist in a country that has banned all political parties for the past 15 years — did their best to impress upon him that Amnesty should take a fresh interest in Nepal. Not only, they said, because a luminary like Mr B. P. Koirala, the former Nepali Congress Party Prime Minister, is back in jail, and needing urgent surgery. The point these politicians make is that, despite King Birendra’s reputation as a benevolent ruler, there is still a dangerous level of political repression in present-day Nepal.

Any discussion about political or economical development in Nepal (whose 13M people have an income of just $lll a year apiece, and are ranked among the

lowest of the 25 least developed nations on the World Bank scale) must inevitably involve India. All Nepal’s trade must come through India. Bonded lorry traffic between Calcutta and Nepal’s cities is often hostage to political fortune, and drivers have found themselves delayed for days as a consequence of some minor intergovernmental irritation. When the Delhi elephant trumpets, Katmandu is deafened, and lately Janata Party politicans nave been trumpeting their distress about the incarceration of Mr Koirala. This may have been one reason for the unusually lavish reception Mr Desai received in Katmandu last month. The Indian Prime Minister responded by not raising the Koirala issue and by granting a longstanding Nepali demand for two separate treaties, one guaranteeing untrammelled passage for goods in and out of Nepal and another governing trade. The wily old Indian politician is undoubtedly hoping that these concessions will make for a change of wind and that the democratic gusts which swept over India last spring will soon be blowing into the Himalayas.