Will China be the gorilla in the room during Modi’s Nepal Visit?

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi undertakes a bilateral visit to Nepal on 3-4 August – the first by an Indian premier in 17 years since IK Gujral in 1997 – the most important and sensitive agenda of his Mission Nepal won’t be purely bilateral. China will be the gorilla in the room during Modi’s one-to-one conversations with his Nepalese interlocutors. And much of it is unlikely to be shared with the media, now or ever. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has done the preparatory work for Modi’s visit to Kathmandu in her just-concluded visit to Nepal. It is not for nothing that Nepal is the second SAARC country Modi has selected for paying a bilateral visit to so early in his tenure after making Bhutan the destination of his first foreign visit. Both Bhutan and Nepal share border with China – 470 kms and 1111 kms respectively. Both these SAARC countries are strategically crucial for India and in both China has been enlarging its strategic footprints phenomenally. The Chinese influence in Nepal has already become considerable to the point of rivaling the hitherto unchallenged clout of Indian embassy in Kathmandu which India has traditionally enjoyed for decades. True, India cannot complain about the rising graph of China in Nepal. But it is definitely a major concern for India’s Nepal policy makers. [caption id=“attachment_1636607” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP.[/caption] The India-or-China-or-both debate in Nepal is getting more and more intense and China is increasingly winning more and more friends in Nepal. Perhaps India needs to blame itself for this. It is a matter of fact that neither the NDA nor the UPA has been able to give the kind of prominence to Nepal which it deserved. Atal Bihari Vajpayee never paid a bilateral visit (emphasis intentionally added) to Nepal during six years of his prime ministerial tenure. However, it must be pointed out that Vajpayee did visit Kathmandu in 2002 for a multilateral event, like attending the SAARC summit. Manmohan Singh’s track record was even worse. During ten years of his prime ministerial tenure, he never visited Nepal even once. This when he found time to pay numerous visits to far-off lands like the United States! It is nobody’s case that Nepal is more important than the US. But our past two prime ministers, coming from two radically different political parties, have not had time to undertake a bilateral visit to Nepal. This is an important flaw that Modi is seeking to remove – and thankfully so early in his tenure. Several previous governments in India had meted out the same treatment to Bhutan but Modi brought in a whiff of fresh air and a welcome dose of out-of-the-box thinking. This does not mean that his foreign policy advisors are better than what Manmohan Singh and Vajpayee had in their times. The diplomatic advice remains the same, more or less. It is the head of the government who has to take a call. But this time the challenge before Modi is far more grim and urgent. The challenge comes from China. Importantly, the Chinese challenge (or ‘threat’ as some would like to put it) is more strategic and long-term in nature. The Chinese threat does not come from blazing guns and firing tanks – that is an overt threat and can be tackled without any scope for confusion. But the present Chinese activities in Nepal – as elsewhere in India’s neighbourhood – are rather subterranean and covert. Over the past few years China has been rolling its infrastructure juggernaut into Nepal at a breakneck speed with a large number of China-Nepal road projects – many completed; many under construction. It is quite clear that while China is pushing ahead with its pet theme of infrastructural connectivity with big-ticket, visionary projects thrown in, India can no longer ignore the fast changing reality. A recent idea that has entered the India-Nepal-China conversations is the “Trans-Himalaya Economic Growth Region”, which is “China and India double-engine powered” as per Chinese ambassador to India Wei Wei. This is what Wei Wei wrote in The Hindu recently: “As neighbouring countries with the largest populations and greatest market potentials, China and India are highly complementary in economy, and are natural partners of cooperation. We are both implementing a 12th ‘Five-Year Plan’. China’s further opening up to the West echoes well with India’s ‘Look East’ policy. China and India should give full play to each other’s advantages, deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, cooperate on the BCIM Economic Corridor, the Silk Road Economic Belt, the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, and establish a China and India double-engine powered ‘Trans-Himalaya Economic Growth Region’, so that our dreams of development and prosperity can interconnect”. The Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor proposed by China has put India on the defensive for security considerations with regard to the Indian northeast. Now China has come up with a similar project apropos Nepal. India was chary of taking a call on the BCIM Corridor proposal, largely because of the domestic considerations which weighed down the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. But unlike Singh, Modi is a strong PM and his own master. One hopes that Modi is not apprehensive of the Chinese proposal about the Trans-Himalaya Economic Growth Region project and takes a call on it boldly. This should be among the talking points of Modi when he undertakes a bilateral visit to Nepal on 3-4 August. This also explains why China would be the Banquo’s Ghost during his Nepal visit. The writer is Firstpost Consulting Editor and a strategic analyst who tweets @Kishkindha.