Nepali analyst Biswas Baral writes in The Kathmandu Post that the recent visit of Nepal’s three-time Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda to India was no tea party. Even after India bowed down, the Maoist supremo could not get what he wanted from the Indians. That too when Prachanda, who has promoted a secular image, visited temples and demonstrated his allegiance to Hinduism. Baral says that in a way, Prachanda has virtually gifted the entire power project of Nepal to India.
‘Nepal has become more dependent on India’
Biswas Baral said that just before Prachanda’s visit, Nepal’s President approved the country’s long-pending Citizenship Amendment Act. He claimed that this too Prachanda has done considering India. Another analyst from Nepal, Ajay Bhadra Khanal, says that after Prachanda’s visit, Nepal has now become more dependent on India. He said that now the challenge before Nepal is how to make the country from ‘dependent’ to ‘dependent on each other’.
Baral claimed that Prachanda has now made Nepal more dependent on India. This dependence on India has happened in trade, transit and payment system. At the same time, India wants Nepal to end its relationship with China. He said that India has made it clear that it will not buy any electricity from Nepal which would have been made with the help of China. India will not even give air routes to those airports in Nepal which have been built with the help of China. He said that there is now a consensus among geopolitical thinkers that a war is going on between India and China in South Asia in which the loss of one side will be the gain of the other.