Unblocking The Blockade

By NARAYAN MANANDHAR

On 30 November activists sympathetic to CPN-UML Party were busy organizing a human chain in Kathmandu, linking Singhadurbar to UN Building, with a goal to internationalize the issue of “unofficial blockade” and thereby put pressure on India. The same evening, in the local FM program going live (Image Channel, 103.6, jana sarokar), I heard an interview, where a fellow Nepali said:

“Look what kind of egoist stand this PM is taking; he is now saying not visiting India unless this nakabandi is lifted or will visit only with a condition that it will be lifted within 24 hours of his visit. I would say, he must visit India to lift this nakabandi and resultant sufferings of the Nepali. He must ask Mr Modi about his mistakes, beg apology (pau molne in Nepali) if there is any, and request him to help resolve the issue. He is no more a PM of a single party; he is the PM of Nepali people. I am speaking on behalf of over two crore Nepali people, he has to take the responsibility to clear this problem. One cannot take egoistic stand with a neighbour; you have to live with the neighbour.”

A bahunistic, anti-madhesi, anti-India nationalistic may take this view as total “servitude attitude” of a hapless Nepali but I would say this anonymous lady, speaking from some street in Kathmandu, is speaking a simple truth. Like in Hans Anderson’s  The Emperor’s New Clothes, this lady has the courage to stand distinct from the bahunistic crowd in Kathmandu and speak the plain truth. Now, let me come back to the title of this writing.

Going by the media, His Excellency Indian Ambassador to Nepal, Mr Ranjit Rae must be having the busiest and perhaps the most difficult time in his career. He could be seen almost everywhere in the media speaking and most importantly repeating the same statements over and again. The gist could be presented something like this:

“Look India has nothing to do with this blockade. It is purely an internal matter of Nepal. The problem is Nepal’s own making. India very much likes to see a strong, stable, and peaceful Nepal. What we are concerned about is security, the possibility of the problem getting spilled to India because of our open border. We hope the political leaders in Nepal will take an inclusive approach. And the only way out is constitutional amendment. We have supported Nepal during April earthquake, we very much like to support Nepal. Look our relationships cannot be broken so easily, we have people-to-people relationship.”

Sometimes he could be seen irritated and saying, “Look, this stoking anti-India sentiment, burning of effigy of Modi is not going to help anybody.”

One can see him on TV, listen to him on the radio, read his views in newspapers, speaking in English and Hindi. I have not heard him speak in Nepali though. He must be under tremendous pressure to save his job, to save his career, and not to complicate the matter further by taking utmost caution, carefully choosing his words, weighing them one by one before releasing them from his mouth.

After listening to Rae’s interview in the BBC Nepali Service, suddenly I caught myself pondering on the question, “What has gone wrong with this blockade problem?” To put it differently, what has to be done to unblock this blockade?

For a while I have been lecturing my management students that they need to learn how to answer three questions on a sequential order. These questions are What, Why and How? Bringing these questions to the blockade problem, we need to answer these questions in a sequential order:

1. What is the blockade?
2. Why is the blockade?
3. How to resolve this blockade?

Ambassador Rae is right when he says the focus of our attention has been on answering the first question: What is the blockade? We have spent hell of a time and words saying what is being blocked, how many trucks are coming in or out, how many are being piled up at the check-points, why no transit from this and that check point, rights of landlocked Nepal, India’s obligations, etc. There is little to no effort in answering the second question: Why this blockade is happening? Even if there are few answers, we diverge in our interpretations on “the causal factors”. There is a sea of difference between us in what factors led to the current situation. We focus more on consequences or results from this blockade and less on the causal identification of the factors. For the third question, “How to resolve this issue?” there is the least to no attention at all. It could be because we have not answered the second question or because we keep ourselves busy answering the first question: What is the blockade?

As you move from the first question to the third question, the answers get pretty complicated. Without answering the question, “Why this blockade?” it is near impossible to answer the question, “How to resolve the blockade?”. My point here is that we have to move in a logical fashion when answering these questions, starting from the first to the third in a sequential order.

The lady on the radio that I quoted above has her own views on the solution, which many may not agree with. She has sought to answer the third question, probably because she has already made up her mind on the answers to the first two questions. Can we “think outside the box” for a while and do some honest soul searching to find answers to the questions One and Two? Without being labelled pedagogical, these two questions seek to define the problem. Remember, understanding the problem is the essence here. There is a saying in research: A well-known problem is half solved. Do we really know or want to know what the problem here is? Because answering these questions could help us unblock the blockade, not just the border one but also the one in our minds.