Over the past couple of days the movement of fuel and other vital supplies into Nepal has increased from some Indian border points. This could be read in several ways. The most likely explanation is that India wants to ease supplies during the four-day Chhath festival, the biggest in Tarai-Madhesh. India does not want to alienate Madheshis on whose behalf it has been imposing a crippling economic blockade on Nepal. Otherwise, if India really cared about the suffering of Nepalis, it could easily open all the blocked border points. Most troublingly medical shops and hospitals are now running out of essential medicines. Major hospitals have announced partial halt to even vital operations. If drugs and medical equipments don't start flowing into Nepal in the next few days medical causalities could vastly increase. This is not counting the 200,000 people displaced by recent earthquakes who have nothing but thin and leaky tents to save themselves from the bracing cold this winder. In other words, as various UN bodies have been repeatedly warned, the country is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. This is why India must rethink its blockade.It is hard to see what India has been able to achieve through the economic blockade that has been in place for over two months. If anything, the blockade has exacerbated the polarization of Nepali society, which makes the task of reasonable constitutional settlement all the more difficult. If Madheshis are unsatisfied with some constitutional provisions, as they seem to be, surely, they are more than capable of putting pressure on Kathmandu for necessary amendments in the constitution—without any help from India. If their grievances are genuine, sooner or later Kathmandu will have to bend to popular will. This is where India has complicated things. Its direct intervention has allowed the largely Pahadi establishment to paint the protests in the Tarai belt as India's handiwork. So only when India withdraws its blockade will Kathmandu get to see the real level of support for the agendas the Madhesh-based parties are now championing.
As Prime Minister KP Oli said in his address to the nation on Sunday, continuing with the blockade could badly impair the age-old Indo-Nepal ties. The constitution, he added, as a living document can always be amended and the provincial boundaries be redrawn. Of course, there is doubt over Oli's commitment given his anti-Madhesh image. But he does not have a choice. In the end, the prime minister will have to heed popular demand. So we would like to once again ask the Indians to let events in Nepal take their own course. That, in our reckoning, would also be the best way to safeguard Indian interests in Nepal. We don't expect India to be a disinterested spectator to the constitution process. India's high stakes in Nepal does not allow for that luxury. But even with the blockade gone, India could still leverage its vast backchannels in Nepal to impress its concerns on Kathmandu. In the conduct of diplomacy between two asymmetric countries power, as India surely knows, is best exercised from behind the scenes.
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