The security clearance is whimsical. Sometimes they wave your taxi in without checking even tickets. However, if the policeman is in a foul mood, he would insist to go through every page of your travel documents. The chaos outside the terminal can be unnerving. The departure lounge is pathetic. It rates low on every count—comfort, conveniences, cleanliness and customer service. But the mess at the immigration area and clumsiness at security gates leaves a sour taste in the mouth of almost every departing passenger.
Airport officials have a tough job to be sure. They have little control over security agencies, immigration officials, and personnel of different airlines. Cleaning services have been privatised, but the efficiency and sincerity of the profit sector in Nepal leave a lot to be desired. And on top of everything else, TIA was perhaps not meant to serve thousands of domestic passengers going abroad in search of work. It was designed to handle VIP visitors and welcome high-end tourists.
Kathmandu is probably not an appropriate place to have the only international airport of the country in the first place. A converted grazing ground—that is what Gaucharan was in the 1950s—was sufficient to serve leisurely royal flights. Condescending national flag carriers of friendly countries and adventurous charter services ferrying supplies considered the airport quaint. Modern budget airlines need more efficient space and services. The only reason they continue to fly to TIA despite all the constraints of a crowded airport inside a confined valley is that it is profitable to do so.
The rigmarole of tarmac security—with sufficient ground clearance so as not to hurt sensitivities of Nepali sovereignty—that flights into India has to go through is laughable. Dual security inside the terminal—with appropriate ground clearance—should not be that difficult to arrange. It would save passengers a lot of hassles, especially during winter months.
The biggest airport in India fares no better. Despite the swank new premises of the Indira Gandhi International Airport, the behavior of officials there is enough to make passengers forget disappointments of TIA. Nepalis do not need a visa to visit India, but that does not mean they can go out of the transfer area when transiting through the New Delhi airport. “You see your passport has already been stamped,” reasoned an airport official as if it was a disqualification. A team of senior physicians flying to Lahore for a conference was forced to use the floor for almost 10 hours. Every one of them would have loved to take a cab into town and come back to catch their flight.
The commotion at the pre-modern arrival lounge of post-modern Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris confirms why it ranked with TIA on the CNN list. Officials are dour and unhelpful. Facilities are strained. And then the reason behind confusion on most international airports—former Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam was frisked at New York recently creating a diplomatic fracas—becomes somewhat clear. Despite differences in levels of economy, society and polity, fundamental predicaments of governments everywhere are similar: They have not yet evolved to cope with pressures of cheaper and faster air travels. Systems designed to check limited number of incoming passengers continue to exist even while their function has increased multi-fold and become much more complex.
The soft power
Among the Big Five of the UN, France has perhaps the lowest level of engagement in international arena, but it is one of the most influential countries with sometimes decisive say in global affairs. It does so with unmatched finesse in international diplomacy.
“A great country worthy of the name,” freedom fighter, premier and the founding president of the Fifth French Republic General Charles de Gaulle is reported to have once lamented, “does not have any friends.” But the country he built from the ashes of the Second World War does have legions of admirers all over the world. From Ayatollahs of Iran and Pol Pots of Indochina to military dictators of Africa and the elite of South America, ambitious individuals from all over the world flock to Paris, making it one of two most visited cities in the world along with New York. With the headquarters of the United Nations, the Big Apple is the reluctant capital of the world. Politicos and diplomats have to go to New York even if they don’t want to. But to Paris they come of their own volition.
Even though the replica of the Statue of Liberty in the US—the smaller original stands in the middle of River Seine—is no more welcoming, people flock to New York because it continues to be not just diplomatic but also the financial capital of the world. Reports of collapse—or occupation—of the Wall Street have been slightly exaggerated. The US dollar is still considered the safest currency even by the Chinese. Parisians know they have to be solicitous to maintain their primacy in the mind-space of the global elite. They do so by acting what is expected of them: Be welcoming in a cold, curious and detached manner.
The French realise that it is advantageous to be the ‘other’ of the hegemonic power of the US and cultivate that image with panacea. The Chinese, Indians and Russians feel that the French often offer them better deals than Americans. So do a host of smaller countries from Asia, Africa and South America who invariably explore French alternatives even when they are under pressure to do business with Americans and the British. One of the ways the French have managed to maintain their presence in the mind-space of social, cultural, economic and political elite of marginalized countries is through the exercise of what Joseph Nye of the Harvard University termed the “Soft Power”: The ability to attract rather than coerce others into submission. However, the kind influence the French exercise is often softer than soft: countries wishing to escape US hegemony find that others may offer protection, but solace can be found only in Paris.
One of his conversations with King Birendra that Girija Prasad Koirala used to remember with fondness related to their banter about favourite places of the world. Responding to a query, Koirala reportedly told King Birendra that he liked his hometown Biratnagar most among all the places that he had ever been. King Birendra had opined that the charm of Paris was unmatched. It is not difficult to see why two of the most powerful men of Nepal at a certain point of time in the history of the country held different opinions. King Birendra loved the order that had been created in Paris out of post-monarchy chaos. Koirala revelled in heat of a dormant volcano that Biratnagar represented in pre-republican Nepal. Had they come together to Paris, they would have probably discovered that the city is both tough as nut and soft as rose petal both at the same time.
The complexity of Paris comes from having survived horrors of humiliation—a British professor remarked with jealously that the French saved their monuments from destruction by surrendering to the Nazis—and achieved the independence of self-sufficiency with grit, determination and the chutzpah of an inventive nation fiercely protective of its distinctive identity.
Is there anything that Nepal can learn from France? Jung Bahadur took the Napoleonic Code and promulgated the Muluki Ain—perhaps the first temporal set of laws, a form of primitive constitution really—in entire South Asia. Mahendra learnt Gaulism. Birendra was inspired by the idea of state patronizing academics. Dr. Baburam Bhattarai should perhaps forget lessons of the Paris Commune and the Jacobin Revolution for a while and see what makes the anarchic French polity function. Its roots perhaps lie in the unity and order of French society. That would take generations to create, but it is never too late to make a modest beginning in search of order in society.
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