AA Edit | New PM in Kathmandu to pose challenge for Delhi

It is not certain that the former guerilla leader Pushp Kumar Dahal “Prachanda”, who took the oath of office as Prime Minister of Nepal for the third time on Monday following a strange twist of events, would himself be optimistic of offering his country a modicum of respite from the pulls and pressures of politics unleashed by ambitious top-guns of a clutch of influential parties — the different shades of communists, and the traditional Nepali Congress (NC).

In the absence of political stability, development is a casualty in any poor country, and Nepal can be no exception. With the world in an economic spin caused by the Coronavirus (whose resurgence in some form is anticipated), and the subsequent war in Ukraine, stability depends on responsible action by frontline politicians. Nepal's just sworn-in PM is guilty of irresponsible conduct in this regard in pursuit of instant gratification.

His party, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre, won the recent November election as part of a front led by NC, which emerged as the largest party in the Pratinidhi Sabha with 89 seats in a House of 275, though this was well short of a majority. On Sunday afternoon, NC leader Sher Bahadur Deuba looked all set to form government in an understanding of rotation with Mr Prachanda for the position of PM. But, in a hurry to grab the top post, the Maoist leader did a double cross. He teamed up with the leader of the defeated front, the former prime minister K.P. Sharma Oli of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist). It didn’t matter that Mr Prachanda had been double-crossed by Mr Oli in 2020.

We can only guess how long the present Prachanda government will last or how it will cope with the demands of a handful of small parties and independents — negotiating to leverage the brittle political position for personal gain — for a larger share of power. The situation is tailor-made to give our northern neighbour China an important voice in the domestic affairs of Nepal, a situation that had obtained before the Oli government had collapsed on the floor of Parliament in 2020.

Mr Oli’s party has 78 MPs as against the PM’s 32. It is clear he will be in the driver's seat.

When he was Prime Minister from mid-2017 to end-2020, Mr Oli had introduced the “study” of Xi Jinping “thought” in Nepal, held joint military exercises with China, and was in the process of offering encouragement to the Chinese railway project to link Tibet to Nepal which would enable Chinese troops to reach the border with our states of Bihar, UP, and Uttarakhand. The massive road connection to Nepal from Tibet is also in the works.

To succour Beijing further, Mr Oli had manufactured a land boundary dispute with India at Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyudhara at the tri-junction of India-Nepal-Tibet (China). With China's belligerence toward India in eastern Ladakh, Tawang and the Doklam plateau far from abating, the current developments in Nepal call for careful husbanding of our relations with Kathmandu.

We have centuries-old deep-going ties with the Nepali people but a traditionally uncertain equation with the Nepali state. The situation is delicate and calls for skillful management.