Speaker Profile: Dr Nischal Nath Pandey

Nishchal N. Pandey is at present Director, Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS), Kathmandu. He was Executive Director, Deputy Executive Director and Research and Documentation Officer of the Institute of Foreign Affairs (IFA) under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Nepal where he worked for 8 years (1998-2006). He was also advisor to the National Planning Commission of the Government of Nepal, taskforce member to draft the ninth five-year plan of Nepal and sub-editor of the daily ‘The Rising Nepal’. From December 2006 – 2007, Pandey was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), at the National University of Singapore and presently Honourary Fellow at the ISAS. In Aug. 2009, he was a short term fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Hull, UK.

Mr Pandey is currently International Research Committee Member of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS), Colombo. He lectures at Department of Peace, Conflict and Development, Tribhuvan University and at the Nepal Army Command and Staff College, Shivapuri.

Pandey is the author of few prestigious publication “Nepal’s Maoist Movement and Implications for India and China” (RCSS and Manohar 2005), “India’s North-Eastern States: Insurgency, Economic Development and Linkages with South East Asia” (Singapore, ISAS 2008). He has edited / co-edited a dozen books including “Nepal as a Transit State: Emerging Possibilities”, “Trade Facilitation: Nepal’s Priorities”, “Nepal-Japan Relations”, “Nepal and the United Nations”, “Labor Issues and Foreign Policy”, “New Life Within SAARC” and “Comprehensive Security in South Asia”. He has also authored over three-dozen research papers and articles that have been published in internationally reputed journals, books and periodicals.

ABSTRACT

Extra-Regional Powers and their Interest in Nepal

The bold decision of the Maoist leadership to shun decade-long armed insurrection and embrace competitive multi-party politics through participation in the first-ever elections to the Constituent Assembly was a welcome change. There was anticipation that a lasting peace would return to the country. However, nobody within or outside had ever imagined that the former rebels would be emerging as a single largest party in the parliament. The first elected Prime Minister under the republican order Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ managed to instill a new spirit of confidence and optimism through announcement of a series of populist programs but his tenure of nine months was barely enough to tackle the enormous challenges that the war-ravaged country faced at multiple levels. Certain powers got anxious with the possibility of a prolonged dominance of extreme leftist outfit in the polity of Nepal coupled with a few reckless decisions of an inexperienced leadership, the government fell into an unconstitutional ambush. This has been a disastrous start to the new republican order of Nepal in which the first elected government has been toppled, the President has been brought into the centre of controversy and the Vice-President has lost his official title through a court decision. The activities of extra-regional powers in Nepal in the backdrop of these unfortunate circumstances can be easily gauged. While India and China have consistently urged Nepali political parties to shun differences and build a broad consensus so as to draft the new Constitution within the stipulated deadline of May 2010, others such as the United Nations Mission to Nepal (UNMIN) have been more assertive. The issues of federalism, integration of ex-Maoist combatants into the Nepal Army, wider debate on security sector reforms, crisis in the terai, rising religious intolerance and ethnic tension and writing of an inclusive and a democratic Constitution are critical issues that demand cautious and adept handling by all political forces but these are exactly those issues where the interest of various powers clash with one another resonating what experts have been increasingly alerting about ‘the possibility of the country turning into another Lebanon’.