Missing Links
IT IS quite unfortunate that the secretary-level talks between Nepal and India that ended
on Thursday failed to reach an agreement on extending Indian railways to the dry port at
Birgunj even after four days of discussion. The talks were also marked by a failure to
reach an agreement on operating direct transport services between Nepal and Indian cities.
Having said that, there is nonetheless some optimism that an agreement could be reached in
some future talks. A Ministry of Labour and Transport Management source told a reporter of
this daily that there has been an understanding on several issues related to the operation
of the railways, but certain issues still needed to be finalised and they would be dealt
through the diplomatic channel. The talks that concluded on Thursday was the third round
of discussions on extending Indian railways to the dry port, and on the selection of the
Terminal Management Company to operate the dry port. Much investment has gone into
building the dry port in Birgunj where the facilities remain in disuse ever since it was
constructed.
The hoped-for benefits from the dry port for Nepalese
businessmen and industrialists have not come, because of the stalemate in the Nepal-Indian
talks on the mechanism to use the facilities. In the talks with the Indian side, Nepal has
been rightly demanding that it should have the right to customs clearance of third country
imports at the dry port itself whereas India wants the customs clearance and container
inspection to take place at Raxaul, the border point on the Indian side. Nepal's stand is
legitimate as the raison d'etre of having the dry port is to facilitate exactly such
movement of goods with least hassles. On the issue of direct transport, though a press
statement from the Ministry spoke of agreement on several provisions of the related draft
agreement, the fact that further discussions were needed regarding the routes, points of
entry, destinations and facilities to be provided to the vehicles made in third countries
and so on, point to the difficulty in the talks on these issues in the future. It is
imperative that, Nepal and India, having such deep ties in so many areas of mutual
cooperation, thrash out their differences on this vital area of the transport sector.
Future diplomatic or bureaucracy-level talks must start from a premise that a mutually
beneficial agreement on the railway link as well as the direct transport link would
strengthen the economic cooperation between the two countries. These essential
transportation connections should not continue to remain the missing links.
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