Blockade a la 1989 March

What is baffling is to know that the Nepalese were put to test of a sort of an all out economic blockade and that too by the other set of the Nepalese, both the sons of the same soil. It is a tribulation imposed on a Nepali by the other Nepali. This is simply bewildering. However, what is not an ambiguity is that if some nation conclude that its neighbor has got to be penalized on any account, convincing or otherwise, she does express its anger by imposing economic blockade on the former hinting at the former that the blockade was necessitated by the formers' acts that went contra to the latter's preferences. Such models of penalizing a country by the other neighboring country are not that unusual phenomenon in the political history of the nations. However, this process of penalizing neighboring countries for possessing differing views or as a matter of fact asserting its political sovereignty or for that matter its territorial integrity as an independent nation-state has become obsolete in this civilized world. Nevertheless, we have some countries in the region, which more often than not resort to such acts simply to exhibit superiority. Muscle flexing has become its habit. Take a classic example, that of the 1989 March 23 economic blockade imposed on Nepal by India for having said a straight no to the security umbrella theory of the other side. It is an altogether a different matter that a section of the political paraphernalia then rejoiced the Indian act of imposing blockade on their own country caring little that a day will soon come when they will have to pay heavy prices for their mis-adventures. It was a classic case when Nepalese leaders invited neighboring foreign friends to abuse the men handling the then regime. The net result: we the Nepalese people are more than loyal to the other side that we invited then. The fact is also that the change in the system here with the other sides' support is benefiting more to them than we the Nepalese. And now the new leadership in Nepal is forced to repay the debts in the form of accepting practically all the good-bad dictates coming from the other side of the border to the extent that even Nepal's exclusive issues need mediators from the other side of the border. The fact is that even if the other side do not want their direct involvement in the Nepali issues, we the Nepalese prefer to bring them in order to sort out the problem which we the Nepalese ourselves could finalize in the larger interest of the nation. We have paid enough. It is time that we stop paying more than is needed.

So that was a blockade to penalize Nepal. This is understandable. However, what is not understandable is why our own beloved brethren, the Maoists, resorted to the same tactics to discipline their own country?

The fact is that if they were waging a war in the name of the people, hence the people's war perhaps, then why they instead were imposing their war on the people? The fact is that the blockade sponsored by them is in no way serving the interests of those for whom they supposedly were waging a crusade which they claim. Admittedly, the blockade has hit the people much than those whom they preferred to force to yield through the use of this barrier. It is not the set targeted by the rebels that are facing the real hardship but the set that comprises "we the people".

The tactics has misfired. It would have been far better if the rebels would have devised some other mechanisms other than those invented by late Indian prime Minister Narsimha Rao who was the real architect of the 1989 economic blockade against Nepal. There could be some other methods, which took care of their cause without hitting the "people" hard as it did this time.

Let's hope that this blockade is the last one to be used by a Nepali political outfit to teach lessons to their own brethren.

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