Prachanda: Debut trip as PM

New Delhi, Sept. 13: A suite at the Taj will probably count the least among the many transformations in Prachanda’s India experience when he arrives tomorrow on a five-day state visit. Neither will it merely be the change from a wanted head of insurgency to a vaunted head of government.

Prachanda, aka Pushpa Kamal Dahal, was till just the other day the nub of differences between India and Nepal. Now he turns up laden with potential to make a difference — elected Prime Minister of a fledgling republic that is seeking to put relations on a new keel. No longer an unwelcome irritant furtively ducking in and out of holes in Noida; very much an honoured guest New Delhi will hope to toast the future with.

There has been whispered annoyance in South Block at Prachanda’s decision to break convention and choose China as his first port of call on becoming Prime Minister, but the Nepali leader has been eagerly prefacing his arrival with loud disclaimers to suggestions that Nepal under him will turn more to China; Beijing, his managers have been saying, was not strictly a state visit, more an incidental trip occasioned by the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games.

Equi-distance with China and India has become the new mantra of Nepali foreign policy; at the moment, that isn’t creating too many worries in the Indian foreign office. Indo-Nepalese ties, official and people-to-people, are too deep and diverse for any nation to pose a threat, the argument goes.

Prachanda himself has been batting about to clear the “anti-India” air that surrounds him. “India has played a very important role in initiating the peace process, we want to enhance our relationship on the basis of the changes in Nepal and on a new and equal footing,” he told an Indian newspaper editor ahead of his visit. “We will put an end to whipping up of anti-India sentiment in Nepal.”

There has been virulent speculation these past weeks that Nepal under Prachanda’s Maoists is set to unilaterally scrap the Indo-Nepal Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1950; the odds are the revolutionaries, having assumed power, will not tilt to such radicalism.

India has expressed its willingness to revisit the treaty and senior officials have cited the precedent of a similar agreement with Bhutan being amended keeping in view the “changing times”. But the mutual will to amend/revise aspects of the treaty may take more than a five-day visit to complete.

Instead, the focus may be on more urgent issues like the Kosi floods, which have caused devastation on both sides of the border.

While India is expected to announce assistance to the Kosi flood victims in Nepal, Nepal’s major parties, including the Maoists, the communists and the Opposition, have advised the former revolutionary to give priority to the devastation caused by the Kosi and prepare the ground for reviewing water treaties, including the Kosi, Mahakali and Gandak pacts.

Nepali foreign minister Upendra Yadav had said during his recent India visit that the Kosi river treaty had to be changed as Nepal could not “put a stone into the river water on its own” — a reference to the fact that the repair and maintenance of the Kosi’s embankments is solely India’s responsibility.

Prachanda is making a strong pitch for better trade and economic relations and security and transit issues. This has been amplified by pre-arrival statements from different quarters in Nepal, and by foreign minister Yadav during his visit.

The Maoist leader, who promised an economic revolution in the annual policies and programme of his government this week, is expected to take up the issue of easy access for Nepali goods to India, easing of quarantine and tax procedures and improved fuel supplies.

The bilateral trade between the two countries now stands at $1.4 billion; the industry body Assocham calculates this volume will double by 2010. Nepal exports vanaspati, jute goods, polyester, pulses, hides and skins, herbs, cardamom, rice bran oil, ginger, oil cakes and noodles, while India imports rice, mechanical equipment, cotton textile, cement, chemicals, electrical equipment, milk products, farm equipment and tobacco.

With Prachanda now in the saddle, India will hope the Red revolution will get off the list of Nepali exports.