A few days before Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s Delhi visit last week, Nepal’s road department made an unusual commitment. Its officials said they were now determined to build and repair the highways to China. Director General of the department, Madhav Karki, told the BBC Nepali service that works had already begun under the current fiscal year budget. “We will now constantly devote ourselves to the construction of these highways to the north. We will do what we can this fiscal year, it will take some time but we remain determined to complete it.”

It was not just a vague plan. Road department officials had specific details to offer. They said works had begun to build double lanes on four such highways. There were further details that the army would be working on the Betrawati-Syabrubesi stretch of the highway to Rasuwagadi while the remaining part would be taken care by the Chinese government. To connect with the Korla crossing point in Mustang, officials said, a Chinese company was already commissioned to do map works for the building of double-laned tarmac highway from Pokhara to Jomsom.

Road department officials also said preliminary works to expand the Kathmandu-Barabise stretch of the Arniko highway into a four lane one was undergoing. According to them, the Chinese government was requested to make the Bharabise-Kodari stretch a two-lane one and China was already working on the maps. Department head Karki also said that there was no fund constraint and that the government had made commitments to invest in road infrastructure.

Indian lines

A few days after all these were said about the highways linking Nepal and China, a long-overdue transmission line between Nepal and India was inaugurated. Prime Minister Oli and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi switched it on, plugging in 80MW of electricity into Nepal from India. Two other transmission lines are in the making and Nepal should be able to get around 600 MW more by next year. It is ironic that water-resources rich Nepal will now be importing almost the same amount of electricity it has been producing. Indian officials have said that the same cross border transmission lines will be used when Nepal starts exporting power to India.

This, however, is not a new idea. Nepal and India have long had a power exchange programme under which some parts of the country saw electricity coming in from India while in other areas it was supplied to some north Indian states. Over the years, Nepal’s generation remained the same while its demand rose significantly and, as a result, its dependence on India’s electricity kept on rising. And now with three powerful cross-border transmission lines, the power exchange could go a long way—if Nepal really becomes successful at building hydropower projects for itself and for export.

Otherwise, these lines will be there for importing power from India which itself is already under increasing demand pressure from its own states.

Pertinent questions

Then there are the questions: What if the hydropower projects are built by Indian developers just to cater to the market in India? If that happens, will the newly built transmission lines be occupied just for export and Nepal may not even be able to import then?

One can argue there is an equal chance that Nepal will be generating surplus power and will be able to sell it to the southern neighbour. And there is no reason to dismiss that theory now.

Meantime, what might happen to the building and upgrading of roads linking with China? Will they move the way officials now are talking? Questions are already being asked what happened with the petroleum deal with China. Will it ever be

officially signed? Will Chinese lorries be transporting the country’s one

third of petroleum demand as announced by Nepal Oil Corporation officials? And then there are fresh media reports that Beijing has offered Nepal cooking gas at a cheaper price. Will Nepali kitchens see Chinese gas cylinders then?

Amid all this, Nepal now has the offer to use the Vishakapatnam port of India and the Indian government has also signalled that the chicken neck corridor to reach Bangladesh might also be allowed.

Suddenly doors of opportunities from both the north and the south seem to have opened up for Nepal—which is extraordinarily good news. The potentials of power export to India and the possibility of a reliable road connectivity with China are just two examples of what the two economic giants could offer Nepal.  

But the questions are: Can the country reap both the “rewards” together? Or, will it have to be either of them? Worse yet, will it be neither of them? How will Nepal handle this, if at all? Or, shall we say, how will it be allowed to deal with it? And most important of all, how will the major players in the region as well as on the global stage react in the bigger picture?

The answers to these questions in the days to come will further underline how geopolitics is shaping up Nepal’s present and the future. They will also be the litmus test of whether the country has really embarked on a development journey.  

Or, if it is destined to be in an endless instability.

Khadka is a BBC journalist based in London