KATMANDU: A virtual blockade of all the roads from India to Nepal is causing shortages of essential goods including medicines and petroleum.
India had blocked all but two of 17 transit routes on March 24, a day after trade and transit treaties expired between the two countries (WSN March 31).
Nepal is a landlocked country sandwiched between India and China. The conflict is seen as a classic confrontation between an emerging regional superpower and a strategic but small nation.
Indian intervention in Sri Lanka and Maldives has caused concern in India’s neighbors including Nepal and Bangladesh. To arrest its sovereignty Nepal had as symbolic gesture ordered some military equipment from China which Indians vociferously objected.
Nepal had also announced that it was imposing restrictions on Indian residents and businessman people here. India allows Nepal’s free access.
Reporters have seen poor people line up for up to 12 hours throughout Katmandu waiting for the weekly ration of one and a half gallons of gasoline and three quarts of kerosene. All the petroleum comes into Nepal from India.
Bangladesh has announced that it will send 1,000 tons of petroleum to Nepal. It is estimated that the country has existing stockpiled reserves for a month or so.
Nepal government has been keeping all its domestic and international flights open so as to keep its tourist flow intact.
All luxury five star hotels have also been given ample fuel to keep running their normal businesses.
There is however a critical shortage of medicines and other essential goods but the Nepalese seems to have decided not to buckle under the Indian pressure.
A Nepalese diplomat charged India with “hypocrisy, white lies and snobbery.”
The whole blockade was staged to assert India as a regional superpower and tell Nepal it was at the India’s mercy, he said, requesting anonymity.
“The Nepalese will never feel the same towards India after all this is over,” he added.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 14, 1989
