Nepal says India ties are excellent, backs pragmatic cooperation push

Nepal Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said ties with India are currently excellent and widening in scope. He said Kathmandu is pursuing pragmatic cooperation with both neighbours through trade, connectivity and energy.

In Short

• Khanal said Nepal and India currently share one of their best phases
• Two-thirds of Nepal's total trade is conducted with India, he noted
• Kathmandu is prioritising pragmatic collaboration over ideological posturing with neighbours

Nepal has an "excellent" relationship with India and is taking a "pragmatic" approach with New Delhi by focusing on opportunities rather than challenges, Nepal Foreign Affairs Minister Shisir Khanal said in New York. He said political ties may see an "ebb and flow" at times, but added that the relationship is currently in a very good phase.

Khanal made the remarks during a conversation at Asia Society on Thursday, where he also spoke about how Nepal is managing its ties with both India and China. He said Kathmandu is moving away from an ideological approach and is instead concentrating on practical areas of collaboration, especially in trade, connectivity and energy.

"Excellent, I'd say. We have had a few high-level visits and exchanges, and I just met Indian External Affairs Minister (S Jaishankar) here in New York as well," Khanal said in response to a question from Asia Society Global President and CEO Kevin Rudd on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's relationship with Nepal's new government. Khanal said India-Nepal ties have a "multidimensional nature", with two-thirds of Nepal's total trade taking place with India. "The cultural and social relationships are very strong between the two countries as well. On the political front, sometimes there often tends to be ebb and flow. But right now, I think we have one of the excellent relationships," he said.

Jaishankar held talks with Khanal at the premises of India's Permanent Mission to the UN on Wednesday. The two leaders reviewed bilateral developments since their last meeting in Delhi in June this year, including progress in development partnership and energy cooperation.

On Nepal's ties with its neighbours, Khanal said ideological differences in Nepali politics had earlier played some role in dealing with India and China. "One of the things that we really focused on is instead of being very ideological about our relationship, just focusing on pragmatic areas of collaboration," he said. He added that with neighbours there will "obviously" be contentious issues such as borders, but said Nepal's current approach is to look at opportunities rather than challenges. "So we're seeing really good positive momentum on energy trade because our economy is very import-dependent. We pretty much import everything," he said.

In his opening remarks at Asia Society, Khanal said Nepal may appear small when placed next to India and China, but added that this should not limit its ambition. "Our neighbours' scale is a fact of geography; it must never become the ceiling of our ambition. Nepal is not small. Nepal is strategically positioned," he said. On India, he said Nepal's focus is on turning "proximity into production". Nepal shares an open border of more than 1,700 kilometres with five Indian states — Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Sikkim — home to more than 400 million people. Alongside this market is Nepal's fertile Tarai, and Khanal said that, guided by a policy of "thick connectivity and thin borders", the country is moving towards "structured reciprocal interdependence".

Khanal said Nepal's perennial rivers have 43 gigawatts of economically viable hydropower potential. By scaling up to 28,000 megawatts by 2035, he said, Nepal can support regional industrial decarbonisation by exporting clean electricity to India and then onwards to Bangladesh. He said global and Indian firms looking for resilient supply chains could benefit from manufacturing in Nepal's border special economic zones through continuous low-cost green power and favourable international market access. On China, he said Nepal's approach is pragmatic, commercially grounded and focused on long-term resilience. "Our objective is not simply to open roads to the north; it is to transform Nepal from a landlocked economy into land-linked economy. We do not see our northern and southern corridors as competing directions. We see Nepal, land-linked to two of the world's largest markets, home to nearly three billion people. Our ambition is to turn this geography into gateway for commerce and opportunity," he said.

Khanal's remarks presented Nepal's current foreign policy approach as one centred on practical cooperation with India and China, with trade, energy, connectivity and market access at the centre of that strategy. He said ties with India are strong at present, even if politics can sometimes see an "ebb and flow".

With PTI Inputs

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