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The price of garlic shot up from previous month’s Rs 245 per kilo to Rs 555 this week. The unexpected rise in the price of the popular kitchen ingredient, which is known for its immunity-boost­ing properties, comes at a time when other vegetables are getting cheaper, according to the Kalimati Fruits and Veg­etable Market Development Board.Likewise, drug dealers say the price of disposable face masks has surged from a retail price of Rs 500 per packet to a wholesale price of Rs 800.

The reason behind both price hikes is the same: the unfolding coronavirus crisis.

The outbreak has affected people’s lives as well as tour­ist arrivals in Nepal. Experts fear the health crisis spread­ing out from northern neigh­bor China may harm the national economy. Nepal’s private sector is mostly con­cerned with its likely impact on tourism.

“Tourist arrivals in January were down by half compared to the same period last year. We foresee an extreme impact of coronavirus in tourism and the Visit Nepal campaign,” says Satish Kumar More, Pres­ident of Confederation of Nep­alese Industries (CNI).

Chinese contractors work­ing in Nepal are yet to return from China after celebrating Chinese New Year (January 25) in their hometowns. Pri­vate sector representatives fear that projects may be delayed.

According to Bhuwan Kumar Dahal, president of Nepal Bankers’ Association, the banking sector could also be badly hit. “Hotels and other hospitality businesses will be harmed,” he says. “So we may lose income from tour­ism.” China is a major source country for Nepal’s tourism dollars. Banks are concerned that they may lose their invest­ments in hospitality and avi­ation due to the coronavirus tourist slump.

“Hotels in Pokhara are already in trouble,” says another banker. “With the fall in number of Chinese tourists, the revenue of travel and air­line companies will go down as well.”

Banks last year increased their investment in hospitality and aviation anticipating good turnout during Visit Nepal 2020. “Banks have invested even in reopening closed hotels,” says another banker, adding that such investment may not bear fruit in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

Hari Bhakta Sharma, former CNI president, also thinks the virus scare may invite a finan­cial crisis. “Our manufactur­ing is dependent on imported raw material. As China cuts down exports of raw material used for medicines, fertiliz­ers, pesticides and the like, our industries may face prob­lems,” he says.

There is also a risk of gen­eral inflation. Nepal imports electrical items, readymade garments, shoes and other consumer products from China. If supply from China decreases and Nepal has to import from third countries, the products may become more costly.

Nepal’s foreign currency reserves cold also be battered. Both Chinese aid and tourist arrivals will go down, caus­ing Nepal to lose foreign cur­rency income. This adds to the worry because Nepal Rastra Bank has already projected foreign currency income to decrease in its annual mon­etary policy this year. Bank officials say Nepal’s ability to purchase goods from abroad maybe affected by the virus outbreak

Little knowledge is dangerous. Perhaps this adage is no truer than in the case of the MCC compact. Everyone is talking about it. Asks a taxi-driver in Kathmandu: “Is it true that America will launch missiles against China from Nepal after its passage of the MCC?” A coffee-shop owner in Teenkune questions as curiously: “Will Nepal lose its inde­pendence if it signs the MCC?” A Nepali TV channel conducts an MCC debate with rockets and missiles shown flying in the background. How did we come to this?The unsettled debate over whether the MCC compact is a part of the ‘military’ Indo-Pacific Strategy—an imperial American construct targeted against China, in the eyes of many ruling party leaders—is one contributing factor. Thanks to the paranoia this debate has fanned, speculations about American boots marching on Nepali soil naturally follow. But whether or not the compact is related to the IPS, the way the issue has been handled by the ruling party is immature. Yet perhaps it was also inevitable that such an ‘imperial agenda’ would be used to fight proxy wars inside a communist party.

The much ado about the compact could have been avoided had our government been honest. With the American offi­cials themselves admitting the MCC is part of the IPS, why does the NCP government have to lie to its own people? Why not rather have the guts to argue that it really does not matter whether the MCC is a part of the IPS because it is in our national interest? After all, even if we are to go by the government’s own diversification policy, greater American engagement in Nepal will help balance India and China—always dangerous for a small landlocked country to exclu­sively rely on its giant neighbors.

The Americans have themselves contributed to the sus­picions by so strongly lobbying in the compact’s favor and giving muddled answers over its IPS link. Having made their case, why not let the sovereign government apparatus of Nepal settle it? And what is the harm in unequivocally saying that, yes, the compact is a part of the IPS, which, in fact, is the overarching American foreign policy formulation for the Indo-Pacific region?

Even some NCP leaders who were initially skeptical of the compact have come around to seeing its benefits, and it is likely to be eventually passed. But the unfolding MCC fiasco also offers an important lesson. It is dangerous to politicize a foreign policy issue—and one related to the world’s sole superpower at that—for partisan gains, and mislead the public.

After listening to those in the know, it seems the MCC agreement was signed in keeping with Nepali laws. There maybe grander ‘American designs’ behind it. But then the same speculation could be made of China’s BRI or India’s ‘Neighborhood First’. Again, I am not asking for blind accep­tance of the compact, as I am also only a learner on the subject. If you too are interested in it, don’t be satisfied by superficial answers—dig a little deep.

In past six months, District Police, Banke has docu­mented the cases of 159 missing women, 52 of them minors. There is a common cause behind their disappear­ance: elopement.“Most complaints are related to girls eloping. As those below 20 years cannot legally marry, they run away from home to get hitched. Par­ents lodge complaints when their daughters go missing,” says Superintendent of Police Bir Bahadur Oli, chief of Banke Police. “They return after turning 20, many with their babies.”

The girls and young women cross the border and reach Indian towns where they get married, according to Oli. Police records show that fam­ilies do not accept the mar­riage at first, but gradually, short of options, they start doing so.

“As parents oppose mar­riage, children run away,” Oli adds. “Fearing punishment for underage marriage, many parents do not report to the police even when their chil­dren return.”

Banke is a district where child marriage is rampant. According to the 2011 Popu­lation Census, 66.08 percent marriages in Banke involved underage participants. Mean­while, another survey of a local non-profit Social Aware­ness Concern Form showed that the underage marriages in 2019 involved 80.79 percent of all girls and 60.92 percent of all boys.

The survey showed that in the Nepalgunj Sub-metropoli­tan and in Rapti Sonari Village Council as many as 83.16 per­cent of the marrying women were underage.

The police have stepped up efforts to control child mar­riage in the district. There are many child and teenage girl clubs that report to police when they come to know of any child marriage. Acting on those reports, the police last year stopped 35 marriages in Nepalgunj Sub-metropolitan City and Janaki Rural Munic­ipality. But this year, no child marriage has been reported yet.

Maiti Nepal, an organiza­tion working to stop traffick­ing-in-person, had received complaints of 869 missing women last year. Of them, 239 were under 18. Keshab Koirala, an official with the organization, suspects most of them run away to marry, as many of the girls rescued from the bordering areas and Indian towns were found to have married before age. “They are at risk of being sold in India,” Koirala says.

The organization had res­cued 347 girls last year. “We rescued 21 girls in a single lot at Jamunaha border point. They were mostly between 14 and 18, and from Salyan and Rukum districts,” Koirala adds.

Three of the girls rescued by Maiti Nepal in India were sold by their boyfriends. “They lure uneducated girls with a promise of marriage, and the educated ones with nice jobs,” Koirala says. “When the girls go to India without their parents, there is a greater risk of them being sold”

As the framers of PM Oli’s foreign policy keep empha­sizing, one of the government’s central foreign policy planks is diversification. This is defined as any maneu­ver that increases Nepal’s ‘strategic autonomy’ by diversify­ing its ties away from India. Away from India, yet close not just to China and the neighborhood but seemingly to every part of the world. The greater the number of its foreign friends, the lesser the chance of Nepal being subjected to the kind of life-sapping blockades it has been subjected to by India—thrice already. But this diversification strategy is also fraught with risks.

This week, the letter of a ranking member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee asking PM Oli to stop the ratifi­cation of the finalized extradition treaty with China became public. The letter published by Kantipur, and signed by Sen­ator Robert Menendez, warns that any removal of Tibetan refugees to China from Nepal would have a “serious negative impact on bilateral relations between the two countries.” It also “urges” PM Oli to issue documents to the Tibetans in Nepal wanting to travel to India. The Americans know such a decision would rile the Chinese.

President Xi was visibly upset during his Kathmandu visit when the extradition treaty, which he considered done and dusted, was withdrawn at the last minute. He espied a clear US hand. At the time, he had thundered in Kathmandu: “Any­one attempting to split China in any part of the country will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones.” Many thought he was referring to the ‘American meddling’ in Hong Kong. But according to those in the know he was as angry about the American maneuvering to scuttle the extradition treaty, including American ambassador Randy Berry’s last-minute lobbying against the treaty. Yet the mutual legal assistance treaty that came in place of the extradition treaty could still be enough to extradite Tibetans to China. It was not lost on anyone that Xi’s Nepal visit was largely aimed at minimizing the US presence. And he succeeded, at least in part.

Coming to the present, India has appointed a new foreign secretary, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, a Sikkim native and a fluent Nepali speaker. Earlier, he had served as the director of the division of the external affairs ministry dealing with Nepal and Bhutan. Shringla, the ex-Indian envoy to the US, is well-versed in the geopolitics of South Asia. Coupled with the appointment of a more sober Nepal envoy—certainly compared to the ever-jovial Manjeev Singh Puri—Indian inter­vention in Nepal could again significantly increase.

New Delhi considers this an imperative at a time the Chinese influence in Nepal is at an all-time high and the Americans are getting uncomfortably nosy in its traditional backyard. Diversifying Nepal’s relations with China, the US, Venezuela, North Korea and every other conceivable power is all and good. But our top leaders, NCP co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal most notoriously, have repeatedly betrayed a dangerous lack of diplomatic nous, often landing the country in a spot of bother.

We already see a clear division in the NCP over the MCC compact, and the letter from the US Senator will only further inflame its critics. This could be a harbinger of graver foreign policy challenges ahead.