The statement, ironically, stands starkly in contrast to what his party chairman, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, had told India two years earlier while he was on a visit to the southern neighbor in the capacity of prime minister. Dahal had then explicitly shared with India that Nepal aims to produce 10,000 MW of power in 10 years, a major share of which would be exported there.
It is not very hard to discern why the Maoists are all of a sudden attempting to make foreign investment in the hydropower sector a gigantic issue if one were to study the timing of the statement and the political developments of the recent past. The Nepali government is gearing up to sign Project Development Agreements with seven power companies, five of them Indian, and the Maoist party here sees an opportunity to use this as a bargaining chip against India, which it very strongly feels is responsible for keeping it out of power.
The intent of the move is clear: To get back to power. But, as the Maoists often deftly do, they are trying to give it a nationalistic color and pull wool over the eyes of innocent Nepalis who stand to lose the greatest if the companies leave the country or there are delays in completing the projects. Considering how badly Nepalis are suffering because of massive power shortages since the past few years, this is the last thing that a party that claims to be the ‘true representative’ of the people should be doing. Hydropower happens to be one of those rare sectors that have the potential to pull out millions of Nepalis from acute poverty and those investing in it have to be protected, not forced to pack their bags and flee.
The Maoists, it seems, have a lot to learn from a fine example set by our South Asian neighbor, Bhutan, which is slowly but surely marching toward its goal of producing 10,000 MW of electricity by 2020. Since the tiny country, like us, does not have the wherewithal to put in money on resource-heavy hydropower projects, it has allowed foreign investment in the sector that it unflinchingly protects and respects. Mixing dirty politics in economic affairs is never a sound philosophy and the sooner the Maoists understand this, the better.
Nepalis will otherwise be forced to believe that the party does not want the country to prosper so that they can continue to have a fertile ground to persist with their version of radical communism.
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