Shiva P. Nepal

Amidst growing Corona concerns, not to mention, the border issue with India, RAW Chief Samant Kumar Goel landed in Kathmandu on Wednesday, 21st October. His mission has been kept secret but it is said that since both sides want to normalise bilateral ties, they want to engage with each other at the highest level to resolve outstanding issues. However, there is one section in Kathmandu that tends to link the visit with the ongoing dispute within the ruling Communist Party of Nepal.
Whereas, the former Prime Ministers Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda and Madhav Kumar Nepal-- who are also senior leaders of ruling NCP-- have denied a meeting between them and Goel, the office of Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has confirmed that Goel, chief of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s intelligence agency, held a meeting with PM Oli on Wednesday evening.
Those who link Goel’s meeting with Prime Minister Oli as an indication of crisis of sovereignty and independence of Nepal must not forget that an intelligence agency led by Goel is a government agency. The primary intelligence function comprises the gathering, evaluation and dissemination of information relevant to decision-making, and may include prediction based on such information, as well as planning for future contingencies. Put simply, the main purpose of intelligence is to provide information to policymakers that may help illuminate their decision options. Thus, the visit of Goel was held in a presumption that India’s PM Modi wants to seek direct information for making foreign policy on Nepal in the future.
Many foreign analysts consider the RAW to be an effective organisation and identify it as one of the primary instruments of India's national power which has to directly brief with the Indian Prime Minister, not the External Affair Minister (EAM), and does not have to be responsible to anyone else apart from the PM of India. On top of that, it has its own budgetary autonomy and privileges.
The diplomatic relation between India and Nepal at present is at a critical juncture as India has not officially agreed to hold talks with Nepal despite several requests by the latter to hold diplomatic dialogue. In such a situation, the visit of the chief of RAW should be understood as a vicarious response from the high level of India to ice-break the diplomatic deadlock.
Those, who knowingly or unknowingly tend to draw the visit of the chief of the Indian intelligence agency into dispute, must have understood that Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, is also the Director of US Central Intelligence Agency. Pompeo’s visit to any head of the governments should not be as sceptic as it should be for some of the Nepali intellects. Moreover, the visit of Goel is not the visit of a retired professor of JNU or an opposition party leader of India.
There is general practice in India that when Prime Minister has to make serious decision on national level or on foreign policy, he has to listen to the advice of the chief of the RAW. In this backdrop, the meeting of the Chief of RAW with the Prime Minister of Nepal at a time when the EAM of India is turning its deaf ears to the calls of Nepal to sit on the table of dialogue is not as straightforward as some sections of Nepali intelligentsia take it to be. This is the compulsion of India, if not the victory of PM Oli, to sit for dialogue on border issue. There is no point to illustrate any evidence to them whose real intention is always to mock at whatever the Prime Minister Oli does to compel India to sit for dialogue for the welfare of the nation.
There is no surprise to see multiple analyses from academicians who win the breads from making assumptions and analyses of an event; but none in the Foreign Ministry of Nepal could ever imagine that PM Modi himself would come to visit Nepal to hold dialogue with his counterpart Oli to settle the border issues. The border issues are eventually settled via the series of diplomatic dialogues at bureaucratic, military, intelligence and political levels.
The haste of a section of the intellectual busy bodies to weigh pros and cons of the Indian side’s meeting with the Nepali Prime Minister is very unsettling as it has failed to evaluate the gravity of PM Oli’s unfettered attempts to compel India to sit for dialogue. Most of the aware citizens know that Nepali Prime Minister at this critical period has a historical duty to settle the issue in favour of Nepal rather than keeping up with the Joneses. We must not forget that the high-end hypocrisy on nationalism harms here and there.
There is a plethora of advice and paucity of assistance to this government from the intellectual sides. The first and foremost duty of the “pure citizens” is to appreciate the attempts made by the government to protect the national interests, if not to support the government.
It is already publicised that Army chief General of India M. M. Naravane will be visiting Nepal next month where he will be conferred the honorary General of the Nepali Army in an investiture ceremony on which Nepal’s President Bidya Devi Bhandari will confer the honorary rank upon Gen. Naravane. The visit of Goel at the background of the visit of Naravane is quite meaningful and could truly be a success of Nepali diplomacy to make India come down from the apex of arrogance to the ground of friendship. Hopefully, no Nepali intellect will air interview over the online media that the President Bhandari breached the protocol by shaking hands with the Army Chief of India!
The approach of the current government is different from that of the previous ones and it has jerked the nerves of some of the intellects as usual. Let’s stand up to our current interest rather than be worried of the past errors.

(Twitter: @shivapnepal)