Well, well, well, an interesting discussion. But, I guess we are at fault too.

India, whether we like it or not, is an emerging power, and as with any other emerging regional powers, India wants to have its share in the region's foreign or domestic policy. Its how the world politics works. India has to think of its national interests, and come up with  the right policies to survive in the messy world of world politics. Therefore, as a student of International Politics, I see nothing wrong in this. It has happened before in many parts of the world and its still happening. So why blame India? It simply doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

If someone's to be blamed then its us. Why do we let India and its security/intelleigence apparatus meddle in our affairs? As far as I can see, and I don't claim to see too far :-), its us who are to be blamed. Its not that we are lacking in manpower, i.e., smart people who know what to do, its the damn system that does not make use of these smart people. What we lack is our India policy. Do we have it? No. We are yet to develop Nepal's India policy. Maybe the political parties have their own India policy but, we, as a nation, do not have any policy framework to deal with India. So instead of blaming India, I think we should learn from it. Kudos to all the Indian career diplomats who fulfilled their mission (s) in Nepal, if there was/were any. They did what they were paid to do and what they were supposed to do. Its our fault that we could not counter it.  Its us who have to get our act together and brainstorm to come up with our unified/national India policy. And as I can far as I can see, its not going to happen any time soon. The reasons:

1. First of all, our political leaders should try to come up with answers/solutions to domestic/internal problems themeselves without relying too much on India. There will be some degree of reliance because Nepal is a landlocked country that shares its borders with India and our very economic survival depends on India. In this context, India not interfering in Nepali affairs  is highly unlikely. India will exert its influence (hegemonic or otherwise) for a long time to come, unless we suddenly discover gold mines everywhere  in Nepal (maybe then our economy will hav e a kick-start and we will be a part of the world economy, and India will have to treat us as an equal partner. )

2. We should stop analyzing India based on Hindi movies.  How many Nepali career diplomats are fluent in Hindi? How many of them really do understand India? I guess, very few. We watch Bollywood movies, speak broken Hindi and claim to know everything about India. Come on, how many of us really understand the Indian economy, politics, literature, culture and other things Indian? Not many. Therefore, we should  first understand India, learn what are its "national interests" in Nepal and we should come up with our own "national interests" while dealing with India.

Its easy to blame India for all that happens in Nepal, but that's not going to take us anywhere. India has to do what it has to do, but are we doing what we have to do?

What are we supposed to do?

First of all, acknowledge the fact that India is a regional power and come up with the strategies to work together as partners, rather than rivals, so that Nepal benifits from the Indian economic boom. What nationalism and national pride are we talking about when millions of Nepalis work in India? Let's forget all that Nepal has remained independent blah blah blah nationalism p[ropaganda  for a while and let's think how we can work together with India, and still retain our independence.

We live in an interddependent world. If France and Germany can  get along well, then I don't see why India and Nepal can't get along well. Its just that we have to get rid off of our India bashing mentality and seriously think how we can improve Nepal by working together with India. Again I don't see any  raesons why we shouldn't as long as India accepts and respects our legitimate demands, then let's do it. We live in an interdependent world, and Nepal, whether we like it or not, is fully dependent on India. Its for our foreign ministry to come up with a India policy that does not compromise our independence and economic interests. And  I believe our foreign ministry can do it. All we need is a new perspective.