Dwaipayan Regmi, (TON Nepal)

With the open border that Nepal holds, the friendship along with cooperation that Nepal has with India is deeply rooted at the national level, community level to individual level. Nepal shares 1850 km with five major Indian states of Sikkim, West Bengal, and Bihar along with Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. It has been regarded that Nepal and India share a unique set of ties of friendship along with cooperation which is characterized by open borders holding deep-rooted people to people-based contact among them. The biggest dispute that these two nations hold right now is regarding territorial disputes which is a land of around 400 km square at India- Nepal-China tri-junction within Western Nepal. Nepal has been claiming that the river leading west of Kalapani would lead to the Kali river which would somewhere balance and bring stuff to Nepal.

Nepal has been an independent nation that has not celebrated any day of independence to date. However, being a landlocked nation - Nepal is heavily dependent on India for the various supply of essential goods. So, what can be easily tracked here is that these nations hereby hold some sort of layer which would somewhere create a different set of impacts for holding the negotiations there itself. Although Nepal has imposed restrictions on different goods right now, what can be tracked or stated here is that - Nepal has to be dependent on India - accepting the weakest aspect of the landlocked nation.

There had been positive rays of hope between India and Nepal at the time when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Nepal showing the hope of connectivity - both physically and technically. The issue of connectivity, which was supposed to be massive ended up with a 35 km cross borderline between Jaynagar of India and Kurtha of Nepal. Although the construction of this railway track was initiated in the year 2010 itself, with a total estimated cost of $ 72.3 million, which increased later the project was an extended version of the old railway track between Jaynagar and Janakpur.

It has been believed that in the days ahead, India will connect other regions of the Dhanusa, Mahotari, and Siraha districts of Nepal for further connectivity. There have been plans for extending the railway up to Kathmandu itself, but because of failure at different places - be it at the connection point of Jogbani, India with Biratnagar extending 18.6 kilometers the plans have remained as a plan on their own.

Had Nepal been part of British rule, the British would certainly opt for Nepalese spaces to build castles and railway lines - because of the cool and charming weather that Nepal has. But, since Nepal did not go under any routine, the supremacy hereby provoked taking India to the bigger role which accounted for a loss of amazing gifts from the Nepalese perspective, especially the railway lines. Apart, Nepal did not get to enjoy another advanced form of infrastructure that the British would have built too. And, this all led Nepal to lose the basic form of infrastructure that it would possess.

Nepal is currently using roadway and airway transportation on a massive scale. Although, today there are other modes like ropeway – which is being used at few places, waterways – also at counting number of places, Nepal has re-initiated this railway mode. The connection of the Indian railway line up to Nepal is limited only to the border region – be that Jogbani, near Biratnagar of Nepal; Raxaul, near Birgunj of Nepal, or other neighboring spaces. Else, Nepalese never got this opportunity to travel by train in their nation.

There can be hopes, that the generation will get to travel by train in future days because there have been a lot of plans and agendas that are being discussed for the same. Currently, Nepal is seeking rooms to improvise electric vehicle campaigns because of their immense production of electricity.

A railway line is required in Nepal. Because of the hilly nature of the geographical structure, this can be complex – but seeing China and taking lessons from them, it can be stated that it is not impossible through any means in Nepal. And, if Nepal does not want to initiate complexities, it can always seek to start this project from the Southern belt – making the entire transportation network easy, accessible, and with connectivity around. No doubt, it is a positive step and is in the interest of both countries but what is feared most is Indian hegemonic designs.