A smuggler coveEVEN without the Terai plain’s winter fogs that cling to the flat borderlands between Nepal and India, the villages on either side of the frontier look much the same: dusty lanes lined with houses made of mud, bamboo and tin. But the fog has its uses. Since protesters against a new Nepali constitution began blocking roads from India in September, enterprising villagers have risen before the rooster crows, slipped on motorbikes across to India, and returned with a jerry can of fuel or a cylinder of cooking gas before the fog disperses.
In just four months the smuggling has encroached on a state monopoly to the point of supplying half the fuel for this poor, landlocked country. It is a parable of the mess Nepal is in. Despite being members of the same lowland ethnic groups, known broadly as Madhesis—who make up about a third of the country’s population of 30m and whose leaders agitate for greater constitutional rights—the smugglers have done more than anything to weaken the Madhesis’ hand. In the Nepali capital, Kathmandu, which nestles in the uplands and whose long domination the lowlanders...Continue reading
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