Posted by Anup Baral November 23, 2015
Upendra Yadav Ran Away When A Youth Encountered Him With Questions
For more than two months now, landlocked Nepal’s border checkpoints with India have been virtually blocked, most of them by Indian border police and customs officials, and one by activists from Nepal’s plains-dwelling Madhesi community, who are unhappy with the country’s new constitution. New Delhi officially denies that it is blocking the border, and a limited number of cargo trucks are getting through, but nonetheless imports of petroleum, medicines and earthquake relief material have been choked. A country of 28 million people has ground to a halt, schools are closing, hospitals are turning away patients, public transport is limited, industries have shut, tourist arrivals have plummeted. The impact of the Indian blockade on Nepal’s economy has now far outstripped damage from the earthquake. Yet, there has been very little international media coverage of the crisis. Nepal is just not strategically important enough, there are no NATO troops here, we don’t have oil and the blockade is too complicated to explain to the world.
