Between a rock and a high place

Kathmandu. By Thomas Bell. Random House India; 461 pages; 330 rupees.

Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal. By Prashant Jha.Aleph Book Company; 384 pages; $39.75. C. Hurst; £17.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

NEPAL is a country of nearly 30m people occupying a strategic spot between India and China. It has immense hydropower potential—the Himalayan rivers could run enough turbines to light much of northern India. If only it were stable and properly run, an already attractive country could become richer and far more appealing to investors, tourists and residents.

After two decades of turmoil, signs of progress can be hard to divine. The world’s only Hindu monarchy survived a massacre by a drunk, disgruntled, heavily armed prince in 2001, but then collapsed within seven years. A Maoist-led civil war spread misery. Clashes between a brutal army and guerrillas, as well as torture, kidnapping and murder by both sides, dragged on for a decade and killed some 18,000 people before a stalemate in 2006. The war achieved little, but the Maoists at least ended up switching to politics.

Yet Nepal’s politics can be dispiriting. Leaders look venal, wasteful and self-centred. By one estimate 80% of aid is stolen in some rural districts. A Constituent Assembly had four years to draw up a constitution and failed. Another is under way. Politicians haggle, betray and rarely think of their countrymen. To prosper, young Nepalese toil in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Over half of all households now rely, to some extent, on the nearly $5 billion sent back each year in remittances .

Two new books on Nepal, both by journalists, offer sharp assessments of how the country is faring. Thomas Bell (formerly a contributor to The Economist) makes Kathmandu his focus. His account is part memoir (he marries and settles in the capital), part war reporter’s travelogue and part political history. He is captivated by Kathmandu’s art, architecture and unpredictable layers of history. But with its thriving cartels and gangsters, the city is growing monstrous, smelly and chaotic. The next big earthquake could cause appalling destruction to its poorly built towers. It is a “mixed-up small town, swallowed by a giant conurbation”, concludes Mr Bell.

His passion, and his frustration with those who misrule, are well expressed, though his tone is occasionally too scathing. Politicians perform a “farce of shameless, naked greed and short-sighted incompetence”; one party’s leaders are “flabby hypocrites”; the political “system” serves only to extract resources to benefit the elite. Donors are no better. If they are not looting artistic treasures, they connive in graft. He posits that much of Nepal’s $1 billion annual aid grant ends up as salaries for foreigners or in the wrong Nepalese pockets. Worse yet are the British spies who played a secret, shameful part in the civil war with an anti-terrorist scheme, “Operation Mustang”. If ever a Truth and Reconciliation Commission considers the war, he says, Britain should be held to account.

Prashant Jha, a Nepalese journalist now based in Delhi, is more hopeful. He too is frustrated by horse-trading politicians, inequality of wealth and caste, incessant Indian meddling and the dreadful former king. Yet perhaps with the benefit of distance, he is able to discern a welcome pattern: Nepal is becoming more open, democratic, inclusive and just. An “ambitious transformation” is under way, which he sees mostly through a leftish lens.

His connections with senior Maoist leaders and politicians from his native area—low plains known as the Terai—allow him to deliver an admirably clear and well-told narrative. It is striking, for example, to track how much the once-feared Maoists have conceded since laying down their weapons in 2008. They ensured that Nepal would be a secular republic. But they backed down on most other demands for land reform, for 20,000 Maoist soldiers to get army jobs (only 1,500 did), and for Nepal to get a powerful presidency rather than a parliament.

That readiness to compromise suggests Mr Jha’s limited optimism is nicely judged. He also applauds changes in India’s behaviour. True, it continues to meddle: Nepal was never colonised by the British; nor was it fully independent, a pattern that continues with India. But India shows more dexterity these days, dropping its old support for the monarch, while keeping links to Nepal’s army, and moving from outright hostility to accommodation of the Maoists. Under India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi, relations with Nepal look warmer than ever, with big investments set to pour across the border.

Just as welcome are tentative signs that Nepalese politicians are growing a little less awful. Elections in 2013 showed voters becoming more assertive. Once-popular Maoists were thumped, even as a breakaway Maoist faction failed to enforce a boycott of the polls. In 2015 the country may just get a constitution and some sort of federal reorganisation. The people of the Terai, long discriminated against, now get papers proving citizenship and have more elected representatives than ever (as do the low-caste), even if high-caste mountain folk retain more power. At the same time, statistics on poverty, education and the like are showing some steady gains. It is far too early to talk of Nepal becoming a Shangri-La but, as Mr Jha suggests, a bit of progress deserves a cheer.