An Open Letter to the BIMSTEC Delegates
Dear BIMSTEC Delegates,
Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan, and Nepal
Nepal, a small country in the Southeast Asia, hosted BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) Summit, the heads of state and government of the seven member states agreed upon 18 point Kathmandu Declaration. BIMSTEC is an international organization to foster socio-economic cooperation among Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.
While the Summit was hosted, Kathmandu saw a phenomenal change in the infrastructures which were mostly related on showing country as a beautiful place hiding all the underlying problems with roads and dirt of the city.
I am writing this letter to the delegates of BIMSTEC, to request you to take back the real image of the country and not the exaggerated-manipulated truth about the country once your wrap-up the meetings and head back to your own nations. Before I begin, let me first remind you that Nepal has hosted South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summits thrice. In addition, Nepal has also hosted the incumbent Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, thrice since he came into power 2014. Overall, Nepal has been a dear host of several other ministerial and high-level gatherings from different countries.

While you arrived, and stayed in Kathmandu, our capital city, I am sure you were baffled by the otherwise rarely seen beauty and cleanliness across the city. But that is not the case for the locals living in the city and commute daily for their works. For your meetings, the incumbent Government in Nepal put all their efforts to keep the city clean. In the meantime, there are few government organizations and resources allocated to keep the city clean and livable. But sadly, they just don’t work out when Kathmandu is having normal days.
To all our surprises, locals and foreigners living in Kathmandu get to see the real beauty of the city, when there are summits like this one and when delegates like you travel to our city for current sorts of regional and international events. Roads were free of pot holes and the roads were literally washed. However, let me draw your attention back to the fact that, the beautiful city during the Summit has already been converted to dusty, crowdy, full of pot holes and problems.
Once you landed at Tribhuvan International Airport, the only international airport in Nepal, you saw that the city’s roads were free of public and private vehicles. However, the views of public roads in Kathmandu that you would observe are of rare views for a common citizen here. As per the recent data from Department of Transport Management (DOTM), there are a total of 3,221,042 vehicles registered for operation across Nepal. However, out of which total number of registered vehicles, 1,172,413 vehicles are registered in State 3 alone. In the meantime, a report published by DOLIDAR in 2016 indicates that only 576 KM of roads in State 3 are black-topped, 2,575 Km is graveled and 11,328KM is earthen. When 1,172,413 vehicles try to fit into a total of 11,328KM of roads, every vehicle gets an estimated 9M of roads which is a fair deal for a vehicle owner. But in reality, most of these vehicles operate in Kathmandu Valley alone. And this makes the roads across the Capital City overwhelmingly crowded and thus making lives of daily commuters in the city a difficult task. Concerning the visits of the dignitaries like you, half of the vehicles registered are banned from playing on the roads. Whereas, almost all vehicles are stopped at different points while you are travelling across the city for meetings and dinners.
The black top, clean and wide road that you saw during your visit is a fraction of the 576KM black-topped road that we have in the country. Rest of the provinces do not have well managed roads that work as death traps for lives of average 2,000 people a year as per the data provided by Nepal Police. The past investigations have revealed that the key reasons for such human casualties are related to the overcrowded roads and poorly managed infrastructures. So, the clean and well managed roads are just a pseudo image of the real road network of the country. The roads that you would witness, were especially black topped to show a nice image of the country before the delegates and huge global media coverage that the current summit would have for next few days. Even worst, the roads were black topped during the monsoon season. That means, the current investments on roads would not sustain that long.
While providing you a nice environment, our Government is violating the citizens’ basic rights to free movements access the available roads. This not only affect commuters’ lives but also the places where they work. That means, these government actions would have negative impacts on country’s economy which is definitely not a good sign for a country that still struggles to recover from 2015 Earthquakes and post-earthquake trade embargo. For me the even more surprising fact is that, Government has spent unknown amount of resources on repairing roads, hiding the dirty sides of the town, deploying Civil Servants and security forces to run the Summit in a desired way. Nepal being one of the poorest countries in South Asia and currently ranks 28th poorest nation in the world. In this regard, I think that the summits like the current on only divert resources, originally allocated for development, on something not in people’s prime priority.
The Summit like this one has caused a negative impact on developing host nation’s long-term economy. Obviously, the vision and mission of the conferences like BIMSTEC are to create a long-term prosperity of the host nation and other member nations. Thus, 4th BIMSTEC meeting could be celebrated by the citizen of the host country if they see reasonable short-term and long-term economic and diplomatic returns. However, the past and the we saw that the Nepali public are dissatisfied with the ways government imposes to host such summits and current BIMSTEC meeting was not an exception.
Finally, to conclude my letter in a positive note, I think the host nation should take every chance to take benefits from the media coverage that the current meeting is going to have. For this, the concerned public and private stakeholders should remain proactive for promoting country’s tourism sector and country’s local investment sectors. Whereas, attention should be paid in making sure that the event does not hamper negative impact in the socio-economic status.
I hope you had a wonderful and productive stay in Kathmandu.
Author Bio: Resident Research Fellow, Center for Research and Development (CERAD), Kings College
