Dark clouds gather over Nepal

By Charles Haviland,
BBC News, Nepal

Straw effigies of politicians were burned Enlarge Image

Nepal is in a mess.

There is ethnic unrest in the south with two more people shot dead by police last week and a continuing general strike in the area.

The country is suffering crippling nationwide shortages of basic fuels and the worst power cuts in living memory.

There is surging crime and growing uncertainty over the elections in April due to redefine the country's political future.

Seething anger

Nepal's unelected coalition government, formed as the Maoist insurgency ended in 2006, is now almost universally seen as incompetent.

Much of the Terai or southern plains is in turmoil, as I have just witnessed in the industrial town of Birgunj.

On Friday there was seething anger in the streets among the majority Madheshi population.

Madhesis are a group of southern Nepali peoples with a distinctive culture. Up to one-third of the country's population, they have always been excluded from the political establishment. They say they are fed up with being ignored.

With shops shut and cars grounded because of a general shutdown ordered by three Madheshi parties, bicycles jostled for space in the bazaar area under the pagoda clock-tower.

On every corner Madhesis were huddled in angry conclaves, their denunciation of the security forces and government booming through megaphones.

Straw effigies of politicians - the prime minister, the Maoist leader and others - were paraded, beaten with shoes in a frenzy and then burned.

The demand which kept surfacing was for an autonomous state within Nepal for Madheshis, comprising the whole strip of the plains from east to west.

There was anger at the curfews which keep being imposed in many southern districts.

And there was anger at alleged police beatings and invasions of homes and the shooting dead of more Madheshi demonstrators.

Tankers attacked

The curfews are aimed at securing the passage of petrol and gas tankers across the border from India and up the road to Kathmandu under armed escort.

Lorries queue for fuel in southern Nepal

Sixty per cent of Nepal's essential fuels enter the country via Birgunj. But in the unrest tankers have been attacked, some set alight, and drivers have been refusing to make the journey.

Blocking fuel movement is a weapon in the Madheshi activists' armoury.

I was told one of the effigies burned was of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, for allowing fuel from India to cross into Nepal for the benefit of "those Kathmandu people".

The general strike and fuel blockade are hitting the Madheshis and other Terai people very hard. Schools are closed. People struggle to get basic goods.

Madhesi politicians apparently assume that such short-term suffering will gain longer-term concessions.

One hot meal

Their Terai neighbours - the Tharu indigenous group, and Pahadis or peoples of hill origin - are unhappy. Tharus are now campaigning against the Madheshis' main demand, and many Pahadis have been violently targeted by more militant Madheshi factions.

Madhesis want an autonomous state

Nepal as a whole is also feeling the fuel pinch, which is combined with about eight hours of electricity cuts per day.

At the big oil depot on the road north, I met the managing director of the Nepal Oil Corporation, Digambar Jha. The place was deserted.

In front of 14 massive storage towers, Mr Jha - himself Madheshi by background - said stored oil there was "about nil".

Fuel shortages mean schools are closing; food deliveries to needy people are being halted. Without cooking gas, people are burning sawdust and having hot meals only once a day.

Generators are harder to run, so hospital medicines cannot be refrigerated.

The petrol shortages are not all due to the Terai unrest. They stem in large measure from the government's unwillingness to reduce fuel subsidies, which means it has incurred massive debts to its Indian supplier. The power outages come from poor hydropower management and the stealing of large quantities of power.

Good humour

Meanwhile the security forces are heavy-handed in the Terai but ineffectual elsewhere.

Tankers move under curfew to Kathmandu

Tankers moving towards Kathmandu last week were commandeered by desperate people demanding fuel. Others were vandalised in the south. Frequent highway blockades obstruct life and are not removed.

There is a sense of Nepal grinding to a halt, of the state barely functioning - yet little sign that the politicians are even aware of the difficulties people face.

So far there has been little progress on the Madheshi demands.

Indeed, their leaders are divided - something that dismays advocates of Madheshi rights. Early on Monday their talks with the government broke down as one of them - Upendra Yadav - went against his colleagues and insisted on postponement of the elections planned for April and constitutional changes enshrining a Madheshi state.

What impresses many is the resilience with which ordinary people here queue for gas and petrol and cope good-humouredly with basic shortages and privations.

But big questions remain. How long can their patience last? And will Madheshi anger mean the elections get postponed for a third time, risking - some warn - worse bloodshed?