Challenges of being on the Indian periphery

Nepal cannot count on the remaining 'Bharatmatako Mutu' with Premier Modi’s Agnipath scheme on stream.

The Poet Laureate of the 1950s, Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909-1959), penned a lyrical essay , “Ke Nepal Sano Chha?” (Is Nepal small?), and claimed that Bharatmatako Mutu (The heart of mother Bharat) was “pretty, quiet and great”. The essayist takes cringeworthy poetic licences to glorify his homeland where “Wagner is using a spade, Shakespeare could be ploughing, Titian and Turner may be tending the sheep, Socrates contemplating in a cave …”!