New India, old thinking

Landlocked Nepal has no option but to import at least some raw materials and expertise from China.

Even at the best of times, there is no shortage of irritants in Nepal-India relations. It would be wise for the governments of both the countries not to add to the list. Yet that is not how India sees things. For over three months, the southern neighbour has stopped importing most categories of Nepali goods. The reason is that the manufacturers of these products don’t have the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) certificates. These certificates supposedly guarantee that the products India imports are of high quality. Yet it is an open secret that when New Delhi imposed mandatory certification in 2020, it did so to stop the import from the neighbourhood of all goods with Chinese components. A related problem is that Indian inspection teams have not visited the Nepali factories in order to certify their products, even months after these factories applied for the certification. This new episode of import restriction raises many questions.