Nepal’s Foreign Minister arrives in New Delhi with unusual candour and a concrete agenda. The real test is whether rhetoric can be converted into results

Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal arrived in New Delhi with something unusual in diplomatic circles: candour. On his first visit representing Prime Minister Balen Shah’s Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) government, Khanal skipped the customary pleasantries and acknowledged plainly that Nepal had wasted years of growth while India surged ahead. That kind of honesty from Kathmandu is itself a departure from the past. Indo-Nepal relations have long been strained by geography, identity, and politics. Border disputes — most notably the Kalapani-Lipulekh-Limpiyadhura row of 2020 — left deep distrust. Past Nepali governments, trapped in unstable coalitions,........

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