New Delhi:
Nepal’s newly appointed Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal arrived in New Delhi this week for a three-day visit, carrying a clear message: the government of Prime Minister Balen Shah is ready to turn the page on years of political friction with India and build a relationship anchored in pragmatism, measurable outcomes, and mutual growth.
In an exclusive interview with NDTV’s Senior Executive Editor Aditya Raj Kaul, Khanal spoke about his Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), Nepal’s newest and most electorally successful political force, and outlined an ambitious vision for resetting ties between the two neighbours while acknowledging candidly that Nepal had squandered precious years of growth opportunity even as India surged ahead.
A Mandate Forged In Protest
The backdrop to this diplomatic overture is a remarkable political transformation inside Nepal. The RSP’s sweeping electoral victory earlier this year was fuelled by ‘Gen-Z’ protests – a youth-led wave of public anger that demanded accountability, transparency, and an end to entrenched corruption in Nepali politics.
“The Gen-Z protest itself was fuelled by a lot of frustration among young people for the business as usual politics, for the sake of politics,” Khanal told NDTV. “They raised the questions of accountability and transparency. They wanted corruption-free Nepal.”
The RSP, formed barely four years ago, had already established itself as a disruptive force in parliament before the protests, spending 90 days boycotting proceedings to demand investigation into corruption scandals. When elections came, voters – particularly young Nepalis – rewarded that consistency. The party emerged with a mandate it describes as unprecedented, coalescing around two central promises: good governance and faster economic transformation.
Khanal, who came into politics from a professional rather than a traditional political background, argued this outsider status is precisely what makes the RSP government different.
“Most of us who came into the party came from non-political, mostly professional backgrounds,” he said. “That meant we were free to a large degree from certain ideological burdens of the past.”
Acknowledging Missed Opportunities
In a moment of rare diplomatic candour, Khanal did not shy away from acknowledging that Nepal had failed to capitalise on India’s economic rise over the past decade.
“As India grew over the last few years rapidly, we have stagnated,” he said. “Even in the last three decades, if you look at it, Nepal has only had very, very few instances where Nepal’s GDP has grown over 5%. We think the potential – we should have grown by double digits, especially when we see India grow at 8%, 9% year on year.”
He attributed part of this stagnation to the revolving door of coalition governments in Kathmandu, which he said often weaponised international relations for domestic political consumption. “There was always the need to build coalition governments, and the coalition governments changed very, very frequently. So that friction led to… often using international geopolitical issues for domestic consumption as well.”
The RSP, he insisted, would not repeat that pattern. “We wanted to be very conscious about how we deal internationally so that our relationships are based on facts, based on evidence and not based on emotions.”
Five Pillars For A New Partnership
On the substance of his meetings with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Khanal laid out a focused agenda spanning five priority areas.
Energy tops the list. Nepal, endowed with enormous hydropower potential, wants to move beyond a piecemeal, project-by-project approach toward a comprehensive sectoral framework.
“We have built a really good collaboration on the energy sector over the last few years, but we think there are ways to improve,” Khanal said, adding that a tripartite agreement involving India, Nepal, and Bangladesh could allow Nepali green energy to flow to Dhaka using Indian transmission infrastructure – a pilot for which has already been tested.
Connectivity is the second priority. Khanal spoke specifically about rail links between Janakpur and Ayodhya, new air connections through Nepal’s recently built airports at Bhairahawa and Pokhara, and road infrastructure upgrades.
“We want to see these different cities and towns in India and Nepal connect better for road, train and air,” he said.
On the digital front, Khanal expressed hope for a UPI-backed payments agreement – one of the MOUs expected to be formalised during his visit – that would allow seamless digital transactions on both sides of the border. He also flagged a collaboration between Nepali universities and Indian institutions on AI language models for regional languages as another near-term deliverable.
Education and technology round out the agenda. Most ambitiously, Khanal floated the idea of establishing an IIT or AIIMS campus in Nepal – a proposal that would mark an entirely new chapter in academic cooperation between the two countries.
The High-Level Visit Question
Prime Minister Balen Shah, known for his unusual public reticence and his preference for direct communication with citizens over media appearances, has received an invitation to visit India. Khanal confirmed the invitation but said Shah remains focused on domestic delivery for now, having only recently presented Nepal’s first budget under the new administration.
“Prime Minister currently is very focused on the domestic agenda and wants to show early outcomes,” Khanal said. “We do hope to see high-level exchanges take place on both sides.”
For now, it is the Foreign Minister’s visit that is laying the groundwork. And if the tone he struck in New Delhi is any guide, both capitals appear genuinely invested – perhaps for the first time in years – in converting goodwill into tangible results.
