Time to regulate and ultimately shut the open border

Are we a free country, where anyone is welcome?

You see, with the thick cover of forest no more there in the southern plains of Nepal and thin presence of Nepali security personnel along the border, there’s virtually no restriction on the free movement of peoples from Indian territories to Nepal, while the movement of peoples from Nepal to the other side of the border remains severely restricted with progressively increased presence of security personnel on the Indian side. For a smaller country like Nepal, it will be impossible to match India's border security presence in terms of number of troops, weapons and surveillance equipment. So, in the long run, we will have to shut the border altogether by desisting from opening one border point after the other for cross-border trade and transit with around two dozen trade points already in operation. 

What of the historic, people-to-people ties, one may ask? Well, our giant neighbour has such relations with virtually every country in South and Southeast Asia. It has Bhai-Bhai relations with our northern neighbour China (As its population will continue to increase, it will have Roti-Beti ties with almost all countries on the Planet Earth, it seems). But they all have well-regulated borders. So, why should not we follow the suit?    

Thanks to the lack of political will, we hardly bother to keep record of people, who manage to sneak into our territories without any let or hindrance via land.  

Who knows? Some of them may turn out to be criminal elements, some of them terrorists. 

It should be noted here that involvement of Indian nationals has been established in some of the most gruesome crimes that have shocked this country.  

Whenever there are terrorist attacks in India, security agencies invariably find a Nepal link. This tarnishes our image as the abode of peace, where the Gautam Buddha, the sanctuary for many other sages, who received enlightenment on the laps of our Himalayas and spread their knowledge far and wide for the good of humanity.    

Even if they are not, most of these entrants are very poor people searching for livelihood in Nepal, having found no work in India, the emerging global economic giant. They may resort to any desperate means to make a living. Once in a while, we also get to read that Indian security personnel push these kinds of people to Nepal through the open border. With the season's spate of floods already displacing a huge number in India, an increasing number of homeless people are sure to enter Nepal through the open border. 

A recent report has it that about 50 people from Madhya Pradesh of India, displaced due to floods there and having found no dry land in their country, are taking shelter in Dharan!

What are the local bodies doing by the way to curb the entry of aliens at a time when our own youths are heading abroad in search of jobs, having found no opportunities here? Taking forty winks? And what is the Nepali state doing to curb this illegal inflow of all sorts of people to Nepal? Nothing. 

As time passes by, political parties will compete with each other to use people like these as vote banks by providing voter cards, citizenship and vest them with special rights by recognising them as a new ethnicity!

There's only one way to stop this from happening: Public pressure on the government to send all these illegal immigrants back, regulate and shut the open border ultimately so that Nepal does not end up becoming a country of refugees.