NDTV Exclusive: This Nepal Town, Running on Fumes

At Birgunj, locals say the biggest casualty of Nepal’s looming fuel crisis is the local bus stand.

Birgunj, Nepal:  For over 50 days now, 44-year-old Ayub Miyan has not managed to open his petrol pump in Nepal’s Birgunj town, about 5 kilometres from the Indian border.

First, a month-long agitation in the area and now a blockade by the Madhesi groups that represent people who share ethnic ties with Indians across the border has meant not a single tanker of fuel has entered Birgunj in about 50 days.

The few that have managed to cross into Nepal have been sent to capital Kathmandu.

“It’s really a dire situation. We have no business and we are out of fuel. I don’t know when my pump will open,” said Ayub.

At Birgunj, locals say the biggest casualty of Nepal’s looming fuel crisis is the local bus stand from where over 300 buses are supposed to depart daily for various places in Nepal including the capital.



 

“Earlier our buses were vandalised too. Now there is no fuel. If you want to go to Kathmandu you have to take a scooter and go – we jokingly tell people who land up here,” Ramu Sharma, a bus operator, said.

At the iconic clock tower in Birgunj, the only four wheelers seen running are ambulances. Two-wheelers are managing to get fuel from across the border in India’s Raxaul town.

Banks and markets are shut. But protesters say they won’t give up.

“We have faced a lot of oppression from the government in Kathmandu. Now we are fighting for our rights and we will live with shortages but not with the crippling of our rights,” said Vijay Kant Karna a professor at the Tribhuvan University and a former diplomat.

Protests over the country’s new Constitution have strangled essential supplies in Nepal over the last few weeks. India has rejected as “totally false” allegations that it has imposed a blockade, saying it is the responsibility of the Nepal government to facilitate the entry of trucks.