India, July 16 -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi had invoked a "special relationship", based on shared culture, language and religion, with Nepal during his first official visit to Kathmandu in 2014. He had said, "This is the land of Sita and Janak; Nepal-India relations are as old as the Himalayas and the Ganga." Given his proclivity for abbreviations, Modi had coined HIT (Highways, I-Ways and Transways) as the transformational formula to strengthen age-old ties between the two nations. Much water has flown down the rivers Kosi, Gandaki and Karnali (the three big rivers that flow from Nepal to India) and Nepal has instead vested its trust in the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to usher in the much-needed transformation.

Nepalese Pr...