Jhulaghat (Nepal/India), February 23
Traders at the once busy trade post of Jhulaghat on the Indo-Nepal border look jaded. On the nippy February morning no one shows the spirit of enterprise the businessmen at the traditional trade posts along the Indo-Nepal border are known for.
Trade along the border has been a way of life for the traders over the generations but the trying times for them also trickle down to people in the border villages. With frequent bandhs called in the markets after the emergency, food shortage has hit the region on the other side.
Jhulaghat comes next only to Dharchula, the biggest trade post among nearly six trade posts along the Indo-Nepal border that boast of a total business to the tune of Rs 50 crore annually. The figure traders say has been slashed to less than half in the past few months and the blow that
came with the declaration of emergency is the last thing they would have asked for.
A trader from the Indian side, Laxmi Dutt Gadkoti, says business has been slack due to an increase Maoist activities along the border but the emergency in Nepal has led to a trade collapse.
While the old world market with grocery shops on the Indian side and popular Chinese gadgets, imported alcohol and cosmetics on the Nepal side wears a deserted look. In the past week alone, the market has had to respond to bandh calls by the Maoists twice. Odd traders in Nepal’s Jullaghat play cards and carom board while many others remain compulsively glued to the tea stall for want of anything better to do.
Once in a while there is a man with a bent back carrying too many sacks for his frail frame looking to cross the 30- foot bridge linking the two countries. Strikingly, it’s the daily foodstuff, including foodgrains, jaggery, sugar and oil, among other things that people from Nepal depend on this market for.
The poor condition of the shacks on the other side is telling. Television sets in this far- flung area of western Nepal are a far cry even in the gadget market and phone lines have become history. Besides safety, it’s for these reasons that the traders cross over to the Indian side every night.
The traders on the other side have worse stories of poverty beyond the trade post. There is nothing up there, even the roads are either bad or not there at all, says Prakash Thapa who runs a shop of imported goods on the Nepal side of the trade post.
But the alcohol
shop owners do a "no pain, no gain" business. The Maoists do not like this business and to drive the point home a few months ago they drained out bottles of liquor worth lakhs of rupees from the shops here, the traders say. The Maoists are also known to draw taxes from businessmen but this area being very close to the Indian side is relatively left out.
Just a few miles from the Jullaghat trade post in the Baitadi district of Nepal there are areas under control of the Maoists which allows them easy access to the place. Last year the Maoists had banned Indian goods after the governments of the two countries were in dialogue over added military aid. But the ban was soon lifted .
