In the 18th century, King Prithvi Narayan Shah described Nepal as "a yam between two boulders." The boulders, then the East India Company and Qing China, have only grown larger. India is now the world's fifth-largest economy, China the second. The yam remains a $40.8 billion landlocked state squeezed between them.
That metaphor has shaped every foreign policy doctrine Nepal has tried since: non-alignment, Zone of Peace, equidistance, equiproximity, and the latest aspiration, becoming a "vibrant bridge." Each term sounds different, but they all answer the same survival question: how do you stay intact between two boulders that are also pushing against each other?
Equidistance vs. Equiproximity
These two terms carry distinct meanings in Nepali diplomacy. Equidistance: keeping both giants at arm's length, favouring neither, was the doctrine of King Birendra's era (1960–1990), when he proposed Nepal as a "Zone of Peace." 116 countries endorsed it. India never did.
Equiproximity is the flip side: equal closeness rather than equal distance. It entered official policy after 2006, when a committee recommended "equidistance and equi-proximity" as Nepal's guiding principle. The shift was strategic because a country that needs investment and infrastructure cannot afford to keep everyone at a distance.
Yet as analyst Chandra Dev Bhatta has argued, both terms are "jargons" disconnected from ground reality. Former Foreign Minister Preadeep Kumar Gyawali put it plainly: Nepal's relationships with India and China simply cannot follow the same scale.
The Numbers That Make "Equal" Impossible
In the first five months of fiscal year 2025/26, Nepal imported Rs 434 billion from India. From China, Rs 163.73 billion but exported back just Rs 46.68 million. India accounts for roughly 65% of Nepal's total trade; some estimates reach 88.6% when services and transit are included. Nepal's entire third-country trade passes through Indian ports. The Nepali rupee is pegged to the Indian rupee at 1.6:1. The 1,751 km border is open no passports needed.
Meanwhile, Chinese investment pledges remain largely on paper. The flagship Kerung-Kathmandu railway, announced in 2016, is still at the feasibility study stage in 2026. Its estimated cost $2.75 billion for just the 72 km Nepali section equals Nepal's entire annual state revenue. Over 98% of that stretch would be tunnels or bridges through the Himalayas.
As a news report from the Kathmandu Post opinion piece put it bluntly: equidistance is "fantasy."
Buffer State to Bridge: The Dream That Won't Materialise
Nepal hates being called a buffer state: a country that exists for the convenience of the powers it separates. Yet the government itself used the term in April 2026, prompting immediate pushback from analysts who insist Nepal is "neither small nor a buffer."
The preferred reframing is the "bridge" or "transit state", connecting India and China rather than merely separating them. The logic is seductive: India-China bilateral trade exceeds $135 billion. If even a fraction flowed through Nepal, the transformation would be enormous.
But three realities block this dream. The Himalayas are a wall, not a corridor. India actively resists Chinese connectivity reaching its border through Nepal, blocking Nepali goods with Chinese components and refusing to buy electricity from Chinese-involved projects. And in August 2025, India and China agreed to reopen trade through the Lipulekh Pass, bypassing Nepal entirely. The bridge only works if the boulders need it.
The 2015 Blockade: When the Yam Got Squeezed
The Indian blockade of 2015, coming months after an earthquake that killed 9,000 people, was Nepal's defining foreign policy moment. Fuel, medicine, and essentials were cut off for nearly five months.
It exposed Nepal's single-corridor dependency. It pushed KP Oli's government to sign the Trade and Transit Agreement with China in 2016, giving Nepal access to four Chinese ports for the first time. And it accelerated Nepal's entry into the BRI in 2017. The message was clear: if one boulder squeezes, the yam leans toward the other.
India recalibrated, shifting from political pressure toward development engagement, financing cross-border railways, and building integrated check posts.
What Nepal Actually Does
Strip away the jargon and Nepal's real foreign policy is hedging: importing fuel from India while courting Chinese infrastructure money; conducting military exercises with both (Surya Kiran with India since 2004, Sagarmatha Friendship with China since 2017); ratifying America's $500 million MCC compact while remaining a BRI partner; joining the SCO as a dialogue partner while maintaining Western ties.
Equidistance as a pure doctrine was always aspirational. Nepal cannot be equidistant from a country that supplies its fuel and shares an open border and a country separated by the world's highest mountains, with near-zero Nepali exports crossing northward. But engagement diversification remains its most viable strategy: staying close enough to each boulder that neither takes the yam for granted.
The yam survives not by being hard, but by being flexible, i.e. bending without breaking. In a world where the boulders keep getting heavier, that flexibility is not weakness. It is a strategy.
Sources: Kathmandu Post, Nepali Times, The Annapurna Express, South Asian Voices, NIPoRe, Springer Nature, Nepal Department of Customs, Government of Nepal policy documents.