Geopolitics and Development: A Nepalese Perspective

of a country's life: society, culture, politics, economics, religion. Although improvements in incomes and standards of living are necessary for development, these conditions should also bring about desirable changes in attitudes, values, beliefs, and culture as well as in institutions and systems. Unfortunately, many less-developed and developing countries such as Nepal are striving for economic development without giving due recognition to bringing out desirable changes in their social and political institutions and systems. One reason for this blindness is that theories of development in the 1950s and 1960s treated it purely in terms of a mechanistic linear relationship between investment, savings, and growth. Even the development theories of the 1970s and 1980s, which focused on growth and distribution, failed to address the problems of socio-political and institutional changes. If economists have analyzed development in a purely economic sense, political scientists and sociologists have discussed it solely with the language of their disciplines. None, however, have examined the impact of geopolitics on development. Nepal is a country sandwiched between two of Asia's competing powers, China and India. This geopolitical position has been described metaphorically as a root between two stones. Nepal's situation provides an interesting example of how geopolitics has imposed an extremely serious obstacle for harmonizing external relations with aspirations for peace, security, and development. It also indicates how geopolitical factors have been, at certain times, a positive element in evolving policies and strategies for countering perceived threats from neighboring countries. However, this latter aspect of Nepal's