Nepal has always been more than a neighbor of India. It has been a shoulder on our northern end – where no danger was feared, whose people mixed with us freely, in whose temples we prayed with enthusiasm, whose Gurkhas themselves defined valor. A long-standing story of roti-beti – sharing bread and blood – explains how India understood and managed its relations with Nepal. Open borders, nurtured on the basis of cultural similarity and civilizational kinship, were seen less as a policy option and more as a state of nature. For decades, this faith-based narrative persisted.Since then it has suffered several rapid mutations. And India has been slow to adjust and recalibrate. The same open border that was a symbol of trust became a corridor for threats that India could not ignore. ISI-backed networks systematically exploited the border – Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed modules used Nepal as a staging and transit area. Radicalism, quietly funded through foreign channels, created the institutional base. Counterfeit currency, narcotics and human trafficking created organized syndicates that operated with impunity. Bad money was also used for election funding.India’s response evolved over time – civilian police, then Central Armed Police, and finally smart border management. This step was necessary. But this brought bitterness in the relationship. The warm story of shared identity gave rise to a cold question: How close should one be?While India was tightening its border position, China was making strategic investments in Nepal’s human and physical territory. Chinese study centers sowed the seeds of cultural influence. Infrastructure investment specifically targeted development-dry regions, where India promised much and delivered little – projects were announced with fanfare, then delayed due to poorly defined timelines and long-term delivery deficits.China built roads and connectivity. India sent goodwill and adjournments, films and fanfare.The result was predictable. The political scenario of Nepal was badly broken. The monarchy faced complete disintegration. Maoists came to power. Political instability became a permanent condition of governance in Kathmandu. Meanwhile, India continued to work through the backroom management of Nepali power groups – a habit that reflects a deep strategic miscalculation. China cannot be balanced at the level of a small country situated between two larger countries. China should be balanced on China’s level.India ignored this basic truth for too long. Until 2015, that changed everything. About 80% of Nepal’s population lives on 20% of its land – the southern Terai belt along the Indian border. This demographic and geographical reality has always made the relationship structurally sensitive. After the devastating earthquake of 2015, Nepal was at its most vulnerable. That’s when the Madhesi community – Nepali citizens of the southern Terai belt, who share deep ethnic and cultural ties with Indian cross-border communities – launched a trade blockade against Kathmandu, protesting what they saw as their marginalization in Nepal’s newly drafted constitution. The blockade blocked the flow of essential supplies into the already crisis-hit country. India found itself indifferent to Nepal’s suffering by putting insufficient pressure on Madhesi groups to take it up. Whether that assumption was justified or not is difficult to conclude either way. What is clear is that India was branded non-humanitarian at the very moment when the humanitarian stance mattered most. It was an image that India has struggled to recover.This episode exposed a deeper problem: India had invested in a narrative of belonging based on civilizational solidarity, while ignoring the material conditions that give the narratives their credibility. We fostered corruption in our own soil, engaged in only patchwork aid, and allowed distribution deficits to grow – while China smartly invested in infrastructure, mobility, and connectivity. We remained stuck in faith-based narratives for a long time, even after the landfall.An explosion of Gen-Z aspirations was witnessed, first in Bangladesh and then in Nepal. The demand was consistent: corruption-free, transparent, accountable governance. The pressures driving it were equally consistent – ​​stress in the agricultural sector, lack of jobs, lack of growth opportunities, unplanned and disrupted urbanization, and the challenges of climate change. Overall, it stifled a generation that is both globally well-connected and locally disillusioned.India missed this change. The religious-civilization narrative, which once served as a soft anchor in Nepal, has been rejected outright by this group. We also missed the time-tested wisdom: When the son grows up to stand equal to the father, the right response is to give him respect, space, and freedom to choose his own path. Imposing old stories on a changed generation creates resentment, not intimacy.Amidst China’s debt-trap diplomacy and this new generational call, India continues to argue from premises that no longer match the reality on the ground.The geopolitical environment is highly dynamic, filled with multiple conflicts and increasingly non-normal patterns of statecraft. New narratives have emerged globally – cognitive control, balance of power through balance of payments, mixed pressure zones. China has become a deep-state actor in Nepal, bringing Pakistan and Bangladesh closer to its orbit through multi-mode mobility, digital cordon and high-tech surveillance. The siege of India’s neighborhood is real.Against this backdrop, a fundamental principle reasserts itself: all wars ultimately end in peace. Wise nations have always chosen diplomacy and negotiation rather than protracted turmoil. Cooperation and mutually respectful arrangements are the only lasting basis for long-term relationships. Even claimants to the Buddha’s tradition have deviated from this middle path – but the principle remains sound.India should now act promptly. The 1950 treaty between India and Nepal needs revision – reached through close, trusted negotiations across the table, not through public release of antiquated base maps that harden the situation and invite conflict rather than resolve it.The new Prime Minister of Nepal has the mandate of corruption-free, transparent and accountable governance. This is a real start, and India must meet it with honesty and commitment – ​​not manipulation, not patchwork assistance, not backroom management of power groups.At the grassroots level, this means vibrant border village programs, avenues for mutual development, diverse institutional linkages, startup connections and fostering industrial clusters that create the right environment for practical relationships to take root. When Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam is put into action – beyond fear psychosis and religious rigidity – and when unquestioning democratic governance backs up the words, strong, tacit communication flows naturally.If we draw bigger lines before other stakeholders in the system, they will also adjust their stance. The task is not to match what China is doing. It is to be transcended – in honesty, in delivery, and in respect for the neighbor whose sovereignty and dignity cannot be compromised.The wind is changing. The question is whether India will read it in time?(The author is a former DG, CRPF)