The first generation of Indian transport entrepreneurs brought “modernisation and change” to Nepal in the 1960s, former Indian envoy to Nepal, Manjeev Singh Puri, said here on Saturday, July 29, 2023. Speaking at the launch of the biography titled Roads to the Valley on Sardar Pritam Singh, who is known as the “transport king of Nepal”, the former Indian Ambassador to Kathmandu, who played a vital role in stabilising relations between the two sides in the backdrop of the 2015-16 economic blockade imposed by Madhesi agitators, said Mr. Singh and his co-workers built “trust” for Indian people within the Nepalese society.
“Just think about it that Sardar Pritam Singh transported trucks across the mighty Ganga and its tributaries in 1959 on boats. You know what they did as a result? In the 1960s, they brought to Nepal modernisation. They brought about change in the country,” Mr. Puri said, praising the role of a handful of Sikh entrepreneurs who created Nepal’s first modern transport network under the Kathmandu-based Mr. Singh’s leadership.
The growth of Nepal’s transport sector was a particularly difficult part of the country’s evolution from a pre-modern to modern society as Nepal did not have an east-west road, which forced people living in the kingdom to take a detour through India, making even internal travel a costly affair.
Ambassador Puri recollected that real change came to Nepal when the National Public Motor Service (NPMS) started a bus service. “Nepalese politicians told me that the Sikhs brought trucks and started supply of goods from India but they also started the bus service, which was very important as buses transported people,” Mr. Puri said, recollecting that Nepalese families trusted buses that were driven by Sikh drivers.
“Trust in today’s world is a particularly important commodity. It is important in diplomacy and for building people to people relations,” Mr. Puri said, highlighting the unique way in which people to people relations grew between post-1947 India and Nepal.
Nepal’s polity and economy began to change as the Rana era of hereditary Prime Ministers came to an end after a rule that lasted more than a century (1846-1951). Taking advantage of the changes, Mr. Singh arrived in Kathmandu from Srinagar and laid the foundation of his transport business.
Mr. Singh’s biography, authored by his daughter Kiran Deep Sandhu, was launched on July 3 in Kathmandu by Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, when he revealed that Mr. Singh had once proposed to make him the PM of Nepal. The revelation caused a major controversy and stalled the functioning of the Nepal Parliament for two days. Mr. Prachanda later regretted the remarks, saying he should not have made them in his “present capacity”.
