Nepal’s 250-year-old foreign policy still works. Why does no one use it?

Nepal’s most durable foreign policy fits inside a single image: a yam between two rocks . A king coined it more than 250 years ago, and the country has been quoting it, and misreading it, ever since. Its sharpest lesson has little to do with geography.

It concerns discipline, which is precisely what Nepali diplomacy has lacked. That lack is now the Balendra Shah government’s to fix. Elected in March on a strong public mandate for change, the prime minister inherited three decades of improvised diplomacy, and his government’s early hesitation to engage envoys directly , along with a taste for informal channels, risked repeating it.

Advisers reportedly held key meetings without the Foreign Ministry’s formal involvement. Direct engagement with India, China and other partners has since resumed, but two repairs remain: make the ministry the only channel for diplomacy, and replace reactive balancing with a strategy Nepal chooses for itself . The doctrine began with Prithvi Narayan Shah.