It must surely have occurred to several wags just how aptly named "South Block" in New Delhi's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is. While the South is sometimes a misnomer specially when dealing with the North, the Block lives up to its name by effectively blocking everything including such incidentals as good relations with ones neighbours. The latest case in point is when The Block, after what must have been a cosmetic meeting with its Nepali counterparts, decided to overturn a 50-year-old tradition and impose new documentation on Indian tourists to Nepal. So tourism to Nepal is blocked.

Mr and Mrs Bhindiwallah from Ludhiana Cantt who have pots of money to spend must now obtain either passports or voter I.D's for all the Bhindiwallahs who want to get away from the burning plains, and wallow in the coolth and casino replete Kathmandu. The Block in its infinite wisdom has decreed that the Bhindiwallahs need nothing more than a wish and a scrappy bit of paper to cross the land border into Nepal. Because being mere citizens, and not terrorists, their intentions like halos will precede them at check points. This is, apparently, beyond the capabilities of those manning checkpoints at Tribhuwan International Airport in Kathmandu who are dab hands at voter I.D and passports but not terribly good at halos.

And the best terrorists can't possibly travel overland having need of Business Clubs liquid sustenance on Indian Airlines or Royal Nepal to perform their evil deeds. Anyway The Blocks and India's, "Security Perceptions" are assuaged and everyone can now concentrate on seeing that the Red Fort and Railway stations are not attacked by baddies instead of splitting their concentration. But the Bhindiwallahs are not the only people being Blocked.

Bombay Dyeing, Hitkari and a number of Indias, Business Houses, as well as suppliers of livestock, massalas you-name-it are halted in their tracks as Nepal's orders to them diminish in direct proportion to tourism needs. But presumably this will take a little time to sink in. By then the present blockers will be replaced by clones who will stop or pass or block the fallout. And Nepal which is the ninth nation on China's list of nine places the Inscrutables can visit wooed the Chinese with the same attractive holiday packages offered to Indians when Chinese premier Zhu Rongji visited on May 14th. And the Block will say that Nepal is playing the China card and/or a Foreign Hand is at work, or all of the above.
The Block must be seen as working to perpetuate itself. Being possessed of mass they cannot bend to Nepal at the negotiating table with infinitely more carrot and much less stick. At the moment it is said that the Indian embassy in Kathmandu has being trying to get the Nepalis, wounded by the negotiations, to meet again. But the Nepalis are busy till two months from now - so the Block mindset has been passed over several high mountains. Only in Nepal it is not called the Block it is called Singha Durbar, or Sheetal Niwas. Amazing what trans Himalayan osmosis can achieve in making the bureau in bureaucracy heavy and immovable.

The Block has to block so their budgets are ever higher, their power over the fate of twenty three million people absolute and they can truthfully tell their children, "We were working our blocks off to see you through school, college, marriage and a house in the hills since you cannot go to Nepal with a passport or voter I.D. And since your children can't get Voter ID and their passports will take forever, forget Nepal altogether. We have".