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. In his Dibya Upadesh, the king who unified Nepal sized up a small state squeezed between the expanding British East India Company to the south and the Qing Empire to the north. His answer was practical: befriend both, bow to neither, guard sovereignty and territorial integrity, and avoid needless confrontation. It was a theory of survival, defensive and cautious, resting on self-reliance and limited contact with the outside world.

The Ranas broke with it. After Jung Bahadur Rana seized power in 1846, foreign policy bent toward British imperial interests, and its chief purpose became preserving an autocracy, often at the nation’s expense. Kathmandu gave the British generous military help while keeping thin ties with China and Tibet. As the empire withdrew from South Asia after the Second World War, the Ranas sought recognition elsewhere, establishing relations with the United States in 1947 and France in 1949 and applying for United Nations membership. The goal was legitimacy for the regime, not for the nation.

King Mahendra revived the idea and made it assertive. Where Prithvi Narayan Shah practised caution, Mahendra practised active neutrality, using treaties, aid, bilateral diplomacy and global forums to widen Nepal’s room for manoeuvre. He formally associated Nepal with the Non-Aligned Movement and adapted the old principles to the Cold War: non-alignment, peaceful coexistence, non-interference. His refusal to give India direct military support in the 1962 Sino-Indian war showed the doctrine at work. The aim was no longer survival alone. It was development assistance, recognition and autonomy.

King Birendra tried to write neutrality into international commitments. His Zone of Peace proposal, first presented at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in 1973, sought a pledge that Nepali territory would never be used for hostile activities against any other country. More than 110 countries endorsed it. India, which saw a challenge to its own security framework, did not, and the idea stalled. Birendra kept China as a diplomatic counterweight, kept ties with the Cold War powers, helped found SAARC in 1985, and steered by Panchsheel, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.

Since multiparty democracy returned in 1990, continuity has broken. Political instability and frequent changes of government left little room for long-term planning. Successive governments swung between closer engagement with India and a lean toward China, depending on their need to survive or their ideological leanings. Foreign policy began to reflect the preferences of individuals rather than the priorities of a nation, and delicate matters moved through informal channels. Institutions, transparency and public confidence paid for it.

The 2015 unofficial Indian blockade showed the cost. Kathmandu turned to China for alternative supplies, a sensible reflex, but with no long-term strategy behind it, the tilt could not alter Nepal’s structural and geographic ties with India. A country that lurches from one neighbour to the other, depending on who holds office, soon earns a reputation. Nepal’s is closer to that of a ship without a rudder than to that of a reliable, predictable partner.

The first repair is institutional. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs must be restored as the sole channel for diplomacy. Informal envoys and parallel channels that bypass protocol confuse foreign partners and weaken the institutions meant to protect the national interest. Political leaders should set direction; professionals should conduct the talks, in coordination and on the record. The ministry has begun drafting country-specific strategy papers, and that discipline should extend to every channel.

The second repair is strategic. Nepal must stop balancing in reaction to events and build a proactive policy around economic diplomacy, regional connectivity and multilateral engagement. Mahendra’s example is the guide: keep the core of the Yam Doctrine and adapt it to the world as it is. In that world, a landlocked country can become a transit and connectivity hub between its two large economic neighbours.

None of it works without predictable, transparent and regular dialogue with both neighbours. Relations with New Delhi and Beijing are not a zero-sum game; each deserves cultivation on its own merits and mutual interests. Nepal should also make far greater use of BIMSTEC, BBIN and the United Nations. And a foreign policy white paper, led by the Foreign Ministry and approved by Parliament, would carry policy across changes of government.

The yam was never an argument for isolation or passive neutrality. Its enduring lesson is strategic judgment, institutional strength and independence in a hard neighbourhood. The Shah government has the mandate and the opening to prove it, provided national priorities come before partisan ones.