Ideally, the Nepal Army should never have been given the responsibility to build the Kathmandu-Tarai Expressway. Essentially, it is a combat force, and supposed to venture out only to defend national security or to respond to calamities. However, as national infrastructure development institutions have proven ineffective and as private contractors have tended to work in cahoots with state authorities to delay projects, Nepal’s military has increasingly modelled itself as a state contractor. This has come at a steep cost. The image of a professional unit the Nepal Army carefully propagated over the years and decades has unravelled most strikingly in the case of the Kathmandu-Tarai Expressway, whose completion has already been delayed by two years. What’s more, as Chief of Army Staff Prabhu Ram Sharma recently testified, the highway may not be motorable for another three and a half years—and it will be two to three more years before all work on the project is completed.

The army chief blames problematic provisions in the Land Acquisition Act and the Forest Act for the delay in highway construction. He said the inability to clear trees on the track had unnecessarily delayed construction, and even called for a change in the laws to ensure that there is no obstruction in projects of this scale and importance. There is no denying that the above-mentioned Acts pushed the project back. The legitimate protests by the locals of Khokana to save their cultural heritage and property has led to some delay, as has the failure to get clearance to cut even a handful of trees. But while highlighting these issues in front of the State Affairs and Good Governance Committee of Parliament on Wednesday, the army chief was a bit too shy about admitting the mistakes and missteps on the army’s part.

First, the army is not an infrastructure development agency, and it has no expertise in building mega-projects. Saddling the army with the project was thus a major mistake. It is foolish to expect the army’s efficiency and professionalism in its primary duty to be reflected in areas outside its expertise. This is why the army has been subcontracting much of the construction to third parties. In doing so, it was just passing the buck. Moreover, the army was hauled before the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament for a flawed bidding process for the construction of tunnels and bridges and was asked to scrap the process. And now, after years of delay, the army says it had never asked for the expressway contract.

Such a lack of accountability is not expected from an institution which continues to enjoy widespread public support despite its chequered history during the years of the Maoist conflict and then the royal takeover. Now that it has taken it up, the army should conclude, without any delay or excuse, the project of national importance. Pulling out now citing this or that difficulty would do great damage to the army’s image, and set the project back by many more years. After all, it had readily agreed to undertake the highway project back in 2017. Once it completes the work, it should refrain from further engagement in infrastructure development or other profit-making enterprises. Right now, the army appears desperately to try to justify its bloated size by pointing to its development credentials which, at best, is questionable.