Politics is an area of promises of political leaders. Nepalis keep in mind those promises as they become a source of judgment. Scholars and journalists carefully analyse whether the promises are fully fulfilled or not. Promises are packed with sober insights and hope that keep political life exhilarating. The aspirations and activities of individuals, society, political parties and non-political actors make political life alive and its dynamics are graced for generations. Learning politics becomes cynical if leaders make only promises without their realisation. If promises spike beyond the adequate means of the state, the consequences become inconceivable. The business of politics is to subdue chaos and create public order. Those who seek truth from politics achieve neither order, nor freedom, nor even peace.
Political life is certainly competitive but its aim is not to heap on competition heating but to stitch various national actors for collaboration to achieve national goals. If opposition forces are often bludgeoned into giving in, it loses democratic equilibrium and turns into a vicious game of escalation. The transformative vision of Nepali political life can inspire the hope of opposition if they win the trust of people. As a public duty, politics is governed by public morality beyond ego-centric leaders, homo-centric class or pious reflection.
Equal opportunity
Nepalis of each generation has rights to use their sovereign power to get equal opportunity and equal outcome of the policy, oppose nepotism and get upward social mobility. This waxes popular curiosity about political life. On the contrary, its brutality triggers the surge of apathy, rage and revolt. The previous political movement and the recent Generation Z stir have sought the rationality of leadership, political parties or the polity in Nepal. Many revolutionary leaders were devoured by the credibility gap between a litany of promises and little delivery. Political promises are made to solve problems, leap the nation to progress and institutionalise democratic life. Political leaders are supposed to reckon with the information-driven awareness of the masses and the fundamental shift in the political milieu like the earlier agrarian and industrial ages.
The recent metamorphosis in Nepali political life has not suddenly transpired. Unmet needs of people steamed up to burst out. James N. Rosenau defines political life “as a process of concerting action on a large scale, the sense of awe when the political system somehow manages to persist, and the spirit that finds fun in the study of politics—all derive from a long and enriching association with a very wise and magnificent person.” He adds, it is “founded on aspirations and anguish, on fear and frustration, on compromise and conflict.” Politics itself is built on the explanation leaders give for the claim, negotiation and reasons offered to demanding people awakened by the winds of change.
Nepali democracy offers scope for deliberation between leaders and people to settle their reciprocal demands through rightful compromise so that political life does not go off beam and hope of reforms of institutional life blinks. Nepali leaders’ ability to attain national goals depends on their ability to resolve their personal differences through imagination, intelligence, dialogue and mutual understanding. Political trust can be built on the optimal satisfaction of each other’s interests. Total satisfaction of one side makes the other weak to fulfill promises and turns it stiff in compromise with the risk of deadlock abridging civility of life.
The promises of political life in Nepal have set its dynamic balance between the core principles of democratic rule and a contextual platform for leaders to compete for power, fulfill their promises, gain legitimacy to rule and muster compliance of people. Collection of taxes and protection of people are the previous craft of politics. Nepal’s classical treatises have set the roles of the Nepali state to protect the people, provide livelihood and socialize them for good conduct. They are rooted in dharma, rather than law and, thus, irrevocable. It is above the contractual tradition Nepal has adopted with the dawn of democracy.
Prime Minister Balendra Shah deems the state as guardian, not unlike the classical notion, not as a regime, class power, market machine, partiocracy, or refeudalisation of the state. This view refuses to accept the nation as a passive buffer or neutral bridge to assist others’ trade. When the nation acted as a site of entrepot, trade was controlled by Nepal on the premise of making it a self-reliant state. The experience of Nepali leaders on nonalignment is suitable to make economic and political life harmonious with the promise of nation-building. The organic concept of the Nepali state to be defended at any cost does mean that individual freedom reconciles with collective security and identity.
Nepali political life has faced many transitions, leaving reforms and reconstruction an uphill task as political leaders had reduced the state to regime power whose institutional positions were distributed as spoils, not impartial authorities devoted to public goods. Traditional politics has defended national interests over personal, partisan, class, business, or regime ones. Socialisation of diverse people has evolved the national worldview, while social innovation shaped a shift from egocentric “I” to homo-centric class to collective feelings of “we” Nepalis. It has helped leaders to protect national sovereignty until now and spurred a stake for its longevity. It is vital to control reckless social engineering and the post-national constellation of parties, civil society and business and deconstruction of the unity of space, economy and people against democratic promise of political life.
Many unfulfilled promises have hollowed out morality. The leadership boom with a vivid turn without proper training on historical sense and without interest in public responsibility is a huge challenge. This has enfeebled national institutions to perform their responsibilities. The under-reach of the Nepali state and lack of sociability of actors pile problems to political life and desist the realisation of the legal promise of an egalitarian society. Nepal’s various constitutions and political parties' manifestos hold infinite promises to the people to mobilise their support and engage in collective action. But when they become multiple sites for power struggle, it has easily caught people into a populist trap. Nepal’s vision is set in the directive principles and policies of the state.
Do political, economic and social actors follow this vision or are driven by their own interests to trample them recklessly thus creating a disjuncture between parliamentary norms and political culture? The blatant betrayal of political promise has left over 20 per cent of people below the poverty line with wounded dignity. Poverty means powerlessness devoid of civic competence to utilise participatory resources and influence policy, law and decision. The turbulent personality of top leaders has infused disarray in their power game, unable to learn from the feedback of people and reform itself. Nepali constitution grants more rights than duties. It has not made politics stability-driven but aspirational. People have formed associations, movements and struggles to realise their rights. The differentiated citizenship and their commissions for various social classes do not foster the common worldview where equality of citizenship is practiced.
Political thinker Hannah Arendt argues that the promise of politics is not only about administering, managing and ruling the people but also about the active practice of freedom, living together in a common space, sharing diverse views and beginning something new in the process of building a common world. The political lessons of the freedom struggle in Nepal and incessant demands of people for reformed democracy are compatible with these promises. The rebellious spirit of youth seeks to make political life attuned to the public goods. Continuous civic education for all Nepalis can link them to the source of legitimacy. As career-oriented leadership keeps a divorce from political ethics, democratic culture requires mixing humanistic messages, feelings for others, keeping discipline, shared culture and lessons of history and modern rationalistic and scientific education that provides enlightenment norms, renews leadership virtues and modernity to address.
Rival ideologies have indoctrinated Nepali leaders into disjoint paths serving a cause of conflicts and exposed each other’s pathological snobbery, not building a stable nation on whose writ democratic culture blooms. Nepali parties are more interested in short-term mobilisation of voters for instrumental politics than long-term political socialisation, role occupation, expectation, modernisation of society and adaptability to climate justice. Their excessive party-mindedness has created differentiation among the people, animus to common ground for a shared future. In this sense, evolving a civic culture in the nation requires a civic curriculum and educators to train cadres and voters on democratic rules of the game. The information revolution has built Nepalis’ evaluative capacity, requiring the regime to balance inputs and outputs of polity.
Idioms of democracy
Nepal hosts a rich tapestry of successful political struggles for the restoration of democracy, establishment of democratic constitutions and institutions and varied idioms of democracy and economy. They are uttered by leaders and media to confuse the public between public goods and consumer items. Not all political parties have internalised democracy in their habits and institutional structures. The contents of socialisation and communication amply demonstrate that radical parties are democracy-disruptive while many conservative elements have found democracy corrosive of national interests. In between are identity-oriented ones or those who appear as comedians in a show. These trends have shifted politics from class to generation.
The reformist crisis of politics shows that Nepalis blame not the constitutions but the lack of constitutional behaviour of leaders. Democracy fails to become a shared value among Nepali political parties to forge consensus on major public issues and concert the conduct of all actors to shape civic culture. A sense of proportional representation envisaged by the Nepali constitution and the nature of adversarial politics have bred a grim irony in political socialisation able to integrate ethnic, caste, cultural and religious diversity in the national mosaic and enabling them to get what they want by turning political promises compatible with democracy.
(Former Reader at the Department of Political Science, TU, Dahal writes on political and social issues.)
