Let Nepal and we Nepalis dare to be honest and do sincere appraisals of Nepal’s past successes and achievements and stop political dogfights from the street to the parliament

By Rabi Raj Thapa The current political imbroglio has taken the political spectrum to the same situation where there was the King versus seven parties of 2005. Political thinker and analyst Jarred Diamond has elaborated on this situation in his book, “UPHEAVEL” (2019, Penguin Random House U.K.); vividly postulating crises and change with valid questions like ‘How do societies choose to fall or succeed’. To elaborate his arguments, he has taken Finland and Japan for its internal and external policies to prevent political upheaval crises. Jared Diamond identifies twelve factors related to the outcome of a national crisis for example – a national consensus that one’s nation is in crisis. Now the question is whether there is a consensus that Nepal is in crisis. Truly speaking, the people of Nepal are going through a serious political, economic, demographic and environmental crisis today. But today’s communists and congress all look the same new neo-liberal federalists who never get tired of parroting the nation is doing great there is only a threat from anti-federalists who want to fail the “hard-earned federal” system. It means Nepali political supreme leaders are not taking people’s issues seriously.  The second important point Jared Diamond raised is, that when the leaders are too engrossed in their peripheral self-gratifications, they busy themselves to build a fence to defend and cover their maladies. Now they have started to comment on constitutional amendment without articulating its dysfunctional fault lines. On the other hand, they want to preserve the outcome and mechanism in which they are the principal actors. Jarred thinks that if leaders want to solve national problems they need to be honest to the people and society. For this, the most important thing is a self-appraisal. That is very difficult for them because they themselves are the major responsible political state actors. The grossroots problem is most of the leaders work under the control and direction of domestic power brokers and more importantly foreign deep states that activate and mobilize to sabotage and subvert state powers who do not serve their bidding.      The most crucial factor for a national social, communal and political crises and upheaval is the denial of responsibility which we have seen in Sri-Lanka and Bangladesh. But the paradox is Nepali leaders are still happy in dog-fighting in the national legislative assembly on one word like “violence” that they used rampantly for “ten years of armed conflict (1996-2006)” which killed 17,000 Nepali people. The concurrent rift between the Seven-Plus-One CPN (Maoist) political party may be a bad omen for the federalists. It can turn the whole episode into Square One by turning the crisis and conflict in urban areas like Kathmandu. Regarding geopolitics; only parroting geopolitics, the landlocked and sandwiched country will not serve the whole military, political, economic and social purposes. Geographic location is something that no national leader can change at his will. Geopolitical constraints and national crises emerging out from instability, public order erosion, and systemic and institutional crime and corruption are very diverse and are more people-related and sensitive.    Therefore, Nepal urgently needs to acknowledge these bitter truths rather than wallowing in self-pity as a victim of circumstances. It is the ad-hoc arbitrary decisions and subjective rules that are the root cause of Nepal’s national crises. Meiji rulers of Japan (1868-1912) succeeded in adopting the Western political, and administrative system and transfer of technology without blaming their old tradition and monarchy. And, at the same time, they have been able to protect and preserve their national core values, culture, religion and civilization and enjoy long life without destroying their century-old rich tradition, culture and civilization.   Now, let Nepal and we Nepalis dare to be honest and do sincere appraisals of Nepal’s past successes and achievements and stop political dogfights from the street to the parliament.