By P.R. Pradhan

“I am among the foolish persons in the society of foolish people ruled by the foolish leaders”, wrote Rajesh Mishra, a journalist currently staying in the United States, on his Facebook. Mishra, a young journalist and strong supporter of the Nepali Congress, was in mission journalism when he was in Nepal.

Looking at the current political scenario in my country, I agree with Mishra that I am one among the foolish guys in the society of the foolish people but ruled by those wolves who always fool us. Our weakness is that we are electing them again and again.

The economy is the backbone of the country. The recent report states that the country’s debt burden has already crossed 25 trillion rupees. In the past six months of the current fiscal year, the government has added one trillion, two billion 30 million rupees reaching a total debt of 25 trillion 36 million 13.14 million rupees.

As in the past, the government has failed to achieve the targeted revenue; the trade deficit continues as in the past; the government is facing a scarcity of funds in managing the targeted capital expenditure.

The real problem faced by the country is increasing nonproductive sector expenditure. Since the country adopted the federal structure, expenditure for managing the federal structure has increased tremendously but it failed to raise revenue to meet the expenditure. Therefore, on average, the country needs to raise debts worth two billion rupees to manage the income-expenditure deficit. For how long should we lend funds to operate the expensive federal structures, the leadership and also the economic analysts know this fact but they never speak. The deficit balance sheet is the result of adopting the federal structure and now, it has started to affect the entire economic cycle. Among many examples of anomalies, one burning example is that the government was unable to clear the dues of the construction companies as it failed to raise revenue as targeted. When the construction companies didn’t get money, they were unable to clear dues of the construction materials they had received from the suppliers. The suppliers were unable to clear payments to the industries producing construction materials and the industries were compelled to reduce their production. The laborers didn’t get money and the market demand was superficially reduced. Finally, a recession cycle has been witnessed in the market. The industries are not taking loans from banks resulting in excessive liquidity funds. The bank interest rates have declined, still, there is no demand for loans. If delayed in taking measures to activate the economy, we may experience further crisis.

The wolf-like political leaders, economic analysts and even those in media are not disclosing the real problem faced by the country and they are advocating for amendment of the constitution and also the election laws for practising a two-party rule by increasing the threshold on the popular votes.

The political leaders are involved in different scandals but the corruption files are kept pending. By introducing the two-party mechanism, the leaders want to continue the corruption practice as much as possible in an amicable attitude. Already, the family members of many influential leaders are settled abroad and if the corruption files are opened, the leaders will go abroad before they are punished.

We believe the present political system has become a burden for the country. Therefore, unnecessary expenditures should be cut down by removing the federal structures. There should be a central government and powerful local bodies along with an autonomous, strong and impartial corruption-controlling mechanism. Today, again, one section of people is demanding for incorporating of all the Tarai districts into one province, which is very dangerous. To avoid all existing anomalies, the leadership should activate the 1990 constitution, in which, all the political sectors will have a space. Finally, we suggest, let’s return to the 1990 model to save the nation.