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By Dr Janardan Subedi

Recently, I read a piece by the esteemed scholar Abhi Subedi in The Kathmandu Post. He wrote elegantly, weaving democracy with memory, reflecting on poems and short stories as if politics were a literary form to be admired. Beautiful. Literary. Thoughtful. And yet — it compelled me to write. Because in that refined language, the raw, bleeding reality of Nepal today was absent: the anger, the loss, the moral urgency, the demands of a generation that refuses to settle for metaphor when lives are on the line.

Poems and short stories are comforting. Politics is not. Politics is brutal, public, and unforgiving. In Nepal, politics has recently resembled theater — complete with scripts, rehearsals, cues, and choreographers whose names we seldom know. Leadership is not stumbled upon. It is curated, negotiated, and rehearsed. Democracy is not a stanza to admire; it is a battlefield, and the audience does not get a vote.

Yes, democracy is fragile. Yes, patience is a virtue. But patience is not paralysis. Respecting institutions is not the same as hiding behind them. When we speak of democracy without naming failure, tragedy becomes aesthetic. We do not live in verses. We live in consequences.

The Georgian calendar insists it is a new year. Yet Nepal has barely crossed 114 days since the streets burned, since 76 young lives fell silent, since hundreds were wounded and thousands traumatized.

These young people were not criminals. They were not anarchists. They were citizens asking for something embarrassingly modest: fairness, transparency, and a nation that does not rob them before they can begin to dream.

Today, mothers still cry in kitchens where chairs sit empty. Young men limp into job interviews, carrying scars rather than résumés. Prisoners wait for hearings that never arrive. And yet, in the corridors of power, this is called justice.

Enter Madam Sushila Karki — former Chief Justice, interim Prime Minister, admired by many as a symbol of moral restoration. Scholars, including Abhi Subedi, have praised her eloquence, her literary framing, and her moral authority. Yet the premiership was not thrust upon her by fate or circumstance. She was part of a grand choreography: Shah-Gurung–Karki, networks moving invisibly, choices pre-arranged, narratives rehearsed. Leadership here is not discovered; it is curated. Democracy is not a poem to savor — it is a machine, and she entered a scene written long before her arrival.

And if leadership means responsibility, who bears the moral weight of the 76 deaths, wrapped now in bureaucratic euphemisms? “Incident,” “under review,” “unfortunate.” Power rarely denies guilt. It merely relocates it.

Here is where I respectfully depart from Abhi Subedi. He writes as though democracy can be contemplated, observed, and waited for — as if it were a poem to interpret or a story to admire. But the youth did not march for reflection. They marched because everything else failed. Because the system that claimed to protect them failed catastrophically.

Gen-Z — the generation that flooded the streets with anger, hope, and outrage — knew precisely what it wanted:
– A corruption-free government.
– Accountability for the killing of 76 young people.
– Care for hundreds of wounded.
– Constitutional reform enabling the direct election of the Prime Minister.
– And above all, stability — a Nepal in which citizens can plan, live, and grow.

They did not demand elections for the sake of procedure. They demanded transformation.

What they received instead was choreography.

Balendra Shah floated, declined, and then endorsed Madam Karki. Harka Sampang arrived — raw, unpredictable, disruptive — and was quietly pushed aside. Durga Prasai flared — loud, combustible, independent — only to vanish. Then Ravi Lamichhane appeared, a reformist voice entangled in cooperative scandals. Briefly floated, quickly absorbed into the machinery. Noise remained. Theatre prevailed.

All the while, Gen-Z believed they were steering history.

They are brilliant. Fearless. Impatient. Yet unanchored. Masters of devices, fluent in hashtags, strangers to lineage. They preach justice while tolerating minor corruption. They speak of equality while negotiating caste at marriage. Over-confident, over-stimulated, convinced of rights, allergic to obligations.

But this is not their fault. It is ours.

We raised performers, not citizens. We rewarded shortcuts. We handed smartphones before books. We trained them to protest, but never to understand institutions. We encouraged condemnation, but never comprehension.

So they march. They rage. They livestream. But they do not yet see the invisible machinery that absorbs their fury, photographs it, applauds it, and resumes business as usual.

Gen-Z’s awakening collides with structural inequalities. Kathmandu youth, fluent in global culture, live in cafes and tuition centers, fluent in debates and startups. Rural youth navigate broken roads, long queues for migration, and empty villages. Democracy sounds different when there is food on the table, work nearby, and hope in sight. Between smartphones and stalled infrastructure, contradictions multiply.

Yet even within these constraints, Gen-Z’s demands remain consistent: justice, reform, accountability. And nowhere is this clearer than in Madam Karki’s interim government.

She arrived with moral credibility. But democracy is not a courtroom. It is a battlefield of competing interests. Somewhere between ideals and institutions, courage dimmed. Tears remain. Wounds remain. Prisons remain. Justice is now a word in speeches, not life.

So, with humility, not hostility: Madam Karki — resign.

Not because you are wicked. Not because every failure is yours alone. But because the structure that placed you there was political engineering, not moral destiny. You tried. But trying is not enough when citizens demand outcomes. The mask has slipped. Step aside before the office consumes what little credibility remains.

To those orbiting around her — commentators, podcasters, social-media philosophers — remember: proximity is not power. Nepal rarely forgives those who mistake arrangement for authority.

And to Gen-Z — furious, brilliant, wounded:

Learn before you march.
Read before you rage.
Understand before you accuse.

Passion without knowledge becomes vandalism.
Rights without responsibility become parasitism.

If you inherit this nation without wisdom, you may destroy it — not from malice, but from inexperience.

Abhi Subedi was correct: democracy is delicate. But it is not a poem, not a short story, not an essay to admire from afar. Democracy is preserved by accountability, courage, and the willingness to name failure.

Nepal does not need saints. It requires citizens — disciplined, ethical, relentless citizens who refuse to accept theater, recognize manipulation, and understand that democracy is constructed not in slogans but in sustained clarity, action, and reform.

Until that moment, we will continue burying young bodies, crowning temporary heroes, and calling our nightmares “progress.” And decades from now, another writer will sit at a desk, wondering why nothing changed, and compose yet another elegant essay that fails to name the real wound.

This is the challenge for those who govern, those who observe, and those who inherit: confront reality, refuse symbolism for substance, and recognize that democracy is hard work, not poetry. Only then can Nepal begin to meet the promise of its democracy.