Congress sailing without a star
Once regarded as the trailblazer of democracy, the Nepali Congress now faces an existential crisis. With the party lurching toward a further delayed general convention and finding itself adrift in an ideological void, a troubling question has emerged. What is the Congress party actually for in modern Nepal? The current situation is not merely an organizational failure or a temporary leadership crisis but a fundamental breakdown in the coherence, purpose and political relevance of the party. The Congress must urgently undertake a radical ideological clarification or face irreversible decline into historical irrelevance.
Institutional failure
The most damning indictment of the party is deceptively simple. Since its 14th General Convention in Dec 2021, the party has been required to hold its 15th convention within four years. However, as of Dec 2025, it has failed to conduct this basic organizational function. This failure cannot be taken as a minor scheduling issue but as a major failure of institutional governance and political competence. The Congress leadership fractured between the Deuba-Khadka establishment faction, and the ‘reformist’ bloc of Gagan Thapa, Bishwa Prakash Sharma and Shekhar Koirala has spent months engaged in mutual obstruction and political brinkmanship. The reasons offered are revealing in their inadequacy. “Technical and logistical reasons,” “complications in the distribution of active membership” and “improper serial numbers on membership forms.”
These excuses would be laughable if they were not so pathetic for a party that claims to represent democratic values. Even 54 percent of the elected convention delegates, well exceeding the statutory 40 percent threshold, had already submitted signatures demanding a special convention.
The central committee was legally obligated to call the convention within three months of receiving such a demand. However, the central committee meeting that began in mid-October simply extended indefinitely, with no resolution in sight. The Deuba-Khadka faction openly preferred to postpone the convention until after the general election transparently attempting to extend their own terms (for whatever reasons) and avoid accountability. Up to the point, it is no longer just institutional inefficiency but institutional paralysis. A political party that cannot organize its own internal democratic processes has forfeited the moral authority to claim democratic credentials. The Congress, which once championed the democratic revolution of the country and led the Jana Andolan movements, has become a cautionary tale in the corruption of organizational purpose by factional ambition.
Ideological incoherence
The Congress faces a more profound crisis. Ideological incoherence that borders on the farcical. The party constitution officially identifies Congress as a “social democratic” party committed to “democracy and socialism.” However, this declaration clashes with its post-1990 practice and its current political alignments. BP Koirala articulated a clear vision of democratic socialism as a middle path between capitalism and communism. Koirala explicitly rejected “unbridled consumerism” as immoral and opposed exploitation of resources as short-sighted. He believed that “only socialism could guarantee political freedom and equal economic opportunities to the people.” This was not theoretical posturing; it rather reflected a genuine philosophical commitment to combining political democracy with economic justice.
Nevertheless, after the 1990 democratic restoration, Congress governments systematically embraced neoliberal economic policies that directly contradict these founding principles. The party implemented structural adjustment programs dictated by the World Bank and IMF. State-owned enterprises were privatized. Trade was liberalized. Import restrictions were eliminated. The Industrial Policy of 1992 and subsequent Foreign Direct Investment policies actively promoted private sector dominance. By the 2000s, Congress was overseeing an economy increasingly shaped by finance-led growth, import dependence and widening inequality; developments that marked a departure from the socialist vision. This contradiction might have been tolerable if Congress had at least articulated a coherent new ideology.
Perhaps Congress could have honestly declared itself a social democrat in the Scandinavian sense supporting capitalism with robust welfare provisions. Or perhaps it could have embraced liberal democracy while accepting market economics. But Congress did neither. It clung verbally to “democratic socialism” while practicing almost liberalism creating a credibility chasm between principle and practice. By 2025, this incoherence reached absurdity. Congress partnered with communist parties—first the Maoists then the CPN-UML—to form coalition governments. The party whose founder rejected communism as an improper path to justice governed alongside self-identified Marxists. The party that privately embraced capitalism after 1990 publicly claims socialist credentials while their communist coalition partners theoretically pursue socialist transformation.
The finance minister and other key economic policymakers navigate between fundamentally incompatible ideological frameworks with no coherent government economic policy to guide them. This intellectual dishonesty is staggering. How can a party claiming to be a social-democratic partner with communist parties while also being the practical architect of 35 years of almost neoliberal restructuring? How can Congress credibly advocate for any economic vision when its actual practice contradicts its stated ideology, which contradicts its communist coalition partners’ stated ideology? The answer is: it cannot. This is not flexibility or pragmatism. This is ideological bankruptcy masquerading as coalition management.
The rise of alternatives
Perhaps most alarming for Congress is the emergence of political alternatives that have started to offer clearer ideological positioning. The Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) has now crystallized as a new centrist liberal force that explicitly commits to “a liberal economy with social justice.” RSP leader Rabi Lamichhane and Kathmandu Mayor Balendra Shah have just announced a “Grand Unity” agreement pledging to implement deep reforms and transform Nepal into a “respectable middle-income country within the next decade” through merit-based governance and youth-led renewal. Even though a broad interpretative commentary on this understanding is necessary and on the RSP itself, for now this represents a direct challenge to Congress’s political space, and it has already challenged the Congress with a growing number of its members and even prominent figures choosing RSP as an alternative.
If voters are seeking a centrist, market-oriented party with democratic credentials, RSP now offers this without the baggage of years of contradictions. If voters are seeking reform and anti-corruption politics, RSP, despite its challenges, projects youth and renewal. Meanwhile, Congress remains trapped in aging factional disputes between Deuba, Koirala and Thapa, with no fresh ideas or new generation breaking through. By this I do not mean to portray that RSP is the one that will replace Nepali Congress ideologically but it may in terms of the voter base reflecting the liberal views.
In India, the Congress party similarly lost its historic centrist space to the BJP on the right and to regional parties on the left. Nepali Congress faces an equivalent threat. The very political niche Congress once dominated, that is democracy, developmental capitalism, and secular nationalism is being colonized by newer parties that do not carry the baggage of neoliberal failure and communist coalition compromises.
A party at a dead end?
Congress has precisely one political lifeline remaining: radical ideological clarification undertaken immediately and with brutal honesty. The party cannot continue claiming to be both capitalist and socialist, both anti-communist and communist allies, both market-liberal and social democratic. Nevertheless, Nepali Congress remains indispensable to the long-term political and economic fabric of the country against the radical newcomers. This moment might even position Congress to lead through another defining crisis of battling the new danger of populism increasingly portrayed by newer parties whose charismatic appeals mask factionalism and untested governance, who are the textbook example of ‘simulacra and hyperreality’.
Congress must make three not-so-difficult choices.
Institutional renewal: Congress must conduct its delayed general convention with full transparency and embrace the GenZ-driven demand for new leadership. The party should commit to term limits, merit-based advancement and ideological clarity rather than factional rotation between aging elites.
Ideological declaration: Congress must publicly acknowledge that post-1990 liberalism either succeeded or failed as a development strategy. If it succeeded, Congress should rebrand as an explicitly market liberal party committed to capitalism with welfare provisions essentially the Indian Congress model embracing “inclusive capitalism.” If it failed, Congress should articulate what economic vision should replace 35 years of liberalization. This honest accounting is a prerequisite to political credibility.
Coalition coherence: Governing with Marxist-Leninists while trying to implement liberal policies is not pragmatism-it is a political fraud. Either Congress should unite with socialist parties around a genuine social agenda or it should form centrist-liberal coalitions. The current arrangement deceives everyone.
The clock is running
The party that led multiple democratic revolutions, that resisted dictatorship, that articulated a vision of democratic socialism suited to Nepali aspirations now risks becoming a historical artifact, a museum piece of failed leadership and ideological cowardice. The window for renewal remains open, but barely. RSP has increasingly captured the initiative for reformminded politics.
Communist parties command the left. Congress occupies an increasingly narrow and indefensible middle ground. If Congress does not urgently undertake radical ideological reconstruction, conduct genuine democratic renewal and offer voters a coherent vision of Nepali economic future, then the party will not simply lose elections. It will lose its reason for existing.
The founding generation of the party sacrificed imprisonment, exile and health to establish democracy in Nepal. The current generation owes it to them and to the future to answer honestly.
What is Congress up for in 2026 and beyond?
Until that question is answered with clarity, unity and humility, the decline will continue not as a dramatic collapse, but as a slow fade into irrelevance. And that may be the cruellest fate of all: not to be defeated, but to be forgotten leaving the nation ever more vulnerable to the populist chaos.
