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I come from a farming family in the mid-hills of Nepal. My mother, approaching 60, wakes up before 5 am every day, and toils in the field or with the livestock till 9 pm. Since the time I have known her I have seen her work these long hours. But as far as I remember, she has never had enough money of her own earning. Our upbringing and education was rather supported by earnings from my father’s job in the Indian Army.

Why are millions of hardworking small-scale farmers, like my mother, so poor and helpless? Why has the system remained so unjust, inefficient and unrewarding? Why is her hard work outside the radar of government policies? What does it take to integrate her work into the national economy? These are the kind of questions that have vexed us Nepalis for decades. 

Under King Mahendra, the state system was designed to create expertise loyal to the monarchy in different fields. He initiated many scholarships and sponsored educational tenures for bright minds from across the country. This system created many state sponsored endeavors that became milestones in our path to progress.

The underlying unstipulated requirement of the feudal and autocratic Panchayat system however had problems. In general, an autocratic system, when compared to a democratic system, is inefficient, un-entrepreneurial and relies more on strong control from the top. Such systems have led to misleading results, great blunders, even famine and mass poverty—Mao’s China being the best (or worst) example of the same. The situation in Nepal wasn't as severe but false reporting, misrepresentations and misappropriations were the norm. As a result, the production system was not efficient and entrepreneurial. 

Post-1990, the role foreign agencies and the INGOs played was even worse. The ‘Bikase’ interventions, till date, are aimed at publicity and documentation rather than bringing in real efficiency and output-oriented productivity in the ecosystem. Shamefully, the development agencies have spent an average of over 80 percent of money on their own administration. The money claimed to have been spent for poor countries like Nepal hasn't reached the targeted people; and in recent years some INGOs have even been blamed for high levels of corruption. In short, the highly bureaucratic mammoth international organizations became the harbingers of the malpractices and inefficiencies that they were supposed to teach us to fight against.

With the promulgation of the new constitution, I had high hopes that the ‘radically decentralized’ state structure would bring in a lot of positive change at the grassroots. In 2017, with a turnout of over 70 percent, Nepal had elected local governments after almost two decades. Optimism had no limit as Nepal exceeded the economic growth target for the year. 

I was fully convinced that visionary local leadership would be the catalyst to allow Nepal to pick itself up, and I happily took the offer to work as an advisor in the municipality. Dilip Pratap Khand had built and successfully sold to voters the dream of Waling as a ‘Smart City’. But four years later, with less than half a year of his tenure left, Khand is struggling to show evidence of his government’s impact.

Khand’s plan to ‘develop the municipality as a cluster of really well administered productive villages supported by a strongly self-reliant town at the center’ has been limited to a well-documented handbook on Smart City indicators. 

My mother still toils extra hours without any support from the governments at three levels. The benefits from interventions of development agencies have not reached her directly or indirectly. Our traditional small scale farming in the mid-hills of Nepal is neglected by the government and not enthusiastically pursued by new generation farmers. Efforts at mechanization and modernization or other reforms in farming have been misguided; big-scale mono-crop specialized and corporatized farming practices are unsuitable to our terrain.

What a small-scale farmer has is the land handed down by ancestors, and no policy has been designed to make farming in such terrains sustainable. Lack of methodical experimentation, recording and evidence-guided innovation in agricultural practices of rural small-scale households have thus contributed to the unsustainability of the majority of farming families.

After serving as the advisor to my municipality for a year, I was left disillusioned at the lack of ingrained capacity of our system. Since then, I have decided to work as a farmer myself to bring in innovations in small-scale farming. That's the least I can do for my mother.

“If things remain the same, the country will be forced to crawl again in the same manner for decades to come. And, especially, it will be the youths, who have already suffered for decades, who will be forced to suffer again. Let’s not assume that the country is not in crisis. There are countries in the world which have descended into deadly conflict and violence and whose existence has been threatened within a short span of time.”

With this opening appeal worded carefully to create a specter, Rabindra Mishra, the President of Bibeksheel Sajha Party, has floated a document for ‘discussion and debate’. This document bases most of its arguments on this specter and a nostalgic appreciation of the Panchayat era and monarchy, and suggests the dissolution of federalism and a referendum on secularism. Surprisingly, it also openly conveys sympathy for the monarchy. This created a hue and cry, both in support and against, across social media within hours of the announcement. 

The background to this is interesting. Mishra jumped into the bandwagon of alternative politics after a long career in journalism. While working as a journalist for the BBC Nepali Service, he had successfully run charity campaigns and projects through his Help Nepal Network and gained popularity.

A rigorous build-up of his ‘celebrityhood’ finally led to the next step, as he started looking for opportunities to enter politics. Having failed to incorporate leaders like Baburam Bhattarai, the disgruntled Maoist ideologue, or Gagan Thapa, the young star of Nepali Congress, into his plan, he started his own political party. 

The Sajha Party that he founded later merged with the Bibeksheel Nepali Dal, founded through youth activism of late Ujwal Thapa. But the merged party soon split over differences in working styles and other clashes. Then, yet again, they reunited, and Mishra currently leads the outfit that is widely considered ‘the alternative party’.

The need for an alternative party was an idea that gathered steam after the disgraceful failure of the first constituent assembly. After fierce conflicts between various interest groups in and outside the CA, the assembly couldn’t come to a consensus on many important issues and the house was dissolved after two extensions.

Bhattarai, having been sidelined by Maoist Supremo Prachanda time and again, initiated the Naya Shakti Party, literally meaning a new force, with the goal of establishing a political force to rival the traditional congress, communist, rightwing monarchist, and regional parties. But when people didn’t respond to his grand design, Bhattarai changed course and merged his party with regional forces.

The Mishra-led Sajha Party and the youth-based Bibeksheel Nepali Dal were now the two remaining contenders in the alternative political arena, and with the merger they came across as the only alternative force. Presently, the party has three representatives in the Bagmati Province legislative assembly.

In this scenario, as the party president, Mishra has floated this document suggesting a change of course. He is being widely criticized for two valid reasons: first, the course he is suggesting is completely against the intent of the document signed for the unification of the two parties the second time, and second, as the sitting party president, rather than presenting his ideas for discussion in internal party committees, he has published them to sway opinions.

Party sources confirm that Mishra isn’t confident that either of the party’s current 25-member secretariat or the 130-member central committee will adopt his new line. Members from the previous Sajha Party, considered Mishra’s own side, have also openly spoken against the idea of basing alternative politics on religious sentiments. Thus this step by Mishra is being seen as a treachery for the cause of alternative politics. Recently, when the youth wing of the party passed its constitution endorsing the ‘directly elected presidential’ system as its main political line, Mishra wrote a harshly worded letter to them, calling his own party a group lacking discipline and capacity.

I have closely observed the alternative political movement in Nepal with sympathy for two reasons: one, a new political force is a must to break the politico-criminal nexus that has turned the state into a kleptocracy and two, in the existing political set up, the established parties have a hardwired hierarchical feudal structure that does not allow young and capable leaders to rise to power. 

There is a clear difference in the way the Sajha Party was founded and the way the Bibeksheel movement evolved, with the latter being a youth-led movement based on liberal values and institutional democratic decision-making. But Mishra’s style of leadership and his rule-via-coterie are antithetical to that, for at the core of its structure is Mishra’s popularity. 

This difference in culture was the main reason for the past split. And now, with an unnecessary right turn, Mishra has once again proved that at the center of his endeavor is a regressive thought process and a populist political acumen. This line of thought may garner mass support for obvious reasons, but whether this clever political maneuvering is in the interest of the nation and its people remains to be seen. 

At its worst, such politics create unnecessary social rifts by exploiting deep fault-lines, and the idea of alternative politics was born to do the exact opposite at a time these conflicts had been paralyzing the country for decades. Therefore, with this new display of preference for a specter-raising right wing politics, Mishra has lost the moral authority to lead the alternative political movement.

Inspired by an article in The Economist about the secrets of the longevity of the Chinese Communist Party, in this column, I want to comment on the condition of the established political parties in Nepal. On July 1 this year, the Communist Party of China will complete 100 years of existence and more than 70 years in power. The Economist points out three reasons for the success of the party (which it calls a ‘dictatorship’): ruthlessness, ideological agility and the ability to save itself from becoming a kleptocracy. 

The suggestive undertones in the article are revealing: the West starts all observations about China, or the other world for that matter, with an air of authority granted (supposedly) by the feeling that they are the harbingers of the universal values of liberty and democracy. So, the observation about the CCP’s success has already been labeled the most successful form of authoritarianism ever.                        

At the moment, the West is having a hard time dealing with the harsh realities of the new world. Covid-19 has exposed the inadequacies many developed nations were sleeping over for decades. Misappropriated priorities, like more investment in weaponry than in health, have laid bare the truth that the self-claimed laissez faire enlightenment is self-delusional. The Trump episode and the BREXIT have also curiously highlighted the shortcomings. 

In this context, when one looks at China from the West, the scenario is nothing but perplexing. Contrary to the predictions of pundits for decades about the Chinese system’s impending collapse, the descendants of Mao and Deng have proved themselves adaptive and quick learners. They call themselves a democracy despite what the West wants to label them with, but they take that narrative to a higher level by calling it a system unique to Chinese history and culture. 

The CCP has proven to be a self-learning system that runs on a clear long term strategy, rewards performance and prefers a disciplined order over laissez faire anarchy. Although the skeptical outlook of the West about the Chinese Party continues, the party has been able to keep its stronghold over the nation because of its aversion to external influence and the ability to keep external players’ attempts to interfere at bay. With the size of the nation, and the focus on long term strategy that is now seen as ingrained in Chinese thinking, Chinese rulers were able to save themself from the devastating helping hands of outsiders. 

A recent example of the helping hands gone wrong is Iraq. The US wanted to force a power equation favorable to its interests, but the lack of in-depth understanding of local dynamics made its strategy ineffective. And now, Iraq has turned into a battlefield of interests between Iran and the US. 

Nepal, too, because of its geo-political juxtaposition and the selfishness of its elites, has become another case study where external interference has led to many quick fixes but damaging outcomes in the long run. Recently, five ex- Prime Ministers issued a statement giving a shout out to the damage such heavy-handedness of external players are causing in internal politics. This is nothing but pure opportunism, as some of the same ex-PMs have been vocal in the Indian media, asking for an intervention in Nepali politics when the power equation here is unfavorable to them. 

At the moment, the two main established political parties of Nepal are both in crisis. The Congress is unable to come out of the grip of the septenerians who have been proven to be failures again and again, and the main communist party has completely wasted an almost two-thirds majority in its ongoing internal power struggle. The Chinese example may not be of much help for us because of reasons like the difference in size and culture. But some things are still worth pondering over. 

In the 30 years since the establishment of multiparty democracy in Nepal, our political parties have failed to build a character of their own aligned to their ideals. The Nepali Congress became consumed by the forces that it fought in the past, and became the vehicle to safeguard the interests of the feudal elites in the name of democracy, as the same Panchayat-time elites of the society became influential in the party at the grassroots. The fear of communists, propaganda about the ruthlessness of their methods, and the hard power of the status quoists of the society were the feeding forces for it. Today, the Nepali Congress has turned into a rigid, feudal structure, albeit wearing a liberal mask.

But the communists of Nepal have undergone a decay worse than this. After raising expectations of the marginalized people through an armed struggle, the communist parties have turned exactly into 'straightforward kleptocracy in which wealth is sucked up exclusively by the well-connected'. So, unless a new political party establishes itself based on ruthless meritocracy, and builds a mechanism to bring to power capable young leaders from diverse backgrounds, this decay shows no sign of halting.

After almost one-and-a-half years of the breaking out of Covid-19 pandemic, 20.7 percent of the world population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Altogether 2.4 billion doses have been administered globally, and 33.1 million are now administered a day. This seems a promising state of affairs until one tries to dig for details.

Only 0.8 percent of people in low-income countries have gotten at least one dose till date. This bleak scenario, as The Economist put it in a recent article, is not just an economic blunder but a ‘moral failure’ of the West.

Under the scrutiny of real-politick skepticism, questions of morality are the privilege of the strong. From the standpoint of a nation labelled as poor, and thus backward, mired in political and social struggles yet bubbling with a young population waiting for their turn to get exposed to the world, the current state of affairs is a cruel display of cumulative injustice compounded over centuries.

In Nepal, during this one-and-a-half years, we have seen a series of unfortunate events. When the pandemic was spreading its deadly wings across the world, and when early sufferers like Italy, the US and the UK were in panic mode, we were in delusion. Our prime minister was busy preaching sermons in the parliament on how the cold breeze of the Himalayas would cause the virus to mellow down. 

Such an attitude made the government lazy in its preparation to deal with the pandemic. As the power struggle in the ruling party ripened, to the horror of all, huge mass protests and rallies were organised by both sides. In hindsight, now, the apparent stupidity of our political leaders, and the ignorance of our people, seems to be an even graver injustice than the global inequality. 

As the pandemic peaked in India, we overtook our neighbour in the rate of rise of daily infections. And by mid-May, we had a higher percentage of deaths in proportion to population than India. Our hospitals ran out of beds, many private hospitals refused to take in patients with fever symptoms, and those with treatment facilities available were taking an exorbitant amount in advance for every patient. 

That we have a poor nationwide health infrastructure is no secret but it has been ignored by all our governments till date. The long wars activists like Dr Govind KC have waged against the criminal-political nexus that controls the hospitals and medical institutes has got a new validity now. Extremely unregulated medical business has made the medical infrastructure and education a source of easy money for what is now known as the ‘Medical Mafia’. In this grim scenario, people are left to fend for themselves.

The situation we are in is a result of many injustices, and will be a cause of further injustice for future generations. Unfortunately, this sad state of affairs is prevalent in all sectors. As the Western world is setting forth on a path to recovery, after fully vaccinating its population by this year’s end, it is also venturing out into a new war for geo-political dominance over China while we, along with other low-income nations, are living in the fear of death under irresponsible governments.

Have we learnt enough lessons from this? Whose responsibility is it to fight against these injustices? Who will sort things out for Nepalis?  

Will we, a nation with one of the youngest populations in the world with a median age of 24, learn and move swiftly to bring about a change in the political system that can make use of the window of opportunity this demographic dividend is creating? Will we learn from the repeated failures of our leaders to look after the interests of our nation and people and opt for an alternative? Under the present political system, established by the criminal-political nexus to secure their interests and maintain their unjust control over state resources, this seems a far cry.

These are the grave questions that our privileged youth, the ones who have access to education and a voice of their own, should ponder today. If our educated youths continue to be lured by better lifestyles and comfortable life in the West, there will be no one to shoulder the responsibility for curing the injustice. It is a time the youth unite to form an avant-garde force that sets an example.

After almost one-and-a-half years of the breaking out of Covid-19 pandemic, 20.7 percent of the world population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Altogether 2.4 billion doses have been administered globally, and 33.1 million are now administered a day. This seems a promising state of affairs until one tries to dig for details.

Only 0.8 percent of people in low-income countries have gotten at least one dose till date. This bleak scenario, as The Economist put it in a recent article, is not just an economic blunder but a ‘moral failure’ of the West.

Under the scrutiny of real-politick skepticism, questions of morality are the privilege of the strong. From the standpoint of a nation labelled as poor, and thus backward, mired in political and social struggles yet bubbling with a young population waiting for their turn to get exposed to the world, the current state of affairs is a cruel display of cumulative injustice compounded over centuries.

In Nepal, during this one-and-a-half years, we have seen a series of unfortunate events. When the pandemic was spreading its deadly wings across the world, and when early sufferers like Italy, the US and the UK were in panic mode, we were in delusion. Our prime minister was busy preaching sermons in the parliament on how the cold breeze of the Himalayas would cause the virus to mellow down. 

Such an attitude made the government lazy in its preparation to deal with the pandemic. As the power struggle in the ruling party ripened, to the horror of all, huge mass protests and rallies were organised by both sides. In hindsight, now, the apparent stupidity of our political leaders, and the ignorance of our people, seems to be an even graver injustice than the global inequality. 

As the pandemic peaked in India, we overtook our neighbour in the rate of rise of daily infections. And by mid-May, we had a higher percentage of deaths in proportion to population than India. Our hospitals ran out of beds, many private hospitals refused to take in patients with fever symptoms, and those with treatment facilities available were taking an exorbitant amount in advance for every patient. 

That we have a poor nationwide health infrastructure is no secret but it has been ignored by all our governments till date. The long wars activists like Dr Govind KC have waged against the criminal-political nexus that controls the hospitals and medical institutes has got a new validity now. Extremely unregulated medical business has made the medical infrastructure and education a source of easy money for what is now known as the ‘Medical Mafia’. In this grim scenario, people are left to fend for themselves.

The situation we are in is a result of many injustices, and will be a cause of further injustice for future generations. Unfortunately, this sad state of affairs is prevalent in all sectors. As the Western world is setting forth on a path to recovery, after fully vaccinating its population by this year’s end, it is also venturing out into a new war for geo-political dominance over China while we, along with other low-income nations, are living in the fear of death under irresponsible governments.

Have we learnt enough lessons from this? Whose responsibility is it to fight against these injustices? Who will sort things out for Nepalis?  

Will we, a nation with one of the youngest populations in the world with a median age of 24, learn and move swiftly to bring about a change in the political system that can make use of the window of opportunity this demographic dividend is creating? Will we learn from the repeated failures of our leaders to look after the interests of our nation and people and opt for an alternative? Under the present political system, established by the criminal-political nexus to secure their interests and maintain their unjust control over state resources, this seems a far cry.

These are the grave questions that our privileged youth, the ones who have access to education and a voice of their own, should ponder today. If our educated youths continue to be lured by better lifestyles and comfortable life in the West, there will be no one to shoulder the responsibility for curing the injustice. It is a time the youth unite to form an avant-garde force that sets an example.

Probably for the first time in Nepal's history millions of people were praying for a politician's recovery from illness—in solidarity. Unfortunately, their prayer went unanswered as Ujwal succumbed to Covid-19 on June 1, after valiantly fighting it for nearly a month. 

He was not a humongously famous big leader of a big political party. The Bibeksheel Sajha Party has only three members elected from proportional representation votes in the Bagmati provincial assembly. It’s a small party by all measures. But when the news that he had to be supported with the very expensive Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) became public, a spontaneous fund-raising campaign was initiated by some youths, which exceeded the target within 24 hours. Almost Rs 5 million was raised spontaneously, and enquiries were still pouring in. The exuberance exhibited by Nepalis from all over Nepal and abroad was insightful. It’s evident that Ujwal was the rare politician of our time who had earned genuine public respect through his virtues.

Ashutosh Tiwari, a fellow party member and a friend of Ujwal, wrote on social media, “There are people who have authority and power. And there are people like Ujwal who have courage and influence. I see the enormous heartfelt outpouring of public support, affection, love and concerns for him in this light.”

Ujwal, who was known to be a miser with words in conversations, had many firsts to his name. At a time youths of this country were frustrated with the never-ending political crisis, Ujwal dared to lead the change. With many patriotic slogans as the basis of his messaging—‘Nepal is open’ in response to the culture of closures that were employed by all political parties, and ‘Nepal is our home, not a rented room’ to invigorate a feeling of commitment towards public matters from the youth—Ujwal had always been a maverick, the daring one.

There was clear evidence of some level of support for Ujwal Thapa and for his brand of alternative politics since the beginning. It was manifest in the followership, the votes that some of the candidates received and on social media. That this support hasn't been enough to sweep the old forces away or to triumph over other parties has been one of the most perplexing dichotomies and disappointments of present-day Nepal. In that context, the spontaneous outpouring of support for him was a happy surprise.

In fact, Rabindra Mishra, the current president of Sajha Bibeksheel Party, which was formed by merging the Sajha Party he founded with the Bibeksheel Nepali Dal that Ujwal co-founded, wrote in social media in the sense that 'had the kind of support and concern that's pouring in at the moment been shown by voters in the two elections that Ujwal faced, the situation would have been much different'. He later withdrew the statement as it drew a lot of flak for being insensitive.

Although it was inappropriate and tactless of him to say such a thing when Ujwal was fighting for every breath, it had some truth to it. And Mishra himself had lost the election to the Congress stalwart Prakash Man Singh by a close margin in Kathmandu 1 constituency; and it is an open secret that the Congress had collaborated with the UML at that time to defeat the most probable winner of the alternative party. Mishra has all the reasons for bitterness as the movement to build an alternative political force in Nepal hasn't gathered enough momentum; and when compared with the movement that Arvind Kejriwal led in Delhi, the Sajha Bibeksheel Party stands nowhere.

Reading too much into the response Thapa's critical health condition had created will be unwise. The reality is that the criminal-political nexus that is hardwired into Nepali society will fight tooth and nail not to let any alternative emerge; and combined with the flock of disinterested youths and degraded moral values and inefficient work culture in the society, the nexus grows ever stronger. There is a lot that the dark forces can feed on, and the rare ray of hope that virtuous leaders like Ujwal Thapa bring is the only weapon against them. The fight is steep, and the youths have to buckle up, learn fast from the failures and fight it hard. At a dark time when politics has failed the people miserably, Ujwal has brought hope in the injured conscience of the society, and hope can move mountains. And that will be his enduring legacy.  

The barking deers bark all night from the jungle nearby, and some dogs from a far away village mimic them. I am not describing a scene from a travel journal. It is a normal night at the village where we live now after shifting from a nearby town, Waling.

Waling is where I grew up. I have strong memories of a childhood in a small town in Nepal. I was seven when the Panchayat fell and we moved to a democracy under a constitutional monarchy. I don’t remember much of the Panchayat era except that the board at the 'Gau Panchayat' office adjacent to our house was repainted a 'Gau Vikas Samiti'. Before that repainting, the walls of the administrative building were plastered with slogans like 'Bire Chor, Desh Chod', a coarse way of demanding the king’s ouster. 

Although the Siddharth Highway was built much before I was born, electricity came to Waling much later. I remember parts of the town had electricity before we got it at our house, and the televisions at those houses were of great interest to us. Many adventures can be recounted only about the endeavors made to watch some television program or movies at one of those 'lucky' houses with both electricity and TV. I also remember the trucks parked on the highway in the town were our perfect hideaways for playing hide-and- seek. 

In the next 30 years, the small highway market has grown into a bustling town. Waling turned into a municipality in 1997, and today gets into national news quite often, mostly for the right reasons. 

This personal journey, and the transition of a small town, is representative of most towns and villages outside Kathmandu. In the past 30 years, I moved out to study and work. I went abroad to study and also worked in a foreign army, came back, worked in Kathmandu and have now decided to finally settle down in my hometown itself. For many here, and for many of my friends and acquaintances in Kathmandu too, this decision to settle in a small town is a courageous one; to some it is blatantly foolish. The social dynamics integrated in our psyche about how we look at places has Kathmandu at its center. Personally it baffles me.

Irritated by the concept of progress and development that our society has ingrained, we tried to rebel. The idea of settling in a village, into farming, is a romantic one for many city-dwellers. Many people busy in the daily grind of city life would probably say they wish to settle into a nice farm-house in the future. Fantasizing is one thing, but actually jumping into the well of death is another. Apart from the social ridicule, we face real challenges too. Although most villages are now well connected with jeep tracks, there is no regular public transport system. And in cases of health emergencies, things can get dangerous.

Poor health and education system makes the biggest contribution to en masse abandonment of our villages. But there is more to it than meets the eye. Over the years, with many half-educated 'awareness campaigns' and misguided modernization attempts aided by foreign agencies, our traditional lifestyles have been ridiculed as symbolising failure. For many youths of our generation, success has come to mean leaving the traditional lifestyle behind, moving into the capital city if possible, or to the nearby town, and building a concrete house for oneself. 

This ill-informed way of looking at success, our traditional way of life, and our culture has disoriented a full generation and left us derooted. Therefore, the way we educate our young minds today is a sad mimicry of many foreign concepts. It’s an irony that in a beautiful village surrounded by nature, we put children in a concrete room tightly packed like a cell and teach them about plants. This extreme picturization aside, without the experiential learning element in our education system, and with little regard for our traditional way of earning a living, we are preparing our future generations to be slaves of some other worlds. 

Our moving into a village from the town coincided with the pandemic’s outbreak. Many of those who were smirking at the idea initially, including my father, now appreciate the freshness of nature and the freedom of getting to produce what one wants to eat. But to depend on a mass tragedy like the pandemic to reorient people's priorities about development is tragic in itself.

“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life,” said Rabindra Nath Tagore almost a century ago. Tagore, probably the most respected renaissance man of Asia, is revered as a household deity in Bengal with the nickname Kabiguru. He has such a revered place in Bengali culture that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's two-year-long 'bearding up' was widely suspected to be a poorly attempted imitation, in looks only of course, of the Nobel Prize winning poet, playwright, painter, composer, reformist, educationist and philosopher. Modi apparently wanted to woo the Bengali 'Bhadralok' before the 2021 Bidhan Sabha elections. But the Bengalis were not impressed by this cheap imitation and the ruling TMC, under Mamata Banerjee, won a landslide victory despite the anti-incumbency factor of two terms.

Modi's style of politics has perception management at its center. Singling out Modi for this would be slightly unfair, however, given that even greatest leaders like Gandhi or Lincoln, or even Obama, took great care in their messaging. It’s documented that Lincoln depended wholly on the network of friends among journalists and newspaper owners to propagate his ideas and breed a wave of popularity. But the controversial rise of Modi-Amit Shah duo in the BJP, and consequentially in national politics, marked a new era of Indian politics. As a successor to the subtle and gentle Congress PM Manmohan Singh, Modi shone in extreme contrast with his flamboyance. 

This change in Indian politics synchronized with a transformation the world over that got associated with two phenomena: the rightist wave, and the post-truth era. One signifies the rise of strongly rightist male authoritarian leaders like Putin, Modi and Boris Johnson; the later is the phenomenon of the diminishing of the gatekeepers in the arena of information. As social media becomes the feeder of news to us, and the traditional media houses have largely vanished as the main source of information and analysis, we have seen a new era in politics. Although this is an ideal condition for a democratic set up and the unjust power of big media tycoons is limited by this openness, with tools available now to reach every mind directly, the access has been highly manipulated to promulgate fake news.

The rightist wave was driven by a majoritarian politics aided by the post-truth perception management. This understanding is an obvious logical connecting of the dots and the extrapolation is applied to understand politics everywhere for last few years, including here in South Asia. At first glance, there seems no problem with this simplification, but I have always been skeptical of such over-simplified versions of history. I am of the opinion that the social media and information age aided by the fourth technological revolution in the first two decades of the 21st Century has brought insurmountable changes in how people communicate. This in turn has spawned new methods and practices in the arena of political communication.

But, for this same reason, politics the world over has become more and more localized, and hence what we see is a series of events resulting from local conditions. But looking at all these events from a distance, and as humans have a tendency to look for patterns in everything, we have clubbed some events together to make the generalization of the idea of a wave plausible.

This simplification was mostly popularized by lazy liberal intellectuals the world over, including in India, where they were not ready to look at the indications of social upheavals. The rise of the BJP in India owes to a legacy that leads back to more than a century, and it gained foothold because of a strong feeling of resentment in the religious majority because of the perceived neglect and uprooting of the mainstream culture. In America, the rise of Trump was a result of similar resentments among the white people.  

There is no denying that past events impact the outcome of future events and there can also be some domino effects. But a simple example from 2013-2014 from Delhi illustrates that people's voting patterns are driven by complex factors and it’s difficult to overly generalize politics. In 2013, the AAP had won almost half the seats in the Delhi Bidhan Sabha, whereas in the Lok Sabha elections six months later, the party did not win a single seat, while the BJP won seven out of eight. But the biggest surprise was in the Bidhan Sabha elections nine months after that: when the AAP again won 67 out of 70 seats. This rollercoaster turn of events in a timeframe of less than a year is intriguing, and speaks a lot about the collective intelligence behind people’s voting patterns. 

With such a complex display of electoral behavior within a short time in such a compact political zone, generalizing a pattern for the world over in today's times is foolish. Even right now, some thinkers are misreading the Bengal elections. Shashi Tharoor, an author of more than 18 books and Congress MP, tweeted: ‘Bengal is a decisive win for the "idea of India", an inclusive, pluralist India where your religion or region don't matter. It shows BJP's electoral juggernaut is not invincible. And it reasserts the value of a federal India where States resist the overweening power of the Center.' Tharoor is obviously happy that somebody is able to put a break in BJP's momentum even if Congress itself hasn't been able to win a single seat. 

But a closer scrutiny of the voting behavior comes from Prashant Kishor, the main elections strategist credited with the TMC’s outstanding victory. He said that 'no matter how polarized an election is, no party can get more than 50 to 55 percent of the majority community. In BJP strongholds, 50-55 percent of Hindus voted for them but the TMC concentrated on the 45 percent.'

Even though many commentators are projecting this result as Bengali people’s rejection of the BJP's Hindutva drive, the fact that the BJP is at 77 seats, and a close second in most of lost seats, speaks a lot about the creeping reach of the idea. If anything, the 'Royal Bengal Show' has not only shown the limits of majoritarian politics, it has also proved the limits of an overly simplified generalization of political events. This tells us to stop the unjustified fear of a majoritarian wave the world over and look for localized solutions to crucial problems. But above all, to paraphrase the Kabiguru saying, it shows us that 'the one who plants the right ideas in society, knowing that he/she will never really be able to benefit from it, has at least started to understand the meaning of politics.