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While it’s common for us to hear that we need to learn from China’s devel­opment, no body offers an insight on how the Chinese growth came about. Some view it as a result of a strong authoritarian government, but they don’t tell us why a bil­lion-plus people willingly accept a different form of government to most of the world’s. Then there are those who believe Chinese development resulted from effec­tive use of FDI, and because of the capacity of its past and present leaders. This too doesn’t explain the development because parts of China are still poor and corrupt leaders are arrested every year. Others believe it has to do with Confucianism and the Chinese desire for “order.” So what makes Chinese peo­ple accept the system? What has led to China’s development? Why have there been no popular protests against the government since Tiananmen 1989? These questions are vital in understand­ing China’s growth.

The answer to all these ques­tions is nationalism. Not the defensive nationalism that pits one people against the other but a constructive sort that only wants good for one’s country. ‘National humiliation’, ‘national pride’ and ‘national power’ are the three concepts that bind the people and the government and that’s what leads to China’s development. It has nothing to do with commu­nism and Confucianism.

National shame

All of China’s rebellions and revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries were motivated by the sole intent of avenging the nation­al humiliation suffered in the tur­bulent 19th century, beginning with its defeat by the British-led coalition in the Opium War in 1840. From the Chinese perspec­tive, hierarchy had been turned upside down and it was their duty to restore the “natural” order. No wonder that every time China lost a war, there was a rebellion/revolution aimed at restoring the order or China’s dignity.

First in the series was the mes­sianic Taiping Rebellion led by Hong Xiuquan. Hong believed that he was the son of God and younger brother of Jesus sent to the earth to establish the king­dom of heavenly peace. His call to the Christian monarchs includ­ing queen Victoria of England to submit to his authority at a time the Europeans thought of China as the ‘sick man of Asia’ was one reason why the Christian Europe­ans allied with the Qing to defeat the rebellion in 1860s.

China’s defeat in the Jiawu War with Japan in 1895 and Euro­pean powers’ continuing dis­respect of Chinese sovereignty resulted in another nationalist rebellion, the Yihetuan Rebel­lion (or the Boxer Rebellion in English). The Boxers believed their practice of martial arts gave them supernatural powers and they were invincible. If the Taiping wanted to oust the Qing dynasty for failing to protect Chi­na’s interests, the Boxers wanted to kick out foreigners for bullying China. Well, they too were defeat­ed by the foreigners.

Then came the first modern revolution against the dynasty that had disastrously failed to pre­serve the honor of the Chinese race. The Xinhai Revolution or the republican revolution led by Sun Yat-sen in 1911 succeeded in overthrowing the Qing dynasty. But it too failed in restoring order and in containing foreigners and avenging their undermining of Chinese sovereignty.

The failure of the republican revolution led to the commu­nist revolution in 1949, again to restore the hierarchy that had been violated since 1840. Establishing an egalitarian society was the secondary aim of the com­munist revolution. Just as the previous generation of rev­olutionaries had done, the communist party propaganda machinery stressed, even after the 1949 revolution, that in Shang­hai’s Huangpu park there was a sign that read “No dogs and Chinese allowed” to motivate the young Chinese to join the revolu­tion (according to historians there were no such sign).

Even when Chairman Mao was able to tell the foreigners to pack their bags and leave China and reenter only when they accept­ed China’s terms, this was not enough to avenge the humiliation. How exactly China would gain its rightful place and respect was still a dilemma.

Angry isolation from the world or friendly engagement with it without sacrificing the goal of making the world take China seriously was a question that Chairman Mao dealt with right up to his deathbed. During his reign, China was dealing with foreigners on its own terms and some degree of national pride was restored, but it was still poor. Moreover, the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s had turned it into an even bigger mess.

The Chinese leaders includ­ing Chairman Mao realized that there was no pride in poverty. A radically new approach had to be explored. A plan was made in the early 1970s but it would take some time before a strong leader emerged to improvise it and avenge the humiliation and restore China’s rightful place in the world

 It is not uncommon to read almost every day how both our neighbors, in fact the whole world, want Nepal to have political stability and economic growth, and that it’s our lead­ers who are hell-bent on doing the exact opposite. And it is also not uncommon to read how our neighbors have decided to pursue a common policy on Nepal after the Xi-Modi Wuhan Summit. (How our analysts came to know about what was dis­cussed there remains a mystery. As is our wont, we have decided not to question the analysts about the source of their information, and to talk of the Wuhan Summit as if we were there when the two leaders were talking.)We have read these things so many times that most of us actu­ally start believing this humbug.

To make sense of what is hap­pening here, we need to personify Nepal, her neighbors and whoso­ever we believe has interests here. Believe me, this makes it easi­er to understand things. There’s absolutely no need to use jargons such as geopolitics, geostrategic and trickle down effect, and what not, to describe what’s happening here. It can be done in a much simpler and plainer way.

Imagine your neighbor’s house, a small house with a small gar­den. The neighbor (read: Nepal) is always drunk. The boundary walls have collapsed. The front gate is broken. The lawn is a total mess and it’s a mess inside as well.

Then you buy a car and decide to park in your neighbor’s driveway, not because you lack parking space. You do it just for the heck of it, just like the Nike ad—‘Just do it’. The neighbor says nothing. Then you decide to park it in his lawn, the neighbor says nothing. Then you start using his kitchen, the neighbor says noth­ing. Then you sleep in his bed, again nothing.

Seeing you do all this, others in the block start doing the same. They too start parking their cars there, and using the drunk neigh­bor’s kitchen and bedroom. In essence, everybody in the block now owns the house. You have problems with the others when you come home from work and that somebody has already parked his/her car there, or has slept in the neighbor’s bedroom that you have come to think of very much as your own.

The next day you come a lit­tle earlier from work and park your car in your neighbor’s house and maybe park your wife’s car as well, before the others do it, and maybe have your dog guard the bedroom. But others aren’t as stupid as you make them out to be, and the next day when you and your wife go to work and you have the dog guarding your own premises, they take control of the driveway, kitchen and the bedroom of the “com­mon” house.

Now, what do you do? Since your neighbor is always drunk and doesn’t seem to mind any intrusion, you lure your neigh­bor’s children with candies: hey, take these, they are good and if you want more you need to make sure that nobody except me uses your house and driveway. The malnourished little children hap­pily oblige.

They shout and protest in vain when others come and park their cars and use the bedroom. The others also employ the same trick as you so the children don’t create a scene the next time: lure the children with candies. But since the children are taking candies from all and promising everyone the same thing, they shout in uni­son when you park your car in their driveway. Then you come up with another ingenious idea. Of the five children, you only start giving candies, much more than before, to three and promise them more candies.

But, again, the others aren’t stupid as well. They do the same to those three children. Then you think of another smart idea: have the children carve out their own “territory” by teach­ing them about ownership and property rights. Divide and rule, so to speak. You will pamper the three chosen ones with candies and have them do what you want. The other two would then have no option but come to you for candies. Then you have the loyalty of everyone and they will shout in unison for your interests. Brilliant, you reckon you are no less than Chanakya or his shrewder version, Kautilya, or Machiavelli.

But again others aren’t stupid as you make them out to be. They too have read their Arthashastra and the Prince and maybe Kissing­er as well, and they do the same. And you are left thinking what to do next.

The neighbor is still drunk and in his own world, oblivious to things around him or pretending to be so because he knows he is too weak to do anything

 Let’s admit it: Nepali politics is more difficult to understand than the complex calculus even for us Nepalis. If you are a foreigner, then you are probably even more confused—unless you happen to be the one who calls the shots here and knows more than what we can ever possibly know. The reason for the confusion is that we have redefined certain political concepts to suit our real­ity, and it’s not your fault that you can’t make sense of what is happening here.

Let’s jump straight to what certain political concepts mean for us.

Capitalism: Do whatever you want in order to make mon­ey, even if that means building buildings and bridges that collapse within a year and roads that are full of potholes within a week. Produce and sell adulter­ated food stuff. Keep the profit margin at 2,000 or more percent provided you are always at the service of the rulers and their relatives. Don’t pay the taxes but make sure to bribe the bureau­crats, leaders and make donations to political parties.

Socialism: Support expensive medical and private schools and do nothing to upgrade the quality of public health and education. Privatize the state-owned enter­prises. Widen the rift between the haves and have-nots. Send your kids abroad and have them own gas stations or use your con­nections to get them good jobs there. Impose all sorts of taxes but spend the tax money on, well, God knows what, but definitely not on public goods—for that, seek foreign assistance and make sure the bid goes to the ones that you the rulers of the day like for “obvi­ous” reasons.

Democracy: Rig elections and keep on getting elected again and again and view that as the right to do what you please. Let even those rejected by the people assume high-level government posts. Promote your children and relatives and practice dynastic politics. Think of yourself as the new king who can do anything because you have “public sup­port”. Let the powerful have their way with everything and even get away with serious crimes, but don’t let the weak escape the long hand of the law.

Let those embezzling bil­lions go free without even with a slap on the wrist and warmly welcome them into your parties, but punish severely the unlucky ones caught taking Rs 5,000 in bribe and tout that as uphold­ing the rule of law and good governance. Believe in, to slightly paraphrase Joseph Heller, ‘Rich is the country in democratic ide­als that has plenty of poor’ (ital­ics mine) and do everything in your capacity to increase the number of poor.

Communism: Rebels who take up arms. Torture and kill class enemies. But when they are in power, shake hands with the cap­italists. Preach Marx and Mao but practice “Some animals are more equal”. Make sure the rich keeps getting richer and the poor, well, view them as the proletariat who will promote revolution abroad while toiling in the sweltering heat. Give a lengthy lecture on “the means of production”, “base and superstructure” and “fetish­ism of commodities”—even if they have no idea what all these mean and make people scratch their heads—while they wear design­er stuff from abroad, and blame capitalism for all the country’s ills. And of course, label those who disagree with them as feudal, reactionaries and rightists.

Nationalism: Be nationalists only when their position is threat­ened. Criticize the 2015 Indian blockade but forget the 1989-90 one. Ask India to blockade us when things don’t go their way and argue it is for “democracy”. View the unification of Nepal by PN Shah as capitalist and impe­rialist expansion, but praise the biggest imperialists in modern history, Lenin and Stalin, for fighting imperialism. Divide the people using ethnic politics and regionalism. Roar like a tiger in Nepal, but meow like a cat in front of foreigners.

Federalism: Build a castle in the air. That’s pretty much it.

Intellectuals: Be greedy and have no ideals. Be able to switch sides and curry favors with polit­ical leaders and foreigners by parroting their lines. Be more concerned about promoting for­eign interests in Nepal than our own interests. Every time they speak and write, use jargons such as ‘Mahendrian nationalism’ and ‘Bahunbaad’ and blame those for Nepal’s wretched fate.

People: Willingly let the leaders exploit them. Gullible. Can do without water, roads, gasoline, electricity, education and health­care and pretty much anything. Not to be taken seriously.

Foreign policy: What is that?

Freedom of expression: Say and write things that doesn’t ruffle any feathers. Be wise and self-censor. 

 Much has been written about Nepal’s last-minute withdrawal from the BIM­STEC military exercises held in India from Sept 10 to 16. Some see this as a mark of Nepal’s asser­tiveness and advice India to get used to dealing with a confident Nepal. Others are praising the government for upholding the principles of non-aligned move­ment as they saw the exercises as being targeted against China. Meanwhile, the Indian side, which was clearly dismayed by Nepal’s “snub”, attributes the cancella­tion to Nepal’s “internal political dynamics”, a vague interpretation that can mean many things. All of these are politically cor­rect interpretations, which, like all politically correct interpreta­tions, are cryptic, bend the truth, do not tell the whole truth or con­tain no truth at all.

Here’s what the withdrawal means, plain and simple. The decision does not in any way prove that we are becoming more independent or assertive in con­ducting our foreign policy. All it means is that we are becoming overly sensitive of China and we don’t want to do anything that we imagine as against Chinese interests. When foreign policy is guided by others’ imagined inter­ests and with the sole intent of appeasing others than promoting our own interests, can we call that being assertive and independent?

China has made it clear time and again that it doesn’t want Nepal to jeopardize its relations with India, but we don’t seem to get it. The Chinese foreign minis­ter, Wang Yi, talked about trilat­eral cooperation with our foreign minister Pradip Gyawali in Beijing for a reason.

Therefore, it makes little sense to believe that the pressure to withdraw from the exercises came from Beijing. As Nepal was beaming with pride for upholding the ideals of non-aligned move­ment and preserving its neutral­ity, China was participating in a 27-country naval exercises that also included the US, Japan and India, among others, in Darwin, Australia, from August 30 to Sept 15. The leaders and scholars who opposed Nepal’s participation in the BIMSTEC military exercises thinking that it won them some brownie points with China, are clearly in for disappointment.

Then, what actually led us to commit a major diplomatic blun­der that certainly angered one neighbor but made no difference whatsoever to another neighbor?

PM KP Oli wants to prove that he is a nationalist and is quite good at standing up to India. As the government is losing its pop­ularity, he seems to have realized that being “assertive” vis-à-vis India would do his image no harm at all.

Nepali Congress probably cal­culated that opposing the mffffffili­tary exercises would help shed its pro-India image and make it appear as nationalist as the rul­ing NCP and it too could be seen favorably by China. The govern­ment thus pulled out of the mili­tary drills, fearing that the NC was stealing its nationalist thunder.

It could also be that some intellectuals and lawmakers who opposed the military exercises were made to believe that China wasn’t happy with them, by a junior diplomat or somebody act­ing on his or her own capacity in Kathmandu. And the government was easily swayed byf the orches­trated “public outcry” against the military exercises.

A recent report by the Wilson Center on Chinese influence in American academia contains many examples of Chinese dip­lomats in consulates across the US going beyond their mandate to encourage Chinese students associations to protest “anti-Chi­na” views in academia. Rather than serving their country these diplomats wanted to boost their own careers and perks. Some­thing of the sort has happened here as well.

In September 2013 the Min­istry of Defense sent a letter to the Nepal Army asking it not to enroll foreign students in its high altitude and mountain warfare school in Mustang. The military, realizing that it was just someone in Kathmandu trying to raise his/her profile, ignored it altogether. There has been no pressure from Beijing, at least publicly, on the issue so far. Just like the south­ern diplomats in Kathmandu, the northern diplomats too at times go beyond their mandate and our gullible leaders and analysts read­ily swallow it.

India probably knows that the decision has to do with the gov­ernment being overly and unnec­essarily sensitive to Chinese inter­ests in Nepal. But it cannot say so openly given the recent thaw in its relations with China. Hence the vague “internal political dynam­ics” interpretation is what they have to be satisfied with.

Again, just like the others, I could be way off as well.

 On August 28, our prime min­ister proudly declared in parliament that he could not and cannot be as strict as Lee Kuan Yew. He was implying that unlike Lee, he cannot give up his democratic ideals for national development, and that makes him a better leader than Lee. Had our democracy or, more precise­ly, had PM Oli been able to at least made us feel that things are changing for the better, then, yes, that comparison and that pride on being democratic would have made sense. But since the system and the leaders, including the cur­rent PM, have repeatedly failed us, such comments only make him appear weak, visionless and with no knowledge of what Lee was actually like as a leader. The only meaningful difference between Lee’s Singapore and Oli’s Nepal is that we can criticize the government here. But what good are constructive criticisms when the leaders don’t listen? Our democratic rights are nothing to be proud of because those have come in exchange of perpetu­al poverty, bad governance and rigged elections.

To compensate for the lack of freedom of expression and cer­tain rights, Lee gave Singaporeans the right to good life. Its per capita income, which was one of the lowest in the world when Lee took charge, is now one of the high­est. Its universities consistently rank as among the best in the world. You don’t need to buy bottled water in Singapore; you can drink the tap water and eat street food without fear. You don’t need to bribe bureaucrats and political leaders to get your work done. It’s a safe, clean and cosmopolitan city-state. Many countries have either waived or made their visa requirements lax for Singaporean citizens.

We have exactly the opposite sit­uation. Singapore is praised and envied, while we are mocked and loathed by the world. Just see the reaction on the face of the immi­gration officer when you present your green passport anywhere abroad. That suspicion-laced reaction with a mocking smile is the accurate representation of our international standing and how the world perceives us.

PM Oli, you are not Lee, and you can’t be Lee. Unlike you, who takes a chartered flight with a jumbo team abroad, Lee flew in scheduled flights, and with only those who he needed. Unlike you, who tries to shield his party cad­res and near ones against charges of corruption and what not, Lee went after his party members and even his good friends, including Singapore’s first president, for poor conduct and corruption.

Unlike you, who shows help­lessness against all that’s ailing us, Lee was strong to weed out most of what bedeviled the Sin­gaporean society and institution­alize rule of law. Unlike you, who had the street potholes filled on the eve of the BIMSTEC summit, Lee began a campaign for clean and green Singapore immediately after he took office.

He was a hands-on prime minis­ter, and you are a hands-off every­thing, mouthful on everything prime minister. Yes, Lee was strict authoritarian and you are a liber­al democrat and that’s why you shoot down people asking for justice.

Unlike you, Lee understood what was in his country’s inter­ests during the Cold War. Despite being an ethnic Chinese, he dis­tanced himself from China politi­cally but continued to trade with it. He joined the Western camp, just so he could attract their investment. And he managed the economy and foreign affairs of his country so well that he was invit­ed to China, and the great Chi­nese leader Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore, even before the two countries had established diplo­matic relations. Deng remarked that China had a lot to learn from Singapore, and China really did relearn ancient Chinese values of meritocracy, rule of law, good gov­ernance, and effective utilization of foreign capital, from Singapore. So much for the “Singapore was small, Nepal is big and we can’t emulate that here” argument of textbook democrats.

Sadly, Mr Oli, you try to cover your weaknesses by comparing yourself with great world leaders who eschewed populist policies for fair ones to lift their countries. You are no Lee, Ataturk, Chiang, Mahathir or Mahendra. You are no better than these “dictators” just because you once fought for democracy. You actually have a lot to learn from them.

Since I am a Nepali of no signif­icance and no communist I know this will fall on deaf ears and blind eyes. Maybe the following lines by a renowned author on cur­rent affairs, Robert Kaplan, will help you see the world and assess yourself and others you consider “dictators” differently.

“Dividing the world in black and white terms between dicta­tors and democrats completely misses the political and moral complexity of the situation on the ground... The twin categories of democrats and dictators are simply too broad for an adequate understanding of many places and their rulers”

No matter what the proponents of federalism argue, Nepal does not seem to benefit at all from it. Further, one important point is deliberately omitted from any debate on federalism in Nepal, i.e., the political parties, espe­cially the former CPN-UML and Nepali Congress. Instead of doing away with the Maoist agendas that were defeated in the second Constituent assembly elections in 2013, these two parties came to carry these agendas themselves, resulting in a perpetual political and economic mess. They had half-heartedly raised the issue and their success in the second CA was not because they too advocated federalism, but the people were less fearful of the former guerillas and actually didn’t care about federalism. NC and UML could have reversed their position on federalism and saved the country a fortune.

During the insurgency the Mao­ists had promised the people ethnicity-based federalism. The party won the first CA election in 2008 using all means possible, but the first CA failed. It contest­ed the second CA on the same premise but then it was relegat­ed to third position, which in a functioning democracy would be interpreted as people’s rejection of the Maoist agenda including the ethnicity-based or whatev­er-based federalism. If UML and Congress had taken a firm and united stand against it, today we wouldn’t be paying more taxes to support another political exper­iment that’s doomed to fail. But what then led the parties that emerged first and second in the CA election to adopt federalism—ignorance, foreign pressure, their disregard of public opinion or a combination of it all? We would probably never know.

But what we know is that we have embarked on a costly exper­iment that makes no sense.

Instead, we could have spent $3-$5 billion over five years on infrastructure with the help of our taxes, foreign loans and grants. That would have created jobs and boosted industrialization and led to more foreign direct investment as well. We could have spent money on agriculture/agricultural modernization to become self-sufficient in food and to reduce our heavy dependence on remittance. Think about it. We could have spent the money doing so many things to develop our economy and enhance our international standing.

If that were the case, we would have no problem paying more taxes. But when you find that your tax money is spent on expensive vehicles and laptops for the lead­ers, and on hefty salaries for pro­vincial ministers and legislature members, you have reasons to be angry. And yes, we are angry. We are paying more than what we were paying before, and yet the government is cash-strapped. It’s so short of money that a Chinese company had to spon­sor the uniforms/wears for our athletes attending the Asian Games in Indonesia.

Chinese government is rebuild­ing Nepal’s first public school, the Durbar high school. Other coun­tries are handing out an ambu­lance or two to our military and police. Almost all infrastructure projects are being built by foreign­ers. Yet we are being made to pay more taxes.

You can argue that it is for the betterment of the country and when federalism is institution­alized everything will be great. Or you can be philosophical and argue that for the country’s pros­perity, one generation has to sac­rifice and that generation is ours. But why should we be the ones to sacrifice and pay for silly experi­mentation? For the past 68 years, we have been sacrificing for revo­lutions and democracy but we are yet to see any results. Admit it, as always, this time too we have put the cart before the horse.

Starting August 8 General Purna Chandra Thapa takes command of the Nepal Army. The appointment is not as sexy as it appears, as the institution is marred by problems. But let’s hope that Thapa will, at the end of the day, leave his mark as one of the ablest CoAS.Unlike how it projects itself, the army doesn’t have modern weap­ons, or enough funding to support almost 100,000 personnel. It’s going to be this way for long time, so let’s not even ask the new chief to lobby with the government for new weapons and more fund­ing. Instead let’s ask him to do things that are within his power to improve public perception of the army, create happy officers and arm it with good information, the most important aspect of security these days.

The military does not enjoy as positive public image as it used to until a decade ago. Rampant cor­ruption, nepotism and favoritism have resulted in bad press for the institution. Further, by involving itself in infrastructure projects, like the Kathmandu-Tarai fast track, our military is morphing into a construction company and courting controversy.

Therefore, the first order of business for Thapa should be to rid the institution of corruption and unnecessary controversy by taking its hands off the fast track project and other similar infra­structure endeavors. We want our army to defend our borders and protect our VIPs and wildlife; we don’t want to see it evolve into a business house by hand­ing out subcontracts. The army can instead provide security and blasting expertise to civilian con­tractors. That way it will be able to focus on its primary duties and avoid controversy.

The second issue concerns pro­motions, especially the promo­tion from the rank of major to lieutenant colonel. The fast track promotion system leaves lots of room to maneuver in order to promote one’s favorites or the ones who are well-connected. The fact that some officers had to petition the defense ministry against some promotions recently does not augur well for the image of the military.

To add to the misery of mid-level officers, the staff col­lege entrance test, the iron-gate to further promotions, seems to favor the elites and the well-con­nected. The fact that it is conduct­ed in English makes it tough for officers from rural areas or those who attended public schools to compete against the ones who attended elite schools in Kath­mandu. The textbook for mili­tary history issued by the Nepal Army’s Staff and Command Col­lege is unreadable, to say the least. It is basically a collection of papers by Nepali and foreign officers without enough editing for language uniformity or clarity. The paper on current affairs does not even have any guidelines: you are expected to know everything about everything, ranging from environment issues to politics to military technologies to sports. All in all, the staff college entrance does not test one’s creativity and problem-solving, but only English and memorization skills.

Moreover, although it has more officers taking it, the army hasn’t increased the number of seats proportionately. Earlier, the ratio between test takers and seats was around 1:3; these days it is around 1:6. Nepal Army thus loses some of the brightest officers due to the unscientific way it conducts its staff college entrance test.

When he addresses these two pressing issues, the new COAS needs to focus on developing the army’s intelligence capability, just like the former chief Guarab Shumsher Rana had envisioned and tried to accomplish during his tenure. One way to do this, as the military doctrine states, is to tie up with civilians and think tanks to produce reports and papers on various aspects of the society and international events. Today’s military needs information and it should utilize expertise of civilian experts for analysis of events, both domestic and foreign, as is the practice in many countries.

Revamping the army’s image and initiating internal reforms, though urgent, won’t be easy. General Thapa will face oppo­sitions from in and outside the military. Let’s hope that General Thapa, who has served in many difficult missions in Nepal and abroad, will initiate the process to transform our military from an exclusively fighting force to a fighting and “thinking” force.

All the best, General Thapa.

If there is one thing that distin­guishes our leaders from the leaders of other countries, it has to be their total disregard of the public and public opinion. Even in the people’s democratic dictatorship of China, the lead­ers have realized that it is in the interest of the communist party to first gauge public opinion; and only then only decide on what needs to be done. This explains the immense public support for one-party dictatorship there. But in our democracy it seems that our opinions, hopes and aspi­rations do not matter at all. We were told that when democracy came to the country we would all become citizens from serfs. Per­haps millions participated in one after another revolution against the feudal system, but here we are, still serfs. Our misfortune is that all our revolutions have been in vain. All we did was replace one dictatorship with another.Now we have something worse than a dictatorship. At least in dic­tatorships these days the dictators try to address public concerns and take on development activ­ities to quieten the opposition, and they are concerned about their image in and outside their countries. But in our system, just because the leaders were voted by us—yes, the silly us—to power, they seem to believe that the fin­est trait of leadership is to appear oblivious to people’s sufferings and their valid concerns. The fact that they are elected seems to give them immense power to do what they wish and to blatantly violate the laws of the land. And we feel helpless instead of empowered, unlike what we were promised by those inciting us to revolt time and again.

The second important trait dis­played by our leaders is blaming past governments for all the prob­lems in order to silence critics. Five months may not be a long time, but it is still enough to make people feel something good is happening. But nothing of the kind has happened. No wonder the collective mood of the “sov­ereign citizens” of Nepal is that of despair, and we have been in despair for the past 50 years. We haven’t been blessed with a sin­gle, thoughtful leader since the demise of King Mahendra.

While many of our analysts and the members of the self-pro­claimed civil society have criti­cized the way the government has been dealing with Dr Govinda KC and the use of force against unarmed protestors in Jumla and Kathmandu, no one dared to speak against the system that allows a handful to do what they want and however they want. Because the ones screaming their lungs out in Kathmandu against the heavy-handedness of the pres­ent government were also those who hoodwinked us into believ­ing that with “this” revolution, with this leadership, all would be honky dory. We listen to them enthusiastically but none dares ask these dollar activists: why did you support the same leadership when it was in the opposition? Thus aren’t you too responsible for the present mess? So much for the impartial and “thoughtful” civil society!

The ones who claim that KP Oli is displaying the signs of a dicta­tor know it well that Oli is doing exactly what the previous govern­ments were doing for the past 50 years. Going by what’s happening now, it will continue to be so for the next 50 years.

It is useless to dwell into what happened and how we can change for the better. To add to our misfortune, there is no one nor an institution we can look up to. Nepal is not going to change, as is evident from the fact that all those delivering inspiring speech­es have already sent or are in the process of sending their off-springs abroad. Something has gone terribly awry with this land. We don’t know what exactly. But how come that in a country of 30 million we don’t have 30 real nationalist leaders?

We can be certain of one thing though: there will be many more revolutions promising to empow­er us and we will enthusiastical­ly participate in those, but they won’t change a thing. We will continue to be serfs, unhappy with our lords but too weak to do anything about it.