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Nepali cable TV distributors are being disingenuous when they say end customers will be saddled with extra charges if the federal parliament passes a recently registered Advertisement Bill. The bill bars out-of-country paid TV channels from broadcasting foreign advertisements. As getting clean feed from paid international TV channels will cost them more, the cable operators argue, they will have no option but to pass on the added cost to their viewers. But then Nepali cable TV viewers are already paying high surcharges, which should more than make up for the puny increase in cable distributors’ costs.

With the passage of the bill, foreign ads on cable channels will be replaced by Nepali ones, to the benefit of many constituencies in the country. Nepali advertisers will be buoyant as all TV ads for foreign products will have to be made in Nepal. Nepali ads will also have more slots on international channels. The Nepali ad industry is projected to grow by at least 20 percent as a result. After all, why should foreign products get free advertisements on Nepali TV? Not only does it lead to a loss of market for Nepali advertisers, it also encourages Nepalis to pick foreign advertised products over domestic unadvertised ones, to the determent of the already struggling economy.

While the Nepali ad industry is still in its infancy, its revenues continue to shrink as more and more people move online for news and entertainment. The problem is that there isn’t much money in online advertising. At the same time, with the economy facing a severe liquidity crunch, Nepali producers and industries are cutting back on their advertisement budgets for newspapers and television. On the other hand, the multinationals operating in Nepal have not had to spend a single rupee as their ads are already transmitted through pay TV for free.

The clean feed policy is a boon for all Nepali content creators. The quality of our advertisements will improve as more money enters the industry. Local products will be more competitive. The stagnant Nepali media will see a fresh inflow of cash. Cable operators have no case.

 The federal government and its head can learn many things from the recent Guthi bill fiasco. One is that decisions with far-reaching conse­quences should be made only after extensive consultations with key stakeholders. Frankly, in its year and a half in office, the federal government, and Prime Minister KP Oli in particular, have acted like a law onto themselves. PM Oli makes vital decisions without informing senior leaders of his own party, much less the opposition parties. The advice of a small coterie of party hacks seems enough.

Broad consultations are at the heart of the democrat­ic process. But for the self-described democrat who fought autocracy half his life, Oli seems to have inter­nalized some authoritarian tendencies himself. Again, seldom does he consult other experts and seek a sec­ond opinion. Take his recent Europe trip, which turned out to be a disaster. The prime minister was keen on visiting Europe and shoring up his international image even as there had been no preparations. The expected agreements with France and the UK could not mate­rialize; the heads of the state of these two European powers did not even bother to see him.

Had the prime minister consulted some foreign pol­icy experts, or even read an oped or two on the topic on the eve of his Europe trip, he could have figured out that instead of buttressing his international image, the meaningless tour would have just the opposite effect. More important, it would harm the standing of the country he represents. But just like he did not bother to consult the Guthiyars—the age-old custodians of the country’s precious heritage—before introducing the Guthi bill, the self-assured prime minister did not see the need to seek expert advice on his foreign travel.

The forced withdrawal of the Guthi bill is possibly the biggest blow to the prime minister’s seemingly unassailable image. He perhaps does not realize that if he continues on his unilateral course, the press, the opposition parties, the intellectuals, and hundreds of thousands of his voters—could all be alienated. It is a reminder that in a democracy you can rule only by a broad consensus and trying to ram through unpopu­lar measures invariably backfires. Perhaps the retreat on the Guthi bill will make PM Oli realize the power of the collective.

 Nepal’s civil liberties are hard-won. During the 104 years of the Rana rule, there was no such thing as freedom of expression for common people. Education was out of their reach and foreign travel completely banned. When the Ranas were forced out, there was a brief respite from authoritarianism in the 1950s, before King Mahen­dra again usurped civil rights in 1960. It would be 30 more years before the gradual opening up of political and social space again. Finally, following another long struggle, absolute monarchy was formally abolished in 2008 and complete sovereignty vested in the people.

As people would from then on be governed solely by their representatives, never again would civil liberties be curtailed, it was hoped. Yet more than a decade later there continues to be a palpable threat to free speech. The two-third communist government of KP Oli has been coming up with one regulation after another to curb press freedom. It censors the internet. It makes a sweeping decision on ownership of traditional guthis in the country without even consulting the stakehold­ers. Most recently, it arrested a comedian on the dubi­ous charge of stepping on public sensibilities.

The communists the world over and throughout history have been high on discipline. (Lenin famous­ly wanted to maintain ‘iron discipline’ in his Bolshevik Party.) They like structures. But it is difficult to give defi­nite structures to a diverse society like Nepal’s. In fact, any democratic society is riddled with contradictions, and the more diverse it is, the more contradictions there will be. But rather than taking it as a natural part of the democratic process and trying to manage these contradictions in a democratic way, the federal govern­ment seems intent on imposing its own vision of a silo-like, monochromatic society.

Voted in with an overwhelming mandate, the ruling communists claim unsullied democratic credentials. They are no Bolsheviks of yesteryears, they protest. Having long fought for the cause of democracy, they claim to be aware of their duty to protect people’s free­doms. They rather blame the recent public backlash against the government as part of the opposition’s dirty politicking. But no one’s fooled. Rather than issuing empty promises to safeguard people’s rights and free­doms, the government would do itself and the coun­try a huge favor if it refrained from restricting people’s constitutional right to free speech. If they want to be heard, it is the democratic government’s duty to listen to them. The undemocratic way of trying to muzzle them is self-sabotage.

 Two recent instances illustrate a signature shortcoming of Nepal’s post-1990 demo­cratic dispensation. In his budget speech for 2019/20, Finance Minister Yubaraj Kha­tiwada increased the yearly discretionary spending cap of federal MPs in their respective constituencies from Rs 40 million to Rs 60 million. The Constituency Development Fund has been arbitrarily increased, at the insistence of MPs from across the political spectrum, even though this fund has historically been grossly misspent. People’s chosen representatives conveniently ignored the pressure this year from the media and the common folks not to do so.

Only a handful of opposition MPs criticized the increase in MPs’ spending capacities. True, Nepali Congress leaders were unanimous in their public objection to the “populist” and “wasteful” budget. Yet most of them were curiously absent from one place from where they could get the government to rethink its budgetary priorities. The ongoing discussions in the federal parliament over the recently presented budget has turned into a farce, as speakers address the assembly without even a tenth of its 275 members in attendance. Most senior leaders of the ruling and opposition parties are missing, as are most ministers.

Sadly, this kind of shameless dereliction of duty and open loot of state coffers by people’s chosen representatives have been a constant over the past three decades. The political system changed, as did the composition of the parliament, which is now a lot more inclusive than it was even a decade ago. And yet the self-serving nature of our MPs remains the same. Upon seeing the empty chairs in the parliament on such important occasions, people are bound to ask: Why will the parliamentarians turn up after they have already gotten all the money they want? Such cynicism of the parliamentary process is troubling. It reflects a deep mistrust of the political class, which only seems interested in enriching itself even if their country is going to the dogs.

A more charitable interpretation would be that our lawmakers are humans and it must be mighty difficult for them to refuse such large sums of money that come with few strings attached. Were we in their place, the vast majority of us would probably do the same. But the point is, we are not in politics, suppos­edly the highest public service. After taking the oath to selflessly serve the country and the people, this attempt of our MPs to suck their poor state dry is morally repre­hensible. In the long run, it is also detrimental to their political career.