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Nepal’s constitution offers a flawed concept of democracy. The current constitutional crisis is, in part, an exhibition of those flaws.

In this five-part series, I explore the elements that make our constitution inherently frail and call on civilians to build a truly apolitical (or non-political) movement to save it.

Part V: Civil Society

Rabindra Mishra, a newly minted politician who heads the Bibeksheel Sajha Party, offers one of the best recent illustrations of the vulnerability of Nepal’s constitution. In a recent think piece, “Changing Course: Nation over Notion,” he calls for the “abolition of federalism by restructuring and strengthening local bodies,” and a “referendum on secularism.”

Mishra’s piece plays on the prevailing deep public discontent. He concludes, without any meaningful analysis, that federalism and secularism are to blame.

Mishra isn’t the only politician seeking to build a following by challenging Nepal’s constitution. Traditional and alternative political parties have used it to tap into public discontent. This is populism at its worst. Nepali citizens must push back against efforts to erode the legitimacy of the constitution and mobilize, neutrally without political affiliation, to strengthen the national charter.

Nepal’s constitution is flawed in many ways. A parliamentary system that makes the prime minister immune from accountability to parliament, for example. A federal structure that aims to empower minorities but wistfully longs for a strong majority at the center. Our constitution is far from perfect and has plenty of room for improvement. But it is our best option. What we need is an apolitical civilian movement that can restore the faith in our constitution and build a stronger democracy through deeper civil society engagement.

As civilians, we must stop associating a single party majority in parliament with stability, and a coalition government with instability. Our stability must now come from parliament where no party holds a clear majority. Nepal’s federal structure, its electoral system of direct and proportional representation, means that a single party is unlikely to ever win a majority in the central parliament.

Besides, truly representing Nepal’s diversity requires the inclusion of different parties and interests. This diversity makes a clear majority highly unlikely. We must stop encouraging the consolidation of parties and instead, push for greater diversity. Coalitions of political parties represent the best source of our future stability.

As civilians, we must find ways to end the involvement of political parties in local government. Our local wards and blocks cannot be a place for political parties to build their organizational strength. Grassroots citizens, not political parties, must be elected to and run local governments. As civil society, we must encourage, support and finance non-political, independent civilian candidates to run for local offices.

Across the country, there are many civil society movements, working to highlight a wide range of issues, such as corruption, policy, social injustice, and environmental degradation. They employ different means across social media; campaigns, protests and even hunger strikes. Overall, however, these movements have failed to coalesce. As scattered initiatives, they fail to generate enough sustained impact.  

Civil society engagement requires funding. Without financial resources, civil society engagement remains at best a loose conglomeration of like-minded individuals, perhaps each honorable in their own way but lacking the ability to collectively build sustained pressure for change.

How can civilians generate enough domestic funding and resources to support diverse and meaningful movements for change? First, of course, through contributions from businesses. Large and small businesses must consider systematically contributing to civil society movements. For how long will businesses, particularly large ones, continue to fund only political brokers? Even a fraction of that funding diverted to civil society movements could lead to more lasting and sustained change in a way that benefits everyone, businesses the most. Only with consistent funding resources can such civilian movements work more systematically for change.  

Second, there are many inspiring civil society leaders across Nepal who have remained as civilians, not joined a political party or started one. These leaders must do more, not just to promote their ideas, but also to build organizations. Movements cannot be easily funded, civil society organizations and institutions can.  

Burning our constitution, eroding its legitimacy, or seeking a populist referendum will not remove our disillusionment. As civilians, we cannot ever stop our politicians from being politicians. But we can make sure that our country runs smoothly and prospers despite the failure of political leadership.

[email protected]; Views are personal.

A bitter truth: We Nepalis are horrible at budgeting and saving. We first spend and then we plan to save. Regardless of whether you are making a couple of thousands or hundreds of thousands, if you are not properly budgeting and saving, you will live with a financial crunch throughout your life.“Spend first save later" is the adage we Nepalis live by. It is a grim reality of our society. Any financial planner true to her profession shall strictly proscribe this practice as it invariably leads to no or miniscule returns.

We live in a country where we struggle even for basic needs, which our government is incompetent to provide, be that water, electricity or medical assistance. Just look at the recent pandemic and vaccine fiasco! Medical bills are piling up and people are taking out loans even as their body ails, which is the worst nightmare for anyone.

I understand that business people will never have cash in their hands. And the theory is that if you have a lot of hard cash, you are going wrong somewhere in investing and growing your business. There are different perspectives on investments and returns. We are not discussing that. We are rather getting into the basics of saving and how it can be done without thinking of it as rocket science.

If you listen to successful people, they have one thing in common: the willingness to sacrifice, for a future gain. It is fascinating to hear a Microsoft, Apple or Tesla starting out from a garage to a billion-dollar-company but we do not care to hear about how every penny was counted and saved. So what is the success formula for savings? Borrowing the words of Warren Buffet, the legendary investor and world’s richest man, “Don’t save what is left after spending; spend what is left after saving.” 

The magic seems to lie in savings first. It eliminates the problem of not having enough to save at the end of the month. Saving first also ensures that we are forced to budget and develop frugality in our spending. It is not about how much you earn but how much you save before you spend. It’s not so much about earning in thousands or lakhs but more about saving first and budgeting our expenses. That’s the key to saving for the future and securing our financial freedom.

But how do we start? What I have learned from American investment guru Dave Ramsay is to save $1,000 (Rs 120,000 approx) every year as an emergency fund. This fund should not be cracked open for a holiday or to buy that Michael Kor mink coat from the fall collection or that sofa set you have been eyeing for some time. This is for your medical emergencies. 

I know a lot of you are giving me big eyes as it seems like a lot of money and I bet it is. Still, I say it is not impossible. The only thing that we might have to cut down on is the money we spend eating out. For example, if you are spending Rs 200 a day while having lunch outside during office hours, you can actually carry your lunch from home. This is an unseen saving that we do everyday. The only hard work is that you have to cook your lunch before leaving for work. Even if you save Rs 100 a day, that is five days a week, making it Rs 500 per week. That makes it Rs 2,000 a month, which doesn’t seem like a big amount but when you do that for a year, you get Rs 24,000. 

If you really want to save, the biggest sacrifice is to quit smoking and drinking. At an average, a restaurant charges you Rs 550 for a bottle of beer that costs you Rs 275 in retail. Now if you really want to drink, you can drink at home. The beer will give you the same kick that it gives you at home or at the cafe.

That said, it is absolutely okay to go out for dinner once in a while. That again is after you have done your savings. We all deserve to celebrate achievements.

Let’s assume you smoke ten sticks of cigarettes a day, which will cost you Rs 145 on average. That will total to Rs 1,015 per week since you won’t take an off on the weekends. The total amount is Rs 4,350 each month, totalling to Rs 52,200 a year. You thus might be able to buy the phone you have been eyeing on just by stopping smoking.

These are just examples. There might be so many ways we can adjust to save. We just need to understand the difference between need and want. Each time you look at something, you should ask this question: Do I need it or want it?

In the end, I want to quote from George Calson’s book ‘The Richest Man of Babylon’: “The first copper you save is the seed from which your tree of wealth shall grow.” 

“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.

Nepal’s constitution offers a flawed concept of democracy. The current constitutional crisis is, in part, an exhibition of those flaws.

In this five-part series, I explore the elements that make our constitution inherently frail and call on civilians to build a truly apolitical (or non-political) movement to save the constitution.

Part IV: Discrediting parliament 

The gavel has fallen. The Supreme Court has spoken. In a decision that will reverberate through the ages, it instructed the President to reinstate Parliament and appoint Sher Bahadur Deuba as the prime minister.

UML and CPN (Maoists Centre) had jointly won a commanding majority in parliament. They were expected to govern smoothly for the full term as a unified party. Instead, they have now had an acrimonious divorce. The UML itself looks headed for a vertical split.

All this instability, political bickering, and grandstanding have come in the middle of a global pandemic that has scorched Nepal just as much. Nepalis have always accepted a base level of political instability given the incessant squabbling for power. Even by that standard, the recent turmoil has been extraordinary.

The Supreme Court ruling will be weighed and debated for a long time. But outside, to the people of Nepal, the impact of the recent political chaos had already left a lasting imprint, long before the court’s decision.

The political chaos—its proceedings in particular—has helped discredit Nepal’s parliamentary system in public opinion, undermining our faith in the system. It would be hard to find a person in Nepal, other than those affiliated to political parties, who now believes that either the judiciary, the executive or the legislature—the entire government of Nepal—can really yield lasting political stability for the country’s progress and development.

The system may not have been at fault. The absence of leadership, the narrow self-interest of politicians, the transactional nature of political relationships, and the lack of diversity in ideology among political parties may all haven been responsible. But none of that really matters.

The view from the street is simple. We blame politicians and political parties, but in one form or another, we end up concluding that this system is hopeless. What we need, we say wistfully, is stronger leadership. That wistfulness often borders on a melancholic longing for the monarchy, or worse, an outright desire for a benevolent dictator.

That is exactly where our constitution begins to fray. Around the world, a constitution’s strength comes from its legitimacy. The majority must believe that the constitution is still the best instrument for delivering results most beneficial to the country. That belief grants the constitution its legitimacy.

A constitution fundamentally lacking in legitimacy becomes no more than a treatise. It could be backed by military power, which makes it a soft military dictatorship. It could even contain elections, which would make it no more than an election-only democracy. Without legitimacy, the constitution lacks its core strength and will remain inherently unstable. One little spark could ignite a revolution and force the constitution to be rewritten.    

This is the current state of Nepal’s constitution. It already lacks legitimacy. As public disenchantment grows with our political system—the failures of our parliament, the courts, the president, and the military—that legitimacy is further eroded.

This erosion of legitimacy of Nepal’s political system is not accidental. It isn’t instigated from abroad. The Chinese or the Indians, who are often held responsible for all our political failings, are not instigating this from their capitals.

There is a systematic and intentional campaign to discredit Nepal’s parliamentary democracy. The easiest way to accomplish this is by pitting one political leader against another. It is hard to establish, for example, what the recent political crisis was about, except that key leaders within UML and Maoist Center were unhappy with each other. As there was no ideological tussle, to the public the political squabbling and resulting chaos is only about control of power. This view leads to public disenchantment, disillusionment, and erosion of legitimacy.

Whether the discrediting campaign is being directed by someone or has now snowballed to take a course of its own is hard to tell. As citizens, our concern could focus on the erosion of legitimacy—our wistful longing for a better system of governance. This is where we must fight back.

Nepal urgently, desperately needs a citizen’s movement to save our constitution. 

[email protected]; Views are personal