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Trump is an exception, not the norm. This is all I can say to the status quoists in Nepal who have made Trump a weapon against the idea of a change to a directly-elected presidential system. The day Trump got elected in 2016, the world was shocked. But America was fractured, probably, irreparably. America, the self-declared torchbearer of democracy, seems to have little idea of the damage the Trump phenomenon has done to the cause of democracy the world over. And it has definitely given fuel to the idea that democracy for the sake of democracy should not be made a holy cow. The fast progress of China, with a different but robust system, is adding fire to the fuel.

I am no admirer of the Chinese model, but I have my reasons for advocating directly-elected president for Nepal. I believe this will make Nepal more democratic, not less, fundamentally changing the nature of party politics in Nepal. And without uprooting the deep-rooted blind (almost religious) loyalty to political parties, we can’t hope for any progress towards a real democracy. The society is divided along party lines. Over the years, the fault-lines have been deeply engraved into our cultures, norms and rituals. Even in marriages and last rites affiliation to political parties take precedent.  

Our socio-political ecosystem is murky. General public depend on party middlemen for all kinds of work. Starting from normal administrative paperwork like getting one’s citizenship card, to complex issues like getting grants for projects, political affiliations take center-stage. And the rudimentary web of traditional privileges and discriminations is superimposed on this political arrangement. The caste hierarchy plays out strong, too, within the political system thus practiced. In a nutshell, deep-rooted loyalty to political parties is leading to non-democratic power structure and a sense of impunity among the politicians.

Recent displays of disgusting power struggles within the ruling party, the bending of rules with utter disregard for the spirit of the constitution or will of the people, and insensitivity to criticism, all point to a failure of the present parliamentary system in Nepal. Years of political experimentation and compromises have made Nepal a patchwork without a clear vision. How will the directly-elected presidential system fundamentally change the nature of Nepali politics? 

The kind of political decay Nepal has been witnessing for many years has rendered our constitutional institutions weak, and political parties have subverted the spirit of democracy by buying off courts, media, private sector, and organized citizens through deep strategic and systematic investments. These bulwarks of democracy have been compromised. The result is this eerie silence and blind reverence we see today. 

No alarm bell goes off amid such a decay, as there is no single moment—for instance, a coup or a declaration of martial law—that can be understood as a step towards dictatorship. In Nepal, there has hardly ever been an independent civil society. And those few who oppose a different course are either labeled opportunists or dismissed as extremists who have no patience for the slow and steady democratic progress. Everything takes time is the repeated excuse of the status quoists in Nepal. But sadly, their own statement is a testimony to the fact that even an irreparable decay is gradual progress and raising alarm bells right at the beginning is a must. 

All in all, Nepal is on the highway to hell. The parliamentary system and deep-rooted nexus of political parties are the main culprits. In the absence of strong democratic norms, the idea that buying out a dozen MPs or so is enough to make or break a government, will keep fueling the idea of misadventure in top politicians and breed systemic instability. This, in turn, will make positional authority of some senior leaders so strong that they cannot be challenged by any force under the sun, and if they join hands, they gain powers almost heavenly in nature—they, in fact, come to be above the law of the land. 

A directly-elected presidential system, on the other hand, will lead to a more robust system of political parties that support performance and merit as the parties will be forced to nominate popular candidates as government head. Nepal will continue to add 10-15 percent new voters every time over the next few decades. And this number can sway any election. But under the present system, with the parties hijacking the nomination process, this people power becomes insignificant.

No previous ‘world war’ or ‘pandemic’ had threatened humanity as much as the current Covid-19 crisis. Even the Second World War, the mother of all wars, wasn’t exactly a global affair. Fighting on behalf of Britain, around 24,000 Nepalis were killed, wounded or missing in action, according to Prem Uprety. The war also marked the watershed when western goods and ideas started filtering into Nepal along with the returning Lahures. Yet in that time and age of limited communication and Nepal’s policy of ‘splendid isolation’, a war that otherwise claimed 70-85 million folks was hardly a matter of common concern for dirt-poor Nepalis. Not so during the current Covid-19 crisis that has affected nearly everyone here. 

A Namibian is as affected by the pandemic as is a Norwegian or a Nepali, and the suffering is imminently relatable. Rich and poor follow the same safety protocol: social distancing, masks, hand sanitizers. I was recently talking to a Nepali friend of mine in Japan and he says rather than obsessing over his family’s health, he is more worried about his economic status, just like most Japanese. Remarkably, this corporate man’s concerns in Tokyo have come to reflect those of a rikshaw-puller in Kathmandu. They also fit perfectly with a recent Pew survey suggesting the Americans worry more about Covid-19’s economic fallouts than they do about its health upshots. 

The irrationality around the virus is also universal. Turn on CNN and you may see a report on how North Carolinians are being ‘highly irresponsible’ in openly flouting social distancing and mask norms, when exactly the same is happening in Nepal. Before long, globalization stood for opening of borders and minds, symbolized by free flows of goods and ideas. Yet for the Covid generation, it is as much about free flow of paranoia and disinformation. 

When Donald Trump pushes his scientists to take short cuts to a vaccine, we realize the faulty jabs could create universal misery. We are hooked to American general election as another Trump triumph could spell a disaster for the globe. We also worry about the resurgence of the virus in well-stocked Europe and wonder how we will ever control it here with our scant resources. And the rates of anxiety and depression have gone through the roof, again right around the globe. 

Recent surveys in China and the US suggest people there are etching to travel in 2021, come what may. Even in Nepal both domestic and international flights are up and running already. Frankly, I too can’t wait to dust off my travel shoes.  

But the next time I travel abroad—whenever that might be—I can be damned sure the people of the place I visit, however privileged, will have faced exactly the same plight that I did, for months on end. This might make me a little more empathetic. It will also make my jaunts a little less exotic. For now, I really understand that our outward differences aside, people the world over are on the same choppy waters. Moreover, the oarsmen we are relying on to see us safely ashore are singularly selfish and incompetent.    

I got a new puppy recently. When my mother entered my bedroom she said: “It stinks in here.” The puppy had taken several pee breaks in a corner of my room, so I knew she was right. I went into my bathroom and right up on the top shelf, a previous tenant had left a nice plastic bottle full of bleach cleaner. It had a bright lemon neon sticker on it, with the helpful suggestion that a capful of the liquid in four liters of water would cure all my ills.

Although I haven’t used industrial cleaners in decades (I prefer soapnut, neem and lemon peel), I immediately pulled it down and poured the capful in a bucket. The white foam rose in a satisfying swirl. As I mopped my floor, I had a feeling of virtuosity. If cleanliness is next to godliness, I was somewhere close to paradise. The sickly perfume gave me a heady sense of accomplishment.

Immediately, however, I could tell something was wrong. An acrid smell from the mixture rose up and entered my nose. I felt a scratchy feeling at the back of my mouth from the fumes, and after a minute my throat ached. The cleaner had come with this soothing assurance: No need to wipe afterwards, just leave it as it is. But as I lifted my shoe, I could hear a crackling sound which told me a layer of chemicals was sticking to my sole.

I opened the door to see why it was so quiet outside (was the puppy eating the electric wires?) and the dogs rushed in. I watched appalled as the puppy sat down in a puddle of wet bleach. Within seconds, it had rolled around in several patches of wet floor. For about 10 minutes afterwards, it ran maniacally back and forth, chewing up my curtains, pulling off the mop’s cotton strands, and biting the other dog.

My mop left a bucket full of black water. At the back of my mind I couldn’t help thinking the liquid was a miraculous solution to my dirt problem. It was hard not to think that the bleach was a holy concoction of hygiene, necessary in a pandemic when germs lurked in every corner, waiting to attack.

This is how the industry which sells us cleaning products works on our minds. We are not good people with a connection to the divine till we’ve bleached our floors. Yet researchers have shown this germicidal blitzkrieg can wipe out our microorganisms on which the pyramid of life rests. Unicellular lifeforms like bacteria and virus form the food of microscopic sea creatures, the fish eat the small amoeba, the big fish eat the little fish, then the big fish is eaten by the mammals, including humans.

Yet we are unaware of how virus and bacteria form the basis of our lives. We are told by the chemical industries that all of these lifeforms must be eliminated—through bleaches, laundry powder, pesticides, paint thinners, etc. Chemicals in every possible molecular combinations now make up the blocks of modern life. Most, if not all, are toxic and lethal to lifeforms our eyes cannot see. The chemicals change the behavior of our children and elderly people, giving us cancer, causing life-threatening allergies, and affect our lives in many other unseen ways.

President Trump was mocked for suggesting that bleach should be introduced into the human body to kill the coronavirus. The fact he saw this liquid as a miracle “medicine” is not an accident. America’s chemical industry has worked hard to create the notion that chlorine-based cleaners and solvents are healing, good, and holy.

Chlorine is known to be carcinogenic. Yet drinking water is chlorinated in modern, advanced Western societies. The quantity is minute, people are assured, and its only action is to kill the bad germs. We have no idea how much damage these vast swathes of chlorinated water have done to wildlife.

Chlorine may be a sacrament for modern cultures, dripped religiously onto the floors where babies play, in much the way as holy water is dripped onto the babies getting baptized in Christian churches. People in Western cultures feel the same sense of safety and protection from both chlorine and baptism water. But we must never forget that nothing which wipes out the basis of life is either ethical, moral, good, or holy.

I theorize one factor for the high death rates from coronavirus in Western cultures is this cult of “cleanliness.” By wiping out the macrophages which eat malefic viruses, Western medical professionals are eliminating a valuable ally from their arsenal of medicine. I read an article about the river Ganga and how it had this marvelous capacity to self-cleanse and get rid of cholera bacteria after a few hours. The scientists theorized it was the macrophages in the Ganga—the macrophages which fed on the dirt of a river riddled with sewage and corpses.

When a Nepali man coughs and spits on the ground, should we tell him to stop? Certainly if we want to stop TB. But maybe not if we want to stop the coronavirus. There is a high possibility that the macrophages in his sputum eats the coronavirus.

Nepal is witnessing a steady rise in the Covid-19 infection cases, which is bringing the government under intense pressure and criticism. All three levels of governments are under public scrutiny for their inadequate planning and response. The monsoon havoc has worsened the pandemic’s impact. Although the monsoon was predicted to be normal this year, incidents of disasters like flashfloods and landslides remained high. For a country that has regularly suffered from water-induced disasters during the monsoon, Nepal still seems woefully underprepared.

Sindhupalchowk district in Bagmati Province, which was among the hardest hit by the 2015 earthquake, has been among the worst affected by disasters during the monsoons. This year was no exception. Incessant rainfall since July, triggering landslides and flashfloods have ravaged settlements in Ghumthang, Jugal, Lidi, and Bahrabise among others across the district, killing over 75 people and displacing over 500 households. On September 3, a flashflood in the Dhorpatan area of Baglung district triggered a landslide, destroying 80 households and leaving 53 partially damaged. At least 16 people were killed and 22 are still missing.

While the flashfloods and landslides cause deaths and destruction in the hills, the Tarai districts suffer from inundation. This year, at least 6,320 families have been affected, including 2,500 displaced families, by floods in the Kailali district of Sudurpaschim Province. According to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, at least 273 people have been killed and 199 injured, due to water-induced disasters across the country this year. At least 92 people remain missing.

Apart from water-induced disasters, Nepal also falls under a high seismic activity zone, with young Himalayas forming a major faultline between the Eurasian and Indian continental plate. Five year since the devastating earthquake that killed more than 10,000 in 2015, the country continues to experience aftershocks. This week’s major jolt came early morning on Sept 16. It was close to 6.0 in magnitude, with the epicenter in Sindhupalchowk district. Nepal’s susceptibility means there has to be advanced preparedness. Even amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the government at all three levels must urgently update their disaster preparedness and response systems. The traumatic experience of being caught off-guard in 2015 has taught us that it is unwise to wait for the disaster to strike before jolting into action.

Take, for instance, the Monsoon Preparedness and Response Plan 2020. The plan, updated every year to manage the monsoon mayhem in the country, had incorporated Covid-19 response and management alongside. It focused on maintaining physical distancing, provisioning PPE for responders, disinfecting emergency shelters, as well as testing affected victims in shelters. However, the plan was approved by the government only on June 19, a week after the monsoon had already arrived on June 12. This makes the whole process of planning seem ritualistic, with little urgency and will to implement. The fact that we are witnessing a daily spike in the Covid-19 cases, despite the implementation of Covid-19 Nepal Preparedness and Response Plan 2020 since April, shows our approach to disaster preparedness and response remains inadequate, if not flawed.

One major bottleneck in government response to disasters is lack of basic coordination across its layered bureaucracy. The delegation of disaster management responsibilities to the sub-national governments, under the Local Governance Operation Act 2017, was expected to make the response at the local level swift and effective. However, inadequate financial support, lack of technically equipped human resources, and general lack of collaboration and coordination between different offices have undermined the impact of such positive policy provisions. This is evident in the weak Covid-19 response of the provincial and municipal governments. Lack of coordination between the provincial and municipal governments, and failure to timely relocate risk-prone settlement areas are also being blamed for the loss of lives and property due to landslides in Sindhupalchowk’s Lidi village.

It is imperative to shift our approach and thinking to disaster response, which remains reactive and focused on rescue and evacuation, setting up temporary shelters, and provisioning for relief measures. The worsening effects and intensity of disasters have exposed our limited emergency response capabilities, as well as our weak healthcare system that gets overwhelmed during national emergencies. Disaster preparedness and response must now include strengthening of relief response capacities, as well as health infrastructures at the local levels. Safe and secure stockpiling of food, drinking water, and medicines, along with other emergency goods must be a priority of every provincial and municipal government. Municipal governments must also identify large public spaces, to set-up emergency shelters and medical camps during disasters.

While the country continues to reel under an impending crisis, the decision by the federal government to introduce disaster risk financing to provide insurance for loss of property due to disasters is a step in the right direction. A multi-hazard approach to planning for more than one disaster, considering their inter-relationships and interactions, will go a long way in helping save lives and enhancing resilience.

Koirala and Shakya are researchers at Policy Entrepreneurs Incorporated (PEI)