Submit your Article

Nepali Congress leader Shekhar Koirala has said that the party made a mistake by giving a vote of confidence to Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal. During a meeting held at Anup Foodland in Battisputali on Sunday, Koirala said that though they had said during the party’s executive committee meeting that the vote of confidence should not be given to the Prime Minister, it was endorsed by majority. “We had said during the party’s executive committee meeting that the vote of confidence should not be given to the Prime Minister. We said that Nepali Congress should play the role of opposition. But, we were compelled to give the vote after the majority took the decision,” a leader, who attended the meeting, said quoting Koirala. Though Prime Minister Dahal is positive towards the Nepali Congress, the ruling coalition parties are not positive towards the Nepali Congress, Koirala said. That is why, the issue of giving the President to the Nepali Congress is no longer in PM Dahal’s hand. Koirala said that now the issue of giving a vote of confidence to Prime Minister Dahal will be discussed in the Central Committee meeting scheduled for January 29.

Puspha Kamal Dahal has secured an overwhelming majority in Nepal's parliament, with 268 votes out of 275 members, which is unprecedented in the country’s history. For the first time in Nepal, there will be no official opposition in the House of Representatives, thanks to the Nepali Congress’ decision to support the ruling coalition in the vote of confidence. This move may have major implications for the integrity of democracy and its practice. In this context, how will the new leadership and fellow parliamentarians be able to address vulnerable economic conditions, foreign policy as well as new innovations in the field of Information Technology such as Machine Learning (ML) under Artificial Intelligence (AI)? This question is pertinent because ML has an important role in Political Science and International Relations (IR). ML in Nepali politics ML may be utilized in Nepali politics to evaluate vast quantities of data and forecast future political events, according to Chat GPT. This might involve examining political trends in Nepal, such as the possibility of political stability or instability, forecasting election results, finding trends in economic statistics, and gauging public opinion on important matters impacting the nation. Sentiment analysis of social media data is one way of applying ML to understand Nepali politics better. This may be used to monitor how public opinion evolves over time or to pinpoint the main concerns influencing public opinion on a certain subject. This can give political parties, candidates, and decision-makers critical information about the problems of the Nepali people and ways to address them properly. ML comes handy also in analyzing voting trends. Voting data may be analyzed using ML algorithms to spot trends, such as which demographic groups are most likely to support a specific candidate or party and what concerns are most significant for these groups. This can offer insightful information for political campaigns and aid in more effective message targeting. Economic challenges   Millions of people are leaving Nepal due to a bleak poor economic scenario resulting from a growing trade deficit brought on by excessive imports, inflation, and increased government spending on oil imports as well as other multidimensional factors affecting the economy. The conditions will degrade further if Nepal slips into the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) gray list making the country unable to issue USD. This will hamper our foreign trade, affecting our borrowing capacity at the international level. While analyzing macroeconomic data, in mid-Dec 2022, Nepal Rastra Bank reported that the year-on-year consumer price inflation was at 7.38 percent, and non-food and service inflation increased to 8.59 percent. Remittance inflows grew 23 percent to Rs 480.5bn during the review period, and the current account recorded a deficit of Rs 37.91bn. The gross foreign exchange reserves grew by 6.3 percent and the overall foreign exchange reserves in US dollars climbed three percent. Economist Bishwash Gauchan states that remittances account for 57 percent of total foreign exchange profits and that there are no urgent government plans to boost or diversify the reserves. He suggests fundamental reforms and the implementation of a medium-to-long-term plan within the next 5-10 years to address these issues. The pills for these ills, per Gauchan, are these: The business sector must put in greater effort in Nepal and the economy should shift away from a credit-centric one, toward investments in the productive sector. Foreign policy challenges The China-led security architecture known as the Global Security Initiative (GSI), a counterweight to NATO, is putting increasing pressure on Nepal to join the initiative. In this context, Nepali President mistakenly took part in the GSI summit. The government has not spelt out its stance on the GSI, though Chinese government websites have made mention of ‘Nepal’s agreement with the concept of the Global Development Initiative (GDI) and GSI in terms of her participation and study’. All this points to some serious confusion about the Chinese initiative. Secondly, Chinese economic assistance is explicitly on loan basis (more than two percent), which is higher in terms of cost compared to western multilateral institutions. Recently, the Chinese side announced that the Pokhara International Airport is the flagship project of BRI, leaving Nepal government authorities puzzled as the airport was never part of the BRI. Thirdly, due to Nepal’s increment toward Debt to GDP (around 41 percent), the government is under pressure to reduce its debt by lobbying for concessional loans with the Chinese side. The rise of India with her mounting intimacy with the US, the EU and Japan on a number of fronts, including trade, technology, and military means Nepal may come under pressure to join the group because of India’s comparative advantage over Nepal. Joining the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) on non-strategic/non-military areas such as climate change, food security, trade and tech startups/unicorn may be an awesome idea as it may help to bolster Nepal’s development initiatives. Path ahead It is difficult to expect long-term policy changes and their implementation for development of Nepal, given the country's hyper-volatile political environment and unpredictable personalities, who come and go from positions as Prime Ministers or Ministers without having any prior education or experience in the relevant ministries. The hunger for power has now replaced all other political principles, leaving the nation in a precarious position amid geopolitical and technological growth (such as ML) in a world where Nepali leaders are uninformed. How will our new generation of lawmakers react to issues such as Cold War Season 2 (involving the US and China), which will seek to use Nepal as a proxy, AI & ML, Sino-Indian rivalry, and the world economic downturn. Here, some discussion related to ML in our newly formed parliament is appreciated, to begin with. Overall, ML has the potential to transform the area of Nepali politics by giving academics and political figures new resources for data analysis and scenario planning. ML may assist political players in better understanding the complex political and social phenomena and making more precise forecasts about upcoming political events, thanks to the availability of growing quantities of accessible data. Social media also played a key role in the election of personalities like Rabi Lamichhane and Gyanendra Shahi as lawmakers. The two lawmakers offer an example of how social media helps shape public opinion. At last, it is crucial for our foreign policy mandarins to successfully negotiate intricate connections we have with China, India, and the United States in light of the present political climate on the international stage. A continuous struggle between the US-led and Chinese-led development initiatives highlights the need for a sophisticated strategy in our interactions with the two powerful nations. Additionally, Nepal's geographic location presents a considerable barrier to commerce, since the population along its northern border with China (3.5m) is far lower than that along its southern border with India (UP and Bihar), which is home to more than 360m people. Because of this, it is crucial for those in leadership positions to be able to negotiate these difficult economic and foreign policy realities, provide a picture and implement it all within a span of 10-15 years. Let us hope for the best. The author is a PhD student of International Relations & Diplomacy at Tribhuvan University

Indira Rana Magar of Rastriya Swatantra Party has been elected as the deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives. She was elected as the deputy Speaker by securing 166 votes. Dana’s closest contender Mukta Kumari Yadav of the Nepali Congress garnered 97 votes. A total of 264 lawmakers cast their votes in the election held today, Speaker Devraj Ghimire said. Sobhita Gautam proposed Magar’s candidacy while Krishna Gopal Shrestha of the CPN-UML, Narayani Sharma of the CPN (Maoist Center) and Rajendra Lingden of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party seconded the proposal.      

The Tharu Commission is provided for in Part 27, Article 263 of the Constitution of Nepal. The Tharu Commission Act, 2017 has been enacted by the parliament incorporating topics like the qualifications of the chairperson and members of the Tharu Commission, status of vacancies, remuneration and service conditions, duties and rights. Bishnu Prasad Chaudhary was nominated the first chairperson of Tharu Commission four years ago. Pratik Ghimire of ApEx caught up with Chaudhary to know about the progress that the commission has made so far.

What are the major working areas of the Tharu Commission?

Our major work is to conduct research on the Tharu community, culture, food, language and all Tharu identity-based issues. We also research problems facing the Tharu community like health, employment and education. The commission regularly conducts awareness programs, skill- and education-based training and workshops for the welfare of the community. Moreover, we study plans and policies of the government and offer suggestions.

Does the government implement your recommendations?

I must say no. The government, to date, has not endorsed our suggestions. It has a major role to make our work effective, meaning that without coordination from the federal government, we can’t even be a proper watchdog. Everything we do, or we require (human resources and budget) to run the office is associated with the government. 

For research activities, we need a huge budget, which we don’t have. For example, data are the foremost requirement for any research but due to the lack of budget, we can’t collect data on our own, so we have to rely on secondary sources. These sources are neither reliable nor accessible. We regularly recommend the government on law and policy making, but they don’t listen. This doesn’t mean these commissions should get executive powers. The duties, responsibilities and rights that the constitution provides us are enough. The problems lie with the government. It must heed our suggestions, and provide us human resources and the budget.

How is the coordination of the commission with three tiers of the government?

Though we work with all three tiers of the government, we are in touch mainly with local and federal governments. For training and workshops, we coordinate with respective local governments while for policy-making, we consult with the federal government.  As we have our main office in Kathmandu and no liaison office outside, it's quite difficult to coordinate, both with the government and the people. 

These commissions don’t have executive powers. In light of ongoing debates about their relevance, do we really need them?

Without these commissions, there will be an identity crisis. In the public service field, Tharu communities were included in the Madhesi cluster after the 2007 revolution. At that time, the Tharu communities had no idea about this. After coming to know about the matter, they protested which resulted in the Tharu revolution—and establishment of the Tharu Commission. The commission has outlined identity-based problems and often warned the government and concerned bodies about the consequences of ignoring them.

Thanks to this, the Tharu cluster is determined for political representation in the Election Act. The Civil Service Act has not incorporated these issues. The Madhesi Commission and the Madhesi leaders have always wanted Tharu and Muslim communities included in their cluster, but we stand firm against it. We have our own history, culture and identity. We won’t let this die down.

How often do you coordinate with other commissions?

We have met with the Madhesi Commission a couple of times for problem identification and resolution of cluster issues. But they don’t want to coordinate with us; they want us in their cluster instead. It appears like they don’t respect our identity. But they should be clear that we are not the Madhesis.