It has been over two and a half months since CPN-UML Chair­man KP Sharma Oli became the country’s prime minister for the second time, following a thumping victory of his left alliance in last year’s elections. Soon after assum­ing office, he cobbled together a lean cabinet, comprised of relative­ly clean figures like Lal Babu Pan­dit and Gokarna Bista who have a proven record in government. Oli then brought important state organs like the Department of Mon­ey Laundering Investigation and the National Investigation Depart­ment under the direct purview of the PMO, apparently to make them more effective. His recent crack­down on cartels and syndicates of various hues has also been widely hailed. Moreover, there are signs that his dream of connecting Nepal with India and China through rail­ways could also materialize soon.

 

But despite such promising sig­nals, there is a lot of skepticism about the new prime minister’s intent. “Prime Minister Oli seems to be in a mood to centralize powers, which is antithetical to the spirit of federalism,” says Ujjwal Prasai, a writer. “He is using public support to strengthen himself, which is no different from what the Panchayat rulers used to do.”

 

Prasai points out how even the party-less Panchayat had survived for 30 years, as it enjoyed “a degree of public support”. In following a “tried and tested” method of cen­tralized governance, Prasai thinks PM Oli is taking the country on a dangerous path. “If there is one lesson of our failed experiment with Panchayat, it is that develop­ment is possible only with broad public participation in deci­sion-making.”

 

Words are not enough

 

Suman Dahal, a lecturer at Apex College in Old Banesh­wor, also sees a troubling pat­tern in how Oli is governing. “We hear the prime minister making big announcements. He says he will bring railways from India and Chi­na. He says he will end the reign of syndicates. But how do we know he is not saying these things off the top of his head?”

 

Dahal is not assured about the virtues of eradicating syndicates either. “What if removing the trans­port syndicates is not in the interest of the common people? I mean: Does the prime minister have hard data on how the removal of syndi­cates will actually help folks like us? Without proper homework, what if, for instance, transport fares go up rather than down?”

 

Upendra Gautam of China Study Center echoes Dahal’s doubts. “The prime minister’s announcement of a crackdown on various cartels and syndicates will be meaningless unless they are backed by strong and consistent action.”

 

Gautam cites how more devel­oped countries use different prox­ies to gauge the effectiveness of their government. “For instance, it is generally thought that if a country has well-enforced traf­fic rules, other public services also function effectively,” Gautam adds. “But the enforcement of traffic rules in Nepal is extremely lax. So what are the metrics with which we judge this government? Words are not enough.”

 

In the opinion of security analyst Geja Sharma Wagle, “This is perhaps the strongest government democratic Nepal has ever had. Yet it has been unable to make decisions commensurate with such power.”

 

What kind of decisions is Wagle talking about?

 

“Take the prime minister’s decision to bring the National Investigation Department and the Department of Money Laun­dering Investigation under the PMO. Having done so, he should have immediately set about drafting the requisite policies and regulations to make them work. Yet he has done nothing of the kind,” Wagle says.

 

Unintended consequences

 

Wagle brings up other unintend­ed consequences of the central­ization of power. “Now that the government’s intelligence-gather­ing unit has been brought under the PMO, the Home Ministry has been deprived of a crucial source of security-related information—with grave ramifications down the line,” he adds.

 

Prasai, the writer, believes the prime minister is pandering to people’s desire to consume more and more—to have wider roads, bigger airports and comfortable homes—without a broader debate on whether such an approach is in the country’s best interest. “PM Oli likes to talk about bringing railways from India and China but he seldom discloses their cost. Are such expen­sive railway links worth it?” he asks.

 

Gautam of China Study Center, for his part, says he has seen too many governments in Nepal in his lifetime, and how they have mis­erably failed people after promising so much at the outset. “So let us hope that this gov­ernment is different, but let us also wait a bit before we start trusting it.”

 

“All the while PM Oli has been projecting himself as a vision­ary,” says Asmita Verma, who has just completed her Masters in International Relations from Amity University in New Delhi. “But he has thus far unveiled no roadmap for the much-touted development and prosperity.”

 

Verma sees Oli’s gestures like addressing the country on the Nepali new year from Rara Lake and his adoption of children to educate them as nothing but “populist gim­micks, which he is quite good at.”

 

But what about foreign policy? Hasn’t the communist prime min­ister done a rather good job of balancing Nepal’s two important neighbors? “His overtures to the outside world are ill-prepared and incoherent, as if he is trying to balance himself on two different boats,” says Verma.

 

And then, Madhes

 

In contrast, Hari Bansh Jha, a former professor of economics at Tribhuvan University and currently a visiting fellow at India’s Observer Research Foundation, credits Oli for bringing a degree of warmth back to Nepal-India ties. But again, when it comes to the domestic sphere, he too believes “there has been no substantive change.”

 

“If PM Oli says that per capita income of Nepalis has grown along with our GPD, we have to remember that these are not overnight phe­nomena. The foundation for what­ever turnaround in the economy we are witnessing was laid before Oli became prime minister,” Jha says.

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He also thinks that the Oli govern­ment has ignored the Madhesi issue of constitution amendment, which would mean that the “Madhesis will continue to harbor a degree of resentment against Kathmandu.”

All in all, nearly everyone I talked to for this report—some cited, some not—seemed to agree that the all-powerful government of KP Oli could do much good. Some of his recent decisions have aroused a glimmer of hope. But people are not ready to believe him—not yet. These conversations also suggest that while Oli can perhaps afford to ignore the views of some members of the intelligentsia, as he recently suggested he would, he as the prime minister needs to pay attention to the hopes and fears of common folks .