Illusion of control

For those who have been follow­ing Prime Minister KP Oli, he sounds bold, confident and optimistic. He strongly believes that after he became the prime minister things have dramatically changed for the better. For example, he believes that despite minor incidents, corruption is under control. He believes that political stability has indeed given us law and order and that development has taken pace.

Unfortunately, the reality is just the opposite. Corruption is wide­spread, not only in volume, but in scale as well. Impunity is ram­pant. People are getting angrier with the government and frustra­tions are beginning to mount. Not just the federal government, the provincial and local governments, too, are losing public trust already. If recent events around the rape and murder of Nirmala Pant are any sign, it is clear that more public protests will follow.

There is increasing evidence that PM Oli does not actually control the council of ministers. On many occasions, he is misinformed and misled by his own cabinet members and advisers. To then watch PM Oli confidently analyze the situation based on false information further entrenches the belief that he is lead­ing and acting in accordance with those false realities.

A report in the journal Psycholog­ical Science highlights how power, once attained, is maintained or lost. The authors note that “positive illusions can be adaptive, helping power holders make the seemingly impossible possible.”

The basic idea here is that when a leader harbors false illusions of power and control that can give them the confidence needed to make difficult policy decisions, push for headstrong legislative or policy implementation and take on major reform processes. For us, however, while there is evidence to show that KP Oli is harboring such positive illusions, there is no marked act that he has made to signify that per­haps those illusions are pushing us towards speedy and bold reforms.

Instead, as further argued in the Psychological Science article, we see that perhaps the “relation­ship between power and illusory control” might be contributing “directly to losses in power,” by causing our leader, KP Oli, to “make poor choices”. This would mean that while Oli is harboring illusions of control, they are leading him to simply exercise his power and flex muscle rather than making positive strides in core and essential gover­nance areas. In essence, in our case, it is increasingly looking like, as the authors of the article state, that “the illusion of personal control might be one of the ways in which power often leads to its own demise.”

So far what we see is that KP Oli’s actions are having an undesired effect on the people. However, he seems rather unaware of shifting attitudes among the public and is showing no sign of course correc­tion. It is indeed a case of not having the facts right, not being told or sim­ply being in denial. That mindset has led Oli to disregard comments and criticism from all corners, opting to take a defensive approach to his style of governance. Over time, that will lead to his own demise.

What is particularly interesting about the theory of illusory con­trol is that it applies differently to leaders on the basis of their back­grounds. The aforementioned report authors point out that lead­ership that emerges suddenly from poor and uneducated backgrounds, “when engulfed by a sense of illu­sory control, generally make terrible decisions.” In Nepal’s case, that rings so true, and it goes beyond the leadership of this current gov­ernment.

After 1990, though we have had many elected governments, incom­petence and inability of leaders to keep their pulse on public sentiment have been defining features. Even this two-thirds majority government is facing a similar crisis. It must then not be a surprise that the vast majority of Nepal’s ruling class hail from poor and uneducated back­grounds and proactively tend to internalize notions of illusory con­trol. So much for achieving the seemingly impossible through false notions of control! o