Dear Balen,

There is something genuinely rare about your rise to power. A young, educated, and energetic leader commanding nearly a two-thirds majority in parliament is not something Nepal sees often. The country’s battered democratic imagination had grown weary of recycled faces and predictable betrayals. So when you arrived, many people, not just your hardcore supporters, quietly hoped that this time might be different.

Two months in, the picture is more complicated than hope allows. The demolition drives, the arrests of high profile figures without what many consider adequate legal grounding, the controversy surrounding the appointment of the Chief Justice, the apparent sidelining of your parliamentary engagement, the silence on runaway price hikes, the mass removal of appointees through ordinances without any immediate plan to replace them, these have left universities and public institutions in a state of drift. Add to this a foreign policy posture that has made Nepal’s neighbors and other friendly countries uneasy, and you begin to understand why voices beyond the usual opposition, civil society, academics, and ordinary citizens have grown concerned.

Your supporters call it disruption. Your critics call it destruction without direction. Both are partly right, and that is precisely the problem.

This is not a piece written to join a chorus of condemnation. It is written out of genuine belief that you can still govern differently, peacefully, and in a healthy manner. Here is how.

Unite, rather than sort people into camps

The framing of Nepal as a battle between “reformists” and “forces favoring status quo” is politically convenient but socially corrosive. It gives supporters a simple story to tell, but it also licenses the government to treat every critic as an enemy of change. A nation with a fractured history does not need a new axis of polarization. It needs a leader willing to speak to people across the divide, not to win them over rhetorically, but to actually listen. The willingness to build consensus, even with those you disagree with, is not weakness. It is what separates a statesman from a politician.

Deal with the past, lead with the future

Accountability for past wrongs matters enormously. Nobody is asking you to forget or forgive what came before. But accountability delivered through spectacle, arrests that feel punitive before they are proven, demolitions that hit the vulnerable alongside the powerful, risks substituting theatre for justice. A futuristic leader holds the past accountable through institutions, not impulse. The goal should be a Nepal where the rule of law is rebuilt so methodically that it outlives any single government. That takes patience and discipline, not a hammer.

Put the people at the bottom at the centre

It is easy for any government, including a self-styled reformist one, to get caught up in the optics of action. Demolitions photograph well. Arrests make headlines. But the people living a vulnerable life for decades will not benefit from these actions both in the short run and long run unless government action produces tangible results. Thus, your government’s policies and programs should start from their reality, not from a preset vision imposed on it.

Lead with compassion, not just conviction

Conviction is essential in a leader. But conviction without compassion produces a government that is right in its own eyes while being indifferent to the human cost of its decisions. The use of security forces should be an exceptional response to exceptional circumstances, not a routine tool of governance. When the state deploys force as its first language, it communicates something about who it thinks the real threat is. In most cases in Nepal, it is not the urban poor whose homes are being torn down.

Stop relying heavily on info that comes your way

Every prime minister’s biggest vulnerability is the distance between themselves and the actual lives of citizens. Advisors filter. Officials manage impressions. Briefing notes flatten complexity. You, who built your original credibility on the ground in Kathmandu as a mayor, should know this better than most. The answer is not to stop listening to experts. It is to make sure those experts are not the only voices in the room. Regular, unmediated interaction with ordinary people, not in staged events, but in genuine conversation, produces the kind of understanding that no report can replicate.

Be dynamic, not just decisive

There is a difference between having a vision and having a playlist. A playlist assumes you already know the right order of things. A vision is willing to update itself when reality pushes back. Nepal is a country of extraordinary internal complexity, geographic, ethnic, economic, and political. A government that follows a predetermined script, however well intentioned, will eventually find that the script does not fit the scene it is trying to play out in. Real leadership reads the room constantly.

Make decisions on evidence, not ideology

This one is simple but it matters more than anything else on this list. The reforms Nepal needs most are not ideologically controversial. Better service delivery, functional public institutions, transparent procurement, a judiciary that works, these are not left wing or right wing ambitions. They are just competent in governance. Decisions grounded in evidence and implemented with accountability build the kind of legitimacy that survives beyond a single electoral cycle. Decisions made on instinct or preconceived conviction, however popular in the short run, tend to unravel.

The majority is an opportunity, not a permission slip

You have something almost no Nepali leader before you has had in the same measure, a genuine democratic mandate and the parliamentary numbers to act on it. That is a gift that comes with a profound responsibility. It means you do not need to govern through fear, force, or polarisation. You can afford to be generous, inclusive, and patient. You can afford to be the leader who restores some trust in the idea that the government can actually work for people rather than against them.

Nepal did not just elect a builder. It elected someone it believed could repair the broken faith in leadership itself. That faith is still alive, just barely, and it is yours to either honour or squander. History will not remember you for the walls you tore down. It will remember you for what you chose to build in their place, and whether the most forgotten Nepali people felt it in their own life. The country is watching you, Balen. More importantly, it is still hoping.