The Himalayan Hindu Kingdom of Nepal is in the midst of a major churn, with most established political parties and their leaders becoming irrelevant. After Balendra ‘Balen’ Shah of the fledgling Rashtriya Swatantra Party (RSP) took charge as Prime Minister with a comfortable majority, major political formations seem to be heading for oblivion.
From K.P Sharma Oli of Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) to more liberal Sher Bahadaur Deuba of Nepali Congress and Nepal Communist Party headed by Pushpa Kamal ‘Dahal’ popularly known as Prachanda, seem to be in winding up mode.
All three top leaders of these parties have had their ‘hey’ days and are now waiting in the wings for rapper-turned-politician Balen to commit big mistakes in steering the Hindu majority in Nepal. And, that would open some political space for them to reconnect with their lost ‘peoples’ antenna.
In the last few weeks that ‘Balen’ has held fort, he’s got to the business of governing this country differently, if Nepalese media were to be believed. There are no high-sounding policy statements made by the RSP leadership that was returned to power with the key mandate of cleansing the system from corruption.
And the RSP seems to be keeping its options open and making plans to deliver governance over the next five years, a plan hitherto unknown before the Gen-Z agitation over the last three decades.
Without a bevvy of politicians strutting in their large black cavalcades that marked governance in the recent past, this new look government of youngsters seem determined to ‘deliver’ on the dot. Well, no political analyst is sticking out his neck to back this government that neither professes an ideology nor a policy paradigm. People in the narrow lanes of Kathmandu to the roadside kiosks of Pokhara seem to like it the way political silence has befell the Himalayan kingdom.
To date, the Prime Minister ‘Balen’ has spoken for over 3 – 5 minutes in public, let alone laying out elaborate plans of his government before its people, his constituency of youngsters.
What’s baffling the political spectrum in Nepal is this ‘deafening’ silence that’s eloquent and signals a change in top leadership that made bombastic statements at briefings each day.
Even President Xi Jinping’s apparatus of machinations seems to have hit a pause button while Beijing seems to be licking its wounds after having lobbied hard to get shades of Maoists and communists to form a government of its liking.
President Trump’s men at the South Asia desk also seem to have ‘gone slow for now’ given Washington DC’s pre-occupation with Iran and West Asia’s dynamic developments. There are already many firsts that the new government is known for, and people are talking about them.
It has been the norm for newly elected Prime Ministers to invite individual envoys ‘one-on-one’ ahead of engaging with the world leaders or different partner countries. Breaking away from unstructured and informal meetings with envoys of countries like China, the US, often without involvement of the foreign office, Prime Minister ‘Balen’ reset the policy approach.
On April 8, he held a meeting with envoys from 17 countries and formally hinted at a deliberate and coherent policy approach, though nothing concrete was put on the table. Some analysts hinted that it was a ‘strategic diplomatic reset’, the way envoys were told of a ‘development-oriented’, ‘nation first’ approach. Trust, mutual respect and shared prosperity were the key to diplomatic engagement that the new government laid out to international engagement.
Well, the ‘balanced approach’ to foreign policy formulation hinted by Prime Minister ‘Balen’ Shah has been read differently in circles across stakeholders.
One thing that seems to have been put to rest: Kathmandu will not play the ‘favourites’ game, hitherto the hallmark of diplomacy, depending on who held the reins in Kathmandu.
What has come as a big talking point is the acceptance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to his Nepali counterpart, Balen, to visit New Delhi for a bilateral engagement. Many analysts, both Indian and Nepali, think that it augurs well for the two neighbours whose engagement has been defined by shared civilizational, cultural and people to people ties.
Nepal’s expectations from Bharat may be expansive, given the intrinsic relations notwithstanding the US and Chinese factors that are coming into increasing play.
Still, Balen may utilise the opportunity to take things one by one with New Delhi and not rush through with a raft of proposals. A deliberate and structured approach may define both Nepal and Bharat relations going forward.
On home turf, Nepal’s Prime Minister seems to be earning big on the 100-point agenda based on his party’s manifesto rolled out before the polls. Rejecting VIP culture, detested by common Nepali folks, may be getting big applause for Balen’s government of youngsters. Setting up a high-powered panel headed by a former Supreme Court judge to tackle corruption and cleanse the educational institutions from the influence of political parties has been widely debated.
While Nepal’s new government seeks to find a new way to serve its people, Bharat could be the biggest support in its journey to prosperity. The new government in Kathmandu must get a full chance to prove its worth and bring the civilizational ties and shared ancestry with Bharat back to bloom.
