Next is what?

On Nepal.

This post is different from our usual focus at The Araniko Project. But as Nepali co-founders watching the chaos unfold from Beijing, it is difficult to remain silent and feel the need to share some reflections on the aftermath of the past two days of protest.

This post is only about Nepal. If you want to know what happened in the past 48 hrs, please read Kalam Weekly

The KP Oli government has murdered 19 people

What we witnessed in these past two days in Nepal is a war of two worlds. On one side stand the old regimes and their old netas, with their outdated mindset of conducting daily public affairs. Until just 48 hours ago, they were the invincibles. Now, Nepal’s ruling elites stand among the fallen: disgraced and deposed, fleeing for their lives with almost no path back to the political stage.

On the other side lies the outlook for a “new Nepal,” which has not yet even been born. There is still no certainty (as of this writing) as to who will lead the interim government. And while the protestors relish on the carnage of 9/9, is there any guarantee this will turn out better?

Mercilessly beating politicians nearly to death, burning a former Prime Minister’s wife, vandalizing the streets, and destroying public property: these are no longer Gen Z protests. These are hooligans, who in their desperation and anger failed to see the evil in themselves. If its the outlook for “new Nepal,” then what is the difference between the upcoming “new” and the already “old”? We can only hope we don’t end up with the worst of both worlds.

In the digital age, network power such as social media has challenged traditional state authority, as seen in the Gen Z protest that led to the resignation of Prime Minister K.P. Oli. But such network power can only challenge and overthrow; it cannot successfully govern a country. It also needs a stable structure and well functioning bureaucracy.

That is where the greatest challenge lies. The protestors have burned down Singha Durbar (the country’s administrative center and repository of key government records), the Supreme Court, educational institutions, Nepal Telecom, banks, hotels, large corporations, and even media institutions like Kanitpur: essentially every major structural institution shaping Nepal’s functioning has collapsed. Thousands of papers, documentations, gone in seconds! prisoners escaped from prison!

How can new Nepal function without the necessary preconditional infrastructures needed for well-functioning bureaucracy? I am not the first person to state just how exhausting, and dissapointing Nepal’s bureaucracy is. But, the jist is that without proper functioning of institutions, people will again quickly loose trust, and just like the aftermath of Jana Andolan II, regimes will come and get replaced by their duplicates, and suddenly everything feels the same as before repeating this endless cycle of protests

Another instance is when I see the protestors burning precious heritage such as Bhaktapur Durbar Square. I remember attending a lecture in 2022 by the eminent Wolfgang Korn, an architect who “illegally” drew maps of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, and Patan Durbar Squares while serving in the Peace Corps during the mid-1960s. Little did he know that when the earthquake struck decades later, it turned out the Kathmandu municipality did not even have maps for reconstructing the temples, and Korn’s drawings were the only maps in the entire world that could help builders restore the temples to their exact form. Such is the state of our institutions - we did not even have a single homegrown record of our temples. How on earth can we think about a better future when we are not capable enough to understand, respect, and not destroy our own institutions? Even if born out of desperation, burning temples, Singha Durbar, and the courts is an absolute disregard for our national heritage, a lack of belonging, and the byproduct of the state’s negligence throughout all these years.

In that sense, my hope is that whoever leads the government from now on will not focus too much on preserving their grip on power, as the old regimes did, but also rebuild public trust and institutions that endure beyond a single crisis. Its ironic that the top leaders of UML, Nepali Congress and Maoists are at the receiving end against the very thing they were protesting in Jana Andolan II. Maybe from now on it will be a government led by young and dynamic forces, but if we start destroying the structures and the very fabric that makes us “us”, then it risks of becoming just another failed revolution. The great reset is needed, not just on our politics, bureaucracy and institutions, but also on Nepali society in general.

Photo credits: onlinekhabar.com