Dev Raj Dahal

The virtue of politics is reflects the nation’s vision, hope and decision for all sectors of life. It is a domain of freedom, an act of free will for peace, not truth which is the job of scientists. Law-based freedom lends essence to rights for the empowerment of people in speech and action. In Nepal, rights pervade justice, equality, dignity, prosperity, happiness, identity, peace and human rights vital to subordinate selfish human nature. Nepali politics has inflated the scope of social contract and rules of the game beyond winner-takes-all but remains weak in coordinating leaders in the middle way. Paradoxically, the concept of duty, the basis of Nepali state and society, is becoming alien to leaders and people.
Bound by pre-scientific tradition, the freedom of ancients was embedded in group rights. The state of nature required them to live in a group for security and safety before entering into the pursuit of nirvana, a fully freed life. As people shed fetters of tradition and lineage clutch, their search for modernity entitled them with individual and human rights. The bulge of rights in Nepali Constitution has enfranchised women, Dalits, Madhesi, Janajatis, tribal and minorities with a new identity of equal citizens. Still, rival claims by political parties, leadership, institutions and constitution have troublesome links to informal politics in need of fair adjudication.
Modern politics has given a chance for social mobility of lower classes to rise to power and create laws to tax the wealthy for social justice and equality. The wealthy can contain the distributive struggle of the poor through property rights, constitutionalism and a social control. Yet, their grasp on the lever of checks and balance of power and due process of law has turned the operation of rule of law problematic, failed to depolarise politics and free it from clerical instinct. Inter-party collusion of Nepali leaders for power sharing has converted politics into a club model at the top with a corrosive influence of opening at the bottom where self-rule is yet to be institutionalised.  
Precious insights of political philosophies and principles add drives of Nepali politics enabling leaders to shape the programme for future, a future emancipated from hunger, fear and inertia. One fresh aspect of Nepali politics is recurrent alteration in the source of authority and legitimacy aiming to shift the pre-modern transactional political ties between leaders and electorates to a transformational one. Beyond the legitimisation of the space for ruling and opposition parties it grants individuals to use conscience, civil society to engage in civic action and myriad of small institutions to mediate the democratic life. Any deviation from their dharma (institutional duties) stripes them of their cheering vitality.
Still, undue influence of non-political forces-- business, bureaucracy and security agencies, pre-political caste, religious, ethnic and tribal forces and sustained anti-political violence committed by criminals, corrupts and armed non-state actors into Nepali politics entangled it in a complexity. The vacuum of security is filled by the geopolitical forces independent of the nation’s law. The adoption of class-based adversarial nature of politics and group-based identity has weakened what Carl Schmitt calls “common identity” of the state and its will to execute the Constitution.
Modern politics does not symbolise each person a force of war. Means are crucial to shape the political culture of leadership for acquiring power through election and popular opinion, using it for governance as per constitutional mandate and transfer power by smooth succession of leadership across gender, social diversity and generations. In Nepal, however, strong penetration of parties into all the state institutions has sapped its elan vital even in neutral areas and undermined the ability of politics to bring people for a large scale cooperative action on shared goals averting feudal resilience. Other shifts are as follows.
First, the domain of politics has widened from the polis and the state to society and acquired complexity. Still, the state constitutes a pivot of order-creating structure, caretaker of public good and stable agency of international relations. The universal concern of polis then and now is to set up a good polity and train virtuous citizens and leaders fit for good life. Nepalis constitute sovereign power. It is a key to widen a sense of community sufficed to ensure their existence. The impact of enlightenment presupposed the perfection of leadership based on reason where citizens can demand the rationality and accountability of their action. Democratic innovation has added voice and transparency in decision system making politics visible to those affected by it and opened it for critical reflection on unsettled convictions of Nepal’s political culture.
New values of politics are embedded in ecological, cultural and social life where people’s ideas, belief and priorities set the standards of its rationality. Democracy-erosive forces, free-riders, pressure and interest groups, lobbies, caucuses, business, consultants, contractors and kleptocrats have, however, consumed the stock of popular trust on leaders’ authority premised on the belief that politics serves public and national interests beyond the artefact of power. The need for their fair test has increased the value of classical aim of politics to sublimate the neo-liberal trap, a trap that has subordinated demos, converted leaders into an instrument of shaping political will for unfettered market economy and moved money from the bottom to the top and outside.
Democracy does not subordinate politics to the moneyed classes and seek to replace real economy - agriculture and industry with the symbolic ones - finance and service sectors, exempting their tax on the hope of their contribution to the party’s fund. The neoliberal monetary transformation of caste into class politics has tainted the lofty aim of politics and increased its costs for the poor. “The society of money and exploitation has never been changed” says Albert Camus.
Similarly, partisan politics that focused on factional leaders too failed to offer public goods in an impersonal manner, their parties’ electoral promise of the happiness of the mass notwithstanding. The narrative of political decay in Nepal points how different organs of the polity mired down each other and bred discontent. It has triggered social struggles as a change agent of its political culture sustained by the scale and scope of politics by parties’ merger and acquisitions, not competition on public policies.
Second, politics brings philosophy into the public sphere for debate and contextualisation. It shifts political ideologies to higher order of brahma (intellect), morality and justice and less deterministic in reference to the future. It furnishes contesting viewpoints of actors, discovers fine tools, approaches and ideas for new thinking and reflection about the changing context and expectation of the people. It does not deem them a passive spectator, a simple set of “conditioned reflexes” of alien knowledge, ideology and institution but shifts monopoly of power of parties or antagonistic model of left and right game dressed up in soothing slogans into a right and wrong politics.
The engagement of Nepali public in daily talk informs each other’s concerns, views and options which are useful for the optimal solution of problems. Yet, the position taking leaders are inclined to hone personal biases and are less opened to compromise. Nepali leaders and social scientists have to see the problems across their own point of view and disciplines. In a diverse nation governing legitimacy does not flow from the domination of majority but from ethical behaviour, social inclusion and performances that satisfies the Other and integrates rival narratives into building a national community suffice to quell predators often aspiring for regime change.

Third, realists’ belief that politics is rooted in the selfish image of human nature, not rational spur of human culture and code explains human being’ blind passion for power. It cannot be explained by scientific reason. The second image of politics, the state, as force monopolising body aims to contain selfish human nature and opposes the habit of leaders to violence as a tool of creating fear to govern human life. In societies like Nepal where values and procedures are not socialised, violence threatens the unity of the nation. Behaviour of leaders is judged by their integrity and credibility of promise. The public vote to set up representative authority in society for their wellbeing as a basis of modernity.
Nepali leaders, therefore, need to be governed by rajdharma and their success rests on adapting to the changing public opinion, right public policy and welfare project of politics. In Nepal, bloated size and cost of leaders who do not perform their duty either in policy making, political education, expand economic base of the state, formulate proper law for the regulation of various actors, representation of citizens and defence of the autonomy of politics have corroded its efficacy. The erosion of ideology of Nepali parties has fortified the leadership cult and cut the virtue of solidarity addicting them to culture-bound syndrome of family-friendly politics and patronage. Leader-driven factions have increased the loyalty of cadres to them, not to the parties.
Fourth, at a time of rapid ecological, technological and economic transformations, Nepali politics as an art needs to be creative to invent context-sensitive knowledge, keep pace with changes and settle the problems of values, actors, institutions and issues so that politics becomes useful. The true measure of good politics lies in the capacity of Nepali leaders to deliver decent standards of living for all people and provide collective presence against all odds.

(Former Reader at the Department of Political Science, TU, Dahal writes on political and social issues)