By Dr. Shree Govind Shah

It has been hopeless reading that for the last 30 years Nepal has remained a poor country, undeveloped, subsistence oriented stagnant economy, managed mostly by rent seeking governing institutions and bureaucracy and many more. As the country is poor, our political and governing decisions have invariably been influenced by powerful neighbouring countries as well as by some authoritative countries democratising poor nations at their own terms.

Unfortunately, we blame inaccessibility and geographic remoteness, unrestricted and unplanned use of natural and cultural resources, population growth, and lack and mismanagement of financial resources for our poor achievement. In early 1990s, we also blamed the Panchayat System of running the country and mismanaging the economy. Now, many of the development and political analysts blame political instability, insecurity, lack of effective domestic policy, and, moreover, poor implementation of policy and programmes since 1990s. Poverty, terrorism and involvement of corrupt and narrow-visioned people in democratic movement and governance are the main challenges in Nepal as well as in South Asia.

Firm government policies and their effective enforcement are vital for a sound and sustainable economic development which largely depend on the governing institution, in our case the political party or parties governing the nation. We cannot practically think of economic development without political stability. During the past 15 years, there have been unstable governing institutions at the national level, with numerous reports of corruption and mishandling of economic affairs even by some of the politicians governing the country. The public policies so far developed and very weakly implemented are incapable of addressing large issues, and the complex social and environmental issues of over 85% of the people living in the rural areas are often left out. Should we blame political leaders alone for our generally low economic achievements?

The political parties in Nepal are facing more competitive environments than other politically more stable countries. These environments are various political outcomes in terms of party members’ resources, its social capital, institutional constraints and low level of understanding within and between the parties, and the location of a party in the present and future political power arena. Moreover, these parties have a different locations in social and economic structures of the country and they have a distinctive party beliefs, ideology and preferences.

Almost all political parties in Nepal claim themselves ‘democratic’ although their names are contradictory in conviction. Moreover, party loyalty has been a question. In addition to these attributes, some of the front-runner parties have a more centralized institutional set up where a handful of members always like to be in the forefront of public visibility.

It has been widely accepted that Nepal, since 1991, has experienced more democratic situation but democracy alone could not bring prosperity and wealth to this country. The democracy we exercised just gave voters a right to elect their choice representatives to form the government, and largely provided opportunity to political parties, governing or in opposition, to demonstrate its intention and actions for a balanced socio-economic development.

During the past 10-12 years, the political parties in the government have seldom demonstrated rational choices, rational actions and ethical strategies. On the other hand, they seem to practice and practically advocate vulnerable systems, which substantially increase the rent seeking behaviour and corruption among the governing personals and their subordinates.

If the governing parties in the past years consider their choices, actions and strategies as rational, it will tend to prove that in Nepalese politics, the individual rational strategies lead to collectively irrational outcomes, suggesting that the rational politicians or a political party could hardly achieve rational results. This is too bad for Nepal.

Politics in Nepal could now be conceptualised as a non-cooperative game where each player maintains a dominant strategy that is “to defect in their action”. Under such condition, communication among the players (here the political parties,) is not fairly possible or simply irrelevant. The strategy of the players in this political game has been “cooperate, defect” rather than “cooperate, cooperate” and this is clear from the majority of actions of both the governing and the opposition parties during the last 12-15 years. Under the existing political governance, the “defector player” in this game obtains comparatively more units of profit than the “co-operators”, who have fewer payoffs. The political parties lack faith and confidence among themselves, and they do not understand to respect each other, and under such condition unity among them for any! positive action would be merely a theoretical perception.

But the question is a) do majority of the people in Nepal want to see the political parties playing this wonderful political game for a longer period? and b) is there any way to make these parties play most of the time a positive game? This game has been very expensive for our poor country which now needs a large investment, internal and external, to develop social and physical infrastructures essential for a balanced economic development as perceived in the Periodic Plans and other various Master Plans, already prepared and endorsed by the government with huge investments. This game, mostly played with negative motives, has further detracted donors and other agencies seeking to invest in Nepal.

The political parties have to develop patterns of interactions among themselves, adopt ethical strategies and work out a strong national character at least for three reasons: a) to increase political and economic bargaining capacity in South Asia to solve many outstanding problems like water resource development, b) to convince the donors and the external investors that we are now a performer, and c) to make the average Nepalese believe that the political changes we have had in recent past will make their daily life secured and momentous.

The immediate goal of peace, security and a dignified living in Nepal could only be achieved, if the political parties understand the country’s reality, people’s aspirations and the gradually improving peace and security situation after the February 1 declaration, and devise positive action plans to smoothly and capably run the country. The political parties and the government should understand and respect each other in practical sense instead of blaming each other. It is universal fact that meaningful dialogues are more productive than staging demonstrations all the time; the latter not only disturbs the life of common people but also harms many people who have to work hard for their subsistence living. Moreover, the political parties have gradually lost their cadres; many of them have left the country for jobs in mid-east and south East Asian countries. And, many common people are reluctant to take part in demonstrations as they think that most of the politicians are corrupt and they got to be penalised for their negative behaviours.

The political parties must consider the aspirations and wishes of the poor people, socio-economically disadvantaged community, and almost all the people living in the rural areas. These people wish the educated and affluent people, and the politicians, human rights activists, media houses and decision-makers to make unselfish decisions and to demonstrate rational actions greatly benefiting them and the country. The question is a) have we properly understood problems the rural people and socio-economically deprived communities are facing? and b) have we identified their needs and made action plans greatly benefiting them?

Let us assume that things will change for good, if the politicians start thinking more positively, and if they start to play a fair game of “cooperate, cooperate”. We have done many difficult things in the past, and we can possibly do the same this time. The political parties need to be developed as a viable institution. For this to happen, it is imperative that the senior party leaders give better opportunities to far-sighted, bright and hard working younger politicians in the governing arena; as well as strictly sanctioning the corrupt members. The political parties have to develop strategies to get support from the majority of the Nepalese people through their positive and far-reaching actions instead of getting support from the powerful countries; they will need to be nationalists in their actions.

We hope lasting moments of understanding, trust, love and goodwill would prevail among all the political parties and the government to initially achieve peace and security in the country and then to institutionalize democratic process in broader terms to benefit majority of the people living in rural areas. It is their natural right and it should be their achievable destiny.