By Shyamal Krishna Shrestha

Nepal is marching precariously on the road to perdition. Prolonged turmoil looms large in the Himalayan kingdom, already confronting a decade-old armed conflict wherein a brutal ‘‘people’s war’’ and an inhumane counter-insurgency operation is undermining personal liberty and human security. Further conflict would exacerbate impoverishment of the economy while putting the country’s population to greater vulnerability.

Nepal now ranks close to a ‘failed state’, along with Sub-Saharan countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Zimbabwe, all characterized by destabilization, armed conflict, social instability and humanitarian disaster. Some nation states, especially in Africa and Asia, have been identified as ‘failed states’ in the post-Cold War era due to continued instability, which have acted as a brake on further growth and development. On what basis are states classified as ‘failed’? It is argued that a dysfunctional state, where multiple competing political factions engage in conflict within its borders, is automatically a ‘failed state’.. However, if essential functions of government continue in areas controlled by the central authority, the state has not ‘failed’. In Nepal’s case, although the state’s writ does not run in certain parts of the rural hinterland, Maoist insurgents have been unable to exercise suzerainty. Hence, it would be premature to term Nepal as a ‘failed state’.

In the view of American scholar Robert Rothberg (2003), Nepal is already a ‘failed state’ Various indicators imply that the state has ‘failed’: the state provides only limited economic and political goods; its institutions are flawed; the state’s apparatus helps in oppression of citizens; Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita declines; the poor become more impoverished and inequality worsens; infrastructure deteriorates or is destroyed in the course of conflict; livelihoods are uprooted, leading to human displacement; the rule of law is significantly weakened; government is characterized by rampant greed and corruption; and there is unparalleled economic opportunities for a privileged few and none for others. Widespread terror and violent reprisals undermine universal principles of ‘freedom from fear’ and ‘freedom from want’ in ‘failed states’ experiencing high level of violence. ‘Failed states’ are also devoid of visionary leadership, leading undesired foreign elements to ‘fish in troubled waters’.

It requires no elaboration that an impoverished economy cannot sustain a civil war too; and is a recipe for imminent economic destitution
The metamorphosis that Nepal, once considered Shangri-la, has undergone could be hardly paradoxical. It is pertinent to recall that, in 1975, late King Birendra articulated his ‘Zone of Peace’ proposal to institutionalize peace within the country and also prevent Nepal to be used as a pawn in geo-political rivalries in the Cold War era. In reality, the country used its geo-strategic location to extract concessions from its neighbours while state persecution was widespread in the domestic sphere. Behind the embellishment of a ‘developmental state’ lay structural weaknesses that remain addressed even to this day. Unaccountability and kleptocracy further weakened the economy. As the Panchayat system outlived its purpose, the historic Jan Andolan was able to succeed.

The political changes of 1990 were a milestone as far as regaining lost political freedoms were concerned. The real challenge lied in breaking away from a feudal past and ushering socio-economic justice by implementing ‘social contracts’, which refers to the economic and political goods — equal economic opportunities to all citizens, basic freedoms, distributive justice and entitlements — that a state has to provide not only to institutionalise its legitimacy but also as a check against ‘grievance’ among peoples and regions. A cohesive and unifying ‘social contract’ is the sustained poverty alleviation plan to address horizontal inequality and uplift the downtrodden. For a country with multiple ethnic groups, strong social contracts also checks centrifugal forces and strengthens nationalism. When these were largely ignored during Nepal’s multiparty democratic experience by a divisive leadership, they became the prime economic driver fuelling conflict. Addressing class, ethnicity, gender and production relations are a sine qua non, without which newly emerging democracies (making the transition from colonial rule or authoritarianism to democracy) can easily fall prey to conflict. Instead, neo-liberal economic policies vis-à-vis ‘Washington Consensus’ dominated the economic agenda while reforms to address genuine constraints on sustainable growth were left to the mercy of the market.

With a low growth rate averaging 4 percent during 1975 to 2003, Nepal has been unable to sustain economic growth to meet development challenges. Its per capita GDP is now only above the twelve poorest economies of the world. When five decades of bikas come to naught, the outcome can only be dependency, poverty, inequality and widening income gaps between the rich and the poor; all factors leading to grievance expressed through political radicalism.

As the country again finds itself under the renewed siege of authoritarianism, unrepresentative form of government is leading to political underdevelopment; a process that deepens the chasm between the actual needs of citizens and the desires of those wielding power. It requires no elaboration that an impoverished economy cannot sustain a civil war too; and is a recipe for imminent economic destitution. The emergence of ‘party-less institutions in the multiparty polity’ makes a travesty of the rule of law.

It must be admitted that Nepal’s current ideological crisis is also a corollary of the state’s continued apathy towards the silent majority (the ruled) compared with apotheoses of a few (the rulers). However, the need of the hour is reconciliation among political actors in favour of freedom, prosperity and peace in a state, which is on the road to perdition, to avert further brinkmanship and catastrophe.

(Shrestha is a Kathmandu-based economist. Please send your comments to [email protected])

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