Whose headache is this any way?

It is widely believed that politics in Nepal often defies rational reasoning.  What politicians' say that may not mean in essence what they mean. Why did this situation occur? No body knows yet we have tried here to give some possible explanations to that effect. First, the Nepalese politicians of all the hues are trained in presentational politics, not representational ones. Therefore, thus they represent themselves, not their voters who have sent them to power. Weak representation may stem from the fact that voters also sell heir votes. Once they sell their votes they do not have any reason to ask their representative to represent. This is social control of politics and politicians are gone. Second, Nepalese politicians are also trained to commit themselves in rhetorical politics, which too has nothing to do with representation again. Rhetoric's, by definition, is detached from the world of reality, the reality of the people as voters, citizens and workers. When politicians promise something to the public they do not fulfil, then, one can call this state of affairs rhetoric. In the West such rhetorical politics is more often than not regarded as crime as it induces public to a false sense of satisfaction which in the long run undermines the civility of citizens. One can imagine the Panchayat leaders' promise to turn Nepal into Switzerland, the current Prime Minister's promise to turn Nepal into Singapore, and what not and what not. In rhetorical crime leaders sell the dream to their innocent people and, in the end, when people debunk a sense of falsehood it undermines the image of political system. The concrete actors of the system whether one calls it democracy, autocracy, oligarchy or give any name to that, are politicians because people judge the performance of the system on the basis of what their leaders deliver to the public—the performance of leaders. Thirdly, Nepalese politicians have also the temptation to commit defamation for it is the best qualification that gives them the required media exposure. One can imagine that in a divided media political culture, as it is very much abundant in Nepal, when one media criticises one person the other, for example the opposition camp, appreciates to the hilt. The polarity of political situation and its effects on media is very much conducive to conceal truth of politics and confuse people forever. In a country where majority of people are driven just to meet their basic survival and have less and less time to ponder on the perfectibility of political process, there is often enough room for politicians to manoeuvre to any corner wherever they like and this is what is happening in Nepal since decades and decades. This has led to a situation of destination-less political direction. Nepalese politics is precisely heading towards this direction. Now Nepalese people have that party government whose party president does not claim ownership on it. It has an opposition political party that does not oppose but that coalesce with the faction of the government to come to power. As a result, the politics of Nepal is apparently operating on binary fashion—the establishment and the Maoist opposition. The establishment is, however, divided clearly into factions called Bhattarai and Koirala faction, Deuba faction, KGB faction, the Oli faction, Nepal faction, Bam Dev faction, Chand and Thapa faction, Sadbhavana, etc. Maobadi faction steers the politics of fierce opposition. Neither the establishment is loyal to the opposition nor opposition is loyal to the establishment. Here lies the crux of problem where both the factions draft people into suicidal game of national annihilation or some thing very close to that possibility. Why intellectuals of the country are silent to this state of affairs? Revealingly, first, majority of them are themselves supposedly accomplices of the establishment while the rest are taking vicarious pleasure of opposition. Caught between hard cynicism and cold calculating moves of politicians some intellectuals seem to have found themselves in a situation of dejection and dreaming for a solace to fall back on rather than thinking and acting in the interest of people and the nation. Second, a number of intellectuals openly admit that they are acting against their intellect because they believe that freethinking is possible in a free country. How can intellectuals of Nepal living in a country totally dependent on foreign aid can think independently of aid? A Himalayan question indeed. Aid has addicted Nepalese intellectuals to such an extent that their advice to politicians and policy-makers is also based on not liberation but on acceleration of further aid. It is here again that the nation is being denied of good and factual advises from the so-called intellectuals who apparently remain busy, sorry to say, in buttering politicians so that lucrative posts could be garnered for their personal benefits. It is these negative syndromes which have gripped the nation. How to come out of this web is perhaps the politicians's headache.

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