Crisis of nation-building

C D Bhatta

Political movements in Nepal have brought about significant changes but, to our dismay, they have always posed a threat to the nation-building. This is partly because after the temporal settlement of political movements, the spirit of any movement is spoiled by the boundless desire of power within the political leadership. And partly due to external forces (as all political movements since 1950 are guided by the foreign powers) and infighting between regressive, progressive and status quo-ist forces on basic political (national) values. Prevalence of this type of (a) political culture within the political class have degenerated both political will and promises made before-during-and right after the completion of people's movement.
Nepali state has witnessed a series of political movements during the last half century to democratize state and address issues that impede the process of nation-building. However, all the political movements have ended up in some sort of, what Prof Thomas Meyer of Germany has called lazy compromises between the political parties in conflict and regime at the helm of power. The lazy compromises have only brought cosmetic changes and the major political issues are yet to be resolved. We have an established revolutionary political culture but not the revolutionary thinking (approach) in translating achievement(s) of political movement(s) for the commonwealth of people. Inability of translating words into deeds (real action) is certainly driving Nepali state towards political deadlock one after another for the last half century. This, no doubt, leads us to strongly argue that Nepal never had complete political revolutions in a real sense of the term.

Another factor contributing towards the crisis of nation-building is that political movements have provided sufficient opportunities for various groups to emerge and make claim and counter claim to the state to fulfill their various demands. But Nepali state is not in a position to fulfill all demands given the resources (economic) available and political capacity of the state. This, by contrast, is eroding the capacity of state.
As a result, internal sovereignty of Nepali state is in crisis due to the rise of various non-state-actors in different parts of the country. The non-state actors have challenged the conventional power of the state (such as authority to punish etc).
In the same vein, Nepali state has also lost policy sovereignty to the Western donors, multilateral and multinational organizations and their subsidiary NGOs due to the crisis of governance. In a nutshell, erosion in 'sovereignty' is contributing towards 'systemic crisis' in the nation.
We had underpinned high hope on civil society given its significant contribution towards regime change. But with the passage of time, Nepali civil society is failing to institutionalize the process of regime change (read democratization). This is primarily because civil society groups do not have common voice on major political issues. In fact, it is not clear who exactly governs and represents Nepali civil society as leading civil society activists keep on changing their position (often clash with each other) on major issues of national importance.

It is primarily due to the fact that civil society is aligned with political parties and is accountable to them (for power) and to the donors (for funding) as against citizens at large.
The sheer deficit in democratic political culture across political parties is the prime facie cause of political deadlock. For example, whenever political parties move onto power they are habitual to capture both state and system. This practice has developed neo-patrimonial culture in Nepali politics. To some extent, the eight party-phobias are also the product of this culture which has repeatedly undermined other societal and political forces. There are chances that the pillars of mass democratic movement will run out of steam and stamina, and that the project of nation-building will never be accomplished.
Moreover, there is no social representation of political power which is causing perpetual political pandemonium. For example - there is no intergenerational justice that is, the highest number of voters lies between 18-35 years of age group but we don't have leaders to represent this age-group across political parties.

The next important point within the context of nation-building is the scenario of national security and foreign policy. To put it bluntly, both are missing from political agendas. There is a great deal of crisis of confidence lurking between political forces and national security organs of the state.
The security organs and their members have been undermined, discouraged and demoralized in many occasions (in the name of restructuring) which is only adding up further problems to national security. The tendency within the political parties and their cadres is that they try to destabilize 'national security' for their own vested interests.
Similarly, unavailability of national vision on foreign policy is inviting too much interference into internal affairs of the state (particularly on the future political discourse). But we don't have ability to act upon because there is no coherent voice of political parties on the issues of national importance.

Given these contradictions in practice, perhaps, we need to develop a spirit of understanding, tolerance and give-and-take culture (smart culture of compromise) to complement each other (political and social necessity), which will help to put an end to all internal strife and violence amicably and to get rid from the web of systemic crisis.
Having said all these, finally, the larger challenge for Nepali state, perhaps, is to bail out from the 'state of nature (everyone against everyone)'. And this can only be done internally, by bringing all sorts of societal forces (left out and potential political actors) into the institutional life of the state and externally by taking international community into confidence. Nepali political leaders should posit some sort of commitments towards the peace process, which does not seem to be in place at the moment. Equally important is that we need to strike a balance between political freedom and external and internal sovereignty of the state to enhance the process of nation-building and maintain national security.

Source: The Kathmandu Post, August 22, 2007