If Nepal today faces a severe shortage of qualified and able intellectual leadership—in just about every front from industrial management to university professorships, from civil service to journalism, from political activism to social service, the blame must be placed squarely on the education system of the Panchayat years.
The legacy of that wasted era can be found in the generation that is today in its thirties and forties, whose intellect was never aroused by challenging education, and whose creative potential was therefore laid waste. A new lost generation is presently in making—five years into democratic rule, Nepali higher education has not changed course, and those attending class today have not been nurtured any better than were their fathers and mothers.
Rather than be shocked at the abysmal level of public discourse, the politicians´ unbridled opportunism, the professionals´ lack of commitment, or the irreconcilable greed of the so many non-governmental organisation ´activists´, it is necessary to understand why, when we are confronted with nation-building, Nepal is left with loud-talking non-performers as society leaders. These people were just not taught right, and whatever ability they might have had to emerge as society´s guides, was never promoted. The country lost a generation.
The feudal Rana era ended in 1951 with Nepal boasting all of two colleges with 250 students. The Tribhuvan University was set up in 1959, and within two years it had 33 colleges and 5143 students. Today, Nepal has 209 private and public colleges with an enrolment of over a hundred thousand.