To the outsider, Nepal is getting to look like a chaotic failed state. The government administration is non-existent; development work is at a standstill; identity-led agitations are erupting all over; the Maoists are finding it hard to fit into a government of political parties while their battle-hardened fighters have difficulty in respecting the populace; criminality rages in the Tarai.
On the flipside, a social scientist would say that only the chaotic moment, as chaperoned by Nepal's resilient political parties, can allow for a transformation of Nepali society, a process to be defined neither by neighbour India nor by the larger international community, including the United Nations. To those who express exasperation with the Nepali players, according to this argument, only peace, democracy and a state-structure defined by Nepalis themselves will have staying power. Also, Nepal is doing much better than so many countries emerging from years of violent internal conflict.
Over the course of the last few years, it has become clear that there is a fuzzy logic to the Nepali political process, where the reality on the ground can be diametrically different from what seems evident in the English-language discourse. When all seems lost amidst the cynicism of the unconnected Kathmandu intelligentsia and the various interlocutors who feed alarmist information to the donors and diplomats among others, one is liable to be surprised in the days ahead when everybody agrees on a formula or scheme that they had been vehemently opposed to the day before.
That, at least, is the hope today, when a thousand mutinies rage while Girija Prasad Koirala tries to hold together a contradiction-filled government. But wishes cannot deliver a constituent assembly election, and that is the event on which every hope for political stability and an equitable and inclusive society now rests. The critical importance of holding elections in November 2007 could be the one factor that ties everyone together – after each is exhausted in defending his/her certitudes, and when every community's (and political party's) demands hit a countervailing demand from another quarter.