Nepalis are justifiably proud of their multi-party democracy which they claim to have achieved after a long struggle against an unjust, apathetic and authoritarian regime. In the political lexicography of post-partyless-Panchayat Nepal, the great change of 1990 and the attainment of multiparty democracy have become conterminous, although it is debatable how far that transformation involved different regions and sections of the population.
According to some impartial observers, popular participation in the Movement for Restoration of Democracy was more or less restricted to the capital, Kathmandu, and a few other cities. The rural masses of landless and subsistence farmers remained largely untouched. The cry for bahudaliya (partybased) against nirdaliya (partyless) democracy was elitist in class content, although it was to receive unprecedented response from the poorer strata of the urban population later on. To that extent, 1990 signalled the beginning of mass politics in the country.
However, the change was more significant because of the ideological conviction of the Nepali elite and intelligentsia that a political system controlled by Narayanhiti Royal Palace could never bring about structural reforms in the Nepali economy and society. In other words, a system that does not allow mobilisation of popular energy on the basis of organised public opinion cannot be expected to work for the benefit of the masses.
Back in 1972, Nepal´s well-known political scholar Rishikesh Shaha had written: "Political parties are the only effective means of formulating and presenting to government the demands of different sections of the people in the determination of policy and selecting candidates for public office. Thus, they serve as indispensable instruments of popular representation in the government and legislature. The party less system is a traditional system which cannot serve the needs of modern development."