Nepal’s convulsions and lessons for India

Giving up on integrating South Asia in the image of the European Union or the Asean is a mistake

- SHYAM SARAN

The common thread among the recent eruptions of popular violence in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal has been the lack of development and employment opportunities for a younger generation that is more educated, more exposed to regional and global currents, and more connected and engaged, both among themselves and with the wider world, thanks to the internet and social media.

These produce eddies and currents that may have no real focus but allow the venting of frustration and resentment, even while providing a platform for celebration of dance and music and for expressions of creative energies.

According to one estimate, 73 per cent of Nepali households own mobile phones and 55 per cent of the population uses the internet regularly. As in most developing countries, the proportion would be much higher among what is now being called Generation Z (or Gen Z). This is an empowered generation, but not always an enabled one, whose energies could be directed towards nation-building, towards the economic and social reform of theirsocieties, and towards a consciousness of being part of a larger humanity.

That requires a quality of political leadership that is sadly missing. It is important to realise that the convulsions we have witnessed among our subcontinental neighbours and even beyond, for example, most recently in Indonesia, have occurred in countries that are democracies, however flawed they may be. It would appear as if the default tendency among democracies is to drift towards oligarchy and sometimes towards autocracy, even if their electoral system remains functional. Given the increasing use of money power in elections and the use of political office as a means of enrichment and for mobilising even more funds for the next electoral exercise, it is not surprising that an enriched and entitled elite begins to lose touch with the popular condition.