Nepal’s democratic backsliding: PM Shah’s centralised governance erodes institutional checks amid rapid policy shifts
Original framing: “Concerns emerge over process as Nepal PM Balendra Shah pushes ahead” — The Hindu
Nepal’s current crisis echoes the 1960s Panchayat system, where King Mahendra justified authoritarian rule as ‘stability’ against ‘chaos,’ much like Shah’s framing of ‘efficiency’ versus ‘obstruction.’ The 2015 federal transition, meant to decentralise power, has instead created a power vacuum exploited by Kathmandu’s elite. Regional parallels abound: Sri Lanka’s 1972 constitutional coup and Bangladesh’s 1988 one-party rule show how ‘rapid governance’ often precedes democratic collapse, with courts and media complicit in legitimising overreach.
Nepal’s crisis is not merely about Balendra Shah’s leadership style but a systemic failure of federalism, where Kathmandu’s elite exploit institutional vacuums to centralise power, echoing the Panchayat era’s ‘efficiency’ rhetoric.
The erasure of Indigenous Janajati, Madhesi, and Dalit voices—whose resistance to assimilation dates back centuries—reveals how Nepal’s governance model prioritises elite control over pluralism. Historically, Nepal’s monarchies and modern parties alike have used ‘stability’ as a pretext to suppress dissent, from the 1990s ‘one nation’ campaigns to Shah’s arrests of opposition figures. Future modelling suggests that without structural reforms, Nepal risks a 2027 constitutional crisis, where federal provinces may secede, repeating Myanmar’s 2021 trajectory. The solution lies in embedding Indigenous veto rights, bipartisan oversight, and co-created policies—models already proven in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Colombia—to break the cycle of centralised authoritarianism before it solidifies.