The early decades of modern Nepal were a time when the country waited to see how BP Koirala would define the nation and democracy. His speeches shook the intellectuals of society, sometimes even changing the direction of politics.

The eight-decade Nepali democratic journey that began in this way has now reached a point where it is thrilling to listen to Balen Shah's three-minute 'vision' of the future, explaining how he will pave the way in one and a half years. Nepalis are now confused whether to listen to Gagan Thapa's video message or follow where Ravi Lamichhane and Balen Shah are today and what they are doing.

In such a situation, many citizens who usually consider themselves serious people in society and try to appear serious in front of others, who can be called intellectuals in colloquial language, must have observed the scene where many people are looking more serious than before, wondering whether the country will be swallowed up by 'populism' or populism.

A society that has not only undergone such large democratic movements but also mass movements, so many revolutions and sub-revolutions of communist dreams carried out by the 'need of history', and a large community of those who have participated in the rebellions of Madhesh and Janajati, seeing the atmosphere ahead of the upcoming elections, are now asking, 'What has become of this country?'

It may not be possible to answer all the questions on such a large topic, but this column will seek an intellectual, not a political, answer to this question. Perhaps, the explanation proposed in this column will make the ‘comfort zone’ of some readers’ thinking a little uncomfortable. After that possible discomfort, I will make some points in the latter part of the article on why Nepal’s new ‘populism’ should be viewed with sympathy.

Let’s move on by briefly touching on the background of the article’s perspective. Given the intellectual debate that has been going on in the ‘developed’ world in recent months, wouldn’t it seem that at some point in the near future, ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) will have its own ‘consciousness’? Whatever we humans call our consciousness or soul, if AI-powered robots and ‘chatbots’ also have their own feelings and consciousness, what path will human civilization take then?

The current AI revolution, which some have described as greater than the industrial revolution in Europe, has already changed our civilization to some extent. It is changing the nature of human relationships, how we speak to each other and how we understand others. AI, like humans, may or may not have its own ‘consciousness’, but it has already learned to penetrate what we call our own personal consciousness and ‘hack’ it to some extent.

Concepts such as consciousness and soul have been described in knowledge traditions around the world for thousands of years. But advances in ‘neuroscience’ in recent decades have studied the brain in greater depth than ever before. It has given new concepts in philosophy about what consciousness is or how it can be formed. The famous American philosopher Daniel Dennett, who passed away two years ago, is the latest figure to define ‘consciousness’ in philosophy, who has rejected the traditionally accepted interpretations of consciousness. And, he has explained how our brain simultaneously takes in various visual, memory, emotional and language ‘inputs’ and creates a person called ‘I’, which is traditionally understood by many as a ‘supernatural’ or mysterious ‘consciousness’.

Since today’s topic is Nepali New ‘Populism’, we cannot spend much space on how consciousness is formed. But the summary necessary to get to the main topic is that – at some point in the development of humans as organisms, what we now call consciousness was not there. Consciousness was formed through a biological process in the course of ‘evolution’. Over time, when humans began to speak language, we began to conceptualize consciousness. It is not a mysterious element that is somehow connected to the entire universe, but a process that is gradually generated by our nervous system, which is influenced by the surrounding culture. If consciousness is a process that arises in this way, isn't the day not far away when AI robots will develop their own consciousness by following a similar process? And won't the influence of algorithms one day make AI's consciousness 'superior' and ubiquitous to human consciousness?

Based on the above background, it is easy to move towards Nepal's populism. Because understanding political science is not enough to understand how 'populism' works. Although political science interprets it from different angles, the basic character of 'populism' is that it says - you trust me, I'll fix everything else. If someone asks, 'How will you fix it?' he says, 'You trust me first, I'll fix everything else.' He doesn't have much 'content'.

He has neither the ability nor the interest to reason intellectually. But he can keep repeating sentences like 'I'll fix everything now' without any hesitation, as if he believes in those sentences. There are problems in society, and people may be depressed on an individual level. ‘Populism’ does not think much about what the answer to all of that is. It can only say in a way that everyone can hear, ‘I am the answer to all of that.’ If someone asks, ‘How are you the answer?’ It says again, ‘Let me come first.’ In other words, weaving some simplified slogans amidst the despair prevalent in society, it comes and says – ‘You believe me, I will help you overcome all your sorrows.’ And, most people, being stubborn towards that, may follow it saying, ‘Yes, everything I am looking for is here, right?’ 

Before understanding political ‘populism’, it is important to understand that non-political ‘populism’ is already omnipresent in our society, as in many other places. Generally, people are creatures who believe in what is unseen rather than seen and what is not. For example, on the one hand, you believe that ‘no matter what happens, the soul does not die’ and on the other hand 

Why do you think people around you are following these ‘populists’, and how did they get along? If you ask why ‘populism’ makes people follow someone without thinking, then the first thing you have to ask yourself is – do I believe in the stories of God, heaven and hell, and the afterlife that were invented 2-4 thousand years ago to answer all questions and frustrations? If you believe in some of these current ‘cults’ like Sadhguru or Ravi Shankar or Osho and think that all the questions of life are answered there, then who else is there who is following a bigger ‘populist’?

Let’s take a look at Nepal’s old political ‘populism’. Who else is a ‘populist’ politically than someone who believes that the monarchy should be restored in the country, after which the country will automatically unite and move forward on the path of prosperity? There is not a single sentence that can be said to defend how much progress the country made when it was a monarchy. Moreover, even the next generation had seen firsthand how worthy and blameless Gyanendra was among those kings. Now, if he or someone like him comes, how something will be good, there is nothing to say for a minute. There is no ‘content’ to speak publicly about how, where, what will be good if such and such an institution comes, but what other political class is as intellectually poor as those who think ‘if that happens, everything will be good’? Nevertheless, the reality of Nepal is that the number of people who believe the group of ‘populists’ who tirelessly repeat that something like that will happen is still there, even if it is not large. 

A larger number of ‘populism’ than those who say that it would be better if the monarchy came has been in the left wing of Nepal for decades. In my assessment, those who have enjoyed the communist dream throughout history around the world are all, knowingly or unknowingly, following ‘populism’ in one way or another. Let's look at the leftists in Nepal. World capitalism is their enemy, as if they were going to create a separate capitalism in Nepal. And for many decades they told the people - 'We must defeat imperialism.' They did not say anything about how imperialism would be defeated, how the living standards of the Nepali people would be raised after that. At most, they would say, we must promote national capitalists. Which capitalists are national and which are non-national, neither they themselves understood, nor could they explain to others. Nevertheless, a large part of Nepali society continued to believe their stories for a long time. 

It was right to raise the issues of the poor and the oppressed, but even though their ideological leaders, Russia and China, abandoned the path of communist 'populism' decades ago, Nepal's leftists have not yet been able to refine their consciousness from the vocabulary of the Cold War. Nevertheless, there are still people who believe their slogans. Moreover, not only when Mahendravadi raised it, but also when the leftist pushed it, a large section of the Nepali people believed in the 'populist' slogan of nationalism.

A line of the disillusioned Congress was still addicted to KP Oli's nationalism a while ago. Similarly, the populist line that the majority Hindus try to despise the religious minority by saying that the identity of the nation should be Hindu may not have changed even in the Congress, which is said to have changed. Therefore, not only for political gain, but in the Nepali social structure and among a large group of so-called educated people, I have always seen one type of 'populism' here and there and from history to the present. Those who say that if federalism comes, the country will break up, or if MCC comes, the country's sovereignty will be destroyed, the operators of 'populism' are often one-sided, they understand that it does not benefit them to be 'engaged' with an independent mind towards the views of others, yet there is always a group of people in society who believe them.

Considering all this and the fact that human consciousness is a biological process formed through interaction with the surrounding culture, no matter how much progress the world has made in everything, the basic nature of man, i.e. the process of becoming his ‘consciousness’ or ‘I’, is still the same as it was thousands of years ago. He still believes in fictional stories as truth. All he knows is that this life is over.

But in general, people do not have the intellectual courage to accept it and want to believe that there is a soul or something after this life, about which he has no direct ‘clue’. It is not surprising that such a person easily believes the slogans presented by someone effectively. Moreover, the brain of a person with such easily ‘manipulated’ consciousness may be ‘hacked’ day by day through social media without him knowing it. 

Whatever happens, it is starting to become clear that the election results of 21 Falgun will be pleasant in some sense. According to the trend seen so far, this election has already changed the political leadership to a large extent. The Prime Minister's contenders have shifted from Sher Bahadur Deuba, KP Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal to Gagan Thapa and Balen Shah. If the Nepali Congress is the largest party and Gagan becomes the Prime Minister after winning the parliamentary elections, the preparations he has been making for the past three years and the vision of the 'Project Government' he has recently made public will find a place to be implemented, which may prove to be a small leap compared to the previous governments. Nepali citizens 

This may be the beginning of a new and stable journey of a new highway where they can be optimistic about their collective future within the country. If the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) becomes the largest party and Balen defeats Oli in Jhapa and becomes the Prime Minister, that will also be a big message for the generational change of Nepal's politics. There will be no 'content' within Balen, let alone Gagan in intellectual capacity, he will be below average. But the interest in this will be unknown to the relatively intellectual community and those who evaluate them in the same way.

Due to his mysterious but domineering image, many 'mass' Nepalis have tried to express their anger towards old characters through him for two decades, which is the reality of society. It is not bad for democracy for the anger accumulated in society to be vented somewhere within the democratic process. It would be good if he could make a 'fresh start' and start raising hope for the future. Nepali society will be shocked again when new questions appear in his democratic character and he will try to do something about it. If nothing happens even after Balen comes, that's okay, society will have already expressed its anger through him once and a more dynamic and long-term alternative is now available to Nepal.