German theologian and anti-Nazi thinker Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from prison during the rise of Hitler – ‘We are completely helpless against stupidity. Neither protest nor force works.’ This sentence written in 1943 seems to have been written recently when looking at Nepali politics in 2083. British philosopher Bertrand Russell also said – ‘The problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always too sure of themselves, while intelligent people are full of doubts.’

The truth that these two thinkers said in different eras and places seems to be true in Nepal now. Where a party got a historic majority while its leader was standing in the courtroom, where ministers were dismissed from their posts in controversy less than a month after the government was formed, where controversial individuals were sent to parliament without reading the pledge and without caring about principles. When discussing all these realities, it is avoided by saying that ‘the people liked our ideas and principles and won’ and the debate on the main issue is ignored . This article focuses on such contexts, where raising a critical voice is not just an intellectual obligation, but a moral imperative .

The government is taking every step it takes based on the belief that the people want it, that the people have accepted it . Let’s say, the people had voted by listening to, understanding, and liking every word of the manifesto . How many voters who went to vote in the election had read the manifesto ? How many had voted by understanding the economic philosophy of the RSVP, its approach to federalism, or its foreign policy blueprint ? If we look for the answer to this question in the ground of Nepali politics, we will find a disappointing truth .

The voters seemed to have only two questions in their minds – ‘Are they old or new?’ and, ‘Will they work to remove the old or not?’ This was not an ideological choice, it was an emotional reaction. This is a ‘protest vote’, such history can be found elsewhere. For example, the Five Star Movement in Italy, Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche in France, the leaders standing in the shadow of Anna Hazare’s movement in India. All of them came to power, but without understanding the true nature of the mandate, they converted power into ideological approval. That mistake also led to their downfall.

In the context of Nepal, the ideological confusion is most clearly visible in the public statements of Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle. He has said in the context of the budget, ‘The budget will reflect what was written in the manifesto.’ He adds, ‘The budget will do justice to whatever we wrote in our manifesto.’ There is a subtle but deadly political logic hidden in this statement. The meaning of the Finance Minister’s statement is, ‘The people voted for us by reading our manifesto, so the manifesto is the basis of the budget.’ But the reality is that the people did not vote by reading the manifesto, but because they were tired of the leaders who were ruling the country under the old system. It is not wrong to make the manifesto the basis of the budget, but to claim that it is ‘fulfillment of the mandate’ is a political ploy.

A pattern is visible when looking at many of the steps and announcements of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-led government. These steps seem to be taken more to prove the existence of the manifesto and to send a message that ‘we are fulfilling our promises’ than to solve the immediate problems of the people. The nature of such politics is that there is a huge gap between announcement and implementation, media visibility is more important than policy success, and every action turns into a ‘branding’ exercise.

Finance Minister Wagle, after discussions with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) MPs, has assured that ‘the situation where MPs have to run to ministries to ask for budgets and projects will be ended.’ It is good to hear this, but this is not implementation, but assurance. There is no need to tell what the history of assurances is in Nepali politics. A government that considers announcements as achievements, assurances as implementation, and media visibility as proof of policy success has not come to power to solve the problems of the people, but to give a ‘live performance’ of its fictitious promises. As Bonhoeffer said, this government is also wrapping every failure in the branded language of ‘the process is underway’. Because they want the illusion that the people liked the promises and won them.

Finally, we must return to one question, where is this government going and where do the Nepali people want to go? The deputy leader of the parliamentary party of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has said, ‘In the five-point agreement, we have stated number one – good governance.’ And, while standing on the foundation of good governance, we had promised to maintain good governance by practicing advanced practices of this system, and the government is practicing that.’

But the RSS’s own MP Amresh Kumar Singh has strongly criticized Prime Minister Balendra Shah’s style of governance and his failure to be accountable to the Parliament, warning that the current government has disrupted relations with India and China and that weakening the Parliament will put the future of democracy in danger. The RSS has been presenting itself as an alternative force, a party that practices good governance and people-responsive politics, but recent events have raised serious questions about this claim. The ruling RSS MPs have started getting dragged into controversies one after another. An MP had to apologize after publicly reprimanding a school principal. This is the face of 'new politics', the face that people claim to have liked after reading the manifesto.