Nepal has once again entered a phase of political upheaval. After weeks of mass protests led mainly by youth demanding jobs, accountability, and an end to corruption, the Prime Minister was forced to resign. A new government has taken office amid promises of renewal. Yet few in Nepal believe that this change will make a real difference. In the last seventeen years since the fall of the monarchy, many governments have come and gone, but the condition of the people has remained largely unchanged.
When Nepal replaced the monarchy with an elected Constituent Assembly in 2008, it was hailed as the dawn of a new era. People from every walk of life participated with enthusiasm, believing they were laying the foundation of a system in which sovereignty would finally rest with them. But over the years, that hope has steadily faded. Power that once belonged to a king and his court has merely passed into the hands of party leaders and their inner circles.
The Constituent Assembly, which was expected to give shape to a new people-centred polity, dissolved once without producing a constitution and later produced one through bargaining among political elites. The citizens, who had been active participants in the struggle for change, were reduced to passive spectators. Successive elections since then have brought one coalition after another to power. None has addressed the fundamental problems of society. Poverty and unemployment persist. The youth continue to migrate abroad in search of work, draining villages of their most energetic members. Corruption has become institutionalised, and natural disasters repeatedly expose the weakness of governance and the absence of accountability.
The Constitution of 2015 promised a federal and inclusive republic. In practice, it has only multiplied layers of authority without bringing power closer to the people. Whether in Kathmandu or in the provinces, decision-making remains concentrated in the hands of party hierarchies and bureaucracies. Citizens have the right to vote but not to decide. The space for their direct participation in governance is virtually nonexistent.
This experience raises a question that goes beyond Nepal’s borders: does the system of multi-party democracy, as it functions today, truly serve the people? Elections are projected as the highest expression of popular will, but once they are over, the people’s role ends. Governments are formed and dissolved, alliances are stitched and broken, and policies are made and remade — all without the consent or control of the electorate. In this way, the system reproduces the same domination under a democratic label.
What has emerged in Nepal is not the exception but the rule of multi-party politics everywhere. Power alternates between parties, yet the structure of authority and privilege remains intact. Ordinary citizens have no means to hold their representatives to account between elections. The promises of equality, justice, and participation made during campaigns are quickly forgotten. Those who control money, media, and organisation dominate political life, while the people, in whose name democracy is invoked, are left with no effective say.
The situation is strikingly similar in India. Here too, the multi-party system has come to mean competition among ruling elites rather than empowerment of the people. Every few years, elections are held at great expense and with much fanfare. But after the votes are counted, citizens return to lives of insecurity, unemployment, and rising prices, while the ruling parties continue to act without public control. The forms of democracy are preserved, but its content — the participation and sovereignty of the people — has been hollowed out.
Nepal’s experience since 2008 therefore carries a larger lesson. The problem does not lie with any particular party or leader, but with a political structure that concentrates power in a few hands and confines the people to the margins.
The challenge before the people of Nepal — and indeed before the people of India as well as other countries— is to ask whether this system can ever deliver genuine democracy. If sovereignty is to rest with the people, there must be mechanisms for them to select and question their representatives, to participate in shaping policies, and to hold power directly accountable. Without such mechanisms, democracy remains only a formality — an exercise that changes faces but not the conditions of life.
Nepal’s recent events show once again that when people feel completely excluded from decision-making, they will rise in protest. Yet periodic uprisings, however courageous, cannot substitute for lasting empowerment. What is needed is not another government or another election, but a new political process that puts people, not parties, at the centre of governance.
The events unfolding in Nepal are a warning and a reminder. They show that unless democracy is transformed to make people the real decision-makers, discontent will continue to grow. The overthrow of the monarchy was a significant moment, but it was only a beginning. The deeper struggle — to ensure that power truly belongs to the people — remains unfinished. That struggle is not Nepal’s alone. It is the challenge facing all societies, including ours, that seek freedom, justice, and genuine democracy in the twenty-first century.
Source of image: https://www.britannica.com/event/2025-Nepalese-Gen-Z-Protests
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