Mottled Dawns and Self-Goals: The Heavy Cost of Instant Statesmanship
Devendra Gautam What happens when powerful people who are not known for speaking begin speaking? What happens when important people not known for writing — because they obviously have other important things to do — begin writing, all of a sudden? Nepal’s contemporary history shows that a disaster — or a ‘revolution’ — is most likely to happen in either of the cases. In our case, the disaster and the revolution are synonyms, by and large, right? Build institutions, not cults Instead of building a base of rabid fans and followers, the focus of any democratic government worth its name, including a celebrity-studded administration of the present, should be on building/strengthening institutions to stabilise and strengthen our democratic polity and country. While our institutions are tottering, a tribe of livid fans and followers is on overdrive on social media and beyond, putting their heroes that have risen phenomenally from the...