Submit your Article

As 2025 comes to an end and 2026 begins, the distance between what is possible and what is practiced feels both close and painfully far. The past year has taught us lessons not through speeches or strategy documents, but through lived realities.

If one force clearly shaped 2025, it was Nepal’s GenZ. Across campuses, streets, and digital platforms, young people questioned corruption, exclusion, climate inaction, and the widening gap between political promises and daily life. Their expressions were not always polished, but they were deeply sincere. Unlike earlier movements, this generation did not organize only through political parties. They mobilized through social media, art, satire, frustration, and shared hope. They were not rejecting the nation they were refusing to inherit broken systems.

What stood out was not just protest, but clarity. Young people were asking for dignity, participation, and fairness. As we step into 2026, the real question is no longer whether young people are ready for leadership, but whether our institutions are ready to listen and adapt.

For decades, development in Nepal has leaned heavily on foreign assistance. In 2025, that reliance began to feel increasingly fragile. Global political shifts particularly renewed foreign aid cuts from the United States under the Trump administration sent shockwaves across development sectors worldwide. In Nepal, projects slowed, priorities shifted, and civil society organizations faced sudden uncertainty. Decisions made thousands of kilometers away affected health programs, governance initiatives, and social services at home.

The lesson from 2025 is not that foreign aid has no role. It remains important. But it can no longer be the backbone of development. Aid volatility exposed the urgent need for domestic resource mobilization, stronger public institutions, and political accountability. As we move into 2026, development must be treated less as external support and more as a national responsibility rooted in public trust.

In 2025, Nepal signaled its ambition to modernize governance through technology. The government established a National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Center to ease the work of both public and private sectors through digital systems. On paper, this represents progress, efficiency, and readiness for the future. Yet alongside this ambition, important questions emerged. Who benefits from these digital systems? Who is left behind?

While digital platforms expanded access for some, many others persons with disabilities, rural populations, older citizens, and those without reliable internet continued to struggle. Technology, the year reminded us, is not neutral. It reflects choices about whose needs are prioritized. As Nepal accelerates digital transformation in 2026, accessibility, ethical use of AI, and inclusive design must be embedded from the start. Otherwise, innovation risks deepening inequalities rather than reducing them.

When resources shrink, inclusion is often the first to be treated as optional. In 2025, as funding tightened and political attention shifted, people with disabilities, women, and marginalized communities once again had to fight to remain visible. Yet across the country, organizations of persons with disabilities, parents’ groups, and community advocates continued their work often quietly, often underfunded. Their message remained firm: inclusion is not charity. Accessibility is not generosity. Both are right.

The lesson is clear. Inclusion cannot depend on favorable conditions. As we move into 2026, accessibility must be built into public transport, education, digital services, and local governance by design not added later as an afterthought.

In 2025, climate change stopped being abstract. Floods, landslides, heatwaves, and water shortages became routine realities. For many communities, adaptation was no longer about planning, it was about survival. Local governments were often the first responders, yet many lacked adequate authority, resources, and technical capacity. Climate change revealed not only environmental vulnerability, but governance gaps.

The lesson for 2026 is demanding but unavoidable: climate action must be locally led, inclusive, and adequately funded. Policies discussed in Kathmandu or global forums must translate into protection where people actually live.

Another defining reality of 2025 was migration. Remittances continued to sustain households, even as migrant workers faced uncertainty abroad and limited protection at home. Behind economic statistics are human stories of parents aging alone, children growing up without caregivers, and returnees struggling to reintegrate.

Development in 2026 must treat migration not only as an economic strategy, but as a social reality that demands dignity, protection, and reintegration pathways.

Walking into 2026 with purpose

As I think back to that December morning on my terrace in Bhaktapur, the dream I had does not feel unrealistic. It feels only unfinished. Nepal does not need louder slogans or thicker policy documents in 2026. It needs quieter courage listening to lived experiences, reforming institutions, and placing dignity at the center of development. The lessons of 2025 are simple but demanding: choose people over convenience, inclusion over shortcuts, and long-term trust over short-term gain.

As Nepal steps into 2026, this reflection coincides with a significant political moment. Early general elections are expected to be held in March 2026 to elect the members of the House of Representatives. Elections are often framed as moments of competition but they are also moments of choice. The real question is not only who will govern next, but how they will govern. Whether the lessons of 2025 on youth participation, inclusion, climate responsibility, ethical digitalization, and dignity will shape political priorities, or once again be postponed in the noise of short-term promises.

For many young people and marginalized communities, 2026 is not just another election year. It is a test of whether our democracy can respond to lived realities with honesty and courage. If development is to mean anything in the years ahead, it must be rooted in accountability, inclusion, and trust values that no election should ignore. If 2026 becomes the year we begin closing the gap between imagination and reality, then that winter-morning dream on a Bhaktapur terrace may no longer feel like a dream at all.

The Election Commission (EC) has determined the maximum amount that a candidate can spend for the House of Representatives (HoR) elections scheduled for March 5.

As determined by the EC, the spending limit is different for remote districts, and others with better access to services and connectivity networks.

According to the EC, the candidates from constituencies 1, 3, 6, 7 and 8 can spend upto Rs 2.5 million. 

Likewise, Rs 2.7 million of spending limit is set for the candidates from 17 constituencies.

The candidates from 65 other constituencies can spend a maximum of Rs 2.9 million, it is said.

EC Spokesperson Narayan Prasad Bhattarai said that the candidates from 52 election constituencies can spend upto Rs 3.1 million and Rs 3.3 million by the candidates of 26 election constituencies.

The EC has also asked the candidates to open a separate bank account in a bank and financial institution for the purpose of the HoR election and a responsible person should be named for the spending authority during the election.  

After the completion of the polls, the candidates should submit the election cost to the EC within 35 days of the polls as per the HoR Member Election Act.

In a significant political development, the Ujyalo Nepal Party led by Energy Minister Kulman Ghising has merged with the Rastriya Swatantra Party. 

Ghising will remain in second place as the Vice President of the Rastriya Swatantra Party. 

The agreement was reached following a meeting between Rastriya Swatantra Party President Rabi Lamichhane, Ghising and Kathmandu Metropolitan City Mayor Balen Shah today.

Lamichhane, Shah and Ujyalo Nepal Party Chairman Anup Kumar Upadhyay signed the agreement.

2016 was celebrated as the bicentenary of diplomatic ties between Nepal and the United Kingdom. Officially, diplomatic relations between the two countries are said to have begun in 1816, the year Nepal signed the Sugauli Treaty with  East India Company. 

The nine-article treaty was not signed between two sovereign states; rather, it was between the sovereign nation of Nepal and an economic entity, the East India Company. Article One of the treaty states: “There shall be perpetual peace and friendship between the Honorable East India Company and the King of Nepal.”

The East India Company formally relinquished control over India in 1858, when its rule was replaced by the British Crown. The first official treaty between Nepal and Great Britain was signed only in 1923. Known as the Treaty Between the United Kingdom and Nepal, it was signed in Kathmandu on 21 Dec 1923. The first article of the seven-article treaty states: “There shall be perpetual peace and friendship between the Governments of Great Britain and Nepal, and the two Governments agree mutually to acknowledge and respect each other’s independence, both internal and external.”

In this sense, the 1923 treaty is the only agreement signed between two sovereign nations. Yet, the Sugauli Treaty continues to be regarded as the benchmark of diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Interestingly, the narrative is different when it comes to China. The treaty signed on 2 Oct 1791, known as the Treaty of Betrawati, presents notable parallels with the Sugauli Treaty. First, both treaties were signed in the aftermath of war. The Betrawati Treaty was concluded 24 years before the Sugauli Treaty, the former following China’s victory over Nepal, and the latter resulting from British victory. Second, neither treaty was signed directly between official state actors, though state authority was clearly referenced in both. In Article One of the Betrawati Treaty, China is explicitly mentioned: “That China should henceforth be considered as father to both Nepal and Tibet, who should regard each other as brothers.”

Similarly, the British government is referenced in Article Seven of the Sugauli Treaty, which states: “The Rajah of Nipal engages never to molest or disturb the Rajah of Sikkim in the possession of his territories; but agrees, if any difference shall arise between the State of Nipal and the Rajah of Sikkim, or the subjects of either, that such differences shall be referred to the arbitration of the British Government, by which award the Rajah of Nipal engages to abide.”

From Nepali perspective, both treaties represent subjugation—one in terms of political hierarchy and the other through the loss of nearly one-third of its territory. Yet, this remains the reality of history, and there is no alternative but to acknowledge it.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of Nepal-China diplomatic ties, formally established on 1 Aug 1955 in Kathmandu. Unlike its relations with the United Kingdom, Nepal and China do not recognize 1792 as the beginning of formal diplomatic relations. This discrepancy calls for deeper debate and clearer interpretation. If Nepal-UK diplomatic ties are considered to have begun in 1816, why should Nepal–China relations not be acknowledged as starting in 1792? Conversely, if 1955 is accepted as the official starting point of Nepal-China ties, why is 1923 not similarly recognized as the true beginning of Nepal–UK diplomatic relations?

Historically, Nepal-China relations date back to the seventh century during the reign of Narendradev. However, no formal written documents from that period exist. The earliest documented diplomatic agreement dates to 1792. Therefore, this should be considered the formal beginning of Nepal-China diplomatic ties.

If diplomatic agreements concluded during China’s monarchical era are deemed inapplicable to the People’s Republic of China, then why should Nepal accept the same logic, given that the 1955 Nepal-China treaty was signed under Nepal’s own monarchy, led by King Mahendra? It would serve the interests of both countries to recognize 1792 as the first documented instance of formal diplomatic engagement.