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Nothing tests a political leader’s mettle more than a national crisis. And without a doubt, this is a time of an unprecedented crisis. The coronavirus has the country firmly in its grip, and is expected to get worse. With its half-hearted response, the government of KP Sharma Oli has, rather predictably, been unable to halt its spread. Instead, he has ordered the construction of a temple dedicated to Lord Ram at Thori, near Birgunj, without a shred of evidence to support his claim that Ram was born there. It’s a curious case of a communist prime minister ordering the building of a Hindu temple.

Our southern neighbor is also being ravaged by the coronavirus, its economy is tanking, and it finds itself helpless against Chinese aggression. So what does its chief executive do? Why, inaugurate a Ram temple in Ayodhya, the ‘real’ birthplace of Ram according to his Hindutva acolytes. Narendra Modi, who became prime minister by peddling an openly anti-Muslim pitch, sure knows how to appeal to people’s religious sentiments. Most devout Hindus are apparently willing to forgive all his other sins if he only covers himself in saffron. Oli is taking a page out of his book.

We hear religious politics has no future in Nepal. Tell that to PM Oli. As he fails on nearly every domestic front, he too is using religion as a political tool in this Hindu-majority country; and if such a move riles Modi’s India, so much the better. He has wasted his two-thirds mandate and is trying to cover his mistakes by using these diversionary tactics.

In doing so, he is undermining the country’s constitutionally protected secular character. Oli is also showing that he won’t stop short of anything to cement his hold on power—and frankly, that is all he seems to care about these days. As people no longer trust his government, they are not ready to heed its otherwise vital anti-corona message. In this time of crisis, Nepal needed a strong and trustworthy leader. But here we have a prime minister who has given up all pretense of governing and who has stooped to openly pander Nepal’s Hindu majority. Unfortunately, Lord Ram is not coming to rescue his country from the dreaded virus and, on current form, neither will the prime minister.    

In his August 4th meeting with opposition leaders and health experts, Prime Minister KP Oli expressed his dissatisfaction over the criticism of his government’s handling of the corona crisis. He accused his critics of being quick to blame the government for its shortcomings, while ignoring its achievements in controlling the spread of the virus. We are sorry to say, but there isn’t much it has gotten right. It’s sudden decision to lift the nationwide lockdown, the abrupt reduction in the number of PCR tests despite a steady increase in contagion, and its visible failure to screen those entering Nepal from India—all were egregious failures. 

The experts he consulted on August 4th advised him to re-impose the nationwide lockdown, partially if not completely, and a calibrated lockdown has in fact been imposed. But this is only the first step in effective corona-control. There is now enough evidence, from multiple places, of community spread in Nepal. Health experts were already warning that the country would be headed down this road when the government lifted the nationwide lockdown on July 21st. There is reason to believe concern over public health was not the prime motivator behind that decision. 

The re-imposition of lockdown measures has to be coupled with widespread testing, something the government failed to do during the previous nationwide lockdown. In the absence of such measures, restrictions like confining people to their homes for months on end make little sense. It will only delaying the inevitable. The speed with which the virus has spread of late also has a whiff of inevitability. Thankfully, more people are now being tested, and public booths have been set up to test likely suspects. Yet, even this may not be enough. 

The time may have come to randomly test people in communities to get a fair assessment of the spread. In cities like New Delhi and Mumbai, such random tests have yielded troubling results, and we can expect something similar here. All our actions from hereon have to be taken assuming the worst. This might mean further hardships for people, especially the daily-wage earners. The government thus has to work out a mechanism to provide for them, through direct cash transfers if need be. Having gotten so much wrong thus far, any more mistakes in handling this growing crisis could prove catastrophically costly. 

Community-level transmission of Covid-19 is now likely in all major population clusters of Nepal. Biratnagar and Birgunj, the country’s fourth and fifth most populous cities, have re-imposed near complete lockdowns. Syangja district of Gandaki province has also witnessed a troubling spurt in infections. On July 28, Kathmandu valley reported 53 new cases, the highest single-day jump to date. Even as the corona menace grows, the number of tests has decreased, from nearly 10,000 a day a month ago to under 4,000 a day today. The federal government says it is planning a significant ramp-up in testing. People are justifiably skeptical. 

Why was testing curtailed at a time India, which shares an open border with Nepal, was breaking records in its daily corona-positive and death tallies? The reduction in testing seems intended to keep a lid on the number of detected corona-positives, reducing criticism of the government and preventing the public from panicking. This is warped logic. When the media raised questions about the questionable handling of the pandemic, Health Minister Bhanu Bhakta Dhakal accused government critics, who were incapable of seeing its good works, of being blinded by cataract.

Meanwhile, the infighting in the ruling Nepal Communist Party is taking the attention away from the corona crisis. KP Oli’s in-party critics are on the mark when they accuse the prime minister of bungling the corona response, among its other signature governance failures. They want Oli to step down from both the posts. But the late-sexagenarian is in no mood to bow out easily. Nor are his party colleagues willing to give up their dogged stand to unseat the prime minister. Oli is rightly faulted for his cavalier handing of the corona crisis. But were they not so focused on their own political calculations, Oli’s party colleagues could have actually forced the prime minister to come clean on his coronavirus mishandling—something the weak opposition parties have not been able to do.

The government messaging when it announced the lifting of the nationwide lockdown on July 21 was poor too. It failed to convey the gravity of the risks people still face. In fact, it increasingly looks like the government lifted the lockdown to honor a Supreme Court ruling on tax collection rather than to ease public suffering. The country has been put on a dangerous corona course. A wrong turn here or there could lead to a catastrophic accident. 

Nepal is battling with the double-whammy of unchecked Covid-19 spread and incessant monsoon rains. Early morning rooftop talks have shifted from the inevitability of widespread coronavirus contagion to the number of daily lives and properties lost to floods and landslides. There is a sense of pervasive fatalism. The KP Oli government has gotten its coronavirus response wrong from the start, and there is no sign it is learning. Likewise, people feel the state has learned little from these water-borne disasters that strike every monsoon. In both the cases, there was ample time to prepare. 

Even with well over two months remaining till the end of the South Asian monsoon, the death and destruction in Nepal is already the deadliest in years. As of this writing, around 200 people were dead or missing in different parts of the country. In Sindhupalchowk district, whole settlements have been wiped out; in Dhading, the major road into Kathmandu valley, its lifeline, is damaged. Major towns in he Tarai like Birgunj and Janakpur are under water. Yet more rain is predicted. Now that the nationwide anti-corona lockdown has been near completely—and rather controversially—lifted, the hope is that the state will now train its focus on controlling water disasters. 

It will still be a herculean endeavor. Besides moving those at risk to safety, and tending to their necessities, there is little that can be immediately done to make the country more resilient to water risks. There is also an imminent risk of the spread of water-borne diseases like cholera and dysentery from pooled water and damages to normal water-supply systems. And when water levels start receding at the start of winter, the families that have lost their homes will be at the mercy of the elements. 

In these testing times, one thing that will definitely help is greater coordination among the three tiers of government in channeling flood relief, taking care of the diseased, and resettling those displaced. This kind of coordination was missing on Covid-19 control, which made the contagion worse. As local level units have given a reasonably good account of themselves during the corona crisis, the federal government should start trusting them more. There in fact is no other way. It is hence vital to develop a functional coordination mechanism in the next few days, with clear-cut responsibilities of different tiers. Many likely damages form this season of water woes can still be avoided.