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Who will be occupying Singhadurbar in a month? No one cares. It should not be that way. If KP Oli fails as a pandemic-time prime minister, people should believe Sher Bahadur Deuba or Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the two most likely candidates to replace him, might do a better job.­ Sadly, that too is not the case. Whether Oli remains prime minister or whether Deuba replaces him, Covid-19 will continue to push the country to the brink. This lack of options is a damning indictment of our democratic process and its principal actors. 

In the US, the incoming Biden administration was able to turn around the country’s dismal Covid-19 record, successfully mobilizing the country’s health resources and persuading millions of Americans to shed their vaccine skepticism. Now most states in the US are largely corona-free. Biden’s leadership—high on action and accountability—was in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s—given to peddling pseudoscience and white nationalism. The choice between Biden and Trump could not have been starker. 

No such choice is available to us. The country will most likely have an election, sooner rather than later. But the public is in no mood to vote. In a recent Niti Foundation survey of those aged 18-40 conducted across the country, fully 44 percent had zero interest in politics, while another 40 percent expressed only ‘some’ interest. Such widespread dissatisfaction with the political class among the country’s most productive workforce is not a healthy sign for the new federal republic. As the Covid-19 crisis worsens, this skepticism will further increase. What is to be done then?

There are no easy choices. But if our political parties are committed to helping the country emerge from the corona quagmire, there is no alternative to forging a broad political consensus, the kind seen in the immediate aftermath of the 2006 Jana Andolan. Back then, the political consensus was aimed at removing the vestiges of monarchy, helping the country transition to peace, and cementing progressive changes. Arguably, the country faces an even bigger crisis today. What better time to revive that old spirit of consensual politics?

Such a consensus has become vital not just to combat corona. The democratic system itself is at risk. If a democratic government cannot deliver during a grave national crisis, do we at all need democracy, people are asking? It is up to our main political actors—CPN-UML, Nepali Congress, CPN (Maoist Center), and JSPN—to remove their skepticism by showing that they can set aside political squabbles and again work together in the national interest. Otherwise, they will leave the space open for demagogues who can justifiably blame the political class for its collective failure on corona-control. (It won’t matter that the Oli government is largely responsible for the unfolding crisis.) The legitimacy of the entire political setup will be questioned. 

Such political consensus is a long way off. But that should not stop our political actors from trying. After all, who would have thought that our querulous politicians—the same ones who had so badly debased national politics in the 1990s—could work together in the national interest? Back then, the common enemy was the autocratic monarchy; right now, it’s a deadly virus. 

Prime Minister KP Oli for once made sense and appeared statesmanly during his May 3 address to the country. Making a U-turn from his earlier public stand that Covid-19 was an innocuous disease that responded to ingestion of turmeric and boiled guava leaves, this time, speaking from inside a glass box and through a surgical mask, he appealed to the people to take the virus seriously. Oli also urged them not to heed rumors and to only listen to experts. He rounded off by expressing his government’s seriousness in combating Covid-19—in English. 

A calculated performance it was, coming hot on the heels of his promise of seeking a vote of confidence in the federal lower house—a vote he could very well lose. If he does, Oli could announce fresh elections in six months. As the number of daily infections and deaths mount, Oli seems to have realized that his pitch of an ‘easy virus’ could backfire as an electoral strategy. People now want the truth, however painful, and expect their prime minister to lead the anti-virus crusade. There could be no better vote-garnering strategy right now than honoring that expectation. 

Oli knows that even though he may lose the parliamentary vote, an alternative candidate is not on the horizon. The only viable candidate, Sher Bahadur Deuba of Nepali Congress, does not seem interested in taking over when there is a high chance of him being discredited for mishandling the pandemic. Better to stay in opposition and continue pointing fingers at Oli. The Oli government’s failure on corona-control, Deuba reckons, will be to the electoral advantage of Nepali Congress. Moreover, he could better plot his comeback as party president from outside the government.   

Relations between Oli and New Delhi continue to thaw, partly because of Oli’s foot-dragging on the BRI and his support for the MCC compact, a part of the broader US Indo-Pacific Strategy. Oli’s support for China was always exaggerated: He was only cashing in on the anti-India public sentiment in the aftermath of the 2015-16 border blockade. Otherwise, Oli’s relations with the South Block have always been top-notch. 

Deuba understands India will not look kindly on him if he disturbs New Delhi’s new Nepal strategy. This, in his calculation, will make it difficult for him to keep the party presidency and return to PM’s chair.

However you see it, Oli seems to be in it for the long haul. Even with his checkered governance history, the master strategist is banking on people’s immediate electoral dilemma. Will they vote for Nepali Congress under Sher Bahadur Deuba, the four-time, largely ineffectual prime minister? How likely are they to back a Dahal-Nepal coalition that has no other agenda than to unseat Oli?

The electorate will continue to be divided in the upcoming elections, and Oli could very well benefit from it again. 

“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life,” said Rabindra Nath Tagore almost a century ago. Tagore, probably the most respected renaissance man of Asia, is revered as a household deity in Bengal with the nickname Kabiguru. He has such a revered place in Bengali culture that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's two-year-long 'bearding up' was widely suspected to be a poorly attempted imitation, in looks only of course, of the Nobel Prize winning poet, playwright, painter, composer, reformist, educationist and philosopher. Modi apparently wanted to woo the Bengali 'Bhadralok' before the 2021 Bidhan Sabha elections. But the Bengalis were not impressed by this cheap imitation and the ruling TMC, under Mamata Banerjee, won a landslide victory despite the anti-incumbency factor of two terms.

Modi's style of politics has perception management at its center. Singling out Modi for this would be slightly unfair, however, given that even greatest leaders like Gandhi or Lincoln, or even Obama, took great care in their messaging. It’s documented that Lincoln depended wholly on the network of friends among journalists and newspaper owners to propagate his ideas and breed a wave of popularity. But the controversial rise of Modi-Amit Shah duo in the BJP, and consequentially in national politics, marked a new era of Indian politics. As a successor to the subtle and gentle Congress PM Manmohan Singh, Modi shone in extreme contrast with his flamboyance. 

This change in Indian politics synchronized with a transformation the world over that got associated with two phenomena: the rightist wave, and the post-truth era. One signifies the rise of strongly rightist male authoritarian leaders like Putin, Modi and Boris Johnson; the later is the phenomenon of the diminishing of the gatekeepers in the arena of information. As social media becomes the feeder of news to us, and the traditional media houses have largely vanished as the main source of information and analysis, we have seen a new era in politics. Although this is an ideal condition for a democratic set up and the unjust power of big media tycoons is limited by this openness, with tools available now to reach every mind directly, the access has been highly manipulated to promulgate fake news.

The rightist wave was driven by a majoritarian politics aided by the post-truth perception management. This understanding is an obvious logical connecting of the dots and the extrapolation is applied to understand politics everywhere for last few years, including here in South Asia. At first glance, there seems no problem with this simplification, but I have always been skeptical of such over-simplified versions of history. I am of the opinion that the social media and information age aided by the fourth technological revolution in the first two decades of the 21st Century has brought insurmountable changes in how people communicate. This in turn has spawned new methods and practices in the arena of political communication.

But, for this same reason, politics the world over has become more and more localized, and hence what we see is a series of events resulting from local conditions. But looking at all these events from a distance, and as humans have a tendency to look for patterns in everything, we have clubbed some events together to make the generalization of the idea of a wave plausible.

This simplification was mostly popularized by lazy liberal intellectuals the world over, including in India, where they were not ready to look at the indications of social upheavals. The rise of the BJP in India owes to a legacy that leads back to more than a century, and it gained foothold because of a strong feeling of resentment in the religious majority because of the perceived neglect and uprooting of the mainstream culture. In America, the rise of Trump was a result of similar resentments among the white people.  

There is no denying that past events impact the outcome of future events and there can also be some domino effects. But a simple example from 2013-2014 from Delhi illustrates that people's voting patterns are driven by complex factors and it’s difficult to overly generalize politics. In 2013, the AAP had won almost half the seats in the Delhi Bidhan Sabha, whereas in the Lok Sabha elections six months later, the party did not win a single seat, while the BJP won seven out of eight. But the biggest surprise was in the Bidhan Sabha elections nine months after that: when the AAP again won 67 out of 70 seats. This rollercoaster turn of events in a timeframe of less than a year is intriguing, and speaks a lot about the collective intelligence behind people’s voting patterns. 

With such a complex display of electoral behavior within a short time in such a compact political zone, generalizing a pattern for the world over in today's times is foolish. Even right now, some thinkers are misreading the Bengal elections. Shashi Tharoor, an author of more than 18 books and Congress MP, tweeted: ‘Bengal is a decisive win for the "idea of India", an inclusive, pluralist India where your religion or region don't matter. It shows BJP's electoral juggernaut is not invincible. And it reasserts the value of a federal India where States resist the overweening power of the Center.' Tharoor is obviously happy that somebody is able to put a break in BJP's momentum even if Congress itself hasn't been able to win a single seat. 

But a closer scrutiny of the voting behavior comes from Prashant Kishor, the main elections strategist credited with the TMC’s outstanding victory. He said that 'no matter how polarized an election is, no party can get more than 50 to 55 percent of the majority community. In BJP strongholds, 50-55 percent of Hindus voted for them but the TMC concentrated on the 45 percent.'

Even though many commentators are projecting this result as Bengali people’s rejection of the BJP's Hindutva drive, the fact that the BJP is at 77 seats, and a close second in most of lost seats, speaks a lot about the creeping reach of the idea. If anything, the 'Royal Bengal Show' has not only shown the limits of majoritarian politics, it has also proved the limits of an overly simplified generalization of political events. This tells us to stop the unjustified fear of a majoritarian wave the world over and look for localized solutions to crucial problems. But above all, to paraphrase the Kabiguru saying, it shows us that 'the one who plants the right ideas in society, knowing that he/she will never really be able to benefit from it, has at least started to understand the meaning of politics.

The prime minister regularly cites unproven Covid-19 cures—salt-water gargle, turmeric consumption, various nasal exercises. This has added to people’s sense of complacency. For the more scientifically minded, such antics reduce their trust in his government. KP Oli’s party, CPN-UML, still holds political gatherings in the presence of many unmasked attendees. No wonder government exhortations to the public to take the contagion seriously and adopt safety measures have fallen on deaf ears. They have simply stopped trusting government officials. 

The opposition parties should have held the government to account on its criminal neglect of public safety. Yet the leaders of Nepali Congress, CPN (Maoist Center) and Janata Samajbadi Party too have failed to convince their electorates on the virus. Nor have they stopped organizing political gatherings, again in violation of Covid-19 safety norms, even as they harangue the Oli government for its failures on contagion-control.

If our political parties cannot help the country deal with its most pressing problem in generations, it bears asking: what good are they? How can they claim to work in public interest? Moreover, the rulers, across the party lines, are seen as representing the interests of only a small segment of the society. People from other ethnic and class groups thus view those in power with deep suspicion. 

I can't think of a single top political leader today who commands broad public support. The main problem is our senior politicians’ sense of entitlement and their failure to see beyond pure power politics. 

As the country battles a deadly pandemic, their focus continues to be to either hold on to power or, for others, to get there, which unfortunately is the ultimate goal of their politics—no, no higher purpose to serve for this elderly bunch. The generation of leaders currently at the helm cite the sacrifices they have made—most notably, their long years in prison—for the cause of democracy. They act as if the state ought to repay their dues. 

No top Nepali leader is thinking about building a constituency by saving people’s lives from the deadly pandemic. They are either ignoring the pandemic or trying to twist it to their political advantage. PM Oli wanted to use the pandemic to prolong his tenure, Prachanda sought to unseat him citing the government’s failure to tackle Covid-19, and Deuba is now hoping to keep his party presidency by indefinitely putting off vital NC gatherings. Other leaders of big and small parties have acted no better. 

People are irrational. It is the duty of political leaders to make them see reason, even when people don’t want to see sense. Yet Nepali leaders who command attention, including the Kumbh-returnee ex-king, have, in this time of national crisis, been busy pandering to people’s basest instincts to boost their public image. The health and wellbeing of the people they claim to represent are really irrelevant. The Covid-19 pandemic has again exposed the narrow horizons of our political leaders who are working for themselves and no one else.