"Things don't move, why?" If there was a prize for the most frequently asked question during this week's Nepal Development Forum meeting, that one would get it. Donors were puzzled: there is awareness at the highest levels of Nepal's government and bureaucracy about the fundamental reasons for our persistent poverty and chronic deprivation. There is a proven formula for setting things right. There are signs that, despite past inefficiencies, bad governance and lack of transparency, some things have worked and Nepal's development parameters show steady improvement. Yet, things don't move. Why?

Looking for a single scapegoat for this national paralysis in statecraft is futile, but it is clear that a large part of this crisis is a result of constant, successive failures of leadership.

It did not take long for the euphoria of democracy to evaporate after 1990. Our elected leaders and the parties they represented let us down badly. Governance, to cite the current buzzword, is a gift they never possessed. Or maybe they thought it was a skill they didn't need, that being politicians automatically endowed them with the craft of governance.

Suffering and fighting for democracy, it seems, aren't credentials enough to turn freedom-fighters into visionary rulers. Decades of incarceration, torture and exile don't guarantee that leaders become better managers or more accountable politicians. We had in the past ten years begun to see a glimmer of the qualities we look for in the commitment and responsibility of elected leaders at the grassroots. But many of them are being systematically eliminated, or hounded out of their home villages by the Maoists.

At the national level, governance isn't just about the conduct of the state. Politics isn't just the operational strategy of the day-to-day survival of the powerful. Politics can't just be about clinging to the table under which deals are made. In any country with our level of human deprivation, politics must be more than that. Politics is the competitive process to choose the best and most honest managers so that they can improve peoples' lives.

If they wanted to govern well, our elected leaders would have made the people who elected them a part of the political process that could make their lives better. They would have tried harder to redress the skewed balance of social justice by giving a voice (beyond just lip service) to the voiceless. They would have done all this honestly and efficiently.

But somewhere in the last 12 years, we lost it. Politics has become an end in itself, politics for politics' sake. And those of us outside politics have often chosen to remain outside the political process itself. We have forgotten the bond between development and democracy. Politics must force elected leaders at all levels to create the conditions necessary for citizens to live more decent lives. Or else, they do not get elected again. This connection was the reason for hope in 1990. And it is because everybody forgot that missing link that we are in the mess we are in today. Even if you don't completely buy the theory of cultural determinism that makes Kathmandu Valley's elite a bunch of pampered fatalists, the reasons for this are as much socio-cultural as they are rooted in the history of feudalism and autocracy that saddled us with the political economy we have today.

Development failed because the people do not feel they are a part of it, and they don't feel they are a part of because they are hardly ever consulted. The United Nations' Nepal Human Development Report 2001 which was released just before the NDF meeting last week put its finger right on the problem: poverty in Nepal, the report said, is first and foremost a crisis of governance. "The level of human development in Nepal remains among the lowest in the world .and this stems basically from inequity and inequality in the distribution of resources and opportunities."

The result: nine million Nepalis still live in hardcore poverty. The gap between rich and poor in Nepal is wide even by South Asia's inequitable standards. The figures for female literacy and maternal mortality are as shameful as ever-especially in the far and mid-west. Millions of Nepali women continue to live in misery.

It's true, it's not all gloom and doom. Nationwide, the literacy rate is moving rapidly past the 65 percent mark, the life expectancy of Nepalis has gone up, per capita income is rising, access to health care has improved, decentralisation is starting to give people at the grassroots greater control over their own destiny. The efficiency of the delivery of basic services can be further improved by turning over the control of their management to local bodies.

So, why aren't things moving? Because Nepal is badly governed. What can we do about it? Ensure greater participation of the people in decision-making, and force politicians to be more accountable. Donors will only go so far, ultimately we have to do it ourselves. We cannot wait for the insurgency to be over before we launch an aggressive development drive, otherwise it will never be over.