It should by now be clear from the examples of countries like Pakistan and Nepal that "democratic transition" does not necessarily denote a transition to democracy. When the political class fails to address popular grievances that led to the downfall of authoritarianism, when pluralism cannot dislodge an entrenched patronage structure, the dangers of democratic reversal are real. Thirteen years after the People's Movement we see this clearly in Nepal.

Transitional countries do not have any cast-iron guarantees that political evolution will be progressive and linear. Democracy-in-transit is often fragile and fickle. Thomas Carothers, in his piece "The End of the Transition Paradigm" in the Journal of Democracy (13.1, 2002) analyses the phenomenon of "democratic deficit". The theory that democracy restored was democracy gained had become conventional wisdom after the falls of dictatorships in Asia and the former East Bloc in the late 1980s. Carothers argues that just because a people have shaken off dictatorial rule, there is no guarantee that their country is on its way to full-blown democracy.

This is not new to us in Nepal, of course. We have lived through the stench of democracy in decay for the past six years. We have tried to the situation by saying that these are teething problems. We have told ourselves it took the Europeans two hundred years to perfect the system, and how can we make it work in a decade? We said we tried dictatorship, and that didn't work either.

So we concluded that despite its messy transition, the answer to malfunctioning democracy was more democracy, not less. What we hadn't bargained for was the fecklessness of our politicians. A more selfish, self-absorbed and visionless bunch of leaders would be hard to find even in countries where the democratic transition is messier than ours. In his Journal of Democracy piece, Carothers reserves special mention for Nepal as one of the countries afflicted with a syndrome he calls "feckless pluralism".

These are states with political freedom and elections, but where democracy hasn't taken root, there is chronic instability, and little political participation beyond voting. Carothers cites countries like Argentina and Nepal as being examples of countries with feckless pluralism where "the political competition is between deeply entrenched parties that essentially operate on patronage networks and seem never to renovate themselves."

Countries with feckless pluralism, writes Carothers, achieve their own "dysfunctional equilibrium" where rival elite groups compete for the spoils of power. And he cautions against having too high expectations of elections as generators of democratic change. Carothers goes on: "Nepal is a telling example.since 1990 (it) has held many multiparty elections and experienced frequent alternation of power. Yet, the Nepalese public remains highly disaffected from the political system and there is little real sense of democratic accountability"

Well put. But while many here would agree with Carothers' observation concerning national politics, he does overlook the genuine evolution of a culture of democracy in Nepal at the grassroots since 1990. One of the major accomplishments of the past 13 years has been the gradual devolution of decision-making to accountable locally-elected leaders. This had started to unleash a wave of development throughout the land: in community forestry, health care, and lately in education.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the architects of a proletarian revolution want to destroy this foundation. Here was one guarantee that our democracy would not be shallow, be bottom-up, and strike roots deep in the polity. Our adolescent democracy is taking a double whammy: from national leaders who lack accountability, and from armed revolutionaries who want to rip out its fragile roots. With such an alliance, our democracy doesn't stand a chance. Unless, of course, the people speak out. They should. We don't have much time to set things right.