There are many images in our archives of the past seven years of violence. Pictures of mutilated bodies, corpses of activists and teachers tortured and butchered by Maoists, 14-year-old boys shot dead by security forces who thought they were rebels. These are disturbing pictures, and many of them are too grisly to print. Then there are photographs like the one below of a father approaching the body of his son which had just been brought home at Chaurjhari airfield last November. For us, this one frame signifies the sorrow of thousands of families across this tear-soaked land, and it is a universal symbol of the tragedy of conflict. We owe it to the souls of the Nepalis who have been killed, their families and friends, to ourselves and to our nation that we work for peace. Don't make us record scenes like these again.

Yet, three weeks into the ceasefire, we sense that some people in Kathmandu are getting blas? about peace. There is the shocking cynicism of the leaders of the political parties who appear to be doing everything in their power to wreck the peace process just because they are not a part of it. The true martyrs of this conflict have been the hundreds of grassroots political leaders of various parties: the VDC chairmen and the DDC members who have been killed by the Maoists. These were people who literally died for democracy. Unfortunately, their party leaders are still playing petty parlour games that brought us to this sorry state. They are still haggling about who will be prime minister and home minister in an interim government that will supervise elections.

Seldom in the past 12 years did they grasp the fundamental truth: that democracy is not just about freedom, it comes with responsibility. The Nepali people are still paying the price for national-level politicians they elected who never took responsibility for their actions.

This peace process has come about because both the government and the Maoists realised that neither could win, and the country would lose if they kept on fighting. Even if one side could get the upper hand, it would come at an unacceptable price. That realisation was the first step and the easy part. Now comes the difficult task of forging a political consensus between the political players.

Maoist banners all over the country this week have boiled everything down to three demands-a roundtable conference, an interim government and a constituent assembly. This could be a useful mechanism to make progress in three time frames:

. Short-term: political forces must sit down together in a roundtable conference, agree on a minimum agenda and desist from pronouncements that jeopardise the ceasefire.
. Medium-term: there is a political and development vacuum at the village level that needs to be addressed with local elections supervised by an interim government.
. Long-term: work towards inclusion, local autonomy and regional balance through appropriate changes in the constitution.

These are also the pre-requisites to immediate and sustainable peace. The alternative is unthinkable. Return to fighting this time means urban guerrilla warfare in the capital, the possible incursion of foreign forces and perhaps the ultimate extinction of Nepal as a nation. What British India couldn't do 200 years ago, we will have done to ourselves.