Someone recently asked me what I thought was holding Nepal back. My answer was not: "lack of peace, and here's why we need more peace-building efforts". Nor was it: "we have too few conflict resolution activities, we need more".

The answer was much simpler. What's holding Nepal back is the incapability of our politicians, who are above the age of 45, to inspire trust. Sure, they speak beautiful Nepali. They give fiery speeches. On television, they are seen intently locked in one barta after another. But their words, spoken or written, have stopped inspiring trust.

They purport to represent the multi-faced entity called the Nepali janata. But they do not respect it enough to act on its laments and aspirations. What's more, they do not trust themselves to take any one incomplete national task to completion so that everyone can focus on the next task.

As a result, Nepal continues to swing between promise (tourism and infrastructure development, untapped potential of its youth) and peril (ethnic violence, long drawn-out uncertainties over the country's future, sickening political blame games). And the present crop of netas' repeated failure to exercise and sustain trust to move ahead towards a shared future is getting unbearably costly for many Nepalis under 40, who are leaving the country in droves as students, professionals and labourers.

The older politicians' inability to inspire trust has two roots: sociological and legal. In rural Nepal, people of different ethnic groups have long lived close to one another - harmoniously, yes, but akin to items in a salad bowl: distinct and separate. It's to globalisation's credit that a villager raised in the caste of blacksmith or as an ethnic minority or as a pundit - sharing as they do with one another only levels of poverty and Nepali passports - can today dream of a prosperous future not in Nepal but in Qatar or Malaysia.

Likewise, only 30 years ago in urban Nepal, not many ventured outside the comfortable circle of their ethnic group, clan or caste for marriage, business deals and social alliances. It is only in the last 20 years that people who are now under 40 have met, befriended, or worked and formed relationships with large numbers of Nepalis from different ethnic groups at schools, at work and in society at large.

Their repeated interactions with one another have made today's youth comfortable with Nepal's ethnic diversity. The old, however, are still stuck with seeing the nation as a divided land. So the only way they know how to buy complaining groups' loyalty is to sign a few lines of hastily crafted agreements without ever bothering to understand, let alone be sensitive to, the grievances and their larger implications.

Compounding this problem of trust is the sheer unpredictability of Nepal's legal system. It has been abused to such a degree that laws do not mean anything anymore. And when legal outcomes are always uncertain or drawn out, one can get away with committing just about any crime - protest programs that curtail others' freedom, murder, fighting, rape, arson and bandas - until some international agency shouts: "Enough is enough, we are coming in," which basically means: "No matter what you say, we do not trust you to solve your problems yourselves."

Training in peace-building and conflict resolution activities on a piecemeal basis is all well and good, but it has become so formulaic that it is often ineffective. Given the persistent lack of trust among old politicians (who we cannot replace for there are no effective mechanisms to do so), it's time we focussed on building up trust among politicians so that they work together with all eyes toward our common future.