Sometime back, NC MP Gagan Thapa addressed a party meeting in a Tanahun village. He tried to project an optimistic view about the party and national politics, and assured his audience they would succeed in writing a democratic constitution. He then declared NC would govern the country for twenty years and lead Nepal's economic transformation.
Pin-drop silence.
That's when Thapa realised just how low the morale of party workers had dipped. They had stopped believing in themselves and the party. Abusing the Maoists could energise the cadre temporarily, but 'we are the future' rhetoric could not penetrate the fog of despondency that had engulfed the party rank and file. Exactly six decades after NC led the first true democratic revolution in Nepal, the party is suffering from its deepest existential crisis.
It does not have an ideological direction. Radical social democracy fell by the wayside in the early 1990s and no one quite knows what has replaced it. The party has slowly shifted to the right of the political spectrum, but neither the party nor the right wing social base have quite embraced each other yet. It does not have a clearly articulated position on any of the contemporary debates that mark our politics - federalism, affirmative action, land reform or even India-Nepal bilateral relations.
NC has lost the propaganda war on 'change' despite being the first party with a remarkably national character. As Thapa points out, by dint of political work, not necessarily quotas, the party has two Newars as vice presidents (Gopal Man Shrestha and Prakash Man Singh), a Madhesi general secretary (Bimalendra Nidhi), and a former Madhesi general secretary as the country's president (Ram Baran Yadav). By comparison, the Maoist standing committee has a far more exclusivist character. But any inclusiveness seen in NC is all the result of pre-1990 efforts by BP Koirala, Subarna Shumsher and Ganesh Man Singh. There was no effort in the 1990s to consolidate and go beyond the relatively privileged in these communities, a massive failure other parties have since capitalised on.
NC is saddled with a dull, uncharismatic leadership that has lost the art of political communication. Apart from Sher Bahadur Deuba, who commands a degree of mass support in his far west stronghold, it is hard to think of a single top leader with truly popular appeal. No one knows Sushil Koirala beyond the party and Ram Chandra Poudel has a limited base in the organisation beyond a few district HQs in the central hills. None of these leaders has ever attempted to explain the logic of the peace process to their own constituencies, which is why there is now resistance to cooperating closely with the Maoists on the ground. In the Tarai, the NC core area, the exodus of leaders to Madhesi groups has been already documented and explains their electoral disaster.
The spat at the party's HQ in Sanepa on Wednesday revealed the factionalism that percolates down to the lowest levels of the organisation. At the top, the leaders spend all their time devising plans to marginalise intra-party rivals. On the ground, the party continues to operate as parallel NC and NC (D) structures in many districts.
But just when you'd think soul-searching is in order, the party seems focused on how to get their own man appointed as governor of the central bank. NC has internalised the belief that securing political appointments for its own, extracting resources from the state for party or individual benefit, and encouraging crony capitalism by diverting local budgets to favoured businesses is the only way to become stronger.
If there is one lesson for NC, it is that this strategy has only made them weaker. The NC has become detached from its social base and ideological moorings precisely because it has become inextricably tied to the state apparatus without using it to effect any radical social change.
There is little doubt that Nepal, and Nepali democracy, still need a strong NC. But for that, as Thapa says, the party has to stop behaving like it is answering questions in an exam paper set by another party. Drive the agenda, discover your roots, engage in a generational transformation, get rid of the money launderers and right-wing pseudo academics that dominate the party's top echelons, spend a few years out of power, intervene on policy issues constructively and patiently rebuild the organisation on the ground. There is no other short-cut.
