What after ‘bhagbanda’ is over?

Depoliticising VC appointment cannot clear the structural rot that has besieged Nepal’s oldest and biggest university.

Over the course of the last month alone, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has said multiple times that he will end political bhagbanda in the appointment of officeholders in Nepal’s public universities. His statements have come at a time when the top position, namely, the Vice-Chancellor (VC), at Nepal’s biggest university, Tribhuvan University (TU), is vacant. Dahal and his Minister of Education, Science and Technology had known for many months when exactly the tenure of the immediate past VC would be over. They could have launched a process to select the successor in time to make sure that the top post in Nepal’s most important university did not remain unoccupied even for a single day. Having failed to do that, Dahal’s recent statements do not generate much confidence. Moreover, we have heard similar statements from prime ministers in the past. Hence, I will only believe Dahal’s recent proclamations once I see how the VC position in TU gets filled.