Pitfalls of pleasurable servitude

Madheshi politicos must realise that confrontation with majoritarian ethnonationalists is the only way of making a mark on history.

In most oligarchies of the world, power-sharing arrangements are negotiated behind the curtain and inked in darkness. The supremo of CPN-UML, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, is a habitual night owl—even a foreign spook , Samanta Goel, had to schedule a meeting with him late in the evening. Perhaps an astrologer suggested the leader of the largest party in Pratinidhi Sabha and the Chair of the Nepali Congress (NC), Sher Bahadur Deuba, to sign a pact with the supremo of the second-largest party in Parliament after midnight. The deal is finally sealed, and the foremost democratic force of the country will be collaborating with the dominant communist party to entrench an ethnocratic regime .