After the vote

There are no signs that Prime Minister Dahal wants to change his errant ways.

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal had to prove his parliamentary majority for a second time in barely two and half months. There could perhaps be no better example of an unstable polity than this. With at least two more governments set to be elected in the next five years, the country will have no respite from this depressing trend—with all its attendant problems. Whenever there is a change in government or its composition, there is also an accompanying shift in state policies. Seldom do incoming ministers take ownership of the policies of their predecessors, instead preferring to come up with their own. They also like working with their own pick of bureaucrats. Thus, when new ministers are inducted, the bureaucracy, the country’s permanent establishment, undergoes a major shake-up too. Top bureaucrats are wantonly transferred as ministers try to bring in those whose personal interests closely align with their own. The old bureaucrats who are transferred take away whatever little institutional memory there is.