Shah government losing its human face

The pursuit of order and efficiency should not impose disproportionate suffering on those least able to bear it.

Whether it is in the way his ministers threaten physical violence against rule-breakers, or the way the prime minister himself dismisses critics, there is a hard edge to the Balendra Shah government. Many Nepalis are happy with the faster and improved service-delivery under Shah—for instance the swift delivery of millions of pending driving licences or greater availability of staff at vital state institutions. They also see that after years of misrule under the old political parties and their ageing leaders, there has been a much-needed generational change in government. Yet all is not well with the functioning of the Shah government. For one, while its plans and programmes seem to have something to offer for the middle and upper classes, people in the lowest strata of the economic ladder who need state protection the most have been left to fend for themselves. This is evident both in the continuing plight of those forcibly displaced from Kathmandu’s squatter settlements as it is in the death through self-immolation of Ganesh Nepali.