The president and the prime minister

Bidya Devi Bhandari and KP Oli have ridden roughshod over accepted political norms.

Towards the end of 2015, just days after Bidya Devi Bhandari was sworn in as the country’s second president, I found myself in a Baglung village talking to a couple of school-aged girls about it. Although hailing from the Kathmandu constituency both she and her late husband have represented in parliament, I was no fan of Bhandari’s for the manner in which she had worked in concert with her close ally, KP Sharma Oli, the current prime minister, to undermine the post-2006 progressive agenda. For the young girls in Baglung though, the excitement at witnessing something historic was palpable. When they said that Bhandari’s achievement proved that girls are capable of achieving any and every thing, they meant it literally for such was the symbolic power of her elevation to the country’s top post.