Balen Shah’s patchy 100 days in office

Instead of honouring due process, the government has taken the populist course of quick delivery at any cost.

The Balendra Shah government’s first 100 days have been eventful. Shah came into office promising a clean break from the past. To change people’s perception of government, something that had steadily worsened under successive administrations, he vowed to quickly act against corrupt politicians and officials and speed up service delivery. Some signs of this urgency are already evident. After Shah entered office, of the 2.9 million backlog of driving licences, the Department of Transport Management printed around 2.4 million copies. Previous governments had trotted out long lists of excuses for why such quick printing of licence copies was not possible. People visiting government offices these days also note faster service-delivery, and how work gets done without the payment of any bribe. Hundred days on, the belief that this government can do the vital stuff in which many of its predecessors failed is still strong. This optimism is justified too as the March elections brought into office a new cohort of young and energetic lawmakers who didn’t feel weighed down by the kind of baggage that older leaders of older parties like the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML appeared to be saddled with.