Ask not what your country can do for you

They say ‘you get the democracy you deserve’. In Nepal, this applies brutally, as collective disappointment with politics has hardened into fatalism. The line is offensive because it denies citizens the comfort of pretending that all failure is elite failure. The inconvenient truth is that democracy is not merely a structure imposed from above, but a reflection of society’s values and everyday conduct. 

John F Kennedy famously said ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country’. It is cliched and is often dismissed as irrelevant idealism and the sort of rhetoric that only applies to rich, orderly societies. But that mindset is what gets things backward in the first place. Our chronic failure to internalise this idea in Nepal explains more about our democratic malaise than any single constitution or conspiracy. 

While making this argument, I am not absolving politicians or bureaucrats. Nepal’s leadership class has been spectacularly mediocre and self-serving. I am merely suggesting, as we head towards the much anticipated general elections next month, that we introspect and acknowledge that we the people bear a substantial share of responsibility for our country’s stagnation. Again, we are not uniquely immoral or incapable. But it is a fact that our social norms, incentives and expectations have quietly corroded the foundations on which democracy depends.  

Human Capital: The Unspoken Constraint 

Discussing Nepal’s human capital openly is often uneasy. When we mention issues like poor learning or low educational quality, they are quickly dismissed as ‘elitist’ or ‘insulting’. But when we really look at how governance works, we can’t ignore our nation’s challenge of weak learning outcomes and under-developed critical reasoning at scale. 

Even if we do not agree with the extreme claims about Nepal having the ‘lowest IQ in the world’, the facts are pretty grim. We have lots of schools, but learning isn’t great, academic degrees are abundant but competence is scarce because the education system focuses on memorisation over thinking and credentials over skills.  

Democracy is a lot to handle, actually. It requires voters who can tell the difference between good policy and just hype and to be able to see through the personalities of leaders. When many people don’t have these skills, politics can become all about show, symbols and favours. Leaders learn that catchy slogans are more important than real ideas and that personalities are more effective than facts. Low human capital does not just limit productivity, it lowers expectations. 

When we get accustomed to mediocrity in schools and workplaces, we normalise mediocrity in leadership to a point where incompetence becomes familiar and, sadly, acceptable. 

Civic Sense 

If one wants to understand the Nepali state, all you need to do is observe a road traffic intersection in Nepal. No patience. No shared rules. No respect for right-of-way. Everyone advances when they can, because they see that if they do not push and shove, someone else will. Personally speaking, I am not exempt from this guilt. Like most Nepalis, I have broken rules, taken short cuts, and rationalised them to comfort myself. More than a metaphor, this has become the modus operandi of our society. Ke garne.  

Democracy rests on the assumption that individuals will discipline themselves for collective benefit. When that premise collapses, governance turns adversarial and enforcement becomes selective. Rules exist only for the weak. The clever evade, the connected bypass and the rest learn to imitate them. Literally speaking, how you drive is how you govern. 

Public space in Nepal is treated as ownerless. Littering, illegal construction, encroachment and vandalism provoke little shame. When we as citizens feel no moral obligation toward shared assets, the state inevitably becomes a marketplace of extraction rather than a platform for cooperation. Corruption as such becomes an equilibrium. 

A Quarrelsome Society 

If I am to generalise, Nepalis were perceived as friendly and peaceful people up until the late 1990s. It may be debatable but I believe a fundamental shift in our nature began to manifest during and after the insurgency. Today, Nepali society is fractious and quarrelsome. Disagreements escalate quickly as if failure to win a shouting match results in our rights being taken away. Trust is thin. Collective action struggles to survive beyond moments of crisis. This has also had profound political consequences. The constant fragmentation of parties, movements and alliances reflect a social inability to sustain coalitions.  

When every dispute becomes existential, governance becomes impossible as leaders mobilise narrow loyalties to compensate for the absence of broad trust. Instability becomes permanent when consensus is culturally undervalued. Democracy depends on the ability to co-exist with disagreement. 

The Hypocrisy of Anti-Corruption 

We Nepalis are famously outraged by corruption: loudly, passionately and often selectively. The politician who steals millions is cursed but the citizen who pays a bribe to avoid a fine shrugs. The bureaucrat who demands a kickback is condemned and the business owner who evades taxes is the clever one. A classic moral double standard. 

Corruption thrives in our country primarily because it lubricates daily life in our dysfunctional system. But it persists also because social tolerance is high. Many of us despise corruption in theory but rely on it in practice. This is not an indictment of every Nepali, but of our dominant norms. And norms shape institutions. In such a context, any attempt to reform threatens not just vested interests at the top but everyday conveniences at the bottom. I often wonder if corruption will ever be reduced significantly in our country. Clearly, it is a mirror of our society.

Civil servants are drawn from the same families, educated in the same schools and have socialised into the same norms as everyone else. So, is expecting bureaucratic virtue in a society that rewards rule-breaking a fantasy? 

Why We Are Not Building Institutions 

Nepal’s political economy is profoundly short-term oriented. Decisions are mostly reactive and based on immediate visibility with little consideration of long-term impact. This bias infects voters, politicians, businesses and even civil society. 

Voters reward leaders who deliver instant benefits: cash transfers, masu bhaat, new tarmac on local roads, symbolic ‘development’ projects. It doesn’t matter if these undermine fiscal stability or institutional coherence. Politicians respond by prioritising projects that can be inaugurated before the next election rather than reforms that mature over decades. Businesses carry a trading mindset and chase arbitrage instead of innovation. Civil society focuses on donor-friendly outputs instead of systemic change. The combined effect is a vicious circle of short-termism. 

Institutions are long-term investments. They require patience, consistency and the willingness to endure short-term discomfort for future gain. A society unwilling to accept delayed gratification will inevitably dismantle the very structures it claims to want. This is why reforms never survive their pilots. This is why Nepal perpetually resets instead of forging ahead. 
It is tempting to blame Nepal’s failures on bideshi shakti for the sad state of our affairs. But, if such a thing does exist, have we realised that external incentives only work when domestic elements and norms allow them to? Aid distorts governance most severely where accountability is already weak. Foreign influence penetrates deepest where internal cohesion is absent. Elites capture rents most easily where citizens tolerate ‘settings’ and nexus with politicians. 

So, What Do We Deserve? 

Nepal has the democracy it collectively enables, not the one it claims to want nor the one it imagines. It is the one it practices daily in queues, offices, elections and conversations. But we deserve better. Cultures evolve. Norms shift. History offers countless examples of societies that escaped low-trust traps. Every successful transition began with an internal reckoning rather than change of rulers alone.  

The youth-led disruption of last September should be followed by broader participation from the young in reforming our institutions. Failing that, the same old actors will likely lead Nepal into a more dire situation. The next election will be pivotal in shaping Nepal’s political trajectory. Hopefully, we will see fresh, more capable faces get elected. But more importantly, our future will be decided by whether enough of us are willing to adopt a different civic ethic that values rules over shortcuts, institutions over personalities and long-term gain over immediate comfort.