#SoftTalk 

Who will douse the fire in Nepal?
Devendra Gautam
Another South Asian country is burning and a hugely unpopular prime minister with dictatorial streaks has managed to flee the country in flames in the nick of time, thanks to eleventh-hour support from the world’s largest democracy.
So precarious was the situation at Dhaka on August 5 that the leader at the centre of national politics for more than two decades, reelected to the top post for the fourth time barely six months ago through an election boycotted by opposition parties, could not even deliver a last-minute address to the nation before her hasty departure as protests against job quotas climaxed in the wake of a brutal crackdown, which has left hundreds of protesters dead and thousands injured. In the wake of a great escape, the national army has taken charge amid reports of jubilant crowds ransacking the presidential residence in Dhaka and targeting the statue of the leader and the father of the PM, who played a very important role in giving birth to what is now a country of 170 million people. Ironically, all this is happening in a country, which was, until a few months ago, one of the fastest growing economies in the world with a GDP of around $460 billion, surpassing even the world’s fifth largest economy located just across the border, in terms of economic growth.
How nations and their fortunes change in this volatile neighbourhood!
The spoils
After its creation in 1971, Bangladesh made arrangements to reserve 30 percent of government jobs to the relatives of freedom fighters, who fought its war of independence against Pakistan.
The government had halted what had turned into inter-generational quotas for the progenies of the war veterans in 2018 after massive protests, but in June, Bangladesh’s High Court reinstated the quotas, setting off a new round of protests. Subsequently, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina quipped, “Who should get job quotas if not the freedom fighters’ relatives? The Razakars?”
The comparison of the protesters with the Razakars (those who collaborated with Pakistan against the armed struggle for independence) added fuel to the fire, leading to an unceremonious exit of Sheikh Hasina.
In the wake of the protests, the country’s apex court ordered the government to slash the quota meant for relatives of freedom fighters to five percent from 30 percent, allocate 93 percent of jobs on merit and set aside the remaining two percent for members of ethnic minorities and transgender and disabled people.
But the verdict seemed too little, too late for a people fighting an oppressive regime ruling a state reeling under corruption and an unemployment rate of five percent, no small number given a population of 170 million.
Like in many other South Asian countries, corruption has become endemic in Bangladesh. In Transparency International’s corruption perception index, the South Asian country scored 24 out of 100 in 2023, 25 in 2022, 26 from 2021 till 2018 and 28 in 2017, its best score so far since 2012.
As for unemployment rate, Nepal, with a GDP of roughly $41 billion, has been ‘enjoying’ a double-digit unemployment rate for years on end. It stood at 10.92 percent in 2022, 12.58 percent in 2021, 13.12 percent in 2020, 10.64 percent in 2019 and 10.63 percent in 2018, in a pointer to a fledgling economy kept afloat by remittances and exorbitant taxes slapped on sections of the population that have clutched onto a country on the brink due to endemic corruption, chronic political instability and bad governance, all delivered to the people in the holy name of democracy.
Remarkably, the turmoil in Bangladesh comes not so long after a massive unrest in Sri Lanka in 2022 in the wake of an economic crisis that led to the fall of the Rajapaksa regime. The year saw the deepest GDP contraction in Sri Lankan history with the overall size of the economy contracting by 12 percent or $11 billion from $88.5 billion in 2021 to $77 billion in 2022 due to a sharp depreciation of the Sri Lanka rupee.
Nepal’s political leadership has grown hugely unpopular over the years for its role in fomenting political instability, institutionalizing corruption and nepotism, and delivering bad governance. By driving away a large section of the national population abroad, it has thus far been able to ward off troubles and partying on remittances and hefty taxes collected from the people.
But it may find itself in unprecedented troubles if extraneous factors like prolonged unrest in the Mideast and several other parts of the world cause the return of Nepali migrant workers to the country. If that happens, what will happen to an economy powered mainly by remittances is anyone’s guess.
With a political leadership shorn of almost all of its credibility and the state showing symptoms of multiple organ failures, which organ of the state will bring a semblance of normality in the event of such a crisis?