The pre-1990 generation would remember quite well what the government press considered newsworthy back then. At a time when the private electronic media was non-existent, the entire nation was forced to hear or watch the ritualistic recounting of every action of members of the royal family, starting, of course, with the head honcho himself. Thus, after invariably informing us about the king’s having felicitated or condoled, as the case may be, the president of a country we would have had no prior dealings or any since, we would be expected to be enthused by the news that another such country had supported the king’s still-born ‘zone of peace’ proposal.

Next would come the scintillating development that the queen had visited a temple while a princess received a consignment of donated medicines and another attended a diplomatic party. Only after having enlightened us about the everyday royal doings would we learn about floods having swept away scores in the Tarai or a diarrhoeal outbreak having struck down whole villages in the west. It was no better in print except that, given the format, one could find the real news on the front page, albeit buried somewhere in the blaze of royal doings, with the only giveaway being the headline in bold italics.

One could hence be pardoned for the sense of déjà vu in the run-up to Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s US visit to attend the UN General Assembly this past month. Publication after publication (and I’m sure that was the case with the radio and TV outlets) went on about each and every detail of how the prime minister was going to keep himself busy in New York. Perhaps because nothing substantial was likely to be achieved in New York, read, a meeting with the Indian prime minister, Oli’s office tried to highlight every aspect of his upcoming trip.

That Oli would face an almost-empty auditorium at the UN was only to be expected since leaders from countries like ours speak only for the record and not to actually influence global policy one way or another. Fortunately for Oli, a meeting with Narendra Modi did materialise eventually, and he was also able to catch up with a few others who had most likely been fishing around for tête-à-têtes as well.

What stood out was that the pre-visit reporting made it sound like the primary purpose of Oli’s trip half-way around the world was to speak at Columbia and Harvard universities, and his attending the annual UN jamboree was only incidental. In fact, one newspaper actually headlined the university visits in this manner, “Prime Minister Oli will address Columbia and Harvard universities”, and, began the story with: “Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, who is coming to America to participate in the 79th General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), will address Columbia University in New York and Harvard University in Boston.”

The breathless tone suggests that if not the governing boards, at least the presidents of these universities had cogitated long and hard on who should be invited to speak at their university this year. And, as it so happened, both elite institutions homed in on no other than our prime minister and accordingly invited him to grace the university premises. Enticing as that scenario might sound to those of a nationalist bent, that would be quite far from the truth. Events at such universities as in any other, and there are always countless such at any given time, are generally initiated by a student body, a member of the faculty or a group of students or even just one, and also at times in response to feelers sent out by diplomatic missions in the case of foreign leaders.

At Columbia, Oli was invited to speak at the World Leaders Forum. This is a series that appears to come alive mostly around the time of the UN General Assembly, taking advantage of Columbia’s location in the same city with leaders like Oli more than happy to oblige. The Harvard talk was part of the JFK Jr Forum, but being placed far away from New York, the emphasis appears less on world leaders. The day before had seen a group discussion on ‘Building a Digital Democracy’ while the one with the Ecuadorian president had been cancelled. The day following the Oli do was just a watch party to talk about the American vice-presidential debate. And that was just the JFK Jr Forum; on the day of Oli’s interaction, 38 other events were taking place at Harvard.

I will not join many others in criticising Oli’s performance. I should say he did creditably well while reading from the teleprompter or the printed page although neither of his deliveries contained anything newsworthy. It was his nonanswers and the senseless or fudged ones during the Q&A that had people riled up, but by now, they should have known better than to expect anything but wisecracks from Oli in lieu of reasoned thought. That he had to deliver his homilies in English was a problem, but he made himself understood. I suppose the only revelation was that Oli’s interlocutor at Columbia, Jenik Radon, an Adjunct Professor there, was a ‘key drafter’ of the 2007 Interim Constitution, a fact that would surely come as news to the 16 members of the Constitution Drafting Committee.

What bugs me is how Oli was both visibly humbled and honoured to speak at Columbia and Harvard. There is no need to belabour the hypocrisy of someone moved to such emotions is the same one who has done and would do practically nothing to improve the quality of Nepal’s institutions of learning. Former education minister Sumana Shrestha pointed out the irony of Oli speaking at the two universities when he himself was ‘a staunch advocate to get students, professors, teachers, university administration including [the] bureaucracy to take political party membership. Nepal’s higher education has been defunct due to partisan politics’.

The greater irony is that the same Oli, who goes around bashing everything and everyone he does not like as inspired by foreign sources, could not but try and seek legitimacy for himself and his ‘theories’ at the very fount of knowledge where many ideas antithetical to his worldview are generated. What else can explain the constant harping about what were touted to be Oli’s supposedly masterly expositions at Columbia and Harvard? That, I believe, is the greater tragedy. But only if Oli and those who think like him would be willing to concede as much.