US President 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 backwards 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.

Nepal’s leadership class has been spectacularly mediocre and self-serving. As we head towards the much-anticipated general elections next month, we need to 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 of democracy.

Unspoken constraint

Discussing Nepal’s human capital openly is often uneasy. When someone mentions issues like 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 underdeveloped critical reasoning. Even if we do not agree with the extreme claims about Nepal having the ‘lowest IQ in the world’, the facts remain pretty grim. We have many schools, but learning isn’t great; academic degrees are abundant, but competence is scarce.

Democracy 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 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 you want 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. More than a metaphor, this has become the modus operandi of our society.

Democracy rests on the assumption that individuals will discipline themselves for the collective good. 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.

Quarrelsome society

Nepalis were perceived as friendly and peaceful people up until the late 1990s. 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 reflects 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.

Hypocrisy of anti-corruption

We Nepalis are famously outraged by corruption: loudly, passionately and often selectively. Corruption thrives in our country primarily because it lubricates daily life in our dysfunctional system. But it is 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. Clearly, corruption 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.

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, and 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 Nepal perpetually resets instead of forging ahead.

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 that is practised 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 a change of rulers alone.

The youth-led disruption of last September should be followed by broader participation from the youth in reforming our institutions. Failing that, the same old actors will likely lead Nepal into a more dire situation. The March 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.