For the forthcoming elections, two competing parties—the Nepali Congress (NC) and the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP)—appear to have adopted “All Eyes on Madhesh” as a rallying cry to mobilise the electorate. Gagan Thapa seeks to rejuvenate the moribund support base of the NC by promising reform that would finally address Madheshi aspirations. His appeal is managerial and programmatic—reform the party, recalibrate policy, restore credibility and generate trust.

Balendra Shah—Balen to his acolytes, Sah rather than Shah to his denigrators—leans more heavily on persona than programme. His pitch carries emotional charge: Where established parties have failed, an energetic new face can deliver.

The irony is inescapable. Both are products of Kathmandu’s political ecosystem. Gagan is a seasoned operator, shaped by the student movements of the 1990s, the youth activism of the 2000s and an insider of the ruling clique since 2010. Balen emerged as the iconoclastic mayor of the capital as an independent candidate before aligning with a party seeking national momentum. Each now rides toward Madhesh as reformer or redeemer, but both remain anchored in the same metropolitan matrix they claim to transcend.

Their campaigns suggest either an underestimation of entrenched electoral mechanics—patronage, brokerage, establishment continuity and performative leadership—or a deliberate wager on personal strength. The experience documented in How the BJP Wins: Inside India’s Greatest Election Machine by Prashant Jha is instructive: In much of South Asia, elections are won through organisation, calibrated coalition-building across castes and communities, and narrative control. Charisma amplifies these advantages but rarely substitutes for them.

Electoral theatre

There was a time when visiting observers, armed with clipboards and clichés, would descend upon South Asia to marvel at what they called a ‘festival of democracy’. Inked fingers were photographed like rare orchids blooming in inhospitable terrain. Queues outside polling booths were offered as proof that liberty had finally found a foothold between the Himalayas and the Bay of Bengal.

Behind every renewal of democracy lies a complex infrastructure. Parties invest months—often years—in resource mobilisation, alliance management, micro-targeted voter outreach, and narrative calibration. Every slogan, every rally, every social media clip is carefully choreographed to create a perception of momentum and inevitability.

Polling-day theatrics—inked fingers, long queues, media snapshots—are the final act of a production whose scripts, sets, and stagehands remain largely invisible to the public. Without this meticulous groundwork, the performance collapses: Votes cannot be reliably channelled, coalitions falter, and the claim of democratic legitimacy rings hollow. Behind the spectacle, the sovereign subject queues, unaware of the machinery shaping the moment they believe is their own—from party organisers to the security forces that quietly ensure the performance proceeds as scripted.

For those who inhabit the settlements of Madhesh, the floodplains of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, or the alleyways of old Dhaka, the ballot is not a philosophical instrument. It is a ration card, a land deed, a hospital pass and a periodic recognition of power. It may be the only negotiable tender many of the poor possess in a marketplace where the state functions as a monopolist and, at times, extortionist—its institutions more extractive than inclusive. The sovereign citizen celebrated in civics textbooks is, in practice, a sovereign subject—licensed to choose a ruler, rarely empowered to question rule.

As the country inches towards its abrupt parliamentary elections in March 2026, still carrying the acrid memory of the Fall Protest of 2025, the mood is not celebratory but apprehensively calculative. The old guard was pushed out; the architecture of power remains largely intact. Palaces have new occupants. Symbolic centres of state authority—the parliament building, the central secretariat and even the Supreme Court—were set ablaze, and prisons across the country were attacked to free hardened offenders. Yet the darker corridors of power in the capital retain their familiar odour.

The 36-hour descent into near-anarchy between 8 and 9 September 2025 was brought under control not by political leadership, nor by civilian security agencies visible on the streets, but almost exclusively through the auto-deployment of the Nepal Army. In the vacuum of elected authority, it was the uniformed institution—constitutionally subordinate yet structurally decisive—that reasserted order. What transpired in those interregnal hours, and who calibrated the response, remains a matter of persistent public conjecture. The old guard has receded, but the grammar of power remains stubbornly intact.

Madhesh sat in the audience while the script was drafted and the drama staged, and is now expected to ratify the performance with its mandate. To understand the voter in this geography, one must suspend the Enlightenment fantasy of atomised individuals serenely weighing policy options. Here, political choice is a choreography of survival, shaped by seven interlocking pathologies of power: Primordial loyalty, patronage, brokerage, bandwagoning, inherited affiliation, centralised extraction, and narrative manufacture.

Primary identity remains the emotional grammar of politics. The twin idioms of Mandal and Kamandal continue to structure political imagination in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar: The arithmetic of caste mobilisation on one side, religious majoritarianism on the other. In Nepal, federalism may be etched into the constitution, but the state apparatus remains disproportionately Khas-Arya in composition and institutional culture.

This basic calculus fuses seamlessly with paternal loyalty. Across much of South Asia, voters do not merely elect representatives; they seek protectors. The leader is less policymaker than patron—dispensing favours, shielding supporters, punishing rivals. Whether in the majoritarian populism of Narendra Modi, the dynastic politics associated with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or the ageing establishment in Kathmandu, the vote functions as a down payment. It says: Remember me when the police knock, when the land office stalls, when the hospital makes unaffordable demands, and when one of our youngsters is jailed—or dies labouring in the deserts of West Asia.

Electoral choreography

The voter is not naïve about these realities. In a nominal republic, the only reliable insurance against bureaucratic predation is collective strength—family, caste, community, congregation, or proximity to a powerful patron. The individual is fragile; networks negotiate, and patrons shield. The state is not neutral terrain; it is a jungle of paperwork and informal tolls. Survival requires choosing the right tiger.

The three principal contenders—the NC, the RSP and the UML—are campaigning as if the contest were for a directly elected chief executive rather than for parliamentarians who will, in turn, select a prime minister. With party structures partially sidelined, presumptive prime-ministerial aspirants are placing considerable faith in brokers and fixers across constituencies.

During elections, these intermediaries metamorphose into mobilisers. They convert the intangible wind of momentum into tangible votes. The rumour that “this one is coming” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Few voters are willing to risk political orphanhood by backing a loser and forfeiting post-election access.

Against this structural backdrop, the 2026 elections have acquired an additional theatrical layer: Media-manufactured enthusiasm. Two narratives dominate the airwaves and algorithms—the well-resourced buzz around Balendra, complete with high-visibility optics, and the carefully curated image of responsibility projected by Gagan. For the UML, organisational muscle may not suffice if dormant cadres in Madhesh remain unmoved. At this juncture, only one outcome appears certain: The PEON is unlikely to surrender the centre stage.