It is entirely possible that when peaceful protestors turned violent, breached the police barricade, and began to storm the Parliament building on September 8, 2025, a few security personnel on guard panicked. The subsequent indiscriminate firing, resulting in the tragic death of 19 youngsters, may well have been the opening act of a Chartreuse Revolt that was spontaneous rather than premeditated.

However, the loot, arson, lynching and mayhem on the following day were far too well-coordinated and clinically executed to be dismissed as a mere paroxysm of public rage. Almost five dozen people, including at least three police officers, were killed, some burnt alive. The primary seats of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary were torched with a professional precision that suggested tactical training rather than organic anger. Total anarchy reigned on the streets on September 9, while the Nepal Army watched with studied indifference and the firefighting vehicles of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City remained confined to their shelters.

Across the country, jails were breached and hardened criminals escaped. Weapons were looted from police posts. Commercial hubs and industrial outlets were engulfed in flames, and arsonists set fire to hotels with guests and staff still trapped inside. Calls for help to the police headquarters were met with the terse, tense reply: “We are helpless. Our personnel have been instructed to protect weaponry, if possible, but to flee for their lives if necessary.”

Then, the pattern began to emerge. The Nepal Army started to call the shots, insisting that the prime minister resign before he could be helicoptered to safety. On the commanding advice of the mayor of the capital city, agitators bypassed the President to hold talks directly with the army. Based on the whims of a Discord chatroom poll, an extra-constitutional prime minister was appointed. She promptly had the Pratinidhi Sabha dissolved to ensure a free hand in governance.

No regime change is complete without the cosmetic veneer of an election. In Pakistan, the anachronistic ‘doctrine of necessity’ is periodically resurrected to provide post-facto legitimacy and elections are held to provide a political face for the Deep State. Recently, even Burma conducted elections.

In the pedestrian world of logic, once is chance and twice is coincidence. By the third iteration, the observer identifies a pattern. But in the choreographed chaos of elected authoritarianism, a fourth occurrence suggests something far more sinister: A premeditated method carefully masked as madness.

In political terms, ‘state capture’ describes a condition where powerful groups acquire such overbearing influence that they reshape laws, policies and appointments for their partisan benefit. In that sense, ‘legitimate state capture’ is an oxymoron. Yet there are ways to circumvent established traditions, and the ethnonational chieftain of Khas-Arya, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, perfected the method that ultimately precipitated his downfall.

Sharma Oli demonstrated that a captured state may still maintain the facade of elections, independence of courts and authority of regulators. These institutions can be manipulated through dexterous coalition-building, adroit co-optation of critics, division of spoils and mobilisation of an aggressive propaganda machinery. However, as the adage goes, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely and extreme power ultimately corrodes the character of the captor.

The regime of Prime Minister Balendra Shah has not only adopted the Sharma Oli playbook of the analogue era but refined it with digital-age speed. He, or his handlers, appears to have ignored the fact that initial success does not change a fundamental truth: Power flips fastest when it is exercised with arrogant confidence.

Instant justice

Under pressure to deliver, the Shah regime decided to begin with a disruptive act of exhibitionism: Clearing ‘unsightly’ settlements on the riverbanks to appeal to the middle-class aesthetics of apathetic urbanites. The legality of dismantling hundreds of homes and uprooting thousands of families under the pretext of clearing unauthorised dwellings is debatable. The constitutionality of federal authorities prioritising urban demolition over the strengthening of provincial and local tiers of government—entities that might have handled such challenges with greater sensitivity—is hardly incontestable. The controversial charter remains a collection of contradictory clauses in dire need of thorough revision without diluting the fundamental principles of federalism, republicanism and inclusion.

The morality of bulldozing the ‘illegal’ occupants of the commons occupies a grey area, best left to the fluid ethics and values of the decision-makers and their loyal executors. When the public remains indifferent towards the suffering of the weak, the ‘practicality’ of the irrational acts of an elected authoritarian regime becomes a moot point. The political economy of prosecuting the poor seldom extracts immediate retribution; indeed, the Shah regime has likely conducted a cold cost-benefit analysis of its policy execution.

The political return on the administrative investment of arresting ousted politicos, high-profile business tycoons and their well-connected fixers must have appeared lucrative enough to warrant taking not only Sharma Oli and Lekhak, but also the likes of Agrawal, Bhatta and Golchha into preventive custody. There is no more efficient way to frighten a community into submission than to make its mightiest icons fall with a resounding thud.

Mediocre meritocracy

It requires no particular genius to discern that the primary purpose of the ‘Ordinance on Special Provisions Relating to the Removal of Public Officials, 2026’ is to replace the political appointees of the ousted regime with appointees of the new one. Under the previous dispensation, loyalty was the sole criterion for selection. In the face of existential threats or the allure of better incentives, loyalties can shift and fidelity can be bought. Adherence to shared values, however, is a more enduring bond. The middle class’s belief in ‘meritocracy’ is inherently self-serving; it secures an advantageous position for those who possess the privilege to define the standards of merit in the first place.

When appointments are reduced to spoils—where sycophancy is rewarded over competence—both performance and public image inevitably suffer. But when contenders are selected through seemingly open contests, a cleverer dynamic emerges: Failure can be blamed on the appointee’s individual shortcomings, while the appointer remains shielded, having taken credit for a transparent process.

The urban middle class dominates the education system, populates the bureaucracy, drives policy preferences and defines social aspirations. Yet, it remains historically insecure and desperately upwardly mobile, rather than entrenched and confident. Consequently, it prioritises stability over disruption, predictability over experimentation and status preservation over risk-taking. Such a value system results in the institutionalisation of memory over imagination, correctness over curiosity and compliance over dissent as the true markers of ‘merit’.

The Shah regime understands exactly what it requires and how to secure it through competitive recruitment. Indeed, the meritorious mediocrity of the urban middle class provided the very ladder it used to climb to the top. But these meritocrats may not prove sufficiently competent in sustaining the regime’s hegemony.

History shows that highly competitive exams and credentialed officials do not necessarily prevent institutions from becoming persistently underperforming sclerotic husks. The royal-military putsch of 1960 attempted a similar ‘cleansing’ of the system, yet it failed to make the state responsive or dynamic. History may not always repeat, nor even rhyme, but it must be read—if only to prepare for the delayed, yet inevitable, consequences of one’s actions.