The performative pomposity of Prime Minister Balendra Shah is irritatingly perplexing. For reasons not difficult to infer, he prefers digital monologues over institutional dialogue. Since being elected, how many times has he addressed the Parliament? Nada. How many press conferences has he held? Zilch. He refused to address the inaugural session of the Pratinidhi Sabha and walked out mid-way through President Ramchandra Paudel’s address on policy and programme. Rather than answering lawmakers’ questions, he deputed a cabinet colleague to face the House.

The freshly painted ceilings of the Parliament hall apparently give Shah claustrophobia. He prefers the adulation of the digital fiefdom that he has built as a rapper. His unceremonious departure from Pratinidhi Sabha during the President’s ceremonial address was more than a breach of protocol—it was a performance of calculated indifference. In Shah’s ‘dashboard democracy’, the legislative chamber is treated as a vestigial organ and an archaic site of political friction.

A government formed from the political ashes of executive, legislature and judiciary buildings put aflame during the Fall Protest doesn’t feel it necessary to value parliamentary traditions. The past was a different realm of dealmakers; the present belongs to a strongman at the helm who believes in making history rather than reading it.

In the digitised political landscape, the locus of authority has shifted from the legislature to the servers of Silicon Valley. Public messaging arrives not through the messy crucible of parliamentary debate or the scrutiny of a sceptical press, but as instantaneous edicts calculated to algorithmically weaponise the fervour of a digital constituency. By shunning republican institutions, Shah isn’t modernising communication; he is signalling a retreat into a high-tech autocracy.

Algorithms have become toxic to democracy globally. Even former US President Joe Biden had lamented that the truth was being smothered by lies told for power and for profit. Indeed, the shared facts of the public square have been traded for the partisan frenzies of the feed. Conscientious citizens are being reduced to fervid followers, and parliamentary debates are being treated as mere formality. Governance now competes with the ephemeral alchemy of viral optics. In the digital durbar, ‘likes and shares’ render legitimacy.

Conversations outside of formal institutions have also begun to degenerate. The aroma of over-boiled sugary milk tea still lingers in the roadside stalls of Prithvi Rajmarg. The whispering of party cadres continues in the dim corridors of Sanepa, Chyasal, Koteshwar and even Banasthali. The old guard’s struggle for the republic had a distinct texture: Nicotine-stained fingers wrapped around chipped glasses discussing Rosa Luxemburg, the theatrical seriousness of district secretaries talking about Gandhi and Mao in the same breath, and revolutionary songs blaring from makeshift stages—Ek jugma ek din ekchoti auncha ulatpulat, uthalputhal, herpher lyauncha. But the day of upheaval didn’t come through political accord; it came from the Discord chatroom and military initiative. Nepali politics was once tactile. It smelled of sweat, dust and body odour. It required physical attendance.

Touchscreen republic

The traditional hubs of political gravity have been quietly upstaged. The physical public sphere has been compressed into the glowing rectangle of the smartphone. A newly empowered republican generation has asserted itself through digital systems. TikTok clips, the livestream platforms of Meta and YouTube Shorts are their arenas of activism. The chatroom has acquired a legitimacy once reserved for the people’s mandate itself—it helped choose an extra-constitutional prime minister.

Anyone with an affordable smartphone and enough rage can become a commentator. Every scandal receives instant scrutiny, every ministerial gaffe becomes a meme. A generation exhausted by the old guard’s entitlement finds liberation in the digital immediacy. The seduction is powerful because it flatters the citizen, offering the illusion of direct participation without demanding the discipline of organisation. One can denounce corruption while lying in bed or ‘overthrow’ a government between two Reels. In the republic of touchscreens, outrage has become the cheapest political currency that knows no boundary. Some of the shrillest supporters of Shah pay their taxes in Australia, Canada, Europe and the US.

Premier Shah’s inspiration is the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who hasn’t held a single press conference in 12 years of ruling the supposedly largest democracy. When the trending topic of the afternoon is treated as the authentic voice of the janata, why face the press? This is democratic legitimacy reduced to analytics and the mutation of politics into data manipulation.

Where old parties measured influence through ward committees and trade unions, the new political class measures relevance through impressions and follower counts. Digital populism thrives on simplification because platforms reward emotional compression. TikTok and Reels are engineered for stimulation, requiring a villain, a betrayal and a punchline every 15 seconds. Complex structural questions—federalism, fiscal transfers, judicial reform—cannot survive this economy of attention. Nuance dies first in the battle for virality.

Politics then becomes theatrical rather than programmatic, let alone idealistic. The competition of policies is displaced by the competition of affect. Leaders are rewarded less for competence than for performance. A sharp insult on a livestream carries greater political value than a negotiated policy compromise. The loudest participant dominates regardless of merit.

This creates a dangerous asymmetry between spectacle and organisation. Traditional political parties, despite their cynicism, possessed territorial depth. Their structures penetrated villages and municipalities; they could mobilise bodies, not merely bandwidth. Conversely, new digital formations possess visibility without infrastructure. An influencer can marshal millions of views but will struggle to gather fifty disciplined volunteers to stand defiantly at Bhadrakali if something akin to the Burmese regime were to assume control. The federal republic cannot be defended by hashtags alone.

Algorithmic legitimacy

The dashboard lies equally effectively through omission. It over-represents the urban, the connected and the performative, while rendering invisible the quiet, the poor and the remote. The algorithm rewards expression, not suffering. Public life becomes a continuous performance calibrated for engagement metrics. The narcissistic politician no longer asks, “What does the country require?” but rather, “How will this trend?”

Nepal figures in the list of five most narcissistic countries in the world, where the cult of personality has now acquired technological acceleration. When a leader surrounded by influencers confuses online adoration with acceptability, authoritarianism doesn’t need guns and censorship: It can arrive through livestreams, fan armies and influencer networks.

Institutions require slowness. Courts, parliaments and bureaucracies move slowly because compromise is democracy’s operating principle. Digital culture, by contrast, worships immediacy, creating fertile ground for demagogues. The narcissistic leader presents himself as the embodiment of the popular will precisely because institutions appear cumbersome. Why negotiate when one can livestream? Why deliberate when one can trend?

There is no return to the slower republic of tea shops and pamphlets. The smartphone is in the democratic bloodstream. But digital signals are symptoms, not diagnoses. A viral video is an alarm, not a verdict. To preserve democratic seriousness, politicos must relearn the difference between attention and representation. The people are always wider, slower and more contradictory than any cellphone can capture. The challenge before the republic is civilisational as much as technological: Listen to the screen without surrendering to it.

Older politicos promised ‘welfare state’ but delivered ‘farewell state’, driving the desperate to near-slavery in West Asia. The new breed that has ousted them doesn’t even pretend: They are telling you that they don’t care. If that doesn’t make you angry, you too have fallen prey to the allure of the flickering blue screen. To paraphrase Bertolt Brecht slightly: He who still hopes “… has not yet heard the bad news”.