Over the past decade or so, ‘populism’ has become a popular byword among academics globally to describe the complexities of world politics, especially after the rise of authoritarian leaders like Narendra Modi in India and Donald Trump in the United States. Does Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli fit the same mould as Modi and Trump?

Indian political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta, for one, does not think so. Mehta said Indian Prime Minister Modi and newly elected American President Donald Trump were ‘populist’ leaders, but he declined to give the same tag to Oli, the chair of CPN-UML.

Answering a question about Oli’s ‘populist tendencies’, Mehta replied, “As I don’t see radical anti-elitism in Nepal, and the political leaders are comfortably maintaining the status quo around the elite structure, there is no populist leader in the present power structure of Nepal,” Mehta said.

Mehta was speaking at a session titled ‘The Wave of Populism’ hosted by the Post’s Editor Biswas Baral in the Kantipur Conclave in Kathmandu on Wednesday. Mehta also claimed that with the election of Donald Trump as the US President, world politics might see the absence of norms.

Trump, who was first elected President in 2016, has been accused of serving an ‘unpresidented’ term and many liberal journalists and public intellectuals around the world have expressed fear over what the businessman-politician’s second term would unleash.

Trump has been accused of leading a racist campaign in the lead-up to the election; and Mehta said that it is one of the hallmarks of populism.

“Feature of a certain kind of populism is to actually say that the nation has a kind of singular nationality and it should primarily be dominated by one particular group,” Mehta said.

“Radical elements of anti-elitism” are the second feature of populism, Mehta added, whereas the prevalence of ethno-identity politics is the other feature.

Indian Prime Minister Modi, who is trying to construct the singular ethno-national consciousness in the name of religion, is a populist leader, Mehta argued.

Modi, a leader of Bharatiya Janata Party, has been ruling India for over 10 years after being elected as prime minister in 2014.

Mehta said that while Modi has tried to mobilise the ethno-national identity to garner votes, the same strategy has not been used in Nepal.

He also believes that instead of criticising populist leaders, traditional political parties should offer something other than the status quo to convince the public of their agenda.

Mehta said that none of the world’s populist leaders have prioritised solving economic challenges.

He cited examples of election strategies in both India and America, observing that “populist leaders do not prioritise economic challenges as campaign issues.” Mehta, however, said that some Latin American populist leaders have raised economic reform as part of their agendas.

He explained that leaders like Modi in India and Trump in America often depict traditional structures as their adversaries. “In India, Modi portrays nepotism as one such adversarial structure,” Mehta said.