Now to the question of democracy. These days it's fashionable to claim -- as some US-based Nepali "analysts" do ? that 1990 yielded a fake form of democracy. In Nepal too, ideologues on the far right and the far left often outdo each other in questioning the democratic bona fides of the political system ushered in through the 1990 Constitution. In truth, I believe, that the political order that resulted from the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy and the 1990 Constitution was a genuineacy democratic system. It vested sovereignty in the people and power onto an elected government. An autocratic King and the pseudo-party (Panchayat) that he supported for 30 years were on the full defensive after April 1990. I probably know some of US-based Nepali "analysts" Anup jee is referring to. In all fairness, I sincerely think that 'fake/genuine' characterization of our democracy is a matter of semantics rather than a matter of fundamental assertion. The fundamental assertion, as far as I can see, is related to 'complete/incomplete' form of democracy. Still further, if one looks at a high resolution picture of the debate, there is no disagreement on the matter of incompleteness of our democracy between the 'middle' argument and the 'left' argument. Their disagreement is only in the importance they give to the 'incomplete' portion of our 'democracy' and whether that, among other things, accounts for the 'failure' of our 'democracy' or not. Many of the ingredients that make for a stable democracy were, in fact, in place in post-1990 Nepal: a democratic constitution, entrenched political parties, relatively fair elections, high voter mobilization and participation, a free and vibrant media, conscious civil society (including NGOs), a dynamic private sector.. By saying 'most of the ingredients', Anup jee probably acknowledges the existence of 'missing ingredients' too. And this is exactly what I would like to be the topic of the discussion here. ... In addition, a political culture of peaceful transfer of power was well underway, including within the United Marxist-Leninist Party (UML). This one is not very clear to me. Are we talking about the transfer of power from the monarch to the political parties or about intra-party power transfer ? In any case, I think this is very critical part of the argument leading to the question of republicanism, which by definition is a complete transfer of power from the monarch to the political parties. I will elaborate on my assertion sometime later, but I want to claim here that the 'political culture of peaceful power transfer' stopped right after the promulgation of the constitution and it started to go in the reverse direction, slowly at first, then gaining the speed and we don't have to talk about what's going on now. Elaboration later, but I want to make two important points right now. One, by power, I mean real power, not just power in technical sense. Second, that reverse transfer of power occurred in subtle way rather than with a bang except for in recent time. A minor, but still very important, factor is lack of intra-party democratic culture in the country. It is interesting to note that most of the 'middle' intellectuals often do not talk about it as if this would argue against democracy in Nepal as such. Skeptics of democracy ko ta ke kura garaai bho ra ? They make it a point for 'disqualification' of Nepal for democracy ! I have been talking about it in a larger debate of how this and many other 'weaknesses' in our democratic institutions, rather than arguing against our qualification, in fact argues for the NEED of total democracy to correct these weaknesses in this forum for three years now. And I do not mind to repeat the debate again, if skeptics of democracy would like to join in. Any rajtantrabadi haru ? Now about the missing ingredient of our 'democracy', the most Anup jee wrote is: I hasten to add that there were flaws, some of them very significant, in the post-1990 political order. In my mind there were two principle sources of flaws. First, there were exclusionary provisions in the Constitution on issues like language, religion, and gender equality which made the document less acceptable across the nation than it could have been. Second, independent of constitutional issues, successive regimes in Kathmandu simply ignored good governance and the practice of democracy. I disagree. I am not saying that they were not flaws. What I am saying is that these are not the PRINCIPLE SOURCES of flaws. The principle source/s of flaws is/are elsewhere. I will come to that source shortly. Here let me put my views on the flaws Anup jee pointed out. The 'exclusionary provisions in the constitution on issues like language, religion and gender equality'. It is interesting to note that Anup jee later in the interview has rejected the 'root cause theory' of 'the experts' on the Maoist problem, which is based exactly on this principle flaw. As I happen to share Anup jee's doubt on the social-economic root cause theory about the Maoists, I think, no further discussion is necessary for now. This constitutional flaw on the issues of social cultural nature is not the principle source of what we see today. Now the flaws related to democratic practice, transparency, good governance etc. There is no question that these are the core of democracy itself and we have failed spectacularly in them. But the point is these are not the SOURCE, but rather the CONSEQUENCES of the flaws that exists in the brand of democracy we chose. The source of all of these consequences is the real power the monarchy retained. That accounts for incomplete destruction of Panchayati culture which accounts for how our political parties became partly Panchayati parties, that accounts for why the Maoists emerged and succeeded to become so powerful which accounts for you name it. Let me tell to general readers that Anup jee and I have exchanged our views, although not in detail, on other occasions too, and I am aware that Anup jee does not subscribe to 'Monarchy explains all' kind of school of thought. So this posting is also to extend that exchange.