JUL 22 -
There is understandable excitement and anxiety about the upcoming Constituent Assembly elections but the debate has been focused on political actors—who gains and who loses. This framework, while helpful in understanding if elections will actually be held, misses a much larger question: how is the Everyman affected by elections?
Let us begin with the electoral calculus, based on how pundits describe it. The ‘traditional parties’, the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML, both stand to gain slightly. This is because of the growing disillusionment about the prolonged peace process among many segments of the population, primarily among the hill caste groups and the petty bourgeois. Both groups were losers in the aftermath of Janaandolan II but have since consolidated. The NC and UML have also copied tricks from the Maoists—they too have sizeable youth organisations now that are equally assertive. Both parties have also spent considerable energy in building a larger organisation at the district and VDC levels, a lack of which was a major factor in their defeat in 2008.
The UCPN (Maoist) has suffered on several fronts—it no longer has a monopoly on violence and has lost support among many segments of the population, including minority groups. But most of all, it is reeling from the split where an estimated 30 percent of their cadres left the mother party. However, it is confident that it has pulled into its fold former NC and UML members who saw an opportunity to access local governance funds as third party actors. The disaffection among Janajati groups, where the UCPN (Maoist) had significant clout, will not affect it much as the newer groups are disorganised and fractious. Even if the Mohan Baidya faction took away some of its cadres, its organisation is still formidable and come election time, it will be able to mobilise effectively. All things standing, even if the Maoists lose some ground, they will not suffer significantly. They may even be able to maintain their strength by appealing to portions of other groups, like the Madhesis.
Among the Madhesi parties eager for elections, the calculation gets easier. They have a solid base nurtured over a long time, which virtually assures their victory in their constituencies. Neither Janaandolan II nor the Madhes Uprising did much to rupture the patron-client networks that are a legacy of age-old feudalism and economic co-option. They will neither make any significant gain nor suffer much loss, particularly if alliances are built in the lead up to polls, as is almost certain.
This leaves us with the parties that have been variously dubbed ‘losers’, ‘spoilers’, or ‘attention seekers’. The two most significant among them are the Upendra Yadav-led Madhesi Janaadhikar Forum and the Baidya-led CPN-Maoist. The hesitant politics of the Yadav faction—on and off government with no real dividend to either the public or its cadres on the ground—has reduced it to a pitiful skeleton of its former self. Other groups have also aggressively courted its cadres, successfully luring them away. Were the Baidya Maoists to contest elections, it is believed that they would suffer the fate of the Bamdev Gautam-led Marxist-Leninists in the 1999 elections where it failed to win a single seat. It is not that the party lacks zeal—it is just not prepared for elections and presents no alternative agenda (other than a return to a decade ago). For both groups, any chance of building an organisation and morale or obstructing elections rests on a mass movement—an unlikely occurrence given the farming and festival seasons.
Other fringe parties will affect the overall electoral calculus only minimally. Ashok Rai’s is not much of a party and it is difficult to see how the royalists will be able to stage a comeback. Personality and locality-based parties, that always win a seat or two (the Nepal Workers and Peasants Party, for instance) will do so again.
The only external actor, India, seems desperate for elections, both to make way for its own elections next year and a desire for stability and a return to the status quo in Nepal.
This is all good and presumably correct. It means that elections will be held even if the composition of the CA will remain more or less the same. What then are its implications for ordinary citizens?
Political scientists have long held that the only moments of true change are popular revolutions; what follows next is the entrenchment of the most organised elite. Robert Michels postulated as much in 1911 when he described the “iron law of oligarchy”—“It is organisation which gives birth to the dominion of the elected over the electors, of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organisation, says oligarchy.”
The democratic system, and its corollary, the electoral structure, functions in Nepal the same way as it does in other nascent democracies. At the top are the elites, often descendants of an antiquated aristocracy. Initially rulers and aristocrats, they have since branched out with many using their family wealth to become businessmen. Those surrounding them have manned the bureaucracy, being the first group of people to have access to quality education (in our case, mostly the Brahmins). With each passing generation, as this core group expands, there are changes in alliances to accommodate changing interests. Each movement also brings in outsiders to the superstructure—but only those who are easy to co-opt and posit the least threat. The stranglehold on power of this group is continuously challenged by newer entrants to the middle and upper classes looking after their own political and economic interests.
As the political structure morphs into a democracy, the hold on power is no longer based solely on elite intrigue. It becomes necessary for elites to build patronage networks to deliver votes. By necessity, the structure is pyramidal, with the voters at the bottom, minor patrons a layer higher, and a few elites at the top. Come elections, any group’s claim to power rests on how many minor patrons at the village and district levels it can count on to deliver votes. To this end, they have to rely on the monied class to finance their campaigns and please the minor patrons, who too will look for their own private gain or kinship loyalties. The minor patrons, for their part, will have to ensure that they maintain their capability to deliver votes and so, demand concessions from the elites. Thus, naturally, this structure is far from static as ambitions and rivalries are rife. But one thing remains unchanged—the position of the Everyman at the bottom of the pile.
As long as this structure remains intact, there is little hope that a new CA will deliver any significant change. Also difficult to see is any radical challenge to the structure. One then has to rely on the hope of gradualism—after all, machine politics, a very similar structure, existed in the United States well into the 1930s.
Jha has worked for various international and national organisations supporting the peace process in Nepal (daulat.jha@gmail.com)