A Nepali domestic worker in Doha checks Facebook before her morning shift. The first post in her feed claims her family’s settlement in Thapathali has been bulldozed without notice, and her relatives are now homeless, with no government plan to relocate them. The next, in a confident anchor-style voiceover, announces that the government has dissolved the Nepal Telecommunications Authority board through ordinance.
One is a distortion; it plays on a real eviction drive, but mixes verified images with rumours that have circulated unchecked for a week. The other is the actual news of her country. Both are produced to look identical. Neither comes from her government.
This is the gap the Balen-led government has not yet noticed; it has or does not perceive it as a significant gap. However, it is the gap into which every promising reform in the last six weeks risks falling.
It is not for lack of activity. Since taking the oath of office on March 27, the Council of Ministers has launched a hundred-point governance reform agenda, expanded the Nagarik App to fold passports and driving licenses into a single citizen application, begun the conversion of the postal service into a government courier, and removed a large tranche of politically appointed officials in a single ordinance. It has, in places, invited public opinion on legislative drafts, a meaningful gesture of consultation that previous administrations treated as optional. The IMF has just completed a governance and corruption scoping mission in Kathmandu. Transparency International Nepal has, accurately, called the reform list commendable.
And on communication itself, this government has not been silent. The Council of Ministers has spoken publicly about its priorities from week one. Individual ministers have issued direct commitments to transparency and anti-corruption, the kind of personal pledges that previous cabinets rarely volunteered. The Foreign Ministry has briefed diplomatic missions on Nepal’s policy positions and circulated a code of conduct internally to the Cabinet. The Prime Minister’s social-media presence reaches a domestic and diaspora audience that no previous Nepali leader has commanded. The instinct to reach the public is plainly there. What is missing is the architecture around it; the kind of intentional, institutional structure that turns information into shared understanding and connection.
Announcing cabinet or ministry decisions is not the same as communicating with citizens. The public of this country at home and the millions more abroad are getting their news of Nepal almost entirely through TikTok, Facebook, X and Instagram, refracted through content creators with no editorial standard, no accountability, and no obligation to be right.
Take the eviction drive of the Bagmati, Bishnumati, Dhobikhola and Manohara corridors. The chronic crisis of landless settlers has been deferred by twenty-two successive land commissions over three decades, each one resetting verification, restarting paperwork, and quietly handing over the problem to the next government. There is a real case to be made that the Shah government’s willingness to act on a problem its predecessors avoided is, in fact, its mandate. But understanding, connection and perspective must come before action, or the action itself becomes the story. A government press briefing on day one of the operation, with the line minister on stage to explain the legal framework, the verification standard for genuine squatters, the relocation plan, and an honest acknowledgement of what the plan does not yet solve, would have changed the public reception entirely. Or, at the bare minimum, a press release with these details beforehand. Instead, the Prime Minister himself eventually issued a clarification on Facebook, calling out “misinformation regarding the demolition of squatter settlements.” The instinct was right. The vehicle was a personal social-media post, in one language, days after the rumour cycle had already set its terms.
Decisiveness is a virtue; so is explanation. A chronic problem usually argues for swift action, though not always.
The point here is not to oppose the government. It is to defend its own success. A leadership that came to power because the previous one lost the narrative cannot afford to govern through the same haphazard tools it used to win. What this moment calls for is stronger communication, greater transparency, and a deeper connection between the government and the people whose lives its reforms are reshaping.
There is no shortage of working models elsewhere. In the United States, the White House holds an on-camera press briefing every weekday, led by a single spokesperson taking questions on the record. It covers the full range of administration policy. New Zealand’s daily 1 pm briefings during COVID, then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern beside Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield, produced one of the world’s highest rates of voluntary public-health compliance precisely because the cadence was scheduled rather than improvised. None of this requires capacity that Nepal does not already possess.
The foundations of a well-defined public communication system are neither exotic nor expensive. The most urgent first;
One – A real-time fact-check portal in Nepali, hosted on a gov.np domain. Singapore’s factually.sg names and counters certain viral rumours in hours, across four languages, with cited sources. Nepal URGENTLY needs the equivalent built for young and old, mobile-first population navigating the most consequential government transition in generations. Without a credible state voice, the vacuum is being filled, deliberately by those with every incentive to distort information, instigate unrest and erode public trust before it can take root. Now, a regular rumour wins out over the truth by a week; a government counter thesis on the same day in Nepali, in a domain whose authority is not in doubt, would close the gap.
Two – A single window communications protocol, restored to the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. Traditionally, this Ministry and its department of Information and Broadcasting have served as the authoritative channel for government communication in Nepal, a function built into the country’s institutional memory across successive administrations. The current arrangement, which scatters that function across the Prime Minister’s press adviser, a cabinet spokesperson housed at the Ministry of Education, is the departure, not the norm. Returning the single window function to its institutional home is not just practical; it strengthens the very architecture of the state at a moment when the architecture needs strengthening most.
Three – An on-camera press briefing at least every other week, run out of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. The Ministry, for all its chaotic past, retains the institutional articulation and restrains the function requires. A spokesperson paired with relevant sector ministers, taking questions on the record, not as a hostile interrogation, but as a space for listening, learning and building shared understanding. The most vivid recent example is the United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio stepping into the White House briefing room. It was conversational, sharp, even funny, shifting the tone of an entire news cycle in under an hour. Nepal’s press landscape presents its own challenges: the line between journalism and content creation has blurred, and the questioning culture can be chaotic. But that is precisely the argument for more disciplined briefings, not fewer. A professional format raises the standard on both sides of the podium.
Four – A central gov.np dashboard to display the 100 points of the agenda, which it sets up as a five-year tracker. At this moment, citizens reconstruct what the government is doing from press notes, gazette notifications, and an ecosystem of unofficial trackers no one can verify. A single government-hosted record of what was promised, what is delivered, what is overdue and with timestamps would provide greater exposure to institutional work and establish the tradition that every reform of the next five years is publicly accountable from the very first day.
Five – A state-mediated monthly video address by the Prime Minister. It can, of course, be a Reel! (Think Mamdani in the office!). But the message should travel through the government’s own digital channels alongside Radio Nepal and Nepal Television. The Prime Minister has consistently proved in his past interviews and public engagements that he can speak directly and effectively to the common citizen when he chooses to. A monthly address through state platforms would give that communicator instinct the institutional weight a personal account cannot, and bring the current administration closer to the elderly voters, the rural citizens, and global Nepali migrants whom Facebook alone cannot reach.
Six – Regular parliamentary addresses with questions taken on the floor. Every functioning democracy is accustomed to addressing both houses at a given cadence. It would also put an end to the current allegation that the supermajority is ruling past the legislature instead of through the legislature.
The Prime Minister already engages directly with citizens on his platforms as needed. His seeming decision not to be sucked into the merry-go-round of personal media interviews is his own discipline, a leader focused on governing rather than defending himself with a big to-do and limited time to do so. He won an election largely without direct media engagement; if there is a working theory behind the present approach, it has earned the right to be tested.
But a personal social-media account is not a state communication system. And a press briefing is not an interview. A briefing is a space for the government to hold a dialogue and share a perspective, talking to people about the country through a specific, institutional avenue. It is owed to the public independently of anyone’s preferences for how to spend a Tuesday morning!
The protests that led to the rise of this government were, ultimately, the price of a leadership that had ceased talking to, or explaining itself to, its own people. The present government reaped the rewards of promising to be different, and its heart, with every visible sign of its presence, is precisely in the right place. What it needs now is a consistent, synchronised, institutional voice that can keep pace with its own ambitions. Because strengthening how we understand and communicate with each other is not a side project, it is integral to who we are becoming as a nation.
This government has the mandate, the digital instinct, and the public goodwill to build the briefing room, the one Nepal never truly had. The Prime Minister, of all people, should be the one most at home in it. He began his career, after all, on a microphone.
The question is whether this government recognises that, in 2026, the briefing room is the reform.
