As the Nepali Congress, having remained at the centre of Nepal’s modern political history for eight decades, moves toward its 15th general convention, the present moment invites both remembrance and reflection. It also offers an opportunity to ask what the democratic tradition represented by the Nepali Congress has meant to Nepal, how the country it helped shape has changed, where the party stands today, and what that tradition will need in order to remain relevant.
No political tradition in Nepal has been more closely associated with the country’s struggle for democracy, the expansion of political participation and the making of its modern political institutions than the one the Nepali Congress represents, and the Congress led that struggle at each stage, setting its democratic demands, sustaining its movements and giving its gains institutional form. Its significance extends beyond the history of an organisation: it forms part of the larger story of how Nepal came to understand citizenship, representation, constitutional government and the possibilities of democratic politics.
That history belongs to a period in which Nepal moved from a highly restricted political order toward a more open and representative one, and political participation gradually acquired a wider meaning. The Nepali Congress was the principal torchbearer of that democratic journey and, at different stages, worked in cooperation and common purpose with other democratic, left and progressive forces.
Its own political journey also included periods of cooperation with the monarchy, from the establishment of the democratic order to work within the constitutional framework. That accommodation ultimately ended when the monarchy reasserted direct political authority in the early 2000s. Other political forces, through struggle, contestation, adaptation and negotiation, also came to embrace the liberal democratic order and became part of Nepal’s parliamentary experience. The inheritance is therefore larger than any one organization. It includes the aspirations, institutions and practices that helped create a more participatory Nepal and gave successive generations greater room to shape the country’s future.
It is natural, on such an occasion, to look back with pride at what has been accomplished. But it may be more important to ask what kind of country Nepal has become, what remains unfinished, and what the next phase requires. The political and social world in which earlier struggles were fought is no longer the world of today. Nepal is more open, connected, mobile and socially diverse, while expectations have expanded alongside education, technology, migration, communication and economic opportunity. A democratic inheritance cannot remain meaningful simply because of what it achieved in its own time; its continuing value depends on whether it can carry forward the principles and purposes that gave it meaning while speaking to the country that has emerged from that history.
The reversal of established political parties, including the Nepali Congress, in the 2026 election has given these questions particular urgency. It pointed to more than a change in parliamentary arithmetic; it also revealed changing public expectations and a changing relationship between citizens and established political traditions. Against this changing landscape, the party’s 15th general convention is taking place amid an unresolved dispute over organizational legitimacy and questions about its leadership. These immediate questions matter, but they also bring into focus the larger challenge of how a political tradition can renew its relevance in a country that has changed so much.
A younger and more outward-looking population increasingly judges politics not only by historical achievement or ideological commitment, but also by the quality of government, the opportunities available to people and the ability of public institutions to respond to everyday problems. Nepal’s central task has moved beyond creating a political order capable of representing its citizens. It is now to make that order capable of delivering deeper economic transformation, competent government and resilient prosperity. The sections below take up what that requires.
From political change to economic renewal
Nepal’s political transformation created the institutional space within which wider social and economic change could take place. Over the decades, the country has seen the expansion of infrastructure, education, health services, communications, public institutions and markets. The state has acquired a much greater presence across the country, and citizens have gained access to opportunities and forms of communication that were largely unavailable to earlier generations. Yet the productive economy has not advanced at the same pace.
Nepal has developed an industrial base, but industry has not acquired the depth or breadth to drive higher productivity and structural transformation. Manufacturing has not absorbed labor on the scale experienced in countries that followed a sustained industrial path, nor has it generated the degree of domestic production, technological learning and value addition associated with such a course. Agriculture remains important and is increasingly, though still insufficiently, connected to markets, while services have expanded markedly. The result is an economy in which the social and institutional landscape has moved ahead of the productive base that must ultimately sustain it.
Geography is central to this challenge, as both constraint and asset. Nepal’s position between India and China creates possibilities, but location alone does not produce connectivity or economic integration. Connections toward the north remain constrained by rugged Himalayan terrain and limited infrastructure, making the movement of people, goods and investment more difficult and costly.
The value of Nepal’s position will depend on whether infrastructure, institutions and productive capabilities can turn proximity into practical economic opportunity. At the same time, the country’s geography provides some of its greatest economic assets. Rivers and elevation create substantial hydropower potential; mountains, biodiversity and cultural landscapes underpin tourism; and ecological diversity supports distinctive forms of agriculture and local economic activity. Their economic value, however, depends on the infrastructure, skills, investment and markets needed to make sustained and productive use of them.
The future will depend less on identifying a single new engine of growth than on creating conditions in which several sources of productive potential can reinforce one another. Hydropower must connect with industry and markets, tourism with infrastructure and local enterprise, agriculture with technology, finance, storage and processing, and digital connectivity with skills and investment. Regional integration, in turn, depends on reliable physical and institutional networks that allow Nepali producers and businesses to participate effectively. Services also offer scope: information and communication, finance, education, health and other knowledge-based activities. In every sector the task is to turn possibility into productive activity, employment, domestic value addition and stronger linkages.
Progress cannot be judged by aggregate growth alone. What matters is whether the economy creates productive employment, raises productivity, encourages investment and innovation, expands domestic value addition and allows more people to participate in a dynamic economy. Nepal’s difficulty is less a shortage of resources than a shortage of the enterprise, infrastructure, skills and institutions needed to connect them.
A Changing Society and New Expectations
Migration has become one of the clearest expressions of Nepal’s changing economic and social structure. Internal migration has altered the demographic geography of the country, while overseas migration has become deeply embedded in household livelihoods and the wider economy. Remittances have provided an important cushion for families and communities and supported consumption, education, housing and other forms of investment.
At the same time, the scale of outward migration reflects the limited capacity of the domestic economy to provide sufficient productive employment. The longer-term question is not whether migration should be regarded as a problem or a solution. It has become part of Nepal’s economic life. The more useful aim is to connect the skills, experience, networks and resources acquired through migration more closely with productive activity at home. A country cannot indefinitely rely on the export of its labor while importing a large share of what its people consume. Mobility should become a source of capability, not a substitute for opportunity at home.
Nepal is also becoming more urban, mobile and educated, and younger people are increasingly shaped by exposure to opportunities and standards beyond the country. This can become a source of dynamism if education, skills, health, employment and enterprise develop sufficiently to make productive use of human capability. But a demographic dividend is not automatic.
Technology is opening another set of possibilities. Digital connectivity can help overcome some of the disadvantages imposed by geography, widen access to markets and services, facilitate new forms of enterprise and employment, and improve public-service delivery. But technology cannot overcome structural limitations by itself. Its benefits depend on the wider economic and institutional capacity to put it to effective use.
Climate change adds a further dimension. Nepal’s contribution to global greenhouse-gas emissions is negligible, while its exposure to climate-related risks is substantial. Climate pressures can affect agriculture and livelihoods, water availability, hydropower, roads and other infrastructure, tourism, settlements and ecosystems. Climate resilience cannot be treated as an environmental concern separate from development. It has to be incorporated into the planning and management of the sectors on which livelihoods and prosperity depend.
This also gives Nepal a distinctive international position. Its negligible contribution to global emissions, combined with serious vulnerability, provides grounds for a stronger voice on climate justice, adaptation, resilience and the concerns of mountain and Himalayan regions. That voice will carry greater weight when accompanied by stronger domestic resilience and the capacity to protect people and productive assets from growing risks.
From political settlement to effective government
These changes bear directly on the state. Citizens look for responsive institutions, good public services, transparency and accountability. Political legitimacy is experienced not only through participation and representation but through the everyday performance of government. The quality of public administration increasingly affects how citizens experience the state itself. Nepal’s political journey has produced a substantial constitutional and institutional settlement.
The transition to a federal democratic republic, a more inclusive constitutional framework, wider representation and devolution of authority have significantly altered how the state is organized and how citizens participate in public life. For the present, the challenge is less further restructuring than making these arrangements work with greater coherence, competence and responsiveness. Debates over federal arrangements and the electoral system will continue, and some adjustment may prove necessary, but citizens now judge the settlement chiefly by how well it performs.
Federalism is an important part of this new architecture. It has brought government closer to citizens and created more room for locally grounded development. Yet weak coordination among levels of government and uneven administrative, technical and fiscal resources have constrained its promise. Local governments hold real potential, but proximity alone does not guarantee good government. Strengthening professional administration, clarifying responsibilities and improving coordination will be central to the years ahead. The same is true beyond domestic administration.
Economic development, infrastructure, migration, urbanisation, technology and climate resilience increasingly require coordination across jurisdictions, while Nepal’s relations with India and China, its place in a changing regional economy, and its growing engagement with global markets and climate diplomacy require coherent and sustained national policy. Nepal needs a state capable of delivering at home while also navigating a complex regional and international environment in pursuit of long-term national interests.
The measure of the present constitutional order will increasingly be found in implementation: the quality of public services, the ability of governments at different levels to work together, the competence of public institutions, and the capacity to turn Nepal’s possibilities into tangible improvements in people’s lives.
Renewal and continuity
The moment matters beyond this general convention. Nepal’s political arrangements have evolved alongside a society whose expectations of politics and government have shifted markedly. Yet the productive and institutional weaknesses described above remain, and they cannot be overcome by political change alone. Democratic institutions must continue to respond to the society they have helped create and to the expectations that have grown around them.
For the Nepali Congress, the moment is significant not simply because of the organisational questions immediately before it, but because it brings into focus a larger question about the future of a political tradition that has played such a consequential role in Nepal’s history. The experience, democratic commitments and sense of public purpose accumulated over eight decades must remain relevant to a society that has itself changed profoundly. The task is thoughtful renewal: understanding what is worth preserving, what needs to change and what the future demands.
That renewal calls for a closer relationship between political achievement and institutional performance. Representation remains fundamental, but it must be accompanied by capable government and meaningful opportunity. Together, these are the larger test facing Nepal’s political order: whether the gains of the past can be converted into a more capable state and wider prosperity. Political traditions still matter here. They carry memories of struggle, institutional experience and public trust accumulated over time.
A tradition that has served the nation well has much worth preserving, but preservation cannot mean standing still. History can provide a foundation; it cannot guarantee continued relevance or public confidence. Those have to be earned again by understanding the country as it is becoming and responding to the aspirations of those who will shape its future. That requires the courage to ask what once made a political tradition meaningful to people and useful to the nation, and to give those qualities new expression in changed circumstances. Democratic conviction, a connection with ordinary citizens, a sense of public service and commitment to a larger national purpose are not relics of an earlier era. Their value lies precisely in how they are carried forward by each new generation.
There is nothing wrong with looking back with affection. Political journeys are made not only through institutions and ideas, but through friendships, sacrifices, shared struggles and memories that remain long after particular moments have passed. For someone like me who has been part of such a journey, attachment is inevitably personal. It is a source of gratitude, and quiet pride, to have shared, however modestly, in a cause larger than any individual: the advancement of democracy and the building of the nation.
That association carries a responsibility to look at the present with candor, including the disagreements and strains that accompany a period of transition, and to look to the future with faith. To care for a political tradition is not to shield it from difficult truths or from the need to change; it is to want it to retain its connection with people, its public purpose and its capacity to serve the country as it is becoming. Precisely because that inheritance matters, it deserves neither uncritical celebration nor easy dismissal, but an honest reckoning with what should be preserved, what must change and what may have been lost along the way.
Every political generation eventually makes room for another. But democratic renewal need not mean a rupture between them. New leadership will necessarily see Nepal through somewhat different eyes, speak more directly to people whose experiences differ from those of their predecessors, and bring expectations that earlier leaders could not have fully anticipated. But successors also inherit a debt: to the pioneers who carried the cause of liberty; to those who devoted themselves to the dignity and well-being of ordinary people; to the builders of modern Nepal; to those who carried that responsibility forward; and to the martyrs who gave their lives for it.
Their sacrifices gave meaning to a political tradition whose deepest inheritance is not simply memory, but the democratic and national purpose entrusted to them. The accumulated wisdom of a long political experience can offer guidance, but those who come next must have the freedom to bring their own language, priorities and imagination to the democratic enterprise. Continuity gives renewal a foundation; renewal gives continuity a future.
A new chapter does not erase the pages that came before it. It carries their lessons forward while accepting that the story must be written in circumstances that have changed. The hope, then, should not be for a return to an earlier political moment or for change for its own sake, but for a future that preserves what was strongest in the democratic traditions that helped shape modern Nepal, learns honestly from what has not worked, and gives each new generation the freedom to bring its own experience and imagination to that inheritance.
When the party looks back from its centenary, it should be able to do so with gratitude for the journey, honesty about what remains unfinished, affection for what was built, and confidence in those who have carried and will carry the work forward. The present period of disagreement should ultimately matter less as an organisational dispute than as a test of whether the Congress can emerge with a stronger sense of purpose, a deeper connection with the people and a greater capacity to meet the demands of a changing Nepal. The ultimate measure will be whether its deepest democratic and national purpose can continue to command the trust of the people it sought to serve, and whether that inheritance can be made meaningful to the Nepal of its time.
May the next chapter carry that inheritance into the Nepal of today, renewing its democratic purpose for a new generation. May those entrusted with it bring fresh eyes, fresh energy and a renewed sense of purpose, while drawing wisdom from the experience that made their work possible. And may that continuing journey contribute to the larger unfinished task before us all: building a more prosperous, inclusive, capable and resilient Nepal.
