Nepal in 1991: A Consolidation of Democratic Pluralism

Abstract

The decade of the 1990s started dramatically for Nepal, with a popular uprising against the 30-year old partyless panchayat system and a change, welcomed by the people, to a multiparty parliamentary democracy with the king as a constitutional monarch. A new Constitution was adopted late in 1990 and, in conformity with it, a general election held in May 1991. The Nepali Congress (NC), the party elected to power in 1959, was once again given a mandate to form the government. The year 1991 will perhaps go into the annals of Nepalese history as a period of consolidation of democratic government. Beginning on a note of optimism that political change might usher in a new era of social advance and economic progress, the year seemed to end on a note of caution, if not pessimism that radical political change notwithstanding, the social and economic progress of a poverty-ridden country might be very slow to come. While Nepal's political gains allowed it to join the ranks of world democracies, its struggles to break away from the ranks of least developed countries will continue for the rest of the century and beyond.