When fear, favour and fervour drive the system

The easternmost district of the Tarai-Madhesh routinely produces momentous events and colourful personalities. The uprising of Nepali Naxalites began in Jhapa. The district repeatedly elected one of the earliest Maoists of Nepal, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, who later became hyper-revisionist and uber ethnonationalist.

Prime Minister Balendra Shah had to discard his metropolitan base in Kathmandu and travel to the banks of Mechi to defang the political predator through electoral means in its den. The district can now also boast of a young achiever who is claimed to have shaken the structure of governance in the country to its very core, with his reach extending from the bar to the bench and from the chambers of executive authorities to the salons of lawmakers. Allegations are so outrageous that they defy imagination and appear to be true precisely due to their incredulity.

Rudyard Kipling quipped, “The wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Kathmandu” in a different context , but it holds equally true of the state of the State in Nepal.