With the recent devastating earthquake in
Nepal claiming thousands of lives, the Nepalese
government has admitted that they are “ill-prepared”
to deal with rescue efforts.
We wanted to examine the political crisis
leading up to this natural disaster.
So what’s been going on in Nepal?
Nepal’s entire history has been tumultuous,
to say the least.
For the past few centuries, multiple attempts
at democracy have failed and depleted Nepal’s
ability to develop as a country, despite a
historically resilient population.
But let’s start around the 1815 Anglo-Nepalese
war, in which Nepal lost a third of their
territory to the British.
Thirty years later came the Kot massacre,
in which a political rival murdered a large
portion of the monarchy, and took over as
king, beginning the Rana Lineage.
The next hundred years of rule were marked
by tyranny, religious persecution, and a drained
economy.
In the 1950s, attempts at democratization
ended the Rana lineage but only lasted about
a decade.
For the next thirty years, Nepal was governed
under the quasi-monarchy Panchayat political
system, which was marred by corruption, censorship,
and human rights abuses.
This lasted until about 1990 when the Nepalese
people again tried to instate a democracy.
However in 1996, the Communist Party of Nepal
attempted a violent coup, which started the
Nepal Civil War.
The conflict lasted until 2006, and left some
15,000 dead and over a hundred thousand displaced.
The war only ended when the new King finally
agreed to cede power.
The next few years saw several back and forth
struggles between the communist party and
the majority parties.
This struggle finally culminated in the dissolution
of the existing government in 2012 after it
was unable to draft a constitution.
It took until 2014 for a new Prime Minister
to be elected.
So what was the result of hundreds of years
of political instability?
Well, Nepal is one of the poorest, and most
underdeveloped countries in the world.
With an extremely low income economy, remittances
sent back by family members working outside
the country make up nearly a fourth of Nepal’s
GDP.
They are also ranked in the bottom quarter
of countries on the Human Development Index.
Nepal holds “least developed country”
status, meaning they are amongst the worst
in terms of poverty, human resource weakness,
and economic vulnerability.
With next to no resources available to deal
with infrastructure or building codes, Nepal’s
capital, Kathmandu, has been called one of
the worst earthquake-prepared cities in the
world.
And with a lack of local elections in the
past decade, the worst-affected villages are
governed by unprepared, unelected committees.
The deadly aftermath of this disaster can
largely be attributed to the country’s erratic
political and social history.
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mobilized to provide much needed support,
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