Reimagining Nepal’s Intellectual and Research Landscape
Presented at the Zoom seminar organized by the Nepal Transformation Support Group on October 25, 2025
This note is adapted from a presentation delivered during a Zoom seminar organized by the Nepal Transformation Support Group on October 25, 2025.
FORGING NEPAL’S PATH FROM CRISIS TO A NEW NORMAL: THE CRITICAL ROLE OF THINK TANKS AND INTELLECTUALS
Speaker: Mr. Muma Ram Khanal (Political Analyist)
Remarks: Dr. Alok K. Bohara, Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico
Moderator: Dr. Nawa Raj Khatiwada
Dr. Alok K. Bohara’s Remarks.
The Missing Middle Corridor: The Role of Nepal’s Intellectuals in Its Collapse
The century of democracy that began in 1950 and saw its renewed light in 1990 with the establishment of a multiparty system offered Nepal three possible paths. Our goal then was to embrace a liberal, rule-based democracy instead of the other two extremes — the despotic and the fragmented state. History provides many examples of both, and our collective aspiration to steer Nepal toward the middle corridor of liberal democracy was, indeed, a noble one.
In this note, I argue that Nepal’s civil society failed to help guide the country into that middle corridor. It began with the co-option of our academic institutions, where free thinkers, researchers, and policy deliberators gradually abandoned their duty as guardians of independent inquiry and public reason. Instead, many became shareholders in the expanding NGO industry, aligning their energies and loyalties with politicians and donor networks.
Once the intellectuals became part of the manipulatory instruments of the party machine, the architecture of the extraction–control nexus was complete. Nepal’s democracy, which had barely taken root in the middle corridor, drifted even further away — morphing into a feudal democracy, a system far removed from the liberal promise of the 1990s struggle.
As energy, focus, and intellectual bandwidth were diverted elsewhere — often toward projects that reinforced the extraction–control nexus of political parties — Nepal’s universities lost both direction and independence. Resources and manpower were drawn away from serious research; academics followed the trail of power and patronage, leaving behind the university’s original mission and weakening its intellectual ecosystem. The decline of these institutions serve as an example: CENAS, CEDA, CERID, APROS.
With the extraction–control nexus in full swing, Nepal’s democracy assumed a feudal façade — a system of patronage, nepotism, and privilege cloaked in democratic attire.
The consequence of such a void — a collapse of independent research and critical thinking — has been profound. Without a self-correcting academic sphere, the country has struggled to anchor itself in the middle corridor of liberal democracy.
In this essay, I offer two humble proposals to help reverse this academic slide and to reimagine Nepal’s intellectual and research landscape — a three-tier university system and an independent grant-funding agency (see Note toward the end). A link to the YouTube video of the Zoom conversation with Muma Ram Khanal, organized by the Nepal Transformation Support Group, is provided toward the end.
Understanding Civil Society’s Shifting Roles: From Promise to Its Complacence
1. Three Phases of Civil Society
When we talk about think tanks and civil society in Nepal, we’re really talking about the mirror of our democracy — how it has evolved, and in many ways, how it has stalled.
Think tanks were meant to be the conscience of democracy — the bridge between the state and the citizen, between outrage and design. But somewhere along the way, that bridge began to crumble.
If we look back, Nepal’s civil society and intellectual community have passed through several distinct phases.
The first, what I call the liberty generation, fought for freedom and multiparty democracy in 1990.
The second, the social-equality generation, championed inclusion and republicanism in 2006.
And then came the professional class — the builders of our bureaucracies, universities, and NGOs. They could have become our institutional reformers and idea incubators.
Sadly, however, many of these spaces came under the control of activist-leaders who carried their old instincts into new arenas. They built cadre armies instead of institutions — alliances instead of accountability.
2. The Current Dilemma
Today, Nepal’s democracy stands at a crossroads — with three possible paths:
a) despotic path, where power again concentrates in a few hands (I referred to it —Unshakled State Leviathan);
b) fragmented path, where society splinters into rival tribes and moves toward lawlessness and disintegration (failed state); and
c) the middle corridor, a liberal, rule-based democracy where checks, balances, and civic ethics prevail; a strong center with devolved grassroot participatory democracy.
Tragically, instead of guiding us toward that middle corridor, much of our civil society became co-opted — choosing silence while the political class, often aided by educated technocrats, went about its business of extraction and control, a pattern I have called the Extraction–Control Nexus.
d) A fourth path thus emerged — the Nepo-Democratic Path — where modern institutions wear the garb of democracy but operate through patronage, kinship, and clientelism: an economy of favors masquerading as reform. Under the Ranas, power flowed through bloodline; under the Panchayat, through loyalty to the palace; and in the post-democratic era, through party allegiance — all mimicking the spirit of a feudal order dressed in democratic attire.
Over time, even the resources meant for independent research and policy discourse were diverted. Government funds began flowing through political channels into NGOs, including those run by political leaders, bypassing universities and research centers.
Professors, in turn, had to join political tribes just to stay connected — through NGOs or government policy departments. Many other professions were equally were tribalized along the party lines.
Even foreign embassies began selectively funding intellectuals with certain ideological leanings.
What could have been a golden age of policy scholarship became an ecosystem of patronage, deepening what I call the Economy of Complaisance — where silence is rewarded and selective outrage becomes a political strategy. This is how civil society went into hibernation until everything exploded in September 8th and 9th.
3. The Consequences
This culture of complaisance has created a vacuum of intellectual integrity. Many in civil society, now aging and comfortable, traded courage for convenience. Outrage became episodic — safe, fashionable, and convenient.
And emerging in this vacuum is what I call the discourse enterprise — not necessarily the think tanks themselves, but a wider community of intellectuals and commentators who have replaced deep research and reflective analysis with popular outrage and shallow commentary.
Their incentives have shifted from understanding to visibility, from knowledge to noise.
Social media’s frictionless belt feeders reward this behavior — inflating commentary while deflating ideas.
In short, research has been replaced by rhetoric, and intellectualism by performance.
Publicly funded research organizations like CEDA, CNAS, CERID, APROS gradually faded away.
The Way Forward
If Nepal’s intellectuals and think tanks are to reclaim their purpose, they must return to their first principles — to become independent spaces of reason and reform, not echo chambers of convenience.
A few starting points:
Build a three-tier higher-education system — research universities, teaching colleges, and vocational institutes, each with distinct missions. (See below a link to a proposal describing in details how Nepal’s higher education structure should be reorganized. Appendix 1)
Leave NGOs in the practice sphere, while universities reclaim the domain of serious, peer-reviewed research.
Establish independent funding agencies — NSF or NIH-style — free from party and bureaucratic influence. Agencies like the National Health Institute of Nepal should fund research, not extract a percentage of it. (See a link to a proposal describing how an independent granting agency (like NSF and NIH) can be established in Nepal to promote research and enhance academic environment. Appendix 2)
Encourage interdisciplinary collaboration — organizations like NAST should partner with social-science and policy-oriented institutions to connect science, governance, and society.
These reforms would restore the intellectual spine of our democracy and help move Nepal from reaction to reflection and reason.
Because in the end, democracy doesn’t survive by outrage. It survives by design.
About Author: Dr. Alok K. Bohara, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of New Mexico, writes as an independent observer of Nepal’s democratic evolution as a system viewed through the lens of complexity and emergence science—critical of capture, wary of populism, and steadfast in his belief that accountability and citizen trust form the foundation of a resilient and prosperous republic. Bohara1955@gmail.com
Appendix 1:
Reimagining Nepal's Higher Education: A Call for Strategic Reforms
The proposed reforms ideas are the result of review of higher education reports study, observation, discussions, and comments provided by numerous educators and scholars, including high-level university officials (see acknowledgement section). This paper serves as an organic document presented as a starting point to trigger discussions on the crucial ma…
Appendix 2:
A Proposal to Establish Nepal Science, Technology, and Policy Research Foundation (NSTPRF) submitted to Hon. Minister for Finance, &
Hon. Minister for Education, Nepal (2008)
Note: The grant-funding proposal idea was first developed at the request of the then Vice-Chancellor of Tribhuvan University, the late Dr. Madhav Sharma, and was conveyed to us — Nepali diaspora academics — through Dr. Madan Koirala (Professor, TU). A delegation consisting of several former Vice-Chancellors — Dr. Suresh Raj Sharma, Mr. Kedar B. Mathema, the late Dr. Madhav Sharma, Dr. Kamal Joshi, and I — presented the proposal to the then Prime Minister, Madhav Kumar Nepal. At the Prime Minister’s request, the team made a brief stop at the office of the then Vice Chair of the National Planning Commission, Dr. Khatiwada. However, due to the prevailing political fluidity and internal dynamics within TU, the idea did not gain traction.
