The traditional political establishment is terrified because someone finally decided that rules should actually mean something.
For decades, Nepal’s administrative machinery has been a graveyard of "process" and "consensus." In the Kathmandu political ecosystem, these are just polite code words for institutionalized paralysis. When legacy media outlets like The Hindu or local pundits fret over the "concerns emerging over process" regarding Prime Minister Balendra Shah, they aren't worried about democracy. They are worried about the loss of the veto power that allows bureaucrats and career politicians to keep the country in a perpetual state of 1990s-era stagnation.
The "process" they defend is exactly what kept Kathmandu’s streets buried in trash for a generation. It is the same "process" that allowed illegal encroachments on public land to become permanent fixtures of the city. Balendra Shah isn’t breaking the system; he is finally enforcing the one that was written on paper but ignored in practice.
The Myth of the Dangerous Outsider
The loudest critics argue that Balendra Shah’s rise to the Prime Minister’s office—and his aggressive executive style—represents a threat to institutional stability. This is the ultimate "lazy consensus." It assumes that the institutions were stable to begin with.
Let’s look at the data. Before the "Balen" era, the success rate of municipal projects in Kathmandu was abysmal. Budget execution was a joke. Why? Because every single decision required a "consensus" among a dozen warring factions who all wanted a piece of the procurement pie.
When you hear that "process is being bypassed," what is actually happening is the elimination of the middleman. In any high-stakes business environment, we call this vertical integration and efficiency. In the sclerotic world of South Asian geopolitics, we call it a "threat to democracy."
If a building is built illegally on a riverbank, the "process" used to be a ten-year court case that ended in a bribe. Shah’s "process" is a bulldozer. The latter is actually more legal because it restores the rule of law that the former actively subverted.
Why Process is the Enemy of Progress
In developmental economics, there is a concept called "Institutionalized Veto Points." Nepal is the global champion of this. To get anything done—from building a hydropower plant to fixing a sidewalk—you have to pass through dozens of offices where any low-level clerk can stop the project.
Shah’s administration operates on a different logic: Permit by default, penalize for failure.
He has shifted the burden of proof back onto the exploiters of the system. The critics claim this is authoritarian. I’ve seen boards of directors in Fortune 500 companies try to "process" themselves into a grave while a lean competitor eats their lunch. Nepal is that stagnant company. Balen is the activist investor who just walked into the room and fired the board.
The outcry over his "unilateral" decisions regarding urban planning and heritage preservation is a classic case of protecting the status quo. These critics aren't defending the law; they are defending the right to negotiate the law. When the law becomes a negotiation, the poor always lose and the connected always win.
The Transparency Trap
One of the funniest arguments against Shah is that he is "too populist" or relies too much on social media.
Imagine a scenario where a leader broadcasts a live feed of a meeting where bureaucrats are trying to explain why they haven't fixed a road in three years. The bureaucrats call this "humiliation." The public calls it "accountability."
The "People Also Ask" sections of South Asian news feeds are currently filled with queries about whether Shah is a "threat to the federal structure." This is the wrong question. The real question is: Why is the federal structure so fragile that one man doing his job makes it shake?
The truth is that Shah’s transparency is a weapon. By making the inner workings of the administration visible, he is removing the shadows where corruption thrives. The "process" loved by his predecessors was opaque by design. If you can’t see the gears turning, you can’t see who is throwing sand in them.
The Cost of Efficiency
Is there a downside? Of course.
When you move fast, you break things. Sometimes those things are sensitive political alliances. Sometimes they are genuine procedural safeguards. But we must weigh the cost of a few procedural hiccups against the catastrophic cost of doing nothing.
Nepal has spent thirty years "doing things the right way" according to international NGOs and diplomatic circles. The result? Mass migration of the youth, a trade deficit that looks like a vertical line, and infrastructure that crumbles during a light rain.
Shah’s approach recognizes that the "right way" was a trap.
He is practicing a form of Strategic Impatience. While the elders of the parliament want to discuss the "holistic implications" of a policy for five years, Shah is looking for the "Minimum Viable Product" of governance. He wants results that citizens can see, touch, and walk on.
The Intellectual Dishonesty of "Democratic Norms"
The most egregious claim made by the competitor article is that Shah’s rise signals a decay in democratic norms.
This is an insult to the voters. Balendra Shah didn’t stage a coup; he won an election. Then he won the influence necessary to lead. Democracy is the will of the people, not the comfort of the bureaucrats.
If the people of Nepal wanted the "process," they would have voted for the grey-haired men who have been promising it since the fall of the monarchy. They didn't. They voted for a structural engineer who looks at a city as a system to be optimized, not a carcass to be picked clean.
The establishment's obsession with "norms" is really an obsession with predictability. They want a Prime Minister they can predict, lobby, and eventually, absorb. Shah is unabsorbable. He doesn't share their history of "struggle," which is usually just code for "I spent twenty years in a prison or a jungle, so now it’s my turn to get rich."
Practical Advice for the Establishment: Adapt or Vanish
If you are a career politician or a high-level bureaucrat in Nepal, stop whining about Balen’s "style." Your complaints only make him stronger. Every time an old-guard politician says Shah is being "impulsive," a thousand young voters see it as proof that he’s actually getting something done.
Instead of fighting the "lack of process," start making the process faster than his bulldozer. But you won’t do that. You can’t. Your power depends on the delay.
The Hard Truth About South Asian Leadership
The region is obsessed with the "Strongman" vs. "Democrat" dichotomy. It’s a false choice. What Nepal has right now isn't a strongman in the traditional, oppressive sense. It has an Executive.
The Prime Minister’s office has historically functioned like a ceremonial chairmanship of a committee of rivals. Shah is treating it like a CEO role. He is setting KPIs. He is demanding reports. He is firing people who don't perform.
If that feels like a shock to the system, it’s only because the system has been in a coma for three decades. The "concerns" being voiced by the international press are nothing more than the sound of a stagnant elite realizing their 1950s-style political games are finally obsolete.
Stop asking if he is following the process. Start asking why the process was designed to fail the people in the first place.
The bulldozer isn't just for the buildings; it's for the rot in the heart of the administration. And frankly, it’s about time.
