By Kedar Neupane
(23 July 2025)

A Country Trapped in Super-Nationalist Political Party Musical Chairs: A Costly Illusion Without Pragmatic Transformation.
Nepal urgently needs a bold and realistic development vision for long-term economic prosperity. While globalization offered transformative opportunities in recent decades, Yet Nepal failed to reposition itself strategically. Geographically situated between two of the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies, India and China, Nepal could have become a bridge of commerce, supply chain, innovation, and regional cooperation. Instead, the country remained paralyzed by indecisiveness and partisan bickering, state capture and trapped in outdated political-economic thinking, and a lack of critical innovation matching the public aspirations of the time.
In today’s interconnected global economy, clinging to outdated ideologies of super-nationalism and ultra-patriotism is not only delusional but counterproductive and self-defeating. Countries like India, China, Indonesia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam have embraced pragmatic strategies focused on competitiveness, innovation, and regional collaboration.
Nepal’s protectionist economic policy postures, often framed in nationalistic rhetoric, has only alienated foreign investors and hindered growth. Empty pride cannot substitute sound policy pragmatism. National dignity without economic strength becomes a hollow illusion and a mere hallucination. Over the decades, Nepal has not to scaled up the economic ladder and continued to remain at the lower scale on the purchasing power parity measure of the World Bank in Asia, and the poorest in South-Asia.
Food Sovereignty: The Forgotten Foundation of National Security
True national security begins with food sovereignty. Today, Nepal imports nearly all essential food staples and petroleum products from India. This growing dependency is alarming. Despite this, policy leadership remains passive. Meanwhile, millions of Nepali youth toil in the informal sector or migrate abroad, legally, or otherwise, in search of livelihoods their own country fails to provide.
Out-migration has become tragically normalized. Rural communities are hollowed out. The diaspora now constitutes a third of Nepal’s broader identity, more a symptom of national despair than global opportunity.
Youth Disillusionment and Economic Policy Paralysis
Nepal must urgently rethink its pragmatic economic policy. With more than 56% of the population under thirty, the youth are central to national rejuvenation. Yet their aspirations are stifled by slogans masquerading as strategy. Super-nationalism offers no jobs. It only limits creativity and entrepreneurship and adds to disillusionment.
Nepal’s investment environment is incoherent, marked by policy inconsistency and lack of investor confidence. Economic nationalism, repeated as political rhetoric, cannot lift people out of poverty. It isolates Nepal from the interconnected world’s economic progress.
Between 1990 and 2020, globalization lifted over a billion people out of poverty, led by China and India. ASEAN and BRICS countries leveraged trade, investment, and market reform to grow. In 2024, BRICS nations accounted for 35% of global GDP, overtaking the G-7, a tectonic shift, unprecedented in economic history of the world.
In contrast, countries like Nepal, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and Eritrea remain economically marginalized, trapped by outdated political ideologies and economic stagnation. Their citizens pay the price and remain far behind the growth curve of well-being and quality of life.
The Cold War Is Over - So Should Be the Grounded Mindset
The Cold War once justified ideological nationalism. But since the Berlin Wall fell in 1980 and the USSR disintegration, the world has transformed both politically and economically. Regional blocs like the EU, ASEAN, BRICS, NAFTA, MERCOSUR, and RCEP have reshaped the global economy.
China rapidly built immense new wealth under centralized leadership, blending market principles, like in capitalist economy, with social control and became the world’s largest manufacturing hub of consumer goods, and parallelly dominating the supply-chain. India led the digital innovation in knowledge economy, redefining economic power shifts away from the Global North, unprecedented in economic history of the globe. These revolutionary developments created additional new wealth away from the Western World, a multipolar geo-economy emerged. India, with its balancing strategic autonomy (by dumping away non-alignment) policy and structural reforms, has committed modernization and diversifying its economy.
The global economic center has shifted decisively to Asia and the Global South. Yet Nepal remains stuck in Cold War-era mentalities and narrative traps, missing the wave of transformation others have ridden to success.
Political Economy in Disarray: Rhetoric Over Strategy
Nepal’s political leadership and elites have repeatedly failed to produce a coherent and credible economic roadmap. Despite frequent much-hyped investment summits and reform pledges, little has changed, except empty political headlines. Investor skepticism has deepened further due to unreliable policy and corrupt governance.
In a multipolar geo-economic world, recycled ideological narratives do not attract capital. Business-as-usual based on out-of-context grounded narratives do not attract foreign capital investment. What is needed is critical thinking in public policy domain for encouraging innovation, entrepreneurship, and a growth model that prioritizes inclusive prosperity.
National rhetoric does not attract private investors and create competitive consumer markets. Proto nationalism cannot build sustainable roads or generate jobs. If economic nationalism has failed before, why expect it to succeed now? Political rhetoric and illusionary dream of republicanism do not resonate with daily struggles of ordinary citizens. People want economic prosperity linked with high quality of living standards and well-being, not super-nationalist theatrics.
The average citizen does not seek ideology, they seek quality education, healthcare, employment, food security, economic gains, and dignity.
Path to Transformation: A Realistic Reform Agenda
To break free from stagnation, Nepal must embrace structural reforms at all levels of governance orderliness. Transformation must begin with governance and quality education, foundations for a knowledge-driven economy. Key pillars include:
·    Foster entrepreneurship and innovation: Establish platforms for startups, youth ventures, and tech ecosystems.
·    Invest in infrastructure and energy: Prioritize reliable energy, transport, and coordination to support long-term sustainable investment.
·    Create a stable and transparent investment climate: Streamline bureaucracy and offer policy consistency to domestic and foreign investors.
·    Support small and medium-scale enterprises: Enhance access to finance, training, and technology for Small and Middle-Scale Enterprises.
·    Embed critical thinking in education: Revise curricula to promote critical thinking analysis, creativity, and problem-solving competency.
·    Eradicate corruption, red tape, and political impunity: Strengthen and implement rule of law and ensure accountability at all institutional levels.
·    Consolidate investment laws: Codify clear, simplified legal frameworks into an easy-to-understand single document, and implement stipulated provisions guaranteeing trustworthy assurance to capital investors.
Regional Cooperation: From Optics to Outcomes
Nepal’s participation in BRI, SAFTA, and BIMSTEC is encouraging, but only if these initiatives deliver real economic benefits for ordinary citizens. Diplomacy must go beyond photo-ops and news headlines. Pragmatic economic integration should focus on regional value chains, market access, competitive exports, and employment.
Nepal must rebuild public institutions to be ethical, capable, and rule based. This is the foundation for attracting capital investment and fostering inclusive growth. The commitment must extend beyond politics, to the private sector, civil society, and diaspora.
True nationalism lies not in political slogans but intangible economic outcomes. Without prosperity, neither democracy nor nationalism hold meaning for the people. The era of rhetorical dreams orchestrated in the camouflage of democracy and republicanism must end. Nepal’s future lies in pragmatic realism, reform, and responsibility.
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Kedar Neupane, a founding executive board member of the Nepal Policy Institute (NPI), is a retired UNHCR official with 38 years of international service across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. He previously served as Senior Change Management Advisor to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, Switzerland. Views are personal. E-mail: neupanek1950@gmail.com