By Janardan Subedi--------------

I do not write this as a cheerleader of Durga Prasai, nor as his apologist. I write as a scholar and citizen who believes that Nepal’s current republic—crafted in closed rooms by political cartels and imposed upon a disillusioned public—is a failed experiment. It has not only betrayed the democratic spirit it once promised, but has also criminalized dissent and sanctified corruption. And in the vacuum left by this implosion of morality and governance, rose Durga Prasai—not merely as a man, but as a movement. Not simply as a rebel, but as a mirror held up to a decaying system.

Say his name in Kathmandu’s power circles, and you will hear a mixture of scorn and fear. Say the same name in the tarai, in the eastern hills, or among the wage laborers of Nepal’s industrial belts, and you will witness something else: admiration, hope, even reverence. The political elites call him a criminal; the bhuin manchhe—those crushed beneath the weight of the republic’s hypocrisy—call him a messiah.

In truth, Prasai is not the disease. He is the diagnosis.

Let us be clear. Nepal’s post-2006 republic has not been built on democratic consensus, cultural belonging, or sovereign self-determination. It has been brokered between political mafias and foreign brokers, wrapped in constitutional jargon, and marketed as liberation. But beneath that thin legal fabric lies a state captured by syndicates, where elections are rituals, justice is auctioned, and public institutions operate like private fiefdoms. The poor are told to vote every five years, but never to speak in between. The educated are exported. The dissidents are defamed. The looters are honored.

Into this vacuum stormed Durga Prasai, unfiltered and unapologetic. A man from Jhapa, far from Kathmandu’s elite salons, who built a state-of-the-art hospital not with slogans, but with service. Have you seen his establishment? The B&C Hospital is not some ramshackle building with political banners and expired medicine. It is a modern institution that treats up to 2,000 patients daily, offers advanced oncology services, and attracts physicians with global credentials. It is one of the few institutions in this country that does what the republic has failed to do: save lives without bribery.

But this doesn’t fit the narrative, does it? The intellectual class that writes poetry about revolution, the NGOs that chant inclusion from air-conditioned rooms, and the media houses bankrolled by corruption—all of them grow silent when it comes to real, grounded contributions. Because acknowledging Prasai’s institutions would mean accepting that someone outside their echo chamber did something meaningful. And worse—it would mean admitting that the people might love someone they don’t approve of.

Make no mistake: Prasai is a deeply political figure. His speeches are incendiary, sometimes uncomfortable, often polarizing. He has called for the restoration of monarchy, denounced federalism, and openly challenged party leaders by name. But the response to him has not been political debate—it has been persecution. Surveillance. Arrest. Defamation. The state machinery, which couldn’t arrest a single major actor in the Bhutanese refugee scam or prosecute those who looted billions through co-operative fraud, has deployed its full force against one man with a microphone.

His release on bail this week is being spun in various ways, but let us not forget: bail is not an admission of guilt. It is a constitutional safeguard. In a rule-of-law society, you don’t jail people for their opinions. Yet in this republic, the law has become a weapon of selective morality. One man’s speech is sedition; another’s crime is politics.

This is not justice. This is a vendetta disguised as governance.

But here’s the irony: every time the state cracks down on Prasai, he grows stronger. Every arrest boosts his credibility among the poor. Every attack by the media elite deepens his appeal. Why? Because the public no longer trusts the traditional gatekeepers of truth. The parties have betrayed them. The courts have abandoned them. The media has ridiculed them. Into this shattered trust walks a man who, however flawed, speaks in the idiom of pain.

To the educated, Prasai’s appeal may seem irrational. But it is not irrational—it is emotional. It is born of betrayal. The poor don’t follow him because he offers ideology; they follow him because he offers recognition. In a country where most politicians can’t even pronounce “public health” without a teleprompter, he built a hospital. In a nation where parliamentarians skip sessions to attend private weddings, he holds mass rallies in dust and heat. He doesn’t always say the right things—but at least he says something.

This is not to sanctify Prasai or to suspend critique. No one should be above scrutiny—not even the messiah of the masses. But critique must come from a place of consistency. You cannot call him a criminal while celebrating leaders who have spent decades auctioning off national dignity to the highest bidder. You cannot mock his politics while ignoring the ideological bankruptcy of those who shout “democracy” and suppress dissent in the same breath. And you cannot label him a demagogue while propping up dynasts and party brokers as legitimate representatives of the people.

Durga Prasai is not perfect. But perfection is not the point. Authenticity is. And in today’s Nepal, where language is sanitized to hide cowardice and principles are traded for portfolios, authenticity is revolutionary.

The tragedy of our republic is not that Prasai has risen. The tragedy is that it took someone like him to awaken a sleeping populace. In a healthy democracy, figures like him would be part of the discourse—not the only discourse. But we do not have a healthy democracy. We have a decaying oligarchy, clinging to a failed constitution, using the language of freedom to silence the very spirit of liberation.

Prasai has become a movement not because he orchestrated it, but because the people needed one. In the sociology of protest, this is not unusual. When formal institutions fail to channel grievances, informal leaders rise—often through charisma, conviction, or sheer confrontation. Durga Prasai checks all three boxes. He has become the embodiment of what the system refuses to see: the anger of the forgotten, the voice of the humiliated, and the resistance of the uninvited.

The future of Nepal does not lie in hating or hero-worshipping him. It lies in asking: why did the system collapse so completely that one man could galvanize the nation’s rage?

Those who fear Prasai should not fear him. They should fear the system that created him. Because as long as this pseudo-republic continues to serve only its architects, more such figures will rise—some better, some worse, all louder. This is the natural law of failed revolutions: the second wave is always more volatile.
Let us not pretend this is about one man. This is about a broken republic, a silenced people, and a slow-burning rage now spilling into the streets.
Durga Prasai is not just a person. He is a portal.
And the question is not whether we like what he says.
The question is—why did we need someone like him to say it?

(with PR)