It was an ordinary evening in a small dhawa—the kind of roadside eatery where the scent of sekuwa mixes with wood smoke, where conversation competes with the sizzling of meat. I was with a group of friends—academics, professionals, a few with foreign exposure—people who, by Nepali standards, were “accomplished”: degrees, steady incomes, passports with visas to countries most Nepalis only dream about.
In the middle of our darbar and casual talk, a young man approached. He had the kind of hands that spoke of long days and hard labor, and the kind of eyes that betrayed a restless awareness. Without a greeting, he asked: You all seem accomplished, educated, and prosperous compared to me. Tell me—what do you think about my life, my family’s life, and our future? It was not a plea for charity. It was a question that pierced the comfort of our table like a blade.
I stayed silent—partly buying time, partly unwilling to utter a well-meaning but hollow platitude. But before I could respond, someone in our group delivered the verdict: You don’t have a life, so don’t bother us. The young man didn’t argue. He gave a small, resigned smile, turned, and melted into the evening crowd.
The Sociology of a Dismissal
In sociological terms, that remark was an act of symbolic violence—the language of hierarchy asserting itself, a declaration that his existence did not count as “life” in the social order. It was cruel, but here’s the disturbing truth: in today’s Nepal, it wasn’t wrong.
To “have a life” in any meaningful sense requires more than breathing. It requires dignity, autonomy, opportunity, and security. In Nepal, millions survive without any of these. They are born into cycles of poverty and patronage politics, trapped in a system that treats them not as citizens but as political commodities.
Life Chances vs. Life Choices
Max Weber spoke of life chances—the opportunities one has to improve their quality of life, shaped by the structures into which they are born. In Nepal, life chances are determined long before choices are made. A child born in Rukum or Achham has a fundamentally different trajectory from a child born in Kathmandu or a foreign capital. Education, healthcare, employment, legal protection—these are not universal guarantees, but privileges distributed according to geography, caste, and political connection.
The young man in the dhawa was not asking about his personal fate; he was asking about the architecture of his existence. The Political Machinery of Hopelessness And here’s where the question becomes political. The last three decades of “democracy” in Nepal have produced what can only be described as a political mafia. The three major parties—Nepali Congress (NC), CPN-UML, and Maoist Centre—are less ideological rivals and more shareholders in a joint venture of power. They rotate governments not to serve the people, but to serve themselves.
Leaders like Sher Bahadur Deuba, KP Sharma Oli, and Pushpa Kamal Dahal have perfected a model of governance where public institutions are deliberately kept weak, because a strong citizenry would threaten their patronage networks. The bureaucracy is a marketplace for bribes. The police serve power, not law. The courts deliver verdicts not in the name of justice, but in exchange for political protection. In such a system, a young man asking about his “future” is like a prisoner asking the warden when freedom will arrive.
Structural and Symbolic Violence
The encounter in that dhawa revealed two forms of violence working hand in hand:
1. Structural Violence – The absence of healthcare, education, and economic opportunity is not accidental—it is the outcome of policies designed to maintain dependency and docility among the masses.
2. Symbolic Violence – The casual dismissal, “You don’t have a life,” reinforces the message: you are invisible in the moral universe of the elite.
This is not unique to my table that night. It is replicated daily—between politicians and voters, employers and workers, landlords and tenants.
A Country Split in Two
We like to speak of Nepal as one nation, but in reality there are two Nepals: – Nepal A: Urban, connected, fluent in the language of development and diplomacy, able to send their children abroad, insulated from the failures of the state.
– Nepal B: Rural, marginalized, living in the shadow of poverty, surviving on remittance or seasonal labor, bound to political patrons for even the smallest state service.
The educated class in Nepal lives in a parallel state—one where the national anthem is sung, but the national reality is escaped. Our privileges are protected not by the constitution, but by the fragility of everyone else’s life.
The Failure of Political Leadership
If the young man’s question were posed directly to the Prime Minister, the answer would be an empty promise wrapped in patriotic rhetoric. Sher Bahadur Deuba would mumble something about “stability.” KP Oli would turn it into a joke about “prosperity.” Prachanda would invoke “inclusivity” while negotiating the next power-sharing deal. The reality is that none of them—nor the political institutions they control—have any incentive to answer honestly. An honest answer would admit that the state has abandoned the majority of its people, and that rebuilding it would require dismantling the very networks that keep these leaders in power. Philosophy in a Dhawa Hannah Arendt argued that to be fully alive as a human being is to appear in the public realm—to act, to speak, to participate in shaping the world. The young man’s life, in this sense, is constrained not by personal incapacity but by political exclusion.
Nepal’s tragedy is that it produces millions of citizens who, through no fault of their own, will never be allowed to appear in the public realm as equals. They will vote, but their vote will be bought or manipulated. They will work, but the fruits of their labor will enrich someone else. They will live, but their lives will not count. The Question Was for Us. It took me days to realize that the young man’s question was not really about him. It was about us—the people who eat sekuwa in clean clothes, who debate national politics without depending on its outcomes, who complain about corruption while quietly benefiting from the same networks.
His question was a mirror: What is your role in my future? And here is the uncomfortable answer: unless we are willing to risk our own comfort to change the structures that keep millions like him excluded, our role will be that of silent accomplices.
From Dhawa to Tundikhel
The day will come when that question will no longer be asked politely in a dhawa, but shouted in places like Tundikhel. History shows that the patience of the marginalized has limits. When those limits are crossed, the same political class that now treats them as invisible will suddenly see them as a threat. When that time comes, neither NC, UML, nor Maoist leaders will be able to hide behind their speeches or their security details. The fury of exclusion, once unleashed, is rarely selective.
The Answer We Owe
What should I have told him that night? That his life is not a natural disaster but a man-made design. That his future depends less on his personal willpower than on dismantling the machinery that has kept him—and millions like him—outside the circle of political and economic dignity. And perhaps most importantly, that no society can remain whole when a large part of it is told, implicitly orexplicitly, “You don’t have a life.” That is not just an insult—it is a prophecy.
If we do not act to prove that prophecy wrong, the question from the dhawa will become the central question of Nepal’s future: not “What is my life worth?” but “Whose lives will be allowed to count?” And by then, it will not be asked quietly over a plate of sekuwa.
with deshsanchar
