Dr. Janardan Subedi
Recent public concerns voiced by senior advocate Sushil Kumar Pant strike at the heart of Nepal’s deepening political and moral crisis. His reflection—on the disconnection of Nepal’s governing elites from national accountability due to their families’ permanent residence abroad, and the concurrent corrosion of public health and food safety—deserves serious academic engagement. This article seeks to contextualize his claims within the frameworks of political sociology and public ethics.
The Externalized Elite and the Hollowing of National Commitment
A troubling pattern in Nepal’s post-1990 democratic journey has been the steady “externalization” of its political and bureaucratic elites. Many who occupy senior positions in the state apparatus maintain permanent family ties abroad—especially in the West. This not only symbolically severs them from the consequences of their policies, but also disincentivizes long-term investments in the public good. From a sociological perspective, this constitutes a rupture of what Max Weber termed the “calling” of public service. Instead of Beruf, or a sense of vocation toward the state, we now witness a form of political parasitism, where public office is used not for nation-building but for family insurance and capital flight.
(Photo: The Kathmandu Post)
Corruption and the Clientelist Logic
Corruption in Nepal today is no longer simply an aberration—it is a system. Political parties operate less as ideological communities and more as clientelist distributional machines. This aligns with the concept of “neo-patrimonialism,” wherein the formal institutions of democracy are subverted by informal patronage networks. What Pant observes as the state’s silence in the face of deadly agrochemical proliferation, food adulteration, and regulatory failure is not a bureaucratic oversight—it is the predictable outcome of a state captured by vested interests.
Sociologically, this demonstrates a collapse of what Pierre Bourdieu called the “field of power.” Regulatory agencies are no longer autonomous actors mediating between capital and the citizenry; they are increasingly extensions of political factions, serving party financiers, foreign interests, or personal wealth accumulation.
The Silent Crisis: Public Health and Intergenerational Harm
Perhaps most disturbing in Pant’s critique is the reference to the long-term effects of food toxicity and environmental degradation on Nepal’s children. Here, the sociology of risk, particularly Ulrich Beck’s “risk society” thesis, becomes relevant. Nepal is now experiencing what Beck called the “manufactured uncertainties” of late modernity, where state institutions fail to manage the very risks they create—tainted food chains, unregulated chemicals, polluted urban life.
These are not simply health issues; they are sociopolitical failures that will disproportionately affect the future of the working class and rural poor, whose children cannot afford organic imports or foreign education. The ruling elites, shielded by privilege and overseas escape routes, will not bear the brunt. The rest of the country will.
The State of Indifference: When Accountability Dies
Pant’s most piercing point lies in his subtle indictment of the state’s moral vacuum. That those responsible for food safety, justice, and welfare appear unmoved by national suffering because their own kin are abroad raises a fundamental question: Who governs for whom?
Here, Antonio Gramsci’s idea of a “passive revolution” is worth invoking. In Nepal, rather than a transformative revolution of the masses, we see a reorganization of power within the elite, leaving the masses politically mobilized but institutionally abandoned. The state has lost its capacity to generate trust, a condition critical to any legitimate political order.
Who Will Care for Nepal?
Pant’s final plea—“Who will care for this small country?”—is not rhetorical. It is a sociological lament. In an era of cosmopolitan exits and national betrayals, Nepal is witnessing the withering of civic republicanism. Public service is privatized, political capital is offshored, and national interest is sacrificed at the altar of personal security.
Nepal’s future depends not just on changing governments, but on reconstructing a political culture rooted in accountability, grounded presence, and ethical commitment. The sociology of power must be reoriented from extraction to stewardship—from party interest to public interest.
Until then, the country remains at the mercy of a political class that governs from the airport lounge and speaks of nationalism from foreign bank accounts.
(Dr. Janardan Subedi is Professor of Sociology at Miami University, Ohio, and writes on political sociology, democracy, and South Asian governance.)