KATHMANDU: Understanding the current political situation in Nepal merely as election results, government changes, or leadership generational shifts is not enough. This is a potential historical turning point that redefines the relationship between the state, power, citizens’ rights, academia, and the legitimacy of public institutions.

The government led by Balen Shah of the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), which emerged with nearly a two-thirds majority in the election, should be understood not just as a victory for a new political force, but as a consequence of long-accumulated public discontent, disgust toward party structures, and a “disconnection”: meaning a deep chasm—between the state and society.

In such a situation, the word “break in continuity” (breakthrough/disruption) becomes a concept carrying political, moral, and institutional meaning, rather than just linguistic attraction. A break in continuity does not signify a mechanical rejection of the old continuity alone. Its deeper meaning defines the effort to break, with critical consciousness, the unjust continuity rooted in the state, power, administration, universities, regulatory bodies, and public life. However, the meaningfulness of a break in continuity depends on whether it removes the old structure and builds a new one, or merely establishes new incompetence in place of the old incompetence.

Therefore, along with the break in continuity, it is necessary to understand the concept of “disconnection”. Disconnection signifies the distance between the state and the citizen. The constitution proclaims popular sovereignty, but the citizen experiences administrative humiliation. Federalism is declared, but decision-making power remains centralized.

Inclusivity is written, but policy-making revolves within a limited elite circle. Universities are said to be autonomous, but the appointment of officials transforms into an arena for party recommendations, power balances, and seat-sharing. This very incongruity between formality and experience is the disconnection.

In the academic debate on state restructuring, such moments can be compared to sensitive and historically decisive turning points.

Theorizing in 2007, Giovanni Capoccia and R. Daniel Kelemen explain this as a historical moment where political options, which are closed under normal circumstances, open up abnormally, and the decisions taken at that time determine the long-term institutional direction. Their highly celebrated article shows that in such a moment, the quality of leadership, ideas, institutions, and decisions is extremely decisive. In this sense, Nepal is currently at a kind of decisive turning point. The election has challenged the old political order; however, challenging and building an alternative theory of state power are two different things.

Similarly, Paul Pierson’s year 2000 argument on “path dependence” is also useful here. According to him, once political institutions move on a specific path, those institutions tend to reproduce themselves. The old state structure does not exist only in the constitution, law, or offices; it resides in behavior, appointment systems, decision-making culture, sycophancy, factions, benefit-networks, and public silence. Therefore, the real challenge of a break in continuity is not just removing individuals, but changing the structural apparatus that produces the old behavior.

If the old party-affiliated appointments are removed and replaced with individuals close to the new power, inexperienced, academically weak, or merely politically convenient, that is not a break in continuity; it is the old continuity in a new guise.

In this context, when the government recently carried out a wholesale dismissal of public officials through an ordinance, the fact that university officials also fell within its scope cannot be understood merely as a routine administrative coincidence. Through the ‘Special Provision Ordinance on the Dismissal of Public Officials, 2026’, a large number of officials from various public bodies have been removed from office, and officials from universities, the University Grants Commission, service commissions, and health science academies have also been included. Due to the said ordinance, positions across 11 universities, the University Grants Commission, and service commissions have become vacant all at once. Through the ordinance, university officials including Vice-Chancellors, Registrars, Deans, and Chairpersons have been removed.

The political, constitutional, and academic evaluation of this step must be done separately. However, one thing is indisputable; Nepal’s universities have long suffered from party seat-sharing, appointment politics, academic mediocrity, administrative inertia, and institutional unaccountability. In the past, major parties like the Nepali Congress, CPN (UML), and Nepali Communist Party have repeatedly faced allegations of using universities as structures to expand political influence rather than as autonomous institutions of knowledge.

Party proximity, power relations, internal loyalty, and political utility were many times placed above academic competence, research vision, institutional morality, and intellectual leadership. This very process established individuals in universities who, despite wearing an academic garb, eroded the culture of knowledge, autonomous thinking, and institutional advancement from within. Metaphorically speaking, “academic weevils”  were established in universities.

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Therefore, a break in continuity is necessary in the academic sector as well. However, this is a break in continuity that must be understood with extreme caution. Merely removing university officials is not an academic renaissance. If old party appointments are removed and replaced with individuals close to the new power, inexperienced, academically weak, or merely politically convenient, that is not a break in continuity; it is the old continuity in a new guise. In such a situation, disconnection does not decrease, it increases even further.

The university community will again view the state as interventionist, students will consider the leadership untrustworthy, teachers will see institutional processes as suspicious, and society will begin to view the university not as a center of knowledge, but as a political laboratory.

Hence, the required break in continuity in the academic sector must occur at three levels.

First, a break in continuity is required in the philosophy of appointment. University leadership must be selected not through the grace of any party, group, movement, relationship, or power structure, but on the basis of academic competence, research contribution, institutional vision, moral credibility, public accountability, and transformative leadership capacity. The leadership positions of Vice-Chancellor, Rector, Registrar, Dean, Service Commission, or regulatory bodies are not merely administrative chairs; they are public responsibilities holding the soul of an institution of knowledge.

If the break in continuity is not linked with the democratization of the institution, it could become a risky decision rather than a transformation.

Second, a break in continuity is required in the process. The appointment process must be open, transparent, competitive, evidence-based, and publicly testable. While selecting university leadership, minimum criteria must be made public: quality of research and publications, institutional leadership experience, financial integrity, capacity for dialogue with students and teachers, commitment to university autonomy, and long-term academic vision.

The leadership search committee must consist of individuals who possess academic dignity, are free from conflicts of interest, and are publicly trustworthy. The supply of qualified academics cannot happen merely by inviting applications; for this, both the vision and the effort of the search committee must be vigilant.

Third, a break in continuity is required in the institutional culture. A university is not merely an entity that runs curricula, conducts exams, and awards certificates. It is a place that builds the critical consciousness of society. Therefore, university leadership must abandon the mindset of treating teachers as employees, students as customers, research as a formality, and criticism as an obstacle. The leadership must be conversational, participatory, ethical, and intellectually capable. The minimum desirable qualification of such leadership is a clear allegiance to transparency, accountability, autonomy, participation, and action-oriented dedication.

Here, the role of youth leadership also needs to be reconsidered. The current government is a representative of youth-oriented aspirations. Many have characterized the rise of the current leadership as a major political shift occurring against the backdrop of Gen Z’s anti-corruption movement, political instability, and employment-related discontent. Therefore, the energy of the youth is politically important, as it can break inertia, make decisions deemed impossible, and make public administration dynamic.

However, the assumption that youth leadership is automatically wise is wrong. While being dynamic, youth leadership can also be accident-prone. What makes a difference is not age; it is ideological clarity, institutional sensitivity, a culture of consultation, and the capacity for self-reflection.

If the old party-worker-oriented academic weevils are removed and replaced with convenience-seeking figures of the new power, the university’s crisis will not be solved; only the ownership of the crisis will change.

Examples from comparative politics also show this. In South America, many ‘new’ or ‘anti-establishment’ political forces emerged against old partyocracy, corruption, and elite dominance. In the initial phase, they used the language of social justice, popular representation, and restructuring. But where democratic values, balance of power, independent judiciary, critical media, and university autonomy were weakened, the break in continuity transformed into new dominance.

Similarly, some countries in Eastern Europe linked the break in continuity with institutional democracy, the rule of law, and academic freedom after communist rule; but in some, nationalist populism treated universities, courts, and media as enemies. The lesson Nepal must learn from this is clear—if the break in continuity is not linked with the democratization of the institution, it could become a risky decision rather than a transformation.

Therefore, the current government needs conscious support. Conscious support does not mean blind support. It is the critical collaboration necessary for the government’s success. The academic class, civil society, media, universities, students, professional communities, and local governments must provide ideas to the government, freeing themselves from both resistant hostility and sycophantic support. The best way to make power successful in a democracy is not to stop questions, but to institutionalize questions.

Particularly in university leadership, a quality is now required where procedural appointments cannot be questioned. This does not mean a person free from criticism; rather, a person whose competence, morality, transparency, and academic contribution cannot face serious public doubt. For leadership positions, what is needed is not a position-hungry aspirant, but an action-oriented individual aspiring for academic advancement.

The leadership that revivifies the university must make transparency and accountability a daily style of working, not just words in a speech. It must transform participation from being limited to formal meetings into active dialogue with teachers, students, staff, alumni, the community, and international academic networks.

If this does not happen, the currently proclaimed break in continuity will be fragmented. In place of the old party capture, a new state capture will be born. If the old party-worker-oriented academic weevils are removed and replaced with convenience-seeking figures of the new power, the university’s crisis will not be solved; only the ownership of the crisis will change. That will make the disconnection of the academic sector even deeper. Society will again conclude—the new ones are just like the old ones.

The university must walk the path of purification, but not through the web of retaliatory practices.

Ultimately, Nepal’s current political moment is extraordinary. This is neither a normal extension of old continuity, nor merely an electoral change. It is a joint expression of the disconnection between the state and citizens, the aspirations of the youth, the decay of universities, mistrust toward public institutions, and an alternative governance-consciousness. If the government has uttered the principle of break in continuity, it must transform it into an institutional philosophy, not an administrative impulse.

A break in continuity is necessary, but an exercise with wisdom must be established as its main departure point. Similarly, the unconscious disconnection must be broken, but not by making institutions even weaker.

The university must walk the path of purification, but not through the web of retaliatory practices.

Youth leadership must be given opportunities, but not while remaining outside critical consultation.

Conscious citizens must support the government endorsed by a massive public mandate, but not by losing democratic consciousness and its elements.

This is the real test of Nepal’s academic, political, and administrative renaissance—can we break the old failed continuity and build a new, competent institutional culture? Or will we reproduce the old incompetence with new names, new faces, and new slogans?

If the break in continuity can institutionalize transparency, accountability, competence, participation, and academic autonomy, it can become a historical opportunity. Otherwise, this too will be another fragmented experiment, where the old disconnection will not disappear, but a new disconnection will merely be born.

For this very reason, today’s need is not to stop the government; it is to compel the government to think. The only thing those running the power need to be reminded of is this—the true meaning of a break in continuity is not just to demolish the old, but also to make the new moral, competent, and publicly accountable.

(This article is a translation of a piece published in the Nepali edition of Nepal News.)