While it is possible to hold very different views on the current situation in
Nepal, there is a general consensus that the country is undergoing a deep
transition. Waves of optimism and enthusiasm for change have alternated
with a sense of deepening crisis and foreboding. At the time of the fieldwork
for this study, the expectations created by the popular movement that put an
end to both the Maoist insurgency and the monarchy’s authoritarian rule
were waning. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which had led a tenyear
low intensity “people’s war” against the state, had pulled out of the
interim government established after the June 2006 Peace Accords. The
elections for the Constituent Assembly (CA), scheduled for November 2007,
had been postponed indefinitely amid wrangling over the type of electoral
system to be adopted and Maoist pressure for the monarchy to be abolished
before the polls. Ethno-linguistic minorities in the Terai—the lowlands along
the border with India—and elsewhere in Nepal were raising increasing, and
often, violent demands for recognition and representation in a political
system that seemed increasingly to be the preserve of a Kathmandu-based
elite in which the Maoist leadership was playing an on again-off again spoiler
role. Moreover, widespread bandhs (strikes/blockades) and long lines for
scarce supplies of fuel added to the perception that the optimism of early
2006 had been replaced by a more somber mood.