A series of ominous signs are visible in Nepal’s peace and constitution-making process. From the Indian Prime Minister to the UN Secretary General — both close observers and supporters of the ongoing peace process — the message is the same: the twin process need political consensus for their timely completion.

In fact, both the US and India, that have bigger stakes in Nepal, had until recently ignored the realities at the ground as they were swayed by the public and private assurances of the actors, as well as the inputs they got from their own diplomatic channels —that every thing was moving in the right pace and direction. But the latest developments only indicate those assessments were not realistic.

Nepal has already been declared a federal country. But parties are divided over the basis of the formation of federal units. Maoists want castes and ethnicity to be the main basis while the Nepali Congress asserts it is the surest way to break the country. Moreover, the former rebels insist upon inserting a clause that the “state shall” pay compensation for discrimination and injustice meted out to individuals, castes and groups in the past — a demand that many constitutional experts have opposed, as it amounts to declaring the state a ‘perpetuator of crime’.

Ten thematic committees of the Constituent Assembly are working on the ‘concept papers’. But consensus, the prescribed pre-requisite for its adoption, eludes them. Moreover, the house committee drastically reduced its interaction with the people — from the planned sixty to 21 meetings altogether — as the people’s enthusiasm and the level of co-operation with the legislators was far too low. The parties have extended the deadline for submission of concept papers from May to early August. And the Constitution Drafting Committee has not met since May 27 in the absence of a chairman, following the appointment of Madhav Kumar Nepal as the prime minister. Moreover, unity among the key partners in the peace process when it began little more than three years ago, is now in tatters. Nepali Congress leader and former Prime Minister G.P. Koirala, a man largely credited by the international community and even the Maoists with bringing the former armed rebels into the peace process, is now the most hated ‘reactionary’ and ‘agent’ of the imperialist and the ‘hegemonic’ forces.

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