NC's 7-state proposal

Nepali Congress, the second largest party in the Constituent Assembly, has proposed seven states at maximum for federal Nepal. The number of states is half of what has been proposed, through a majority vote, by the State Restructuring Committee of the Constituent Assembly (CA). The proposal should have come long ago, much before the state restructuring committee began deliberations on the issue.



Had that been the case, it would have made discussions in the CA more productive and would have perhaps influenced the outcome as well. It’s not a good sign that the grand old party of the country came up with its stance on federal Nepal just a month before the expiry of the extended term of the Constituent Assembly. But it’s better late than never. And since the CA is unlikely to draft the constitution in the next one month and a comprehensive debate on the modality of federation is yet to kick off in a real sense in the CA and in the public arena, the NC’s proposal, even if it came late, will certainly contribute to federalism discourse, if not influence it.



The NC has argued that a 14-state federal Nepal will not be economically viable, which is why it’s proposing to reduce it to seven states. There is a lot of weight in this economic argument, which has largely been overlooked so far, but the argument has not been adequately explained. The party must fully and convincingly explain why it thinks 14 states will not be viable in federal Nepal.



And equally importantly, it must also explain, on the one hand, why seven (states) is the right number, and on the other, how it will address the political aspirations of a diverse populace. The discourse on federalism has become so polarized, and so emotional, it now appears that seven states are politically not feasible (there are at least a dozen strong ethnic groups each demanding a state) and 14 states are not economically viable.



State restructuring, however, should be guided not by short-term emotionalism but by long-term rationale. But that does not mean that ethnicity or identity should not influence the federalism discourse or the actual restructuring process since the issue of identity is very much at the core of the demand for federal Nepal. That we are a diverse populace with distinct ethnicities, cultures, languages and religions and that historically some dominant caste-groups dominated the state and others remained excluded for long justifies a call for an inclusive federal Nepal.



But again, let’s not forget that demand for federalism is as much about identity aspiration as it is about developmental needs. If the states in federal Nepal fail to address the developmental aspirations of the people, sooner or later people will begin to raise voice against it. The challenge is, therefore, to come up with a federal model that is economically viable but also takes into account the identity aspirations of the people.

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