The Home Minister's recent response in Parliament to the tragic public act of setting oneself on fire by Ganesh Nepali has prompted an important national conversation.
Responding to questions from Members of Parliament, he focused primarily on mental health and spoke of his own resilience in overcoming hardship. His intentions were undoubtedly positive. Nepal has neglected mental health for far too long, and encouraging resilience is never a bad message.
However, his response prompted me to ask a different question.
Are we asking the right questions?
One lesson has stayed with me throughout my engineering life: the first explanation is rarely the complete explanation.
When an aircraft crashes or a bridge collapses, investigators do not stop at the final point of failure. They distinguish between the proximate cause—the immediate event that triggered the accident—and the root causes—the weaknesses in the system that allowed it to happen.
The purpose is not to assign blame. It is to prevent it from happening again. I believe governments should approach national tragedies with a similar mentality.
Mental health may well represent the proximate cause of an individual's actions. It deserves serious attention, greater investment and better access to support. But public policy cannot stop there.
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It must also ask whether there were deeper root causes. Were there institutional failures? Economic hardship? Social isolation? A loss of dignity? A belief that legitimate channels no longer worked.
These questions do not replace mental health. They complement it.
History reminds us why these matters.
Public self-immolation is one of the rarest and most extreme forms of human behaviour. Unlike most suicides, it happens in public. Throughout history—from Thích Quảng Đức in Vietnam to Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia—such acts have often been understood as more than personal tragedies. While every case is unique, researchers have argued that public self-immolation can reflect a complex interaction between psychological distress and wider social, political or institutional circumstances. They have argued that such acts are often driven by a combination of personal distress, perceived injustice, humiliation, hopelessness and a loss of faith in institutions—not by mental health alone.
The Home Minister's response prompted me to ask whether if this tragedy being reviewed through a sufficiently wide lens. Complex national tragedies rarely have a single explanation. They deserve to be examined from multiple perspectives, because each perspective reveals a different part of the truth.
A Psychologist wants to understand the emotional and psychological suffering that may have driven the individual to such a desperate act.
A Sociologist asks whether poverty, social isolation, unemployment, inequality or the absence of effective family, community and public support systems helped create the conditions for despair.
A Public Policy Expert asks whether government policies and public institutions were working as intended. Were there opportunities to intervene before the crisis escalated? Were support systems accessible, effective, and responsive?
A Political Scientist looks even wider. What, if anything, does this event reveal about the relationship between citizens and the state? Does it raise questions about institutional trust, public confidence, or the quality of governance?
As an Engineer, I instinctively ask a different question. ‘If this tragedy exposed a weakness in the system, what should we redesign so that fewer people ever reach this point?
None of these perspectives competes with another. Together, they remind us that complex problems rarely have single explanations—and almost never have single solutions.
Each discipline provides a different piece of the puzzle. Looking through only one lens may produce answers, but not necessarily the right ones.
That is why Nepal must ask more difficult questions. Why did this young man believe that such an unimaginable act was his only remaining option? Did he feel ignored? Did he lose trust in public institutions? Were there failures that could have been prevented?
This is also why the Home Minister's reference to his own resilience gave me pause. Personal experiences can inspire others. But public policy should not be built on personal anecdotes. A cabinet minister and an ordinary citizen often experience very different realities, opportunities and support systems. Governments exist precisely because individual resilience has limits. Their role is not only to encourage resilience, but also to build institutions that reduce the likelihood of people reaching such desperate circumstances.
This brings us to a concept that receives far too little attention in Nepal: institutional trust. Every government depends on something more valuable than power—it depends on trust.
Citizens obey laws, seek justice, and resolve disputes peacefully because they believe public institutions will eventually respond fairly and effectively. When that trust weakens, societies become more fragile. Whether institutional trust played any role in this particular tragedy is not something we should assume. But it is certainly something responsible policymakers should examine.
The Home Minister's response has started an important conversation. My hope is that it now becomes a broader one.
The question before Nepal is not simply how we improve mental health. It is whether we are defining the problem correctly.
Because if we focus only on the proximate cause, we may prevent one tragedy.
If we also understand the root causes, we may build a stronger society.
Good leadership is not measured by how quickly it finds answers. It is measured by whether it is asking the right questions.
The author is a UK-based engineer, writer, cultural organiser, and community leader promoting Newah culture through heritage initiatives, cultural events, and creative projects including the book London Lakhe.
