The Reluctant Inclusion and Federal Institution Building in Nepal

Kalpana Jha 

Nepal Policy Institute

Executive Summary:

Inclusion was central to adopting a federal structure in Nepal. However, the idea and the process of inclusion both have been contested over the years since inclusion, as a concept, was conceived officially and envisaged in the Constitution. Using ‘reluctant inclusion’ as an analytical frame, this Policy Brief explains how the articles included in the Constitution in Nepal have grappled with the question of facilitating broad inclusion in the design of political power-sharing mechanisms and institutions. The groups who face major institutional constraints on their representation and participation in the power-sharing arrangement are influenced by multiple factors that are accentuated by the entrenched loopholes in the Constitution, the structure, and the process of inclusion at large. This makes Nepal’s effort at inclusion a reluctant one as exclusion is rooted within the social structure, that manifests at the political level making inclusion rather a token than a principal in which the democratic, federal institution building is grounded.