The Nepal Academy (formerly the Royal Nepal Academy) has bee without its top office-bearers for about three years. Though this state of affairs has not been peculiar to this institution, particularly during recent years, it is a worrying sign, for it indicates the indifference with which those in power have looked at the role of national public institutions. The holders of office at the Academy were forced to resign at some time around Jana Andolan II; they had been appointed under another regime. But the vacuum left behind has been much the worse, because the Academy has been deprived of its leadership for too long a time. If the post-Jana Andolan government had been able to provide the replacements in time, the incumbents’ exit would not be felt now. The present government is considering filling the vacancies, but no further delay should be made. However, in an institution devoted purely to the promotion of languages, literatures, and the arts, even those academicians seen close to the discredited regime would hardly have caused any harm. Among other organisations, several universities, including TU, had remained leaderless for long since the political changeover.

The government has decided to set up two more academies to take up specific functions of the arts, languages and literatures. Though the idea itself may not be faulty, given the experience with the way the Nepal Academy has operated over the decades and what it has achieved, one wonders whether the three would be worth the investment that they would require annually out of the taxpayers’ rupees. The Nepal Academy has to its credit occasional publications that it commissioned, including a synchronic Nepali-Nepali dictionary, which has not been revised since its first edition over two decades ago, let alone recording the history of the Nepali language and literature on a large scale. There is the need also to promote and preserve the heritage that the other languages and literatures of Nepal represent. The State institutions should undertake such worthy, even though often commercially unattractive, projects. Business firms engaged in the related fields cannot be expected to do so, because they go where the profit is.

During the later part of the Panchayat period, any reputed figure in the fields concerned used to be chancellor of the Academy. But, sadly, the democratic government after 1990 started making Prime Minister chancellor. Now, however, this ill-advised step has been corrected. Besides, the academicians must also be people of such national stature as to do credit to the institution by enabling it to take national leadership in its area and make research-based contributions of high quality, among other things. In Nepal, it may be hard to ignore the role of a certain degree of political closeness in deciding whom to select as the top leadership and academicians. But political weightage must not come at the expense of other considerations necessary to make the Academy discharge its designated functions effectively. This will also apply to the two other academies that are in the process of seeing the light of day. If the Academy were to be run in the days to come the way it was in the past, few would mourn even if it died, because its absence would not be felt strongly enough.