The failure of Nepal's political and intellectual class to stand up against the urban mafia is not merely negligence – it is complicity
The cyber law is not about regulation – it is a weapon crafted by the Kathmandu elite to suppress dissent and safeguard entrenched power. A Kathmandu-based urban mafia is strangling the democratic foundations of Nepal. This mafia is not a criminal gang in the conventional sense. It is a tightly interlocked network of approximately 350 to 400 households who dominate Nepal's political economy. They own the media, control banking and finance, command the security apparatus, and exert influence over all major political parties. Their presence is embedded in government contracts, land deals, judicial decisions and the narratives circulated in mainstream discourse.
The recently enacted cyber law reflects how deep this control runs. Publicly justified as a necessary tool for digital regulation and online safety, the law is used selectively and arbitrarily to target critics of the ruling elite. Print and broadcast media enjoy impunity even when they propagate slander or political bias.
In contrast, independent voices on social media – often grounded in evidence – face legal harassment. The law is used not to ensure justice, but to maintain informational dominance. Dissent has become a liability; speech, a punishable offense. This selective enforcement is not a glitch but a feature – a strategy to hollow out civic space and intimidate critical thinking into submission.
Sociologically, this urban mafia operates as a state within a state. Its members – media tycoons, banking families, senior bureaucrats, political patrons and corporate elites – are interdependent. Their loyalty lies not with the nation or Constitution, but with the perpetuation of their own power. These elites determine what is newsworthy, what is politically permissible and what is socially acceptable. They have created a seamless ecosystem of patronage in which legality is fluid, accountability absent and institutional integrity a farce.
Several cases illustrate this reality. A journalist and social media activist was prosecuted under the cybercrime law after exposing land corruption involving powerful political figures. The charges were vague, but the message was clear: do not expose the mafia.
In another case, a senior employee of a major financial institution leaked evidence of collusion in loan fraud involving politically connected businessmen. Rather than being protected, the whistleblower was dismissed and threatened into silence.
These are not isolated incidents; they are the modus operandi of a political economy that feeds on fear and silence. The majority of Nepal's politicians – elected or nominated – offer no resistance to these trends. Many are unqualified, with no record of public service or legal knowledge. Their loyalty is not to the people, but to their party's supreme leader. These "supreme bosses" are themselves embedded in the urban mafia, forming a feedback loop in which party, business, and state power reinforce each other.
In such an environment, meaningful reform is impossible. Laws are drafted not to uphold public interest, but to serve elite agendas. Parliament has become a rubber-stamp chamber – ceremonial, decorative and devoid of moral authority. More insidious than political complicity is the silence of Nepal's educated, urban liberals – those who identify as socialists, progressives or defenders of democracy.
Despite access to elite platforms, research centres and international funding, they have offered no serious resistance to the cyber law or broader democratic erosion. Instead, they attend workshops in five-star hotels, funded by the very international organisations complicit with the status quo. Their political engagement is tailored for donor approval, not democratic accountability. When ordinary Nepalis – especially from rural, working or religious backgrounds – express support for monarchy or Hindu identity, these same liberals react with disproportionate panic.
They sound the alarm as if democracy is under attack. But when actual democratic suppression occurs – through surveillance laws, censorship or elite capture – these voices fall silent. This contradiction reveals their alignment not with democratic values, but with a narrow, urban ideological elite.
Their outrage is selective; their politics, performative. They mistake performative radicalism for transformative politics and conflate elite networking with national service.
The failure of Nepal's political and intellectual class to stand up against the urban mafia is not merely negligence – it is complicity. Through silence, opportunism or active participation, they have enabled a soft-authoritarian state governed not by law, but by patronage. The neoliberal alliance of political power and financial interest has reduced the republic to a transactional arrangement. Sovereignty has become negotiable; dignity, disposable.
If democracy is to survive in Nepal, this mafia must be named, studied and dismantled. That task falls not only to political activists or opposition parties, but to the broader civic sphere – journalists, educators, students, legal professionals and citizens.
The future of the republic depends on the courage to confront power, speak the truth and resist with integrity. There is no third path between complicity and resistance. The longer the silence persists, the more entrenched the mafia becomes. The cost is not just legal freedom or fair governance. The cost is the very soul of Nepal's democracy.
Subedi is Professor of Sociology,Miami University, Ohio, USA
