The leaderships of two Nepali Congress parties appear remorseful over their mistake of breaking up the party. Sher Bahadur Deuba, as PM in 2002, had split the party in his bid to take revenge for his expulsion from the party in a disciplinary action taken by the

party head Girija Prasad Koirala on the plea that the former happened to breach party discipline while seeking to mobilise the army to fight the Maoists.

However, the story of NC split was not as simple as it is made out to appear. The real motive behind Koirala’s taking action against Deuba was that by throwing Deuba out and re-placing himself, he mistakenly believed that once without a party, the PM would be considered unfit to stay in the highest executive post by King Gyanendra who, despite his lip service to party system, was actually seeking to send it packing. Eventually, he dismissed the PM, who headed the breakaway NC, on the pretext of having failed to hold the general elections as per the schedule only to take over the reins of the government by hurling all democratic norms and values to the winds only to face ignominious consequences.

All the three sides regret their wrongdoings. While the fate of the monarchy is hanging in the balance, the two NCs seem to fear the other parties, particularly, the CPN-Maoist and the CPN-UML, which have proved themselves superior.

With the success of their bid to unify the splintered organisation, both sides might feel upbeat. However, they have to go far ahead if the integrated NC is to gain insight and capacity to meet the challenges of the changed times. It has to drop many past concepts and ideologies regarding the reconstruction of the economy, as it can no longer stay beholden to socialism, which is practically played out. B P Koirala and other leaders of the past had styled themselves as advocates of nationalisation without actually meaning what they were saying. They were enamoured of the idea of creating an “egalitarian society”.

The NC, if unified, will have to change its outlook on economic ideals and goals of the nation. For that, its needs new enthusiastic faces to put plans rooted in the social sciences into practice, rather than prattling about B P Koirala, Ganesh Man Singh, and Surya Prasad Upadhyaya. Unfortunately, the NC doesn’t have “intellectuals” or “think tanks.” Nepali Congress can be called an organisation manned by people of pedestrian minds. However, the Nepali Congress can open its door wider for the younger generation capable of achieving prosperity and progress. The party as such, even if unified, cannot achieve anything solid in the nation’s socio-economic life. The NC, if injected with fresh blood, can build new strategies for the nation’s reconstruction.

In this age of specialisation, technocrats, field experts and management gurus have usurped the role of great men in all sectors. After all, the NC is a party of mediocre minds even if many within the organisation regard its past leaders, including B P Koirala, as legendary figures.