Why Politics Matters

“I don’t care about politics.” How often have we heard this from our generation? Many of us proudly claim we don’t follow politics or know about parties and leaders. But this ignorance has a cost. When citizens turn their backs on politics, leaders get the freedom to act without accountability. They misuse power, feed corruption, and let injustice grow unchecked. And the ones who pay the price are always the ordinary people in the villages and remote districts like Karnali.

I realised this deeply in 2018, when I spent nine months in Dolpa as an English teacher through the Snow and Yak Foundation. Living there changed how I understand politics. I saw that politics is not just about debates in parliament; it is about whether a school has teachers, whether a road connects a village to a hospital, whether a woman gives birth safely, and whether children dream of a future beyond child marriage. Politics decides all of this.

Karnali is the clearest example. Poverty, hunger, caste discrimination, child marriage, chhaupadi Pratha, superstition, and these are not simply “traditions” or “social issues.” They are the result of years of political neglect. When leaders in Kathmandu fight over ministries instead of schools, Dolpa’s children walk four hours to attend basic classes. When budgets are swallowed by corruption, mothers in remote villages still die for lack of medicine. When development funds are announced but never reach the ground, families continue to live without electricity in 2025.

I saw it myself. The students I taught in grade six were bright and curious, but today some of them are parents in grade nine or ten. They dropped out because politics never gave them better options. I stayed in a dark, windowless cowshed during menstruation because politics never enforced the end of chhaupadi. I watched children from so-called “lower castes” stand outside temples, because politics never dared to challenge caste-based exclusion. These are not just social failures; they are political failures.

And the tragedy is that little has changed. In 2018, Dolpa was shadowed. In 2025, it still is. The internet has reached, but instead of empowering, it is often misused. Roads are promised but rarely built. Schools exist, but teachers are scarce. Hospitals are named, but medicines and enough health workers are missing. The state celebrates change in Kathmandu, while villages like Dolpa remain forgotten.

This is why I regret staying silent in 2018. I regret not writing more, not shouting louder about the lives of Dolpalis. Maybe nothing drastic would have changed, but at least urban readers would know that their fellow citizens still cross rivers on Tuins, still light kerosene lamps, and still lose lives that could be saved by a simple packet of ORS. Silence, I learned, is not neutral. It is political too, and it sides with the unjust.

Today, as Gen Z rises in protest, I see hope. But hope alone is not enough. If we remain indifferent, history will repeat itself. We have seen it before: the civil war, the 62/63 movement, the 2015 earthquake, the blockade, even the monarchy protests; we protested, we remembered for a while, and then we forgot. I fear that we will also forget this Gen Z movement. And when we forget, leaders return to “new faces, old habits.”

Karnali cannot afford our forgetfulness any longer. Politics is not far away in Kathmandu; politics is whether a mother lives or dies in Dolpa. Politics is whether a child becomes a student or a bride. Politics is whether Karnali gets light or remains in shadow. And if we, as citizens, keep saying “I don’t like politics,” then we are choosing to keep Karnali in the dark.