Panchayat (Nepal)

Mahendra introduced a four-tier structure (village, town, district, and national) based on limited elected executive committees.

The king consolidated power by institutionalizing three pillars of national identity—Hinduism, the Nepali language, and the monarchy—as foundations of everyday social and religious life.

[3] Popular discontent with the panchayat system grew and exploded on 18 February 1990, when the banned Nepali Congress and the United Left Front (a coalition of left-wing Nepali parties) launched a campaign of popular demonstrations and strikes to end the system and restore multiparty democracy.

Organizations also existed at the village, district, and zone levels for peasants, youth, women, elders, laborers and ex-soldiers, who elected their representatives to assemblies.

[This quote needs a citation] Mahendra dismissed the first democratically-elected BP Koirala government, and the panchayat has had a lasting impact on Nepal's history.

[8] Under Mahendra's direct leadership, the government implemented some significant projects initiated under the previous regime and oversaw further steps toward Nepal's development.

Eradication of malaria, construction of the east-west Mahendra Highway along the southern foothills of the Himalayas, and land-settlement programs contributed to a massive population shift from the mountains to the Terai; this significantly increased the area devoted to agriculture.

[12] The palace was considered unrepresentative of the masses, especially when the Marich Man Singh government faced political scandal for misappropriating funds allocated for the victims of the August 1988 earthquake or when it reshuffled the cabinet instead of investigating the deaths of people in a stampede in the national sports complex during a hailstorm.

[14] The country's poorer classes bore the brunt of the restricted supply of consumer goods and petroleum products such as petrol, aviation fuel, and kerosene.

The Nepali Congress (NC) and the left-wing parties blamed the government for perpetuating the crisis and not taking any serious measures to resolve it.

Leaders from India attended the meeting; Germany, Japan, Spain, and Finland supported the movement, and the US and West German ambassadors were present.

Inspired by the international support and democratic activities occurring throughout the world after the 1989 dissolution of the Soviet Union, the NC and the ULF began a mass movement on 18 February of that year to end the panchayat system and install a representative interim government.