Nepal, Aug. 6 -- For someone seemingly more at home in the virtual world and surrounded by a narrow coterie of friends, the recent unrest that swept parts of the eastern Tarai must have been a rather rude awakening for our prime minister, Balendra Shah. That it took violence and deaths to extricate Shah out of the cocoon he has woven around himself and start acting like a real leader says a lot about how our country is being governed.

There was not much Shah actually did, though, apart from being briefed by the chiefs of security agencies and, in turn, providing the briefest of briefings on the situation to the President, which itself was preceded by a short address to the nation uploaded only on social media.

That he (or his advisers) ...