Nepal, Nov. 3 -- For some time now, a new joke has entered Nepali households. When guests arrive at someone's house, people welcome them by asking, "You're not plainclothes policemen, are you?" Both the host and the guests burst out laughing. Tea arrives, the laughter continues, and for a while the atmosphere lightens.

Underneath the laughter lies a fear. When society cannot express its fear directly, it turns it into humour. The laughter is directed less at the police and more at a system in which a citizen, upon hearing a knock at the door, must first wonder whether it is a neighbour or an unfamiliar face of the law.

The presence of law should give a citizen a sense of security, not the uncertain fear of arrest. Yet even as citizens w...