For the past one month, pressing national issues have been sidelined by depressing debates on the future of a prime minister. The nation had been held hostage over the fate of prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal. The cry for freedom has fallen on deaf ears. There had been a persistent call for the PM’s resignation. There has been an equally persistent resistance too.  The man who was supposed to take care of the country had been dubbed a caretaker. The “caretaker” prime minister claimed to enjoy the parliament’s majority support. Ironically, few dare to test him on the floors. The net result: utter uncertainty reigned across the country. The man in the middle is now gone. He has stepped down. But who will step in is not clear. How will he/she step is and move ahead, if at all, is even fuzzier.  With the resignation of the prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, the prolongation of uncertainty has become the only certainty. Failure of a country to decide its own fate leads only to a fatal disaster. This is what we have sought to get across our readers in this issue’s cover story, in the aftermath of the long-speculated resignation of the prime minister Nepal..

Keshab Poudel
Editor