Nepal, Feb. 19 -- Two weeks remain for the March 5 snap polls, and there is a familiar, suffocating stench of electoral promises in the air. Campaign vehicles, festooned in party flags, have started traversing each constituency, blaring songs of nation-building and unprecedented development. Yet, the campaigns mask a perilous disconnect between the rhetoric of party manifestos and the daily struggles of the people. The recent flurry of election manifestos is, for the most part, a collection of tall tales and hollow assurances, devoid of the issues that determine whether a family in the grassroots eats, drinks, or survives the night.

The political abandonment is most glaring in Madhesh province, where leaders float grand development dream...