Kathmandu, March 3 -- A cabinet meeting last week appointed former journalist Sharad Ojha as the chair of the Nepal Insurance Authority, the regulator of the sector. Ojha has no qualifications for the post as required by Nepal's Insurance Act.

His family ties to Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba has been cited as the reason he got to bypass appointment criteria.

This is just the latest example. Bending the law to appoint cronies and special interest groups to leadership positions in regulatory bodies has become the norm in Nepal.

Ojha's predecessor was former Home Secretary Surya Prasad Silwal, who resigned two months before the end of his term in December after the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CI...