National Constitutions, the basic laws of the land, depending on whether they include or exclude different segments of the polity through the institutions they adopt, laws and policies they facilitate to be formulated, and norms they help to establish, can contribute toward peace/conflict, stability/instability and prosperity/poverty (Elkins, Ginsburg, and Melton 2009; Lutz 2006; Acemoglu and Robinson 2012). At the time the new constitution of Nepal was being promulgated by the Second Constituent Assembly with a super majority in September 2015, organizations of various marginalized groups (Dalit, indigenous, Madhesi, women), who collectively form more than two thirds of the population, were engaged in month/s long peaceful and not-so-peaceful socio-political movements to pressure the major political parties for the inclusion of their demands in the New Constitution. While the ruling political parties claim that the new Constitution is inclusive, the organizations of marginalized groups have gone on to declare the Constitution promulgation date as the Black Day claiming that the new constitution advantages the ruling group while marginalizing their groups through denial of autonomy and recognition, reducing proportionality in the electoral method and eliminating proportionality from inclusive provisions, weakening secularism, among other things. In this context, the papers in the panel/s will analyze the new Constitution and the constitution making process to examine, among other things, whether the constitution making process was as participatory as the constitution makers claim, which demands of the marginalized groups were included and which were not, why the movements of the marginalized groups failed to pressure the ruling parties to incorporate their demands, and whether the articles of the new Constitution will contribute in fostering equality/inequality and justice/injustice among the traditionally marginalized groups. The panel has two proposals that will look at the cases of Dalit and indigenous nationalities status in the new Constitution and a third proposal that will examine the participatory nature of the constitution-making process.
