16 B. Causes of the fall (structure them: internal → economic → external → conjunctural)

1. Structural illegitimacy — a partyless system in a politicised society; the 1959 election could not be unremembered; each "liberalisation" (the 1981/86 direct elections to the Rastriya Panchayat) only advertised the ban on parties. 2. The 1979 student uprising and the 1980 referendum — the system survived the referendum (reformed Panchayat ~55% vs multiparty ~45%) but at the price of revealing a near-majority for the opposition — a truce, not a victory. 3. Economic failure — aid-dependence, deficit, the "Panchayat cronies' economy" (birta and license raj); unemployment exporting the youth; the 1980s' austerity biting the middle class — performance legitimacy exhausted. 4. The 1985 civil-disobedience (Satyagraha) of the Nepali Congress — mass discipline rehearsed; the regime's "bomb" emergency discredited it further. 5. The international democratic wave — Philippines 1986, South Korea 1987, Eastern Europe 1989: the "third wave" of democratisation; the Palace's cold-war patrons themselves now lecturing on human rights. 6. The 1989 India blockade — the expiry of the trade-and-transit treaties (March 1989) and the thirteen-month blockade shattered the economy's myth of stability, split the regime's business base, and gave every citizen a daily economics lesson in the cost of the system — the single greatest accelerant. 7. The united front of the opposition — the Nepali Congress + the United Left Front (seven communist parties) — the historic…