Governments in Nepal have rarely been credited with moving quickly, and the administration led by Prime Minister Balendra Shah has spent its first hundred days changing that expectation. Sworn in this past Chaitra with a mandate few coalitions in recent memory have enjoyed, it has treated the goodwill of that mandate as a reason to act rather than to settle. A hundred days is a short window in which to reshape how a state works, yet the early record suggests a government that understands its opportunity and is using it. The more encouraging question is not whether it has begun, but how much of what it has begun will endure.

The fiscal housekeeping is the least visible achievement and among the most important. Consolidating twenty-two ministries into eighteen, initiating the dissolution or merger of dozens of redundant boards and committees, and recovering hundreds of state vehicles from unauthorized use are the kinds of measures every incoming government pledges and few carry through. The projected annual saving of roughly twenty billion rupees is meaningful in itself, but its larger value lies in what it signals. Money freed from recurrent overhead can migrate toward the capital spending where Nepal has long needed to do more, and a government willing to shrink its own footprint gives real weight to the idea that discipline begins at the top. That is a credibility few administrations earn so early.

The anti-corruption drive has rightly drawn the most attention. Asset investigations reaching back two decades, money laundering cases naming more than a hundred individuals and legal entities with claims approaching one hundred eighteen billion rupees, and the swift blocking of illegal betting platforms together mark a genuine appetite for enforcement. For a country working to restore public confidence in the fairness of its institutions, the message matters as much as the totals. It matters, too, beyond the domestic sphere. Nepal is working to exit the Financial Action Task Force grey list, and visible, sustained action against illicit finance is precisely the evidence that international assessors weigh. Progress on money laundering is not an abstraction. It shapes correspondent banking relationships, the cost of remittances, and the terms on which the country accesses global finance, and the government has moved in exactly the direction that strengthens Nepal's standing.

Service delivery, so often the widest gap between promise and daily experience, has seen equally real movement. Delivering citizenship documents, passports, and driving licenses to people's doorsteps through the postal network removes friction that ordinary Nepalis have long accepted as unavoidable. The steps toward an integrated digital asset registry, linking bank accounts, wallets, and share holdings, and the shift of mortgage registration fully online, are quieter reforms with larger consequences. They build the plumbing of a more transparent economy, one in which ownership is traceable and collateral is easier to pledge and release. From the vantage of anyone concerned with financial deepening and inclusion, these are foundational rather than cosmetic gains, and they position the financial system well for the years ahead.

Much of this has been achieved through ordinance, and in a system prone to legislative delay that has been a sensible way to convert intent into action. The government has itself framed this year as a base year for governance reform, which points naturally to the next task: giving these measures the permanence of law. Sequencing the central reforms for parliamentary passage on a clear timeline would let citizens, investors, and international partners see the agenda maturing from initiative into statute. This is less a gap to close than a milestone the government is well placed to reach, and reaching it would place the reforms beyond the reach of any future reversal.

The same forward spirit applies to the human dimension of change. Clearing high-risk settlements along the Bagmati, the Bishnumati, and the Dhobikhola, and reclaiming public land around Fewa Lake, serve real environmental and safety goals, and the government has already begun pairing them with relief for displaced families. Building on that start with a clear path to permanent rehabilitation would ensure the environmental gains are matched by social ones. So too with the cooperative depositors: the refunds already made to small savers are a welcome beginning, and extending that relief steadily to those still waiting would complete a story the government has set in motion with evident good intent.

What, then, should the coming phase build toward? Four opportunities stand out, each a natural extension of work already underway. The first is legislative durability. Every ordinance central to the agenda deserves a published route to parliamentary passage, so that reform hardens into law and citizens can watch the calendar of commitment being kept.

The second is confident measurement. The government's own progress figures are strong, and inviting the Auditor General and the relevant sectoral bodies to validate them against audited data would turn a good self-assessment into an independently confirmed one. Confidence that welcomes scrutiny is the most persuasive kind, and a government with this record has every reason to seek it.

The third is completing the human side of enforcement. Investigations and land reclamation produce results quickly, and pairing each with a funded remediation plan, whether for displaced families, cooperative depositors, or affected workers, will let the public read this government as both principled and caring. That combination is what converts approval into lasting trust.

The fourth is protecting the quiet infrastructure of a modern economy. The digital asset registry, the online collateral system, and the national integrity policy are the reforms least likely to make headlines and most likely to matter in a decade. Giving them dedicated project management, ring-fenced budgets, and continuity across the political calendar would secure their promise. From a central banking perspective, it is institutions rather than personalities that carry an economy across cycles, and this government now has an unusual opportunity to build exactly that kind of durable machinery.

The first hundred days have earned the Balen government real and deserved confidence, which is more than most administrations manage so soon. The natural temptation of any fast start is to ease the pace, but the greater prize lies in converting visible energy into invisible durability, the kind of reform a citizen never has to think about because it simply works. Nepal has seen ambitious beginnings before. What is distinctive here is a government treating its own momentum as a responsibility to build on, and if it holds to that spirit, these hundred days will be remembered not as a headline but as a foundation.