Explained : Nepal’s youth rebellion meets geopolitics and Its Impact

The old is dead, the new is born, and the interregnum – fraught with morbid symptoms – is finally over. If Gramsci were alive in Nepal today, he may have approved. Emphasis on may.

The outcome of Nepal’s snap elections signals an extraordinary shift, just seven months after a Gen Z-led protest movement against entrenched corruption and economic malaise turned into deadly riots that toppled the government. A political party formed on an anti-corruption platform four years ago, Rastriya Swatantrata Party (RSP), swept the polls to win 182 out of 275 seats in the House of Representatives (Lower House), just two short of a two-thirds majority. Much of the credit goes to the stardom of a 35-year-old rapper, and former mayor of Kathmandu, Balendra Shah or Balen (his stage name), who joined the RSP less than three months ago. This week, he will become Asia’s youngest prime minister. Nepal’s incoming parliament will be its most youthful yet, with over 70 new members under the age of 40.

As a small country straddling the great Himalayan faultline, Nepal is used to literal landslides – hundreds a year – but its electoral system, bifurcated into first-past-the-post and proportional representation polls that are held simultaneously, was designed to make political parties hard pressed to pull off even a simple majority. The country’s deep-seated and complex socio-cultural divisions make it all the more difficult. 

In its 18 years as a democratic republic, 15 coalition governments have taken oath in Kathmandu, but not one completed a full five-year term. If you start the count in 1990, the year Nepal became a constitutional monarchy, the figure stands at 32 governments. The last time a political party won a two-thirds majority in Nepal was in 1959, when the country’s first democratic elections were held. Even that was short lived, as King Mahendra launched a coup d’état the next year. 

For decades, the country has been roiled by political instability of such mythical proportions that it is commonplace to hear it attributed to ‘an ancient curse’ uttered by the sage Gorakhnath, a figure from Nepali folklore. It’s somewhat understandable when you consider that King Birendra – a relatively progressive man who surrendered absolute powers in the face of popular demand and initiated the country’s transition towards democracy – was shot to death by a severely inebriated Crown Prince in 2001. The heir apparent also killed himself, but not before he killed his mother and several other members of the royal family at a customary private dinner inside the Narayanhiti Palace. 

The protracted churn in Nepali politics has extracted a heavy price. Its economy has one of the world’s highest youth unemployment rates (close to 21 per cent in a country where the median age is 26) and a GDP per capita that ranks in the bottom 30 globally. Entrenched corruption has undermined stability, and the blame must be equally shared between the supremos of all three traditional parties – the Nepali Congress (NC), the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), and the Nepali Communist Party (NCP) – who have ascended to the prime minister’s office multiple times in a series of rocky alliances with each other. For more than half of the country who voted for the RSP, out of over 130 parties in the fray, the election results of this week hold the promise to reverse Nepal’s fortunes. Their optimism is cautious but real.

The sheer size of the so-called ‘blue bell wave’ (after the RSP’s party symbol) and, inversely, the dramatic collapse of the traditional parties, confirms that even if the Gen Z open revolt against the old guard was a spontaneous reaction to the violence on 8 September (when the police opened fire on peaceful protestors), it has since drawn in every segment of Nepali society, irreparably frustrated with endemic governance failures.

Yet, the road ahead is riddled with uncertainty. Large chunks of the country didn’t vote for RSP as much as they voted for Balen, in what analysts have termed as the ‘Presidentialisation of Nepali elections’. But much about him remains a mystery. He has an unparalleled command over Nepali social media, which he mobilised to defeat the ousted prime minister on his home turf by a margin of 50,000 votes. But Balen has rarely appeared at press conferences or media interviews, and wears rectangular sunglasses outdoors and indoors supposedly to cultivate an aura of mystique.

Balen’s punchy and socially conscious rap songs were used as anthems for social justice and change in the Gen Z movement last year. However, as mayor, he concentrated power in Kathmandu within a close circle of advisors (and once expressed admiration for the managerial acumen of dictators like Adolf Hitler). Although Balen used his mayorship to reform education, expand healthcare and tackle longstanding waste disposal problems, he attracted more than a few controversies during his tenure: he employed bulldozers to raze illegally constructed buildings with minimal notice, ordered a truck to dump garbage in front of the Department of Roads (to make a point about slow road construction) and was charged with contempt after he loudly defied a court order.

In a sense, this all ties to his appeal. After decades of unstable governments and ossified party hierarchies, Nepalis may want centralisation of power around a populist leader, but whether Balen’s approach as mayor will work as prime minister is entirely uncertain. The new administration’s primary agenda will be the pursuit of political and constitutional reforms, aimed at cracking down on corruption, as proposed in the agreement between the interim government and Gen Z representatives. The RSP and Balen campaigned upon them and, with their victory, comes great expectations of swift delivery. 

However, constitutional reforms remain contested within Nepal’s polity, and the party – composed of neophytes, many of whom have never even met each other – will need to work together to carefully measure and build consensus. Balen’s leadership is uncontested for now but he joined the party in January and, in the past, has vehemently rallied against it. Moreover, the RSP does not hold a single seat in the country’s National Assembly (Upper House of Parliament), and if the old guard senses even faint public disagreement, it will swiftly delay or even block reforms. To what extent the Nepali bureaucracy, historically steeped in political patronage, will shift its alliance is another open question. If Balen’s administration fails to overcome these hurdles, the emergence of public disappointment may be as rapid as the party’s rise. 

Before Balen gets to all this, he will have to navigate the crisis engulfing the Middle East. Between two to three million Nepalis (nearly 10 per cent of the country’s population) work and live in the region, predominantly in the Arab Gulf countries. At least one Nepali has already died in the UAE, 15 more have been injured across the region. The interim government has started to co-ordinate rescue efforts and acknowledged that it will soon need a ‘national plan’. If the war escalates and evacuation efforts expand, a resource-starved Kathmandu may have to seek the help of India and/or China and hundreds of thousands of Nepalis may return home with no jobs in sight. Kathmandu will also have to manage the energy price implications of the war with tact as it is entirely import dependent on India for hydrocarbons. 

The new leadership in Nepal has no prior diplomatic experience and is about to take over a landlocked country trapped between two major powers – India and China – fiercely competing for influence over South Asia. The RSP’s victory has completely reset the foreign policy template in Kathmandu, as both China’s bet on the communist parties of Nepal and India’s historic influence over the Nepali Congress have unravelled. Where the RSP stands on foreign affairs, beyond ‘balanced relations’ as mentioned in its election manifesto, is unknown. 

Given corruption allegations around Belt and Road Initiative projects in Nepal, particularly the embezzlement scandal uncovered after the construction of the Pokhara International Airport, as well as the former administration’s close ties with the CCP, the RSP appears to desire some distance from China, at least for now.

Balen’s past approach to dealing with Nepal’s powerful neighbours has been largely limited to boisterous and nationalistic protests on social media that hardly inspire confidence in his diplomatic abilities. Last year, in the style of his rap idols, Tupac and 50 Cent, Balen declared in a (since deleted) viral post: ‘F**k America, F**k India, F**k China…’

As Prime Minister, Balen will have to upskill – and fast, given Nepal’s need to mitigate extreme economic dependency on India; balance large trade deficits with China; repatriate thousands of Nepalis (15,000 according to CNN estimates) enlisted by Russia and still trapped in the Ukraine war; and finally, its need for developmental assistance from India, China, and the US. If he doesn’t, we can expect all four strongmen leaders to be less than patient with his administration, to put it mildly.

Balen’s rise and the Gen Z movement that he tapped into reflect a broader pattern of political rebellion. Last year, this became starkly visible across distant geographies in youth-led protest movements against high unemployment, income inequality and corruption. 

Nepali demonstrators borrowed social-media mobilisation tactics from their Gen Z counterparts in Indonesia and Kenya, who launched nationwide protests in July and August respectively. Nepalis followed their example in using decentralised platforms such as Discord to coordinate demonstrations and bypass government restrictions. The ‘nepo-baby’ trend that made headlines in Nepal – involving viral posts to expose the lavish lifestyles of politicians’ children and turn them into symbols of corruption – was first popularised online in Indonesia. 

Closer to Nepal in South Asia, corrupt and brazenly authoritarian governments were overthrown by youth-driven mass protests in Sri Lanka in 2022 and Bangladesh in 2024. Last month, the leaders of Bangladeshi National Party (BNP), who had walked out of prison or returned from exile barely a year ago, won a two-thirds majority – a result made possible by the momentum generated by the 2024 youth-led protests.

In an era of widespread public discontent and economic anxiety, felt most acutely by the world’s youth, political rebellion is routinely rewarded at the ballot box, especially when the status quo is coercive and corrupt. Rather less certain is whether rebellion can successfully translate into democratic reinvigoration. Balen is the latest political rebel to secure an impressive mandate, but he faces a formidable challenge in delivering lasting political stability.