Since the restoration of democracy in 1990, Nepal has cycled through twenty-seven prime ministers, each averaging barely a year in office. None of them was a woman. This changed on September 12, when former chief justice Sushila Karki was sworn in as the country’s first woman prime minister.
One only wishes it were under better circumstances.
Karki was sworn in via extra-constitutional means by President Ram Chandra Poudel. He had little choice. What had begun as a peaceful protest against widespread corruption by the Nepali youth—flattened under the broad “Gen Z” label by the media—ended with seventy-four deaths. The collective fury of a society mired in corruption, economic distress, and mass unemployment toppled the government at a staggering cost.
After nineteen protesters—most under the age of thirty—were killed by state forces on September 8, vengeful mobs began burning buildings the next day. Offices of the three major parties—the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist, or UML), the Nepali Congress, and the Maoists—were torched. A former prime minister and his incumbent foreign minister spouse were beaten up inside their home, which was later burnt down. The Prime Minister’s Office—a 122-year-old palace—went up in flames, along with the Ministries of Home, Finance, and Health. The Parliament was incinerated, as were the Supreme Court and several other lower courts, and the anti-corruption commission. And this was just in the capital of Kathmandu. Several municipal offices across the nation were also set ablaze, as were tax offices, district administration offices, provincial assemblies, customs offices, private homes, and businesses. Prisons were broken open. The rage was nationwide, and the mob unrelenting.
On September 10, a dark pall hung over Kathmandu as the Army took charge of security. In less than forty-eight hours, Nepal’s state machinery collapsed, and with it, the very legitimacy of its rulers. Presiding over its fall was the post-2015 Nepali republic’s chief architect and incumbent prime minister, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli.
The Spark That Lit the State
On September 6, just as online forums were organizing the protests for September 8, a provincial minister’s vehicle hit an eleven-year-old girl on the outskirts of Kathmandu. The driver did not stop to check on her; instead, the vehicle sped away, leaving the dazed girl fallen on the asphalt. Oli brushed the infraction off as “normal,” urging people not to politicize it. This proved to be a fatal miscalculation.
Nepal’s political leadership believed the brewing online discontent reflected a minority view as protests are not uncommon in the country. Civil society often takes to the streets to protest a polity where the political class considers itself immune to public sentiment. As no party achieved a majority on its own in the 2022 election, government formation required a coalition between two of the three largest parties, the latest being a coalition of the Congress and the UML—the two largest parties. The three major parties have each taken turns in government since 2015, with the prime ministership rotated between Oli, Congress chair Sher Bahadur Deuba, and Maoist chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal “Prachanda.” Party loyalists were appointed to almost every branch of government and its bodies, student and professional organizations, and even sections of the media. The proliferation of crony capitalism meant the business class had also been co-opted. The ageing leadership assumed discontent was just part and parcel of politics—inevitable, harmless, and ignorable.
This was a mistake. In a country where 56 percent of the population is below the age of thirty, a geriatric leadership whose average age was seventy was woefully out of touch. In the last decade, internet connectivity had rapidly expanded to cover more than half the population. Young Nepalis were online—on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Discord—but offline, they saw none of the better future promised by the 2006 revolution against the monarchy. Instead, they saw widening inequality and corruption, and on their social media feeds, they saw the children of elites flaunting their privilege.
The signs of discontent were ubiquitous. Since 2020, GDP growth has averaged under 5 percent—wholly inadequate for an economy with a per capita income below $1,500. Overall unemployment stood at 12.6 percent in 2022–23, but 22.7 percent among those aged fifteen to twenty-four. While the per capita income of the poorest 20 percent grew from NPR 2,020 to NPR 61,335 between 1995–96 and 2022–23, those of the richest 20 percent rose from NPR 19,325 to NPR 259,867 over the same period. Over three-quarters of households rely on remittances. Today, some 1,700 Nepalis leave the country every day in search of work.
As if economic distress wasn’t enough, the Nepali youth was bombarded with reports of widespread corruption.
As if economic distress wasn’t enough, the Nepali youth was bombarded with reports of widespread corruption. In 2025 alone, more than ten cases emerged of corruption involving former prime ministers, ministers, and bureaucrats. The list was long: allegations of embezzlement to the tune of NPR 14 billion during the construction of Pokhara airport; a NPR 3.2 billion procurement scam during the purchase of a Telecommunications Traffic Monitoring and Fraud Control System (Teramocs); a “visit visa” scam where immigration officers at the airport allowed Nepalis to fly abroad on tourist visas to work and live illegally, with bribe “rates” quoted at NPR 50,000 for the Middle East and NPR 300,000 for those going to Europe. A 2023 scam promising Nepalis certification as Bhutanese refugees to help them settle in the U.S. involved ministers and officials of the Home Ministry. To top it off, several cooperative finance companies, run by political affiliates, had embezzled depositor funds to the tune of tens of billions of rupees.
With graft on this scale, popular anger had long been simmering. Political groups such as the monarchists had incorporated the anti-corruption agenda within their larger objective of bringing back the king. A violent protest in March this year saw two dead and similar patterns of looting and arson. But a lack of popular support for the restoration of the monarchy meant the discontent had not yet been channeled into a broader movement. That changed when the Oli government decided to ban twenty-six social media networks on September 4.
When the Internet Went Dark
Successive Nepali governments had attempted to muzzle social media in the run-up to the mass ban. In 2023, the government banned TikTok on charges of fomenting communal disharmony. The ban was lifted after nearly a year once the app agreed to list itself with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, in line with new social media rules, and also “invest in digital literacy efforts” and “be mindful of the language used on its platform,” the Communication and Information Technology Minister announced. The government issued multiple notices to other companies, but none heeded the missives. On August 28, the government gave the companies a seven-day ultimatum following a Supreme Court order that all “online and social media platforms of domestic or foreign origin should be mandatorily registered with the competent authority before operation, and mechanisms should be in place to evaluate and monitor undesirable content.” When the deadline passed on September 4, the Nepali internet went dark—or so the government believed.
The Nepali internet had been awash with the #NepoBaby campaign for weeks before the ban. The campaign skewered the gap between the gilded lives of politicians’ children and ordinary youth. Oli’s social media ban was seen as one more gag on such criticism—and for young Nepalis, the last straw.
What began as an informal conversation over the messaging app Viber to protest turned into an overwhelming call for participation once the ban was announced. On September 6, activist Sudan Gurung, founder of Hami Nepal, a nongovernmental organization founded in the aftermath of the 2015 earthquake, put out a call on his Instagram. “Do not stay silent. Do not stay home. Bring your friends, your family, your courage, and your voice,” he wrote, giving out a call to young Nepalis to gather to join “a movement for justice.” Other youth groups chimed in. On September 8, Gurung announced the Discord channel “Youths Against Corruption” as a “central communication system” for the protest. Similar calls to actions were made by other youth leaders. The very tool Oli tried to muzzle became the nerve center of his downfall.
On the morning of September 8, young people arrived in Kathmandu in droves, carrying placards. A few held megaphones, shouting slogans against corruption. Others sang and danced. A short film showed skateboarders wheeling along as the crowds moved toward Parliament. A youth leader announced the protestors would not destroy public property, commit arson, or even leave behind any trash, but would raise their voices peacefully. Within hours, the crowd had surged to thousands, many of them in their school and college uniforms, their first act of organized resistance against the state. One of the many symbols of the protest was the Jolly Roger flag popularized in the Japanese One Piece series, symbolizing the manga’s pirate captain’s goals to “liberate oppressed people, and fight the autocratic World Government.” The flag, as in the earlier Indonesian protests, came to symbolize a globally connected Nepali youth’s dissent against a corrupt government.
Suddenly, chaos erupted and a few protesters stormed the Parliament. As tear gas and water cannons proved insufficient to stop them, security forces turned to rubber bullets and live ammunition in a dramatic escalation of force. By nightfall, nineteen protesters were declared dead across the country and hundreds more were injured. Protest videos went viral: blood-soaked school uniforms and teenagers sprawled on the ground. The anti-corruption rally had generated a national fury at state violence—a massacre on a scale Nepal had never seen.
A Fragile Constitutional Lifeline
On the evening of September 10, as chaos threatened to engulf the political vacuum in Kathmandu in the wake of two days of protests, 7,586 young Nepalis cast their votes for their candidate to lead the interim government on the “Youths Against Corruption” Discord channel. Sushila Karki, the former chief justice, emerged as the winner. It was perhaps the first time in history that a prime minister had been chosen via an online vote, a reflection of the times itself, and also of the churn in Nepali politics. Karki would thereafter lead the talks with the president as Nepal began to pick up the pieces.
The vote was chaotic, as one might expect from an internet chat channel, and was livestreamed on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and other platforms. But it was also a remarkably effervescent moment. Young Nepalis were imagining democracy and their future in real time, on anonymous online forums rather than in newspapers or TV studios. The irony was that Discord was among the twenty-six apps banned by the Oli government, along with WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube.
A churn in Nepali politics has been evident since the 2022 elections.
A churn in Nepali politics has been evident since the 2022 elections, when the fledgling Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) emerged as the fourth largest in Parliament, a rebuke to the popular notion of the permanence of the older parties in Nepali politics. This churn was particularly noticeable in local government elections, where younger independent candidates such as Harka Sampang had won as mayor. The most popular of such candidates was Balen Shah, a civil engineer turned rapper, who became mayor of Kathmandu—and whose legal adviser Om Prakash Aryal has been appointed home minister in Karki’s interim cabinet. These newer candidates represented a break from the older parties and their cadre-based systems and patronage networks, and instead relied on social media outreach to connect with their voters.
That Balen Shah had an immense following among the youth was known, but his influence on Nepal’s new political landscape became apparent to all when he supported Karki’s nomination. Sudan Gurung, the Hami Nepal leader, subsequently stated the youth would like to see Balen Shah as prime minister for five years and not six months. “What can Balen Shah do in six months?”
Under the 2015 constitution, Karki could not become prime minister as a former chief justice and as a non-parliamentarian. President Ram Chandra Poudel eventually invoked the “doctrine of necessity” to appoint her head of an interim government that would oversee elections in six months, and subsequently dissolved Parliament, a sequence of events that political parties have termed unconstitutional. However, had the president resigned following Tuesday’s mayhem and not taken such steps, Nepal would have been plunged into a crisis. Already, royalists were being considered as stakeholders in the discussions post-Tuesday, threatening to push the republic further down the abyss. Karki now stands on the edge of Nepal’s political precipice. If she cannot conduct elections within six months, the constitutional authority of her government will be challenged by other forces.
But holding an election will test Nepal’s strained finances and fragile institutions. The young have demanded a revision of the electoral rolls as many of them are not registered to vote. A presidential ordinance will now correct this. Aryal, the interim home minister, has also announced the likelihood of the Nepali diaspora being able to vote in the elections. The older parties will find it convenient to delay the election as much as possible in the hope that the current groundswell will eventually lose its momentum and the people will have no choice but to turn to them.
The interim government’s immediate priorities are more straightforward: investigate state excess and incidents of arson and looting during the protests, for which a commission has been announced, and investigate corruption by the erstwhile political leadership. If these investigations move forward expeditiously, Karki will gain the legitimacy needed to hold elections.
Gen Z’s Next Test
Nepal’s political landscape has undergone an extraordinary and rapid change. The older establishment parties, although regrouping, face a crisis of legitimacy and trust. None of the chairs of the three major political parties has resigned or made way for younger leaders in their ranks. While the parties’ organizations are still intact, they face widespread discontent. Internal party schisms may soon spill out publicly in response to the older leadership’s unwillingness to cede the reins despite the parties being forced to put on a facade of unity for their followers.
The protests revealed a force the parties had long ignored: the youth. But the younger Nepali must not be mistaken for a homogenous demographic. Internal fissures have been visible, inevitable in most movements that begin in the digital sphere as a faceless and leaderless collective. If the youth is committed to change, it must do so via the democratic process. The formation of a political party (or parties) that can put up nationwide candidates in the midterm election will be the first step. Yet questions remain as to who will be the movement’s leaders. Thus far, Balen Shah seems to be the popular choice. But his authoritarian style as mayor of Kathmandu leaves others doubting his democratic instincts.
Equally concerning is the youth disenchantment over the federal foundations of the 2015 constitution. Many young protesters see the provinces as useless and expensive, favoring a return to just two tiers of government—local and federal. This would be a grave error. The 2015 constitution was put in place after fragile negotiations with multiple sections of Nepali society, and the past decade has seen an unending tussle on laws around citizenship, provincial duties and transfer of responsibilities, and proportional representation. A premature dismantling of the provincial structure would invite severe backlash from the plains, which has remained at the forefront of the discourse around representation and inclusion in Nepal.
Any future discussions around government formation and constitutional amendments must also ensure the participation of younger marginalized voices, especially from nonurban Nepal. There is growing consensus that the youth must be unified in their demands from the state, but questions remain as to the ideological moorings of such a unified position. The male-dominated nationalism espoused by many of the younger protesters recalls a unitary idea of the country as earlier espoused by Nepal’s kings during authoritarian rule. The 2015 constitution was promulgated to counter this unitarian vision of Nepal and ensure its diversity could be addressed, but centralizing tendencies within the old leadership forced many of its goals to remain unimplemented. Already there are fears monarchist groups may seize the discontent against traditional parties to further their revanchist agendas.
Tackling entrenched graft—the protest’s initial demand—will require widespread institutional reform including that of the bureaucracy.
Younger protesters have also demanded several political reforms following elections, including a directly elected head of state limited to a two-term mandate. Tackling entrenched graft—the protest’s initial demand—will require widespread institutional reform including that of the bureaucracy. There is also growing consensus that any future ministers and other government positions must be appointed on the basis of merit and specialization, rather than political loyalty. Karki’s interim cabinet reflects such a technocratic approach. The finance minister was a former finance secretary, while the energy and infrastructure minister was earlier the head of Nepal’s power authority before the government removed him.
Nepal’s bilateral and multilateral partners were all caught off-guard by the swift collapse of the Oli government. India, traditionally its closest partner, was among the first to emphasize its support for democratic principles as the country regroups. The United States has also lent its support to forthcoming elections. China, on the other hand, will not be pleased by the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration announcing their support to the Karki government. China had successfully engaged with Nepal’s multiple coalitions over the past decade to align the country with Beijing’s foreign policy goals, but its key interlocutors were the Nepali Communists. A definitive rejection of Communist parties in the elections may disrupt this alignment.
Finally, the protests also must be seen against the background of similar popular movements in Bangladesh (2024) and Sri Lanka (2022). The internet’s great equalizing abilities ensured the Nepali youth took inspiration from the region’s upheavals, and more recently, Indonesia’s. But it would be premature to suggest Nepal’s future trajectory will follow similar patterns. A more cautionary tale may be Nepal’s own fractious years between 2009 and 2012, when prolonged deadlock led to the dissolution of the first Constituent Assembly.
For now, this is a moment of reckoning for Nepal’s youth. Every generation before has overthrown a government. None has sustained lasting change. This time, Nepalis must do better.
