Nepali Youthquake Shakes The Himalayasand Warns The World

The youth unemployment rate hovers near 20% . Brain drain is a national fact of life; thousands leave the country every day in search of opportunity abroad. Remittances account for nearly one-third of GDP, making economic vitality less a function of domestic productivity than of overseas sacrifice.

Add to this the daily insult of conspicuous corruption. The“Nepo Kids” phenomenon - the children of political elites flaunting imported cars and designer clothes on the very social platforms the government sought to ban - has become a digital shorthand for all that is rotten in Kathmandu's corridors of power.

It is hard to build trust in institutions when those who run them treat public office as a private inheritance. In this light, the social media ban was less a spark than a detonator. It compressed years of frustration into days of rage.

And it reminded political leaders of a simple truth often ignored in young democracies: legitimacy, once squandered, is rarely retrievable by decree.

Nepal's politics are inevitably interlinked with its neighbors. Nepal is a landlocked country between India and China , and it has long been a regional political chessboard.

Recently, Beijing has been more engaged with Kathmandu - investing heavily in infrastructure, mediating party disputes, and promoting its Belt and Road Initiative . Oli himself was a beneficiary of China's political attention, particularly during periods when his party seemed poised to consolidate a pro-Beijing tilt.

But the current crisis is not one Beijing can easily shape. China may prefer stability, and it may have quietly encouraged party unity behind closed doors. But these protests are not a function of foreign policy disputes.

They are not about borders or trade or even great-power alignment. They are about dignity, opportunity, and accountability - things no external actor can credibly deliver. That may be a silver lining. Nepal's turmoil, for all its dangers, is fundamentally a domestic affair. It is not yet another proxy conflict in a region already overburdened with them.

Still, the dangers are acute. Power vacuums do not stay empty. Oli's resignation has removed a lightning rod but not the storm. The protests continue. Other ministers have resigned. The army is reportedly prepared to“stabilize” the situation, an ominous euphemism in a country with a fraught history of military involvement in politics.

The scenarios ahead range from fragile hope to outright tragedy. A caretaker government could steer the country toward reforms, addressing corruption and opening space for a younger political generation. But it could just as easily drift toward repression, particularly if elites misread the protests as transient rather than transformative.

One risk is radicalization. When peaceful protests are met with bullets, anger curdles into extremism. With the decades-old Maoist conflict , Nepal's recent history shows that political violence has generational consequences. There's also a risk of geopolitical opportunism.

Both India and China have interests in maintaining stability near their borders. If Nepal remains unstable, they may be tempted to support certain groups to protect their own interests.

Nepal's youth movement is part of a global trend now. Similar protests have occurred in places like Hong Kong , Iran , Chile , Sri Lanka and recently Bangladesh . In all these cases, young people, connected through the internet, are standing up against governments that are unresponsive, corrupt and authoritarian.

Social media plays a key role, both as an organizing tool and as a symbolic battlefield. Banning it, as Nepal discovered, is like trying to silence a storm by confiscating umbrellas.

Equally instructive is what happens next. In some countries, protests yield meaningful reforms - Chile rewrote its constitution, for example. In others, they trigger repression or political backsliding - as in Myanmar or Egypt .

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The determining factors are rarely the scale of protests alone. They are whether political elites can channel dissent into institutional change rather than personal survival, and whether opposition movements can translate fury into a coherent vision of governance.

Nepal has arrived at precisely that fork in the road.

Narrow but real opportunity

For a nation of nearly 30 million, perched between two giant powers and burdened by history, the temptation will be to view this crisis as an existential threat. It is not. It is a warning - and perhaps an invitation.

Democracies often renew themselves not through gradual evolution but through abrupt, uncomfortable reckonings. The violence of the past weeks is a tragedy, but it may yet be the cost of long-deferred accountability.

The task now is neither restoration nor revolution. Nepal now needs to reconstruct trust, institutions, and the bond between its leaders and its people. For this, it needs unwavering courage from politicians, professionalism from the security forces and patience from the protesters. International actors should help stabilize the vulnerable situation in Nepal.

In the end, a stable democratic Nepal can serve everyone's interests best. The pressing question now is whether Nepal's leadership can grasp this opportunity. If they cannot, the streets will decide for them - and history rarely remembers those who mistook a generational demand for dignity as a temporary inconvenience.

M A Hossain is a senior journalist and international affairs analyst. His articles are already featured in South China Morning Post, The Jakarta Post, Asian Age, The Korea Times, New Age, Modern Diplomacy, The Geopolitics, South Asia Monitor, The Daily Guardian, etc. He may be reached at: ...

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