KATHMANDU: The political situation in Nepal took a dramatic turn on Saturday, as huge student-led demonstrations resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, marking the third leader of the government to be ousted by popular unrest in South Asia over the last two years.
What started as calls to reform the education system and anti-corruption measures went berserk, and the capital was in paralysis as international alarm was raised at the teetering stability of the Himalayan nation.
With the crowds celebrating their way out of Durbar Square, holding placards and screaming about a new Nepal, the vacuum of power left when Dahal stepped down is a cause of concern that the country will go through ethnic tensions and economic collapse in one of the poorest nations in the world.
The rebellion, which was happening during the rains of the monsoon season, which made the streets rivers of mud and rebellion, highlights a generational revolt against old elites. The movement was led by young protesters, most of whom are in their teens and twenties, who used their social media to publicise graft in their university seats and government contracts, bypassing traditional opposition parties.
The Supreme Court has dissolved parliament by midday and fixed snap elections in November, but the viability of the interim administration is just on a thin thread. The global leaders, be it New Delhi or Washington, are keeping an eye, and aid funds may be on the line.
This tectonic change comes as South Asia struggles with the wave of instability: Bangladesh overthrew Sheikh Hasina last year through the student revolt, and Sri Lanka collapsed due to economic crises and turned to protests toppling Gotabaya Rajapakse.
The crisis in Nepal, nonetheless, is a compilation of youth activism and fundamental resentment of federalism, and calamities caused by climate change, which makes it a potential region-wide democracy indicator.
The Origins of the Uprising: Campuses to Streets
The fire started burning in late August in Tribhuvan University when leaked documents showed a multimillion-dollar corrupt scheme in scholarship grants to the relatives of politicians. Further enraged, undergraduates, rallied under the umbrella name Youth for Justice, started internet petitions that twinned into sit-ins in Kathmandu Valley.
We are not only struggling to get seats in college but to have the future of no thieves in office, said 21-year-old organiser Sita Gurung, yet thousands shouted her words back through the crackling megaphones.
Towards the middle of September, the protests had spread, with the farmers of the Terai plains protesting the shortage of fertilisers and the ethnic Madhesis protesting the inequitable allocation of resources under the 2015 constitution.
The confrontations with the police intensified last week as tear gas canisters collided with barricades of building tyres, dozens of people were injured, and one student was killed – a 19-year-old student of Pokhara whose funeral ceremony was attended by half a million people.
The coalition government of Dahal, a marginalised coalition of Maoists and UML conservatives, answered by blocking the internet and arresting people, which served only to pour more gas on the blaze. The digital war rooms were social media websites such as Tik Tok and X where viral videos of baton charges amassed millions of views and Indian and Bangladeshi activists joined in solidarity with them.
Blending both the global inspiration and local taste, a viral post by a protesting tweeter in Lalitpur read, “This is our version of the Arab spring, only with Himalayan grit to it. The number of NGOs reported in Kathmandu alone on Friday was nearly 100,000, which is far more than the 1990 People’s Movement that brought the absolute monarchy to an end.
The governmental errors added to the crisis. A 7.8% rate of inflation, combined with slow post-COVID recovery, already put the Dahal administration in a bad place; it cut education budgets to finance vanity infrastructure projects. It is like a cash machine to cronies in universities, raved economics professor Rajendra Sharma during a rally.
The economic pundits attribute the upheaval to more expansive ills: the remittances sent back by the Nepalese migrant workers, 28 per cent of GDP, had plummeted with the global downturn, even as catastrophic floods last summer displaced 200,000 people in the south.
The Fall and Its Immediate Aftermath
The unexpected news of Dahal resigning broke in the early mornings as a conclusion to protests where protesters broke the police lines close to Singha Durbar, the office of the prime minister. In the sake of national unity, I withdraw myself, he said, flushed all over with his face and a background of decayed portraits.
In the background, backchannel negotiations facilitated by the former King Gyanendra a controversial figure in the republican Nepal was allegedly putting pressure on his resignation to avoid bloodshed. The intervention of the Supreme Court was quick, and it used the emergency powers to suspend the parliament and appoint a caretaker cabinet headed by Chief Justice Bidya Devi Bhandari.
There were party celebrations in the streets, and fireworks were used to light up the snow-capped mountains that could be seen in the valley. But it was mingled with relief: raids of looting were made in markets at Biratnagar, and Maoist dissident elements threatened to protect the revolution by arms should it be necessary.
The human rights monitors estimated that more than 500 people were arrested, and excessive force was used, with the UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Turk urging restraint and dialogue. He called on both parties to uphold the rights of protesters in a statement in Geneva and echoed the support expressed by Amnesty International for the disproportionate violence against the youth.
It is economically a bitter pill. The tourist strip in Kathmandu, which depended on the number of trekkers who flock to see the Everest Base Camp, came to a halt, as hotels were used by 20 per cent of the guests.
The Nepal Stock Exchange crashed by 15 per cent at the start of the day and destroyed a value of $1.2 billion. Already struggling families that rely on remittance also risk rising prices of their staple food, such as rice and lentils, which are already 40 per cent higher than in July.
Local Effects and International Influences
The turmoil in Nepal has a ripple effect on South Asia and this puts India into a strain on its Neighborhood First policy. New Delhi, which considers Kathmandu a check on China, sent Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri to hold urgent consultations.
He wrote on X, “Stability in Nepal is stability in all of us, as there are unverified reports of Indian intelligence supporting security forces. Beijing, in its turn, looks at the riot with suspicion; its Belt and Road dams up the river Karnali have long been a source of irritation among locals, and anti-China slogans were used during the protests as well.
The State Department issued a statement of deep concern in Washington that pegged $100 million of yearly aid to democratic changes. The spokesperson Matthew Miller was quoted saying, at a press briefing, that they stood with the Nepali people in their struggle to have accountable governance, implying sanctions in case violence increased.
The top donor, EUR50 million in grants by the EU to Nepal, was frozen pending elections due to governance shortcomings. Specialists are afraid of more profound fractures. The federal experiment in Nepal, which divides the country into seven provinces, has exacerbated ethnic differences, and the eastern part of the country, where the Tharu and Limbu people are threatening to secede unless their demands are met.
Climate change maximises the dangers: glacial lake outbursts in the Himalayas have increased three times since 2010 and displaced thousands of people, causing resentment of a government perceived to be inactive.
Inevitable are comparisons of Bangladesh. In that case, the sheer numbers of students overthrew the dynasty of Hasina; in Nepal, the lack of a leader of the movement, the organisation of which was possible through encrypted applications, such as Signal, presents the co-optation with certain specific challenges.
Political scientist Yubaraj Sangroula wrote an op-ed in The Kathmandu Post, saying that this is not a takeover that happened to the party, but rather a paradigm shift. But there are also many flats: unless it is followed by comprehensive reforms, the vacuum might open to military intrusion or Islamist extremism across the porous border.
Charting a Path Forward: Hopes and Hurdles
The interim government settles down, and election logistics and economic triage become the priorities. Election Commission promised biometric voter rolls to prevent fraud, and international observers led by Carter Center are readying themselves to do so. The leaders of youth, making ad-hoc councils, want quota of youth under 30s in the new assembly and truth commission in corruption investigation.
Ideas are flying with the civil society: decentralized education boards, green jobs based on hydro-power, and electronic transparency of public expenditure. You have tried power in the streets, now take it in the halls, said Gurung, and drew up images of a “federal Nepal 2.0” to give power to the provinces.
Chaos, however, is anticipated by sceptics. Revolutions eat their children, said old time journalist Deepak Adhikari, and the bloody toll of the Maoist insurgency lives in memory. As urban floods ebb back, leaving wounds, the great challenge is to bridge the urban-rural divide and charm disillusioned middle classes.
A sense of frailty of hope was felt by evening time when prayer flags were fluttered over a purged Durbar Square. The monks chanted for peace, vendors sold revolutionary T-shirts, and the elders told stories about the jasmine revolution in the year 2006.
Nepal, balanced on the Roof of the World, is between renaissance and relapse. The eyes of the world – Davos boardrooms, Delhi think tanks – are on this small country, where the screams of students can still prove to be the rewrite of the South Asian history.
