As the dust settles over Nepal’s parliament building, its charred facade is a stark reminder of the fury that erupted across the landlocked Himalayan nation last week. At least 74 people have been killed and hundreds wounded in clashes between police and protesters.

The tumult was initially sparked by a September 4 ban on social media platforms but quickly morphed into the all-out exposure of something far deeper: decades of systemic corruption and a complete breakdown of trust between Nepal’s youth and its political elite.

The Nepalese G Z uprising is a vestige of a youth movement that began in Kenya in June 2024 and spread to the rest of Africa, then to developing countries in Asia and Latin America. The consistent theme in the uprisings from Kenya, to Nigeria, Ghana… and latest, Nepal, has been the same: deep-seated graft, bad governance,

Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli stepped down on September 9, just five days after the social media ban ignited nationwide protests. In his place, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Sushila Karki was appointed interim prime minister and the government lifted restrictions on 26 platforms.

At 73, Karki became the first woman to lead Nepal, taking the oath of office on September 12, after a few days of power vacuum and intense negotiations with protest leaders. The concessions did little to quell the anger on the streets.

“It was necessary to take out this government. We have had enough,” Aabhash Raj Lamichhane, a social work student at Khwopa College who helped coordinate student groups during the protests, said in an interview. “We kept hearing that if we go to government offices, we need to bribe.”

For Nepal’s youth, who account for a little over 20 per cent of the population, the 22-year-old said daily life had become an endless cycle of unemployment, graft, and favouritism: “The government gives jobs and tenders to their own people, and we suffer. They favour relatives and friends and their own political parties.”

Largely driven by what demonstrators call “Gen Z”, the protests have drawn comparisons to recent youth-led uprisings across South Asia and Indonesia, including the movement that last year toppled Bangladesh’s long-serving autocratic Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The success of that movement provided a powerful precedent, showing that sustained popular pressure can force even entrenched leaders from power.

However, as with the so-called Arab Spring, many of the media headlines have focused on Western and Chinese social media platforms.

On the streets of Kathmandu, protesters said the social media ban on September 4 came shortly after Nepalese youth started seizing on another recent global cultural obsession: the proliferation of nepobabies – or the offspring of already well-known politicians, business titans and celebrities – who use their privilege to land highly-competitive and coveted roles in any number of industries.

From Pakistan to Bangladesh to India to South Korea to the Philippines, and even to the former Western-backed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Asian governments have been plagued by dynastic rule and constant games of political musical chairs that see the same familiar faces going from one high-profile post to another. Nepal, say the protesters, was no exception.

“Whenever Oli comes into power, people die,” Hem Chaudhary, a Nepalese Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student who came back to Nepal for his vacation only two months ago, says.

Oli, a three-time prime minister, has seen his latest tenure marked by entrenched corruption, economic stagnation and authoritarianism, explaining why protesters hold him responsible for many of Nepal’s systemic issues.

The viral protest campaign particularly resonated with Nepal’s youth, who – while watching politicians’ children live lavishly abroad – face unemployment rates of 20.8 per cent (one of the highest in the region), according to the World Bank.

As the hashtag #nepobabies began trending in Nepal, the larger Gen Z audience got to know about how these people are making money and going around the world, and this, according to Chaudhary, is what really triggered everyone into action. “There is a stark imbalance between us and nepobabies,” he said.

Apart from lifting the social media ban, protesters demanded that the prime minister resign and that Nepal establish an independent watchdog body to monitor corruption – demands that speak to deeper institutional failures that have plagued the country for decades.

The calls for Oli’s resignation reflected anger at his government’s deadly crackdown, while the demand for an anti-corruption body addressed widespread frustration with existing oversight mechanisms that protesters saw as compromised and ineffective.

“It has moved like a game of musical chairs between three people for 30 years and they never gave a chance to their young politicians. It was a mafia.”

Nepal ranked 107th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2024, but the statistics barely capture the lived reality of a system where political connections often matter more than merit, and public resources are routinely diverted for private gain.

“Everybody wanted a change. We knew the country was ruined by corruption and governance,” explained Suman Pandey, 60, vice chairman of the Pacific Asia Tour Association and a 30-year veteran of Nepal’s tourism industry. “It has moved like a game of musical chairs between three people for 30 years and they never gave a chance to their young politicians. It was a mafia.”

Despite some progress on poverty reduction, Nepal remains one of Asia’s poorest countries. Nearly a third (33.1 per cent) of Nepal’s GDP comes from personal remittances, highlighting the scale of migration as young Nepalese seek opportunities abroad, creating both a brain drain and a sense of hopelessness among those who remain.

“The frustration was and is shared by Nepalese across ages, ethnicities and locations, and the resulting anger too. The outrage was almost universal, and so there was a real mass response,” said Roman Gautam, editor of Himal Southasian, a regional magazine. Speaking from his home in a quiet neighbourhood of Kathmandu, where he has been closely following the unrest, he added: “That’s really the root of young people’s frustration: a political establishment that had proven corrupt and incapable of leading the country in a different direction.”

Rachana Khare, a 29-year-old English language teacher who joined the demonstrations in Kathmandu, said the protests may have been initiated by Gen Z but the vision of a corruption-free Nepal swept across the country. Despite decades of frustration, Khare, who joined her friends in a candlelight vigil to honour those killed in the recent unrest, said Nepalese “are hopeful that we will have a better government in place if this energy can be channelled into sustained pressure for institutional reform”.

• A Tell Media report / Republished with permission of The New Humanitarian