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📊Analysis & Opinion

Nepal’s Fresh Start Begins Now

A new party takes office with a mandate—and high expectations from the Gen Z movement that propelled it to power.

Foreign Policy
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Nepal’s Fresh Start Begins Now

Nepal’s Gen Z protest movement brought down the government last September, but it appeared to score a more lasting victory when the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) won the country’s March 5 election in a landslide. The anti-establishment party beat out more traditional forces to become the first since 1999 to secure a parliamentary majority in Nepal.

The RSP has selected Balendra Shah, widely known as Balen—a rabble-rouser who previously served as mayor of the capital, Kathmandu—as prime minister. His government will be sworn in on March 27 with a mandate for sweeping reforms to address Nepal’s endemic corruption and mismanagement.

However, some activists and observers worry that the RSP’s supposed meritocratic approach could threaten the hard-won gains of Nepal’s marginalized communities. They also warn that the party’s lofty promises could come back to bite it, igniting fresh unrest if the new leaders fail to meet expectations.

Expectations seemed sky-high as Nepal went to the polls this month. The usually traffic-choked streets of Kathmandu had been emptied by a vehicle ban, imposed for security, and were dotted instead with huddled groups of people discussing the mammoth political shift that seemed to be underway.

The RSP achieved what many analysts thought impossible by winning not only an election but a nearly two-thirds majority, picking up 182 of 275 seats in the lower house. The party, formed in 2022, rode a wave of disgust with the corrupt old guard: the endlessly shifting coalitions, with a few men taking turns as prime minister, that were blamed for Nepal’s economic stagnation.

This sentiment drove last year’s anti-corruption protests, led by people in their teens and 20s; they were met by a deadly police crackdown that sparked rioting. On Sept. 12, with at least 76 people killed in the violence and the parliament and Supreme Court in flames, Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli resigned, and the army briefly took charge.

Days later, an interim government was formed with input from protest leaders and charged with holding an election within six months.

Eager for a force that could counter the established parties, the protest leaders pressured the RSP to team up with other upstarts, including the 35-year-old Balen. The former rapper capitalized on viral fame to become the mayor of Kathmandu as an independent in 2022. His popularity grew as he picked fights with powerful interests, including by removing illegal structures across the city and curbing nepotism in private school scholarships.

Balen was named the RSP’s choice for prime minister ahead the election, and in a show of defiance, he directly challenged Oli for a seat in the former leader’s home district of Jhapa in southeastern Nepal. The 74-year-old Oli lost by almost 50,000 votes to Balen.

Ranju Darshana raises a fist while wearing a blue scarf in front of a crowd.

Ranju Darshana raises a fist while wearing a blue scarf in front of a crowd.

Ranju Darshana cheers during a campaign rally in Kathmandu, Nepal, on Feb. 17. Subaas Shrestha/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

RSP candidate Ranju Darshana, a teacher and activist, was declared the election’s first winner in a Kathmandu seat. Speaking to Foreign Policy before the vote, Darshana said the previous leaders’ “game of musical chairs had been the murder of hope,” particularly for young people, who grapple with high unemployment and often have little choice but to migrate overseas for work. Darshana, who at 30 calls herself “borderline Gen Z,” said a lack of local jobs prompted many of her students to take part in last year’s protests.

Darshana said Balen’s inclusion had boosted the RSP’s appeal, with help from social media. A Kathmandu Post report found that in the month before the election, more than half of political posts across a selection of popular Facebook pages were about the RSP rather than other parties. Though much of this buzz was organic, the RSP skillfully used platforms such as Facebook and TikTok to broadcast its message to voters.

In Nepal, politicians have conventionally won elections by building party machinery and extending patronage down to the village level. The RSP lacks these personal networks, making its victory a dramatic break with the past.

Beyond Kathmandu, residents in the southern city of Janakpur and surrounding villages echoed the party’s messaging when Foreign Policy visited in the lead-up to the election. In Balen’s ancestral village of Ekdara, a tea shop owner cheerfully recited an RSP slogan that he saw on Facebook: “Take other parties’ money, but vote RSP!” referring to accusations that many parties secure votes via handouts of cash and food by local cadres.

A group of five people sit around low tables playing cards in a cafe.

A group of five people sit around low tables playing cards in a cafe.

Young people play cards at a cafe in Kathmandu on Feb. 27. The students say their first step after graduation will be to migrate abroad for work. They hope that Balen as prime minister will provide jobs that will allow them to stay in Nepal. Ranzen Jha for Foreign Policy

Ujjwal Kumar Jha, an RSP candidate from Ekdara who went on to win a seat, said a politician with local roots, such as Balen, becoming prime minister would be a “sign of progress” because the people of the country’s southern plains, which border India, have long been marginalized in favor of Nepal’s mountainous heartland. The tea shop owner agreed, saying that Balen could “unite the plains and the hills.”

However, the RSP’s platform prioritizes efficient, corruption-free administration and service delivery over directly addressing inequality. A so-called citizen contract shared by the party ahead of the vote promised “merit-based” governance. This stance is mainly aimed at nepotism and partisan appointments, but it could endanger civil service and parliamentary quotas, which aim to promote inclusion but have drawn accusations of tokenism.

In the name of efficiency, RSP leaders have also previously proposed scrapping provincial assemblies, after opting out of the 2022 provincial elections. A core component of Nepal’s federalist system, the assemblies were enshrined in the 2015 constitution after years of struggle by marginalized groups, which argued that decentralizing politics would address regional disparities.

Such anti-federalist proposals were removed from the RSP’s 2025 platform, but some observers still worry about the party’s commitment to social justice.

Analyst Roshan Janakpuri said the RSP’s “middle-class politics of comfort” is consistent with the Gen Z movement that helped sweep it into power. Though the protest movement drew people from across social classes, Janakpuri said its focus on clean governance and job creation differed from previous struggles waged by workers or poor rural communities, which called chiefly for a redistribution of wealth and power along class or ethnic lines.

Balen’s conduct as Kathmandu mayor has raised similar concerns about his priorities. His attempts to beautify the city sometimes came at the expense of its poorest residents, such as when he sent police to violently evict street vendors and squatters along riverbanks, allegedly breaching municipal law.

Meanwhile, Balen’s tendency to lash out on social media invites comparisons to populist strongmen elsewhere in the world. In 2023, he threatened on Facebook to burn down Singha Durbar, Nepal’s seat of government, when his wife’s car was briefly stopped for a routine check by traffic police.

“Balen scares me,” said Sabin Ninglekhu, a researcher and urban housing activist, referring to the former mayor’s violent whims and disregard for the rules when clearing vendors and squatters. “When it comes to something he wants to do, he has been as authoritarian as can be.”

A close-up of a thumb marked with purple voting ink with a woman's out-of-focus face behind.

A close-up of a thumb marked with purple voting ink with a woman's out-of-focus face behind.

A voter shows her inked thumb after casting her ballot at a polling station during Nepal’s parliamentary election in Kathmandu on March 5.Prabin Ranabhat/Getty Images

Balen will face more constitutional checks and balances as prime minister. But with such a large majority for the RSP in parliament, it will be hard for the traditional parties—holding just a few dozen seats—to hold the government to account. Gen Z activists will face a similar challenge, with prior achievements now at risk.

Last December, youth representatives signed an ambitious 10-point agreement with the interim government that included proposals for high-level commissions to reform the electoral system, depoliticize the bureaucracy, and probe the assets of past and present leaders. Despite claiming the Gen Z mantle, the incoming administration may not consider itself bound by these terms.

Monika Niraula, an activist who works with the Gen-Z Movement Alliance and who took part in the negotiations, said the Gen Z movement had experienced “a bit of a downward wave” since the agreement but described this as part of the natural ebb and flow of any political struggle.

“The strength of the movement was rapid mobilization, but we’ve been extremely lacking in organization,” Niraula said. “We’re going to be much better organized in the future,” she said, but “it’s going to be challenging.” She added that although she disagrees with the RSP’s politics, which she considers troublingly right-wing, the party’s landslide has given it a “wonderful opportunity” to introduce reforms and improve people’s quality of life.

However, Niraula warned that the party’s unrealistic campaign promises—including to more than double Nepal’s GDP and per capita income in five to seven years—risk repeating a dangerous “cycle of hope and disappointment.” “If you raise expectations up so high, the downfall is going to be steep and hard,” she said.

For now, though, most Nepalis seem happy to put their trust in the RSP’s younger, less tainted leaders and are relieved at the prospect of a stable majority government. Years of shaky coalitions in Nepal produced 14 governments since 2008. The decisive election result may also soothe lingering fears that radical elements, including advocates of a restored Hindu monarchy, could exploit future instability.

“The game of musical chairs is now over,” said Dibya Mani Rajbhandari, a former parliamentarian with the Nepali Congress party, which came in second in the election, with 38 seats. Rajbhandari chose not to contest his seat this year, and he conceded that traditional parties such as his were too slow to adapt to public discontent: “We’re in the Gen Z era now.”

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Foreign Policy

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