GEN Z OF NEPAL: THE LEADERLESS REVOLUTION by Mihir Srivastava

The revolutionary Gen-Z of Nepal overthrew the incumbent government in merely 24 hours of agitation. They were against protracted corruption of the ruling class, irrespective of the ideological affiliations, which had become endemic.

A young 18 years old girl, KU (her initials), grew up in Kathmandu, articulate and aware, is outraged by how the youth are denied their due to fill the coffers of corrupt ruling class. She’s a typical Gen Z, who are the first generation of 'digital natives'--as were born into a world of the internet.

This one development has revolutionised the way they communicate, learn, socialise and make friends, even buy—the consumer behaviours—compared to the previous generations. They employ social media for information exchange, community building; short video content is a very popular mode of dissemination of information. Gen Z is prone to addiction to social media, though some are wary of compromised privacy.

Gen Z are against what KU describes as the ‘duality’, I’d call it an unbridgeable trench, between the rich politicians’ kids and the poor youth. It’s irreconcilable and Gen Z is not ready to take it anymore. 

---

What happened in Nepal is not isolated, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka are other examples. Gen Z outrage has rattled governments across the globe, particularly in the developing countries where the resentment is growing with the widening disparities.

---

No More ‘Nepo Babies'. KU wants ‘fair opportunities’ in ‘my country’. The shameless display of wealth by the offspring of Nepal’s political elite is demeaning to Gen Z. This has to stop, also, accountability needs to be fixed, fair investigations against the corrupt politicians be carried out so that they pay for the price of amassing illegitimate wealth. 

The internet and social media have changed the rules of the game. For many like KU, social media is how they stay connected as a community and also to what's happening around the globe. They are no more frogs in a well, citizens of an isolated Himalayan country of 30 million. They understand very well how corruption and nepotism are corrosive to, as they say in one voice, ‘my country’.

The present crisis in Nepal started when the government banned social media on September 4. KU explains they did so ‘until the social media register with the government.’  In other words, the local government wanted to get their share of the pound of flesh; and some leverage.  

This caused resentment amongst the Gen Z. They marched out in large numbers to register their protest at 9 am on September the 8. They were greeted with bullets. Many died. The state thought that they had broken the back of the Gen Z movement before it started by killing many amongst them. They were gloriously wrong.

When KU reached after attending school at 11 am, people were running helter-skelter. ‘Most of those gunned down were in the school uniform,’ she’s outraged. Media was not reporting what was going on. 

After the shooting down, the social media was restored and the gory videos of students being killed by the security forces went viral. The killing galvanised Gen Z as a potent force, far from being scared, they were determined to end the regime.

No one knows where the clarion call originated, but everyone had it on their mobile, and they knew it was time to act. The movement was without a leader, without an organisation or a union, and it remains a mystery how it all started—there’s no specified source, it was an organic protest that swept the government like a tsunami. ‘The murderers can’t be the rulers,’ asserts KU—the popular sentiment.

The streets were flooded with angry Gen Z. They started with the targeting of the prime properties, mansions of the politicians, and their families dragged out. Even the women of the house were not spared. The Gen Z have no regrets; they deserve the treatment meted out to them.

Gen Z, without a leader, yet a cohesive force, for they had a common goal, to force a change, and vent their pent-up fury They set fire to symbols of statehood like the parliament and the supreme court. Assets of the ruling class were also the targeted, like the Hilton Hotel in Kathmandu. Not much could be done to stop them, before it was all over. Prime minister KP Sharma Oli resigned.

The ruling class, some of the politicians, allegedly, tried to escape in vain. The army came to their rescue, ensured they, with their kith and kin, are not lynched. They will now live in fear and their ill-gotten wealth is of no use.

The anger in Gen Z was simmering for a long time. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), or the CPN (M), way back in 2005, to dislodge the monarchy under King Gyanendra used the Maoist fighting forces that comprised 3,500 to 4,500 Nepali children, many of them died in the conflict that followed over the next few years. They were not ‘volunteers’ as was claimed, rather, the Maoists forced them to join the force, some of the children were kidnapped from school, others were abducted in large groups. As a consequence, hundreds of children fled their homes to escape the Maoists. Though a long time has passed, anger and resentment persist.

The Gen Z committee, a loose group, met and decided who their future prime minister would be. For the interim the former chief justice Sushila Karki. She made it ample clear at the very onset that she is taking up the mantle only for six months. Gen Z have reposed their confidence in Belen Shah, 35 years of age, a rapper turned politician, currently serving the mayor of Kathmandu, the first independent candidate to be elected to this coveted position. 

What happened in Nepal is not isolated, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka are other examples. Gen Z outrage has rattled governments across the globe, particularly in the developing countries where the resentment is growing with the widening disparities.

It seems like history repeating itself. It reminds me of 1968—the year that rocked the world, which is also the title of the seminal book by Mark Kurlansky. Students all over the world took to the streets, it was a global moment with a local cause, be it New York or Berkeley or Chicago or Paris or Prague or Rome or Berlin or Warsaw or Tokyo—to name a few.

A lot happened that year that instigated the students to take the streets, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy; the Vietnam War's Tet Offensive ; Prague Spring; the antiwar movement; Black Power; avant-garde theatre, the birth of the women's movement, and the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union; Yasir Arafat's guerrilla organization rose to prominence in the Middle East; the Mexican government having massacred hundreds of students protesting police brutality.

Kurlansky shows how the coming of live television made 1968 the first global year. Television shocked the world with seventeen minutes of police clubbing demonstrators at the Chicago convention, live film of unarmed students facing Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia, and a war of starvation in Biafra. The impact was huge, galvanising the student power against the authorities.

He argues that the ‘live television was like a cultural revelation and had enormous consequences.’ Now, the Internet. 

Television provides real time spectacle of state brutality, social media goes a step further, it allows people not just to share sentiments, nut also to organise themselves as a group for a common cause—and they don’t need a leader to affect a revolution and change the status quo. 

It’s a reason to worry for the entrenched interest groups. The internet has become the biggest nation for Gen Z across the world.