What’s Next for Nepal after the Gen Z Protests?

In past decades, there have been a number of protest movements driven to a large extent by public anger about corruption and poor economic governance which brought down governments, including Georgia’s Rose Revolution, Ukraine’s EuroMaidan and the Tunisian Revolution. Recent years have seen mass protest movements in Asia in particular connected to economic grievances, such as the 2022 Aragalaya in Sri Lanka that toppled Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the July Revolution in Bangladesh that brought down Sheikh Hasina.

Nepal’s September 2025 Gen Z protests fit these trends, led by young people tired of a sclerotic and corrupt political class, nepotism and lavish spending by the children of the elite, poor public service delivery, and a lack of opportunity. Touched off by the government’s ham-handed attempt to shut down social media, the protests, at first peaceful, quickly turned violent, and eventually forced Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli to resign. As a result, Sushila Karki was appointed interim Prime Minister, becoming the first woman to lead Nepal. New elections are set for March 2026.

One question about all of these movements is the degree to which they are capable of truly breaking deeply entrenched patterns of corruption, poor governance and economic mismanagement. The track record is not particularly good. Georgia has seen significant democratic backsliding and Tunisia has turned authoritarian anew. August 2025 protests in Indonesia, while they did not bring down the government, led to a promise to cut perks for parliamentarians, a pledge that now appears to be walked back. Meanwhile, there is reportedly mounting dissatisfaction in Bangladesh a year after the revolution, and one month on, frustration in Nepal that the interim government is not tackling corruption quickly enough.

To better understand what is happening in Nepal in particular, I spoke recently with the head of a local economic, governance and democracy think tank who requested not to be named for this blog. He raised several points that are concerning if the aim is to bring about lasting change. First, he noted, the protestors brought rather diverse and, in some cases, vague demands to the protests and lacked a unifying political center. Additionally, he told me, the violent turn that the protests took appears to have been driven by opportunists, who in turn provoked the government’s overreaction. He explained that the anger with corruption and nepotism that drove the protests is a multi-layered problem without clear solutions – from petty bribes to secure basic public services, to mid-level graft impacting small and medium-sized businesses, to grand corruption and kleptocracy that have allowed those in power to live extravagantly. 

He also explained that Nepal’s experience is different from other cases in key ways. After centuries of monarchy, Nepal became a democracy in 2008, and since then, at least on paper, has exhibited a quite robust and competitive political system. The country didn’t fit the model of one leader or political party dominating the country, growing rich, and eventually sparking the anger of young people. However, he noted, corruption had also become “democratized.” The ashes of millions of dollars and rupees were found in the burned houses of political leaders across the spectrum, from the center-right Congress Party to the Maoist Party, he noted. By the same token, he credited that democratic instinct for opening the information space that touched off the protests, and paradoxically he has some optimism now that all of the parties have been discredited. 

As we concluded our conversation, I asked, after a long career working in civil society, including with many Western donors, how he now feels about the results of the numerous anti-corruption and governance programs implemented in Nepal. His view is rather bleak: that much of the work was for naught, that the bureaucrats who participated in those programs were happy to spend someone else’s money, and that they were more accountable to the donors than to Nepal’s citizens. He explained that there had been a revolving door between the government and the various aid agencies’ implementing partners, while few benefits accrued to Nepal’s people. Citizens, he said, saw the impact of public health and nutrition programs, but he now wonders whether good governance and anti-corruption can ever be externally funded.

Marc Schleifer

Governance, Democracy and Economic Development Expert