Himalayan hopes: RSP's decisive victory raises Gen Z's expectations

Nepal marks the third South Asian country, after Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, where elections have been held following popular protests that ousted established political leaders. Like Bangladesh, this South Asian neighbour also saw young people precipitating political change. Like Anura Kumara Dissanayake in Sri Lanka, a political outlier has received overwhelming support from the electorate in Nepal. But while Mr Dissanayake has over three decades of experience in politics and previously served as minister, Balendra Shah, 35, is a political novice. He has roughly four years of experience in public administration, starting in 2022, when he eschewed a career as a rapper to win the Kathmandu mayoral election as an independent.

 

Mr Shah, popularly known as Balen, rode a wave of GenZ discontent to defeat four-time former Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist), or CPN (UML), one of the country’s established political parties, by over 50,000 votes. The four-year-old Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) is on course to sweep both sections of the 275-member Lower House – 165 seats directly elected through the first-past-the-post system and 110 elected via proportional representation. The RSP’s appeal appears to have spread beyond Kathmandu, where it swept all the seats, decimating political stalwarts. Among them is Gagan Thapa, the Nepali Congress’ prime ministerial candidate, and several from the CPN (UML). An exception was former Prime Minister Pushpa Dahal “Prachanda” of the Nepali Communist Party – Maoist Centre, whose coalition government included RSP members in Cabinet positions.

 

The RSP’s decisive victory, which promises stability in place of frequent coalitions run by three parties headed by entrenched politicians, has concomitantly raised expectations. GenZ protestors, who precipitated the political crisis in September last year, reflected their frustrations with high joblessness — running at 10 per cent — and rampant corruption among the political elite, among whom the youth’s particular target was “nepo babies”. Chronic political instability — 14 governments since the fall of the monarchy in 2008 — has eroded Nepal’s key tourism and services sectors, even as droves of educated Nepalese have headed overseas. The result is that remittances, rather than productive economic activities, have become a major driver of consumption. Though the RSP is not without administrative experience, it has set itself a challenging agenda. Its manifesto promises to create 1.2 million jobs in five years, reduce foreign migration, double per capita income from $1,447 to $3,000 (more than doubling gross domestic  product), and provide health care and insurance for all. It is unclear how it plans to achieve this. Balen’s governance record in Kathmandu as a decisive, technocratic disruptor may offer clues to the new government’s approach.

 

Balen’s victory could also alter the geostrategic landscape of the Himalayan nation, wedged between India and China. He is the first person from the Madhesi community, which inhabits the Terai region, bordering India, to hold office. He has expressed reservations about China’s growing influence in his country, a point that has caused growing discomfiture between New Delhi and Nepal’s earlier administrations. In that context, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s warm congratulatory message could reflect a new dynamic in Indo-Nepalese ties, just as it has done in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.