The air in Kathmandu still smells of smoke, the residue of a three-day fury that tore through Nepal’s capital and shook its political core to the bone.
What began as a digital dispute over a social media ban erupted into a full-blown uprising—the restless youth’s cry for jobs, justice, and dignity.
Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s fall was swift. The military marched in. Parliament burned. The hunt for new leadership has spilled onto the streets and social media feeds.
The question now: is this the dawn of a new Nepal, or another tragic chapter in a long cycle of half-finished revolutions? Is it a true revolution—or a powder keg poised to explode into chaos and authoritarianism?
To answer, one must look beyond Nepal’s mountainous borders to patterns increasingly familiar across Asia and beyond: the Arab Spring of 2011, Sri Lanka’s “Aragalaya” in 2022, and Bangladesh’s “Monsoon Revolution” of 2024.
The Many False Springs
The Arab Spring of 2010-2011 offers a stark blueprint. What started as youth-driven demands for jobs, dignity, and anti-corruption reforms toppled dictators and unleashed chaos elsewhere.
The wave started in December 2010 with the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia. It achieved a fragile democracy, with a 2014 constitution and improved civil liberties, yet youth unemployment lingers at 15-18%, fueling ongoing discontent and authoritarian backsliding under President Kais Saied.
A decade later, many Tunisians, particularly those who protested on the streets in 2010–2011, felt the revolution did not achieve its goals.
Egypt’s Tahrir Square euphoria ended in a military coup, installing Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s repressive regime, where over 60,000 political prisoners languish and poverty affects 30% of the population.
Libya and Yemen descended into civil wars, with foreign interventions exacerbating fragmentation—Libya’s oil output halved, Yemen’s death toll rocketed amid famine and Houthi resurgence.
The point is, the Arab Spring ignited bright hopes—autocrats toppled, new constitutions drafted, and elections held. But the revolution illuminated fundamental truths: tearing down corrupt regimes is easier than building resilient institutions that tackle economic inequality and social exclusion.
The Arab Spring also exposed dangers inherent to street revolutions: leaderless protests vulnerable to hijacking by militaries or extremists, social media as a double-edged sword spreading both mobilisation and misinformation, and external powers turning genuine uprisings into cold geopolitical games.
New Dawns in South Asia
South Asia’s recent upheavals mirror these pitfalls but with local twists. Sri Lanka’s 2022 “Aragalaya” protests, triggered by debt-fueled shortages and corruption under the Rajapaksa family, forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee. The crisis, exacerbated by Chinese “debt-trap” loans like the Hambantota Port (leased to China for 99 years), saw GDP contract 7.8% that year.
It has been a partial success. An IMF bailout tugged the economy back from collapse, with GDP recovering to 5% growth in 2024 and inflation fell from 70% to 6%, and IMF-backed reforms have stabilised finances.
The protests led to free and fair elections in 2024 that ousted political dynasties and old leadership. Political stability holds for now.
According to this paper, “the Aragalaya rattled a complacent political class that imagined it was secure within an entrenched patron-client political system.”
Yet scars remain: Poverty afflicts 25-30% of the population, food insecurity persists, and austerity measures have widened inequality.
The Monsoon Revolution
Bangladesh’s 2024 “Monsoon Revolution” ousted Sheikh Hasina after student protests against job quotas escalated into nationwide violence, killing around 1,500. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus heads the interim government, announcing reforms in the electoral systems, police, and judiciary.
Inflation has dipped, but youth unemployment remains high, minority persecution has spiked, and deep political schisms threaten any unifying vision. Islamic fundamentalist groups like the Jammat have entrenched themselves deep.
The South Asian experience supports the core hypothesis: street revolutions address visible political symptoms like corruption, repression and censorship. But they rarely resolve deeper structural economic and institutional dysfunctions.
Can Nepal’s eruption avoid the fate that haunts most street revolutions?
Nepal’s Many Revolutions
Nepal itself is no stranger to upheaval. It has cycled between monarchy, democracy, Maoist insurgency, and back again—always returning to the same crossroads. Protests often flare in Kathmandu but end in elite-driven power-sharing deals, repression, or fractured coalitions.
So what comes next?
American professor and socoloist Sidney Tarrow writes that there are three kinds of “long-term and indirect effects” of social movements: “The first is their effect on the political socialisation and future activism of the people and groups who participated in them; the second are the effects of their struggles on political institutions and practices; and the third are their contributions to political culture.”
(Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2022)
Sooner or later, Nepal must choose: burn it all down to the ashes of anarchy, or build a future on the embers of struggle. Jobs must be created, development be prioritised, corrupt networks dismantled, and young voices included.
Nepal’s streets are screaming. The clock is ticking. The world is watching, hoping, fearing—that this time the revolution will not just roar but rise.
– Ends
