When Gen Z challenges the establishment

Social media has eased mobilisation but the hard task of cleansing public life will require people to dig in their heels and persevere against the establishment

The unquiet alleys of Kathmandu are witnessing the coming of age of Nepal’s restive Gen Z generation that seems to have toppled not just a regime but the old political order itself. What comes next is anybody’s guess, though the army, a never-changing Nepalese institution, has taken charge of the street and has asked the protestors to come in for negotiations. The Gen Z mobilisations articulated two demands: One, lifting the ban on various social media platforms; and two, an end to corruption and nepotism. The first has been achieved while the latter is more of an abstract wish that will need a painstaking process of restoring credibility in public institutions, including political parties, parliamentary platforms, the judiciary, and legacy media. This calls for immense patience and a forward-looking leadership willing to invest in the laborious task of institutional building.

Past youth “revolutions” have floundered because they failed to build on the spirit and energy in the street for political transformation and allowed the old order to return or regressive forces to fill the vacuum. (REUTERS)

Past youth “revolutions” have floundered because they failed to build on the spirit and energy in the street for political transformation and allowed the old order to return or regressive forces to fill the vacuum. In the debris of the Arab Spring, the first of the “revolutions” organised by the youth and facilitated by social media in the late 2000s and which swept through Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Bahrain, lies the relic of a failed youth “revolution”. But then the young are seldom prisoners of history. The 2024 “Monsoon Revolution” in Bangladesh has yet to result in institutional reforms. The caretaker administrator has been more keen on extending his tenure in office than creating the ground for any radical re-haul of administration. In Indonesia, youth have been mobilising against public corruption, nepotism, and harsh laws. From Sri Lanka of 2022 to Nepal in 2025, or Myanmar in 1988, Hong Kong in 2019, youth rebellions have challenged the establishment deemed as corrupt and self-serving. One may see the shadow of Paris 1968 in these, a short-lived fire that singed the urban elite but failed to dislodge it from power. Social media has eased mobilisation, but the hard task of cleansing public life will require people to dig in their heels and persevere against the establishment. That’s no easy task.