Kathmandu is on edge not because of “apps”, but because a generation raised on the promise of democracy and mobility has collided with an economy and political order that keep shutting every door.
The proximate trigger was regulatory: the government ordered 26 major social-media platforms to register locally and began blocking those deemed non-compliant, including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, X and others.
Crowds surged toward Parliament; police deployed tear gas, rubber bullets and, in several places, live fire. By late September 9, at least 19 people were killed and well over 300 injured. Under pressure, the government lifted the social-media ban and Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli resigned.
The spark was the ban. The fuel was political economy
It is tempting — especially from afar — to narrate this as a clash over digital freedoms. That would be analytically thin.
For Gen-Z Nepalis, platforms are not just entertainment; they are job boards, news wires, organising tools, and social lifelines. Shutting them off — after years of economic drift — felt like collective punishment.
But the deeper story is structural: Nepal’s growth has been stabilised by remittances rather than transformed by domestic investment capable of producing dignified work. In FY 2024/25, the Department of Foreign Employment issued 839,266 labour permits — staggering out-migration for a country of ~30 million. Remittances hovered around 33% of GDP in 2024, among the highest ratios worldwide. These numbers speak to survival, not social progress; they are a referendum on a model that exports its youth to low-wage contracts while importing basics, and that depends on patronage rather than productivity.
That is why the ban detonated so quickly. With youth under- and unemployment already high at 20.82% as seen in 2024, ministerial churn the norm, and corruption scandals ambient, attempts to police the digital commons looked less like “order” and more like humiliation.
The movement’s form — fast, horizontal, cross-class — echoed Bangladesh’s student-led mobilisations and Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya: school and college students in uniform, unemployed graduates, gig and informal workers, and a broader, disillusioned public converged around a shared verdict on misrule.
Facts on the ground: Casualties, curfews, and climb-down
The event’s sequence is unambiguous. An expansive registration order and blocking decision ignited protests; security forces responded with escalating force; by Monday night 19 were dead and hundreds injured; curfews and assembly bans spread; the Home Minister quit; an emergency cabinet huddle withdrew the ban; by Tuesday, Oli resigned.
Importantly, the grievance was never only digital. Protest signs and chants centered on corruption, elite impunity, and the absence of a credible development horizon. Amnesty International demanded an independent probe into possible unlawful use of lethal force — another reason the uprising hardened from a platform quarrel into a legitimacy crisis.
Migration as the silent plebiscite
If one metric explains the generational mood, it is Exits. The 839,266 labour permits issued in FY 2024/25 (up sharply from the previous year) translate into thousands leaving every day at the peak. These are not tourists; they are the very cohort now on the streets. Their remittances — ~33% of GDP — keep households afloat and the import bill paid, but they also mask a lack of structural transformation in the domestic economy.
In a system that cannot absorb its educated youth into stable, value-adding work, the public square — online and offline — becomes the one place where dignity can be asserted. Trying to close that square amid scarcity was bound to provoke an explosion.
A self-inflicted wound for Nepal’s left
Following Nepal's four-year IMF Extended Credit Facility (ECF) program, the government faced pressure to boost domestic revenue. This led to a new Digital Services Tax and stricter VAT rules for foreign e-service providers, but when major platforms refused to register, the state escalated by blocking them.
This move, which began as a tax enforcement effort, quickly became a tool of digital control, and it occurred as the public was already dealing with rising fuel costs and economic hardships driven by the program’s push for fiscal consolidation.
The government's platform ban became the final trigger for widespread protests against corruption, joblessness, and a lack of opportunities, highlighting that the unrest was less about a "colour revolution" and more about material grievances fueled by austerity measures.
That the crackdown and its political denouement unfolded under a CPN (UML) prime minister makes this a strategic calamity for Nepal’s left. Years of factional splits, opportunistic coalitions, and policy drift had already eroded credibility among the young. When a left-branded government narrows civic space instead of widening material opportunity, it cedes the moral terrain to actors who thrive on anti-party cynicism — individual-cult politics and a resurgent monarchist right.
The latter has mobilised visibly this year; with Oli’s resignation, it will seek to portray itself as the guarantor of “order,” even as its economic vision remains thin and regressive. This is the danger: the very forces most hostile to egalitarian transformation can capitalise on left misgovernance to expand their footprint.
From an anti-imperialist vantage — one that opposes Northern privilege yet insists on unsentimental analysis — the crisis is textbook dependency without development. Remittances smooth consumption but entrench external dependence; donor-driven governance tweaks rarely become employment-first industrial policy; and procurement-heavy public spending feeds rent circuits more than productive capacity.
In such an order, the state is tempted to police visibility rather than transform conditions. That is why an attempt to regulate platforms by switching them off — rather than by ensuring due process and narrow tailoring — was read as an effort to manage dissent, not to solve problems.
What opposition signals tell us (and what they don’t)
Opposition statements recognised the larger canvas sooner than the government did.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) expressed condolences, urged action on anti-corruption demands, and called for removing “sanctions on social networks.” The CPN (Unified Socialist) and CPN (Maoist Centre) statements condemned the repression, demanded an impartial investigation, and linked digital curbs to failures on jobs and governance.
These reactions matter analytically because they show that even within mainstream politics there is acknowledgment that the crisis is about livelihoods and legitimacy, not merely law-and-order.
But these signals also reveal the predicament of the left: if its leading figures can only react to a youth uprising rather than prefigure the development horizon that would have prevented it, then the arena will be dominated by anti-establishment and royalist currents claiming to deliver order faster — even at the cost of democratic space.
The bottom line
These protests in Nepal began because a government tried to regulate by switching off the public square. They exploded because that square is where a precarious generation looks for work, community and voice in the absence of opportunity at home.
A complete accounting must therefore record both the human toll — 19 dead and hundreds injured — and the structural toll: hundreds of thousands compelled to leave each year and remittances that prop up consumption while postponing transformation.
With Oli’s resignation and the ban withdrawn, the immediate confrontation may ebb, but the verdict delivered by Gen-Z will not. Until Nepal replaces remittance complacency and coalition arithmetic with an employment-first development model, the streets will remain the most credible arena of accountability.
[This article was produced by Globetrotter. Atul Chandra is a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His areas of interest include geopolitics in Asia, left and progressive movements in the region, and struggles in the Global South. Pramesh Pokharel is a political analyst and part time lecturer of Anthropology at Tribhuvan University. He is a Central Committee Member of CPN (Unified Socialist) and General Secretary of All Nepal Peasants Federation.]