How Gen-Z used the U.S.-based app to coordinate the activities of an online community protesting against corruption and changed the course of political history of the young Himalayan republic
It is said that a week is a long time in politics. And it is true for Nepal. The Himalayan republic, sandwiched between India and Tibet, has a new, interim government. A former chief justice, Sushila Karki, has been sworn in as Prime Minister. Parliament has been dissolved. And an election has been called for 5th March 2026. It marks the culmination of anti-corruption protests by Gen-Z — the loose umbrella title of the youth movement.
Justice Karki has two firsts to her credit — She is the first woman chief justice of Nepal and, now, the first woman Prime Minister of the country. The manner in which she was chosen is equally interesting. More than half of Nepal’s 30 million people are online. No wonder then that social-media came in handy for the digitally-savvy. A U.S.-based app called Discord is particularly popular with Gen-Z.
Discord is a free app for voice, video, and text communication, allowing users to connect with others in private messages or within large online communities, known as servers. Originally popular with gamers, it has expanded to become a versatile tool for people with shared hobbies and interests to form communities. This is how it works — Users can join or create “Servers”, which are organised into text and voice-channels for real-time communication, file sharing, and screen sharing. Gen-Z protesters formed a community called “Youth Against Corruption” on Discord to organise and vote for their next leader. And that’s how Sushila Karki was picked for Prime Minister.
Every which way you look at it, Nepal is a story that’s captivating the world — How a protest against corruption, made worse by a social-media ban, snowballed into a full-blown popular uprising, toppling a government and igniting calls for real change. How did Nepal get here? And, more importantly, where does it go from here? Sometimes, it is important to understand the past to predict the future.
Gen-Z movement
Generation Z — the digital natives born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s, who make up a huge chunk of Nepal’s population — have been protesting for many months about corruption and nepotism. Their anger was directed against the children of politicians, who lavish lifestyles contrasted spectacularly with that of the average Nepalese youth. Social media was full of images of #NepoKids and their private jets, luxury cars, and exotic vacations — while ordinary families scraped by. Then came the spark that lit the fuse.
On 4th September, Nepal’s Government, led by Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, imposed a sweeping ban on 26 popular social-media platforms. We’re talking Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, and X — tools that 90 per cent of Nepal’s population rely on for everything from staying connected with family abroad, to running small businesses and sharing news. Nepal’s per capita income hovers around 1 thousand 4 hundred dollars per year, and with youth unemployment soaring, social media was a lifeline for young people dreaming of better opportunities. The Government claimed that the platforms failed to register under new regulations aimed at curbing fake news, hate speech, and online fraud. But Gen-Z and human-rights groups saw it as a blatant power-grab to silence dissent. The ban felt like the final straw, cutting off their voices just as they were amplifying these inequalities.
On 7th September, activists such as Sudan Gurung, the 36-year-old president of a youth-led N.G.O. called Hami Nepal, rallied his troops via still-open apps such as TikTok and Viber. Gurung, a former event organiser who turned to activism after losing his child in the 2015 earthquake, urged students to protest peacefully — wear school uniforms, carry books, and march to symbolise education over violence.
Hami Nepal, which focussed on disaster-relief and youth empowerment, had already built a network through Instagram and Discord, sharing safety-tips and routes. And so, on 8th September, thousands of Gen-Z protesters gathered in Kathmandu’s Maitighar Mandala, a bustling square near the Parliament building. The protests quickly morphed into something bigger. Protesters surged toward the Parliament complex, occupying a security building in a bold show of defiance. But the response was brutal. Police fired tear-gas, rubber-bullets, water-cannons, and — according to Amnesty International and the U.N. — live ammunition as well. At least 51 people have been killed and more than 13-hundred injured. Hospitals overflowed. Protesters ferried the wounded on motorcycles. Curfew was slapped on parts of Kathmandu, Pokhara, and Rupandehi. But the anger only grew. The U.N.’s human-rights office called it shocking, and demanded a probe into the disproportionate use of force.
By the 9th, the protests had exploded into a nationwide anti-government storm; no, make that tsunami. An avalanche that came hurtling down, destroying everything in its path. Everything.
Nothing and no one was spared. The President’s estate was looted. The Prime Minister’s residence was vandalised. The Parliament was targeted. The country’s top court was attacked. Government Ministers were chased down and assaulted. Finance Minister Bishnu Prasad Paudel was kicked, stripped nearly naked, and chased into a river. Prime Minister Oli’s private residence was set on fire. Former Nepal prime minister and Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda’s house was ransacked. Another former prime minister and Nepali Congress leader Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife were almost lynched. Hilton Kathmandu, the tallest hotel in Nepal, was burnt to ashes.
Car showrooms were vandalised. And the headquarters of Kantipur Publications, the publishers of Nepal’s largest selling newspaper, the Nepali-language Kantipur, and The Kathmandu Post, one of the largest English-language newspapers in the country, was set on fire. The trigger for this deadly turn was the police crackdown on the 8th, which protesters saw as proof of an oligarchy protecting its own. The International Crisis Group called it a major inflection point in the country’s uneasy experience with democratic rule.
Unrest had been brewing for some time. People had had enough of decades of elite corruption. Scandals such as the 2017 Airbus deal that cost Nepal 10.4 million dollars, or endless headlines about politicians’ kids flaunting wealth amid 7.5 per cent of the population working abroad as migrant labour, only fuelled the discontent. An opinion piece in The Himalayan Times newspaper published from Kathmandu calls the Pokhara International Airport a symbol of financial mismanagement.
The airport, funded by a 20-year loan from China’s Export-Import Bank and built by a Chinese State-owned engineering firm, has become a financial burden — a white elephant. The loan from China Exim Bank has become an economic strain, with the airport generating insufficient revenue to meet debt obligations. Another scandal that rocked Nepal was the distribution of fake Bhutanese Refugee identity cards to Nepal citizens so that they could be resettled in the U.S.
The social-media ban was lifted late on the 8th, but it was too little, too late. The 73-year-old, four-time Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli was forced to step down. The Nepal Army was deployed to patrol the streets and appeal for calm. By 10th September, a fragile normalcy had returned, with soldiers enforcing curfews and helping stranded foreigners. Mass jailbreaks were reported amid the chaos. A former Deputy Prime Minister, Rabi Lamichhane, was freed from the Nakhu jail.
A brief history of Nepal
Once a constitutional monarchy under King Birendra, Nepal was a Hindu kingdom sandwiched between India and China. But the 1990s brought turmoil. A Maoist insurgency from 1996 to 2006 killed more than 17,000 people. It demanded an end to the monarchy. In 2001, Crown Prince Dipendra’s massacre wiped out the royal family, thrusting Gyanendra onto the throne. He seized absolute power in 2005 but mass protests in 2006 forced him to restore parliament. That paved the way for the 2008 abolition of the monarchy, turning Nepal into a federal republic via a new Constitution in 2015.
Oli, a communist hardliner from the C.P.N.–U.M.L. party, has been a key player in this era — serving three prior terms since 2015, often in unstable coalitions. His latest stint, starting July 2024, promised stability but delivered more of the same — infighting, economic woes, and accusations of authoritarianism, like past social-media bans and draft-laws imposing a fine for anti-national speech. TikTok was handed down a nine-month ban, which was lifted in 2024. Oli upset New Delhi by publishing a map of Nepal that showed Lipulekh as Nepal’s territory. He further provoked New Delhi by picking China over India for his first overseas visit. “Oli Chor, Desh Chhod!” (Oli thief, leave the country!) became a rallying cry.
Ignore young people at your own peril
These Gen-Z protests mark a shift. Unlike the Maoist rebellion, this is youth-led, tech-savvy, and leaderless at its core — though figures such as Gurung and Kathmandu Mayor Balendra Shah have emerged as unlikely heroes. The fury feels homegrown, inspired by uprisings in Bangladesh 2024 and Sri Lanka 2022. Globally, this is a wake-up call. Nepal reminds us that from the Arab Spring to Hong Kong, from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to Mongolia and Indonesia, digital generations won’t tolerate opacity or oligarchy.
(The writer is a senior consulting editor with D.D. India)